Olympic champion He Chong held his nerve on his final dive to take the gold medal at the World Championships in Rome yesterday.

He came into the final round of dives in the lead but picked a trickier dive than his rivals.

Although he did not execute a perfect dive, it was just enough to push American Troy Dumais and Canadian Alexandre Despatie into second and third respectively.

He's team-mate Zhang Xinhua finished fourth with Australia's Olympic 10m champion Matthew Mitcham in ninth.

He held the lead in the competition after every dive except the second round when he made a mistake and Dumais overtook him.

However, the American made a hash of his third dive, scoring a lowly 67.50 while He posted a 91.80 and Dumais was playing catch-up from there.

Despatie got off to a slow start with a 72.00 that left him in seventh place but four dives in the mid-to-late 80s pushed him into gold medal contention.

But the 2005 champion had a poor last dive compared to He and Dumais had to settle for the bronze medal.

He deserved his victory with the only total score over 500, managing 505.20.