Although powerhouses China swept all three gold medals at yesterday's Fina Diving Grand Prix, the glittering result was not enough to impress China's national team diving coach Wang Xiao Song, who insists his divers are not ready to mine precious metal at next year's Rio Olympics.
At the OCBC Aquatic Centre, the dominant Chinese were first in the synchronised 10m platform for both men and women, as well as the mixed synchronised 3m despite sending their B team to compete.
"We reached the finals of all the categories and won gold, I would say that we performed up to standard," coach Wang said.
"However, I think they (the divers) are not of Olympic standard yet, they are still in the training process," he added.
The pairing of Wang Ying and Wang Han won the women's synchronised 10m platform in only their second competition together, scoring 288.00 points.
They pipped North Korean duo Choe Hyang and Kim Mi Rae (282.90) to the gold.
Li Ya Nan and Wu Chun Ting won the mixed 3m synchronised event while Wang An Qi and Gao Ang clinched the gold in the men's 10m synchronised platform.
Wang Han, 19, described her performance as "quite all right", saying: "We performed up to standard for some of our routines but we still have room for improvement."
While China were not fully satisfied with their showing, the home crowd were more than happy to see Singapore's SEA Games silver medallists Myra Lee and Freida Lim finish fourth in the women's 10m synchronised platform.
Lee said: "Actually, we're quite pleased with the performance given that we actually took a break after the world championships and coming back again to compete, we're quite happy with our performance today."
Yesterday's score of 251.61 is a new personal best for the duo, erasing their previous record (244.32) set in the World Championship in Kazan in Russia.
The two Singaporeans set the new mark despite needing to balance studies with training.
Freida, 17, is studying in Yishun Junior College while Lee, 21, is a third-year student at the Singapore Management University.
The latter is considering rearranging her school schedule to free up more time to train.
The pair hope to continue training and focus their energy on ramping up the difficulty level in their routines so as to do well at the World Championships next March in Beijing and Dubai, which will serve as an Olympic qualifier.
Singapore's national diving coach Wang Jun said: "We'll increase the difficulty of routines and have more training together."
Lim says: "We're planning to up the difficulty in the forwards, inwards and the twists so it won't be as scary as the backs or reverse."
