Europe’s finest high divers delivered performances to be proud of at the Porto Flavia stop of the World Aquatics High Diving World Cup 2025, with Romania’s Constantin Popovici and Spain’s Carlos Gimeno taking respective silver and bronze in the men’s 27m event, and Switzerland’s Morgane Herculano leading the way for the continent’s women with a fifth-place finish. 

The male athletes were both in fine form at the Sardinian harbour, and swapped places from their achievements at the World Aquatics Championships Singapore 2025 just a month prior. 

With USA’s James Lichtenstein ultimately doing enough to secure the gold medal, it was a similar story for the medals once again. With the front three on near-enough level pegging following the first three rounds in the previous day, Popovici made the difference with his 6276B dive – which carried a stunning difficulty of 6.0 to earn him a total of 138.00 and earn him another silver medal in what is an ever-growing collection for the veteran, on a final score of 406.20. 

Gimeno opted for a lower level of difficulty to round-off his effort, with a 3.6 for his 5461C. Despite being neatly-executed, it was only able to give him a score of 135.15 and see him end-up on 399.75. 

France’s Gary Hunt, Ukraine’s Oleksiy Prygorov and Romania’s Catalin-Petru Preda rounded off the top-six, as they finished in fourth, fifth and sixth respectively. 

The battle to lead the women’s charge came from both Herculano and Netherlands’ Ginni Van Gatwijk. The former athlete was narrowly ahead of the latter with one dive to go, and they kept that trend in the fourth and final round – clocking the same score of 79.80 for their 5141B and 631C, as they ended up on respective scores of 276.00 and 266.55 respectively. 

Spain’s Paula Gilabert Dolz also put in a good effort in a strong field which was eventually headed by Australia’s Rhiannan Iffland – finishing eighth. 

Stephen Stanley for European Aquatics