The pair were the top performers in the first four rounds, including an inward 3.5 somersaults with tuck as their fourth routine which was awarded 89.76 points.

They notched 90.30 for a reverse 1.5 somersaults with 3.5 twists free routine in the fifth round, but faced a growing challenge for gold from the increasingly ambitious British pair of Anthony Harding and Jack Laugher.

They scored a huge 98.04 from their forward 4.5 somersaults tuck, a dive with a 3.8 degree of difficulty, in the fifth round, and piled the pressure on with a 3.9 degree of difficulty forward 2.5 somersaults with three twists pike, which earned 90.09.

Wang and Cao required 72.34 to win from their final dive, and although not as convincing as they had been in the earlier rounds, it was enough to see them over the line.

Olympic champion in this event Wang, who competed with the since-retired Xie Siyi at Tokyo 2020, scored lowly for execution, and they took synchronisation scores of 6.5 and 7.5.

However, a total of 79.80 clinched the gold medal for the pair, who finished with an overall 459.18.

Wang admitted afterwards that their final dive was "not perfect", but insisted that "overall we did a very good job."

It was a third World Championships triumph in this event for Cao, who has previously competed with Qin Kai in 2015 and Xie in 2019.

Harding and Laugher, an Olympic champion at Rio 2016 and silver medallist at the World Championships in Gwangju in 2019, scored 451.71 in second.

Germany's Timo Barthel and Lars Rüdiger took bronze in 406.44.

Rüdiger also placed third at Tokyo 2020 with Patrick Hausding, but this was the first time his country have medalled in this event since 2007.

Earlier in the day, there was a dramatic finish to the mixed 4x1,500m relay in the first open water swimming final held at Lupa Beach in Budapest, where less than three seconds separated the medallists.

Germany's Florian Wellbrock, the men's 10km open water Olympic champion, provided a telling contribution in the closing sprint, edging ahead of rivals from Hungary and Italy to clinch gold in 1hr 4min 40.50sec.

He had a deficit of 25 seconds to make up after the third exchange, with Hungary, Italy and France occupying the top three positions.

Lea Boy, Oliver Klemet and Leonie Beck had raced the first three legs for Germany.

The host nation and Italy were involved in a very close tussle for silver, which Hungary edged through Kristóf Rasovszky.

Both nations clocked 1:04:43.00.

France slipped out of contention and had to settle for fourth in 1:04:56.40.

The women's 10m platform final looks set to be a battle between China's world champion Chen Yuxi and Olympic champion Quan Hongchan for gold, as they both led the scoring in the preliminary round and the semi-final.

Chen scored 427.00 overall in the semi-final, and Quan 413.70.

China has dominated major diving events, including winning 95 of the available 151 gold medals going into this year's edition of the World Championships in Budapest.

The 10^th day of the FINA World Championships tomorrow is due to feature the women's 10m platform final, following on from the men's 3m preliminary round and semi-final.

The men's and women's five kilometres finals are also scheduled in open water swimming.