Mixed events are likely to provide some of the most compelling competition at the European Aquatics Diving Championships Antalya 2025 which get underway tomorrow (May 22).
The mixed 3m springboard synchro title was one of three won at last year’s European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade by Britain’s Desharne Bent-Ashmeil.
But she and her partner Ben Cutmore now face the challenge of the two young Italians who have excelled at this event over the past five years – 18-year-old Matteo Santoro and Chiara Pellacani, 22.
Santoro was only 14 years and 215 days old when he and Pellacani won the European title at the 2020 edition – held in 2021 in Budapest. It was his first medal at a senior international championship.
Since then the Italian pair have added European bronze at the Rome 2022 Championships and another gold in 2023. They have also won medals at the last three World Aquatics Championships – silver in 2022, bronze in 2023, silver in 2024.
The male silver and bronze medallists from Belgrade have returned with different female partners.
Sweden’s Elias Petersen, who finished second last year in company with women’s 1m bronze medallist Emilia Nilsson, is now working in tandem with Nina Janmyr.
Also likely to be challenging for a medal will be the Polish pairing of Aleksandra Blazowska, last year’s women’s 1m springboard silver medallist, and Kacper Lesiak, who earned men’s 3m synchro bronze in company with the men’s 1m springboard champion Andrzej Rzeszutek.
Spain had some of their most profitable competition in mixed events last year, winning the 10m platform and team events, and all those victorious athletes are back.
Carlos Camacho, who also won individual 10m platform silver last year, and Valeria Antolino will defend their 10m platform title against a field that offers a significant challenge in the form of Ukraine’s Kseniia Bailo and Kirill Boliukh, who won this title in 2023. Bailo claimed bronze in Belgrade partnering Marko Barsukov. Germany, who earned silver last time round, compete with a new pairing of Ole Rosler and Pauline Pfeif.
And Camacho and Antolino will join forces once again with Juan Pablo Cortes in the opening event of the Championships tomorrow as they seek to win a second successive title in the mixed team event – with the huge additional gain of the women’s 10m platform champion of last year, 18-year-old Ana Carvajal.
They will need all the strength they can muster however in the face of two massively accomplished teams from Italy and Ukraine.
The Ukraine quartet includes two of the divers who helped earn this title at the European Games in 2023 – Bailo and Oleksii Sereda.
Bailo, 20, won last year’s women’s 10m platform synchro title with Sofiia Lyskun, and Sereda, 19, has already accrued five European golds. Lyskun, who was joint silver medallist in the 10m platform last year, is in the team, as is Boliukh.
This quartet will be expecting to do at least as well as the different Ukraine team did in winning silver last year.
Meanwhile the Italians have put together a combination that will also challenge strongly for the title in Santoro, Pellacani, Sarah Jodoin de Maria and Riccardo Giovannini.
Britain, Germany and Poland will also fancy their medal chances.
Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
