This summer’s European Aquatics Championships in Paris provide the main focus of the season for athletes within the continent – not least for the respective EA male and female divers of 2025, Oleksii Sereda of Ukraine and Italy’s Chiara Pellacani.
Both excelled at last year’s World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, where Sereda, then 19, earned silver in the men’s 10m platform and Pellacani, then 22, combined with Matteo Santoro to earn Italy’s first world diving gold since 2015 in the 3m synchro event.
Pellacani also secured her first world individual medals, taking bronze in the women’s 1m and 3m springboard.
When they return to the Centre Aquatique Olympique built for the Paris 2024 Olympics they will be seeking to augment their already formidable records at European level.
Sereda has eight European golds, and will be seeking a fourth 10m platform title as well as defending the 10m synchro he won at last year’s EA Diving Championships in Antalya with 16-year-old Mark Hrytsenko.
Meanwhile Pellacani, who has also won eight European golds, will be defending her 1m springboard title while seeking a third 3m springboard victory – and also a third mixed 3m synchro win.
The Italian diver will face strong opposition in the 3m springboard, where Switzerland’s Michelle Heimberg will be defending champion.
Competing in Paris will be particularly significant for Heimberg, who took the rest of 2024 off after failing to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
She made a telling return to international competition in Antalya, where she also earned bronze in the 1m springboard.
Paris is set to feature other European women divers who reached the podium in Singapore, notably Germany’s Pauline Pfeif, who earned silver in the 10m platform – her first world medal – and Britain’s Paris 2024 bronze medallists Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen, who finished second in the 3m synchro.
Pfeif also competed in Antalya, coming away from the Turkish venue with bronze in the mixed 10m synchro and women’s 10m synchro and silver medals in the team event and the 10m platform.
Italy’s 25-year-old Sarah Jodoin Di Maria claimed the first individual European gold of her career by taking 10m platform gold in Antalya and will be eager to retain that title. Di Maria was top European in the women’s 10m at the opening Diving World Cup earlier this month, finishing fourth.
The German diver also earned bronze in the mixed 10m synchro and the women’s 10m synchro.
Spain’s hopes will be high for Valeria Antolino and Ana Carvajal, 10m platform synchro silver medallists the year before in Belgrade, who claimed their country’s only medal of the 2025 European Championships and made it golden.
For Harper and Mew Jensen a return to this venue in the French capital would bring back treasured memories of their achievement in earning 3m synchro bronze at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
They will face a challenge for that right, however, from Amy Rollinson and Desharne Bent-Ashmeil, who won the European 3m synchro title in 2024 and bronze last year.
Britain’s other female medallists at the last Olympics, 10m platform synchro bronze winners Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and Lois Toulson, are not currently competing together – but both have hopes of making Paris 2026.
Spendolini-Sirieix is reported be working her way back to diving after taking a break from the sport and is unlikely to be seen in competition before the Aquatics GB Diving Championships in June.
Meanwhile Toulson has formed a new pairing in the 10m platform with 18-year-old double world junior diving silver medallist Maisie Bond.
Another of Britain’s established partnerships will return to the scene of success in the form of Jack Laugher and Anthony Harding, who won 3m synchro bronze at Paris 2024 and followed up with world bronze last year.
Laugher and Harding earned bronze at the opening Diving World Cup in Montreal, where another British pairing, Euan McCabe and Ben Cutmore, also finished third in the 10m platform synchro.
Home fans will be looking for success from talents such as 23-year-old Jules Bouyer, who has European gold, silver and bronze medals in his collection and who finished eighth in the 3m springboard at the Paris 2024 Games.
Germany’s Moritz Wesemann performed outstandingly at last year’s European Diving Championships in Antalya and looks odds on for further success in Paris.
Wesemann was a commanding winner of the 1m springboard title, and although he had to settle for bronze in the 3m springboard after a late lapse undermined a thrilling sequence of efforts, he had a second podium-topping experience in the men’s competition thanks to his 3m synchro partnership with Timo Barthel.
The men’s 3m springboard title in Turkey went to the super-consistent 33-year-old Andrzej Rzeszutek, who kept his nerve to secure Poland’s first medal of the Championships in the last event. He will not be giving his title up easily.
Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
