Golden day for hosts

China began their expected dominance in diving by winning a gold medal in the women's synchronised 3 metre springboard.

Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia lived up their billing as favourites by compiling a total of 343.50 points in front of an enthusiastic home crowd.

A string of perfect 10's in the second round thrust them to the top of the leaderboard and they comfortably held on.

Victory means the Chinese pair defend the title they won in Athens four years ago. Russia's Julia Pakhalina and Anastasia Pozdnyakova took the silver with German duo Ditte Kotzian and Heike Fischer claiming bronze.

South Korea's dominant women archers comfortably won the gold medal with a 224-215 victory over hosts China in the final.

The Koreans landed a world record against Italy and hammered France in the semis - where China put out Great Britain.

France then edged out Team GB in the bronze medal match by just two points as the Brits had to settle for fourth place.

World number one shooter Guo Wenjun had already China a third gold medal of the Games when she became the women's 10m Air Pistol Olympic champion.

Although the 24-year-old had a shaky start at the Beijing Shooting Hall and Ranges on the city's outskirts, she recovered superbly to set a new Olympic record when landing gold with 492.3 points.

Russian Natalia Paderina took the silver after leading through qualifying, with ironically Georgian Nino Salukvadze winning bronze - just hours after the team decided to remain at the Games after considering a withdrawal in protest over the conflict in South Ossetia.

Thailand weightlifter Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakon won the women's 53kg gold medal with a new Olympic record also under her belt.

The 24-year-old set a new Olympic clean and jerk mark of 126kg during her total lift of 221kg that saw her finish ahead of Yoon Jin-hee of South Korea and Nastassia Novikava of Belarus.

The Czech Republic won gold for the second time in a shooting event, David Kostelecky winning the men's Trap Final.

His score of 146 points was enough to see him pip Giovanni Pellielo of Italy. Russian Alexey Alipov took the bronze after a shoot-off.

China's Xian Dongmei retained her Olympic title in the women's 52kg judo competition with a final win over An Kum Ae of North Korea.

Xian's win made it five gold medals for the hosts and they look like they will be hard to topple from the medal table.

Japan got on the gold medal board with Masato Uchishiba after he won the men's 66kg judo title by defeating France's Benjamin Darbelet in the final.

Darbelet takes the silver and the bronze medals went to Pak Chol-min of South Korea and Yordanis Arencibia of Cuba.

A sixth gold for the Chinese followed as Long Qingquan of China landed the men's 56kg weightlifting title.

Italy won the final old medal of the day to be handed out as fencer Matteo Tagliariol won gold in the men's individual epee.

Tagliariol beat France's Fabrice Jeannet in the final and Spain's Jose

Luis Abajo won the bronze.