China’s Wu Minxia splashed into the Olympic record books yesterday, passing legends like American Greg Louganis and her “big sister”, compatriot Guo Jingjing, to become the first person with five diving gold medals.
Wu reached the landmark through a no-doubt victory in the women’s synchronised 3m springboard along with dive partner Shi Tingmao at the Rio Games.
The win establishes Wu as one of the great all-time Olympians and broke other barriers as well.
Wu passed Guo to become the first man or woman with seven diving medals in total, and she is now the only person to win the 3m event in four successive Games.
At the age of 30, she also became the oldest women’s diving gold medallist.
 The win kicked off the Olympic diving competition as well as China’s hopes of a sweep of all eight men’s and women’s events.
The victory could help Wu emerge from the shadow of her former dive partner Guo, the Chinese diving diva who dominated the sport in Games past.
Previously, only Guo and fellow compatriots Fu Mingxia and Chen Ruolin, along with Louganis and Patricia McCormick of the USA, had attained four diving golds.
Chen could catch Wu on five golds later in Rio when she competes in the 10m synchronised event.
Wu, however, won’t be able to add to her tally as her participation in Rio started and ended with the 3m synchronised springboard.
Wu won the event in 2004 and 2008 with Guo, and in 2012 with He Zi. Wu’s other gold came in the 2012 3m individual springboard.
Wu and Shi leapt to the top of the leaderboard from round one and never let up, locking it away in the last two rounds with exquisitely synchronised dives that had the judges fawning.
 Their final tally of 345.60 points was 31.77 more than Italian silver medallists Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallape. Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith of Australia took bronze.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s archers extended their unbroken reign in the women’s team event to an eighth successive Olympics with an emphatic defeat of Russia in the final. The trio of Ki Bo-bae, Choi Mi-sun and Chang Hye-jin were unflappable on a windy day at the Sambodromo, shooting brilliantly to rout their opponents 5-1 and send Korean fans in the terraces into raptures.
Archery queen Ki, the defending champion in the individual event, was magnificent in the win, shooting four perfect scores to ensure the team would remain unbeaten at the Games.
Taiwan’s Le Chien-ying, Lin Shi-chia and Tan Ya-ting held off the Italians in the playoff to capture bronze.
Majlinda Kelmendi also made history at the Rio Games as she won gold in the women’s judo, becoming the first athlete from Kosovo to win an Olympic medal after overcoming Italy’s Odette Giuffrida in a tense duel.
Kelmendi, ranked second in her 52kg weight class, topped 10th-seeded Giuffrida with a single point from a yuko that had initially been judged to be a more valuable waza-ari.
 Rio marks the first Olympics at which athletes are competing under the flag of Kosovo, which proclaimed independence from Serbia in 2008 and which was accepted as a member of the International Olympic Committee in 2014.
The two-times world champion, who was Kosovo’s flag bearer at Friday’s opening ceremony, represented Albania at the London Games in 2012 but she went home without a medal that time.
Japan’s Misato Nakamura and Russia’s Natalia Kuziutina won bronze.
Earlier, first-time Olympian Catherine Skinner of Australia battled to the end of a tense all-Oceania final in women’s trap shooting to win the gold medal, edging out Natalie Rooney of New Zealand by one shot.
The 26-year-old Skinner hit 12 of her 15 orange targets with her shotgun to Rooney’s 11, but she got off to a rough start by missing the first target.
“I have had plenty of finals when I missed the first shot and it went downhill from there,” said Skinner, who won her first gold medal in a major international competition.
After qualifying at the bottom of the six finalists, Skinner was a steady shot in the semi-finals blasting 14 of the 15 targets and went straight to the final, prevailing over a veteran field including defending Olympic champion Jessica Rossi.
Rooney, also a first-time Olympian, made it to the final in a shoot-off with American Corey Cogdell.
Cogdell, a three-time Olympian, took her second Olympic bronze medal by besting Spain’s Fatima Galvez in a shoot-off, after each woman shot 13 of their 15 targets for the medal.
Earlier, Zhang Mengxue got China off the gold medal mark and gave her mum the perfect birthday present at the Rio Games yesterday, the Olympic debutant winning the women’s 10m air pistol title.
After an assured display of precision shooting at the Deodoro range, the 25-year-old beamed: “It happened to be my mother’s birthday yesterday (Saturday) so this will be the best gift for her.”
The woman from Jinan produced a perfect 10.9 on her 17th shot to comfortably hold off Russian teenager Vitalina Batsarashkina.