Maisie Bond and Euan McCabe dived brilliantly to win their first-ever senior individual platform British titles, while the partnerships of Jack Laugher with Anthony Harding, and Scarlet Mew Jensen alongside Yasmin Harper took gold in the 3m synchro events.
Following on from an exciting opening two days at the Aquatics GB Diving Championships – with British titles awarded across five medal events – the weekend action from Sandwell Aquatics Centre saw attentions turn to the Women’s and Men’s individual platform and 3m synchro.
A strong performance from Maisie Bond (Sheffield Performance Centre) saw her take the Women’s 10m Platform title during Saturday afternoon’s action – a maiden senior individual British gold following her synchro win with Lois Toulson earlier in the meet.
The world junior medallist had qualified top out of the prelims, and the repeated consistency across her list proved a driving factor behind her title-winning score of 311.25. That total was greatly helped by Bond’s second round Back 2 1/2 Somersaults Pike (205B) pleasing the judges to a tune of 71.05 points.
“This weekend was really important to me to show my ability and my improvement in my diving over the last few months,” said Bond
“There’s always more I could’ve done, but to come away with the national title for the first time means a lot. I’m very proud of my performance and my improvement over the course of the season so far.”
Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix produced the dive of the women’s platform final with 86.40 points scored on her opening Armstand Back Double Somersault 1 1/2 Twists (6243D), and secured bronze on a list with reduced dive difficulty – with London teammate, Hannah Newbrook earning silver just over a week on from her involvement at the European Championships.
Bringing the curtain down in Sandwell was the Men’s 10m Platform final, with both Euan McCabe (Plymouth Diving) and Robbie Lee (London Performance Centre) stepping up their performances from prelims to final in a bid for the British title.
With McCabe holding top spot going into the final round, Lee applied the pressure with a stunning Back 2 1/2 Somersaults 2 1/2 Twist Pike (5255B) worth 86.40 points. The Plymouth-diver would have his chance to respond moments later with the very same dive, and with great composure rounded out the final with the best-scoring dive of his list that afternoon to set a gold medal winning total of 439.70.
Lee took silver on 435.65 points, while Ben Cutmore (London Performance Centre) completed the British podium in bronze position.
Reflecting on the competition McCabe commented:
“After being out with an injured foot and stuck in a boot for three months, what I’d say what was important for me this weekend was just getting my dives back up on 10m - to enjoying being back out there competing and being back in the mix.
“The quote that sums it up for me is ‘If it doesn’t happen the way you wanted, it will happen in a better way than you imagined’.”
Meanwhile across the 3m Synchro events the national titles were snapped up by the British pairings that stood on the Olympic podium last summer at Paris 2024.
Scarlett Mew Jensen and Yasmin Harper showed poise to edge out a close contest in the Women’s event, with the London and Sheffield Performance Centre diver combination nailing the opening round required dive to get their competition off on the front foot.
Consistency was a marker of their performance as they capped their list with a solid Forward 3 1/2 Somersaults Pike (107B) for 66.96 points - and ultimately securing gold on a final score of 294.66.
Desharne Bent-Ashmeil and Amy Rollinson took silver with 289.50 points, with Evie Smith and Tilly Brown winning bronze with 283.80 to their name.
“Overall, I think I speak for both of us that we’re really happy with the performance and pleased to be back on the podium at British nationals,” said Mew Jensen.
“For Yas and I there is a load of personal and team internal goals that we are trying to achieve that goes beyond medals and results. We’re really trying to push for that 300 plus and to maintain the consistency of our dives across the list so that we can go forward - hopefully to world’s - in a positive mind frame. I think our performance yesterday did that, I think we showed real push when we’re being pushed by other teams – the girls put up a great fight and it was a really good event to compete in and I’m sure to watch.
“We’re a promising team and I think we can be confident to go on the world stage and perform to achieve what we want to, which at the end of the day is a medal, but we’re focusing on doing things the right way – earning each of the small wins and taking chunks [of feedback] from each performance to improve our later competitions.”
In the Men's 3m Synchro, Sheffield duo Jack Laugher and Anthony Harding showed their class in finishing close to 75 points clear of the field on Saturday afternoon. Laugher and Harding scored 426.69 overall across their two required and four optional dives, the highest-scoring of the latter coming in round six, as they earned 92.34 points from the judges for their Forward 4 1/2 somersaults tuck (109C).
Behind them, European bronze medallists Hugo Thomas and Leon Baker teamed up and picked up the silver on 352.53, ahead of Southend Diving’s Connor Lano and Todd Geggus on 348.75.
“There was a lot of positive things in there for me and Anthony,” said Laugher.
“We’ve stepped down the difficulty of our list from Paris just because we took a long time off and getting back to our best is just taking a little bit longer – but we’re still hitting some really good scores which we’re very happy with. I think it was a good performance, and I know that there is some more we can add to it to be able to fight for international medals later in the year.”
Full results from the 2025 Aquatics GB Diving Championships are available on the DiveRecorder website, while updates and behind the scenes coverage of the championships can be found across Aquatics GB social channels.