ROME (AFP) - Chinese Olympic champions Qin Kai and Wang Feng led from start to finish to retain their men's 3m synchronised springboard title at the World Championships here on Saturday.

Americans Troy Dumais and Kristian Ipsen finished second with Alexandre Despatie and Reuben Ross of Canada completing the podium.

It was Qin's second gold medal of these championships having won the 1m springboard event on Friday while for Wang it represented a third straight world crown in this event.

The Chinese posted the best score in five out of six rounds and clinched the title with a 94.50 score from their final dive to give them a total of 467.94.

"This morning we were feeling a bit nervous so we didn't perform our best. Tonight we did better, much better," said Wang.

"In the preliminaries we didn't do our best because the competition was pretty easy," added Qin.

"Tonight it was more difficult to get through so we had to perform better. This gave us a boost."

Dumais and Ipsen were in a battle with Yuriy Kunakov and Dmitry Sautin, the Olympic silver medallists, for second until the Russian pair produced the worst dive of the fifth round to drop out of contention.

Despatie and Ross came into the final round in fifth place but did just enough to deny hosts Italy a medal by finishing a mere 0.09 points above Nicola and Tommaso Marconi in a tight finish for the bronze.

Dumais and Ipsen had headed the field in the morning preliminaries after Qin and Wang flunked their final dive to drop from first to fourth, but they made no mistakes in the final.