Chiara Pellacani will leave Paris with five European gold medals from a single Championships – a feat no other diver has achieved – after partnering Elisa Pizzini to victory in an incident-packed women’s 3m synchro final.
It was a historic triumph for the 23-year-old Italian athlete, who has already stood atop the podium in the Olympic Aquatic Centre after the women’s 1m – where she retained her title – the women’s 3m, the mixed 3m synchro and the mixed team event.
The diving programme concluded with a men’s 10m platform final of staggering quality that saw NAB athlete Ruslan Ternovoi, who had already secured 10m synchro gold with Nikita Shleikher, crowning his performance with a fifth-round dive yielding 100.80 which secured him the title with one round to go.
Brilliant performances from two young German athletes – 21-year-old Jaden Eikermann Gregorchuk and 18-year-old Ole Rosler – secured respective silver and gold in a competition where Ukraine’s defending champion Oleksii Sereda finished sixth.
Their efforts helped Germany earn the Championship Trophy, which was presented to their double gold medallist Moritz Wesemann by Otylia Jedrzejczak, EA Bureau Liaison.
Pellacani’s contribution was enough to leave Italy top of the medals table with five golds, a silver and a bronze. Germany were second with three golds, four silvers and four bronzes, and Neutral Athletes B finished third with two golds, three silvers and a bronze.
“This means a lot for me, especially with Elisa because we have been working a lot for this moment and it was not easy,” Pellacani told European Aquatics.
“But I am so proud of our team because we were able to show all the work we did before coming here.”
Pizzini added: “I was a little bit scared! Because I knew we wanted to bring home gold. But I am so happy that we were able to jump with no stress. We’ve done it together, and it’s so good. I’m so grateful to Chiara that she has me as her partner. “It was good to see all our successes, but it put some pressure on me because I wanted to do something good too! So I’m so glad to have helped the team.”
The stellar level of this men’s 10m platform final was evident from the first round.
Ternovoi executed the same Inward 3½ Somersaults Tuck (407C) dive with degree difficulty 3.2 that Williams – competing in the venue where he won 10m bronze at the Paris 2024 Games – and Sereda had for respective scores of 81.60 and 80.00.
He took it another level as he scored 89.60 to go top, scoring the first 10 of these Championships.
While the general populace was taking that in, Germany’s 18-year-old Rosler stepped up to produce an even more astonishing effort – albeit with a DD of 3.6 – scoring 97.20, the highest registered at these Championships, with his Back 2½ Somersaults 2½ Twists Pike (5255B) dive.
And Rosler’s team-mate Eikermann Gregorchuk, who had beaten him to top spot in the morning’s preliminaries on 486.50, completed a round of dazzling accomplishment with a score of 86.70 for his Reverse 3½ Somersaults Tuck (307C) dive with 3.4 degree difficulty.
The second round saw Sereda’s 16-year-old team mate Mark Hrytsenko enter the high-scoring lists as he generated 94.35 with his Forward 4½ Somersaults Tuck (109C) dive with 3.7 degree difficulty.
Sereda executed the same dive soon after, but his score of 77.70, while highly respectable, was not enough to keep him at the forefront of the competition.
Ternovoi nudged into the lead with a score of 76.80 that took his total to 166.40, but it seemed only a matter of time before Rosler resumed at the top.
Except that he didn’t, with human frailty creeping into his performance as he scored just 45.90 on a 3.4 degree difficulty dive to drop to eighth place going into round three on 143.10.
His team-mate Eikermann Gregorchuk also dropped one place off a medal position after a score of 68.40 left him on 155.10.
So Ternovoi, Hrytsenko and Sereda led into round three with less than 10 points between them.
Sereda moved top with his third dive as he earned 81.60 to total 239.90, above his younger team-mate on 230.70, but was shortly overtaken by Ternovoi, whose 76.50 saw him onto a total of 242.90.
How would the Germans who concluded each round fare this time?
Rosler’s rollercoaster was now moving in the right direction as he scored 78.40, although he remained eighth. His team-mate Eikermann Gregorchuk was more emphatic as his 86.40 took him up to second place behind Ternovoi on 241.50 at the halfway point.
A huge mistake in the first round had hampered the progress of NAB’s Miroslav Kiselev, four times European junior gold medallist last month and, at 14, the youngest diver in these Championships.
But he proved his massive potential as he scored an 89.10 on his fourth-round dive, a beautifully executed Armstand Back 3 Somersaults Tuck (626C) dive with degree difficulty 3.3.
Williams revived his hopes with a score of 88.20 that put him ahead with 311.10. But the hopes of the defending champion plummeted as he misjudged a dive with a 3.6 DD and scored just 46.80 for a total of 286.10.
The late German show was good for Rosler – who moved up to fifth with a total of 304.70 after scoring 83.20 – and also for Eikermann Gregorchuk, whose score of 80.00 moved him second behind Ternovoi, by 6.50, on 321.50.
The penultimate round saw a mistake by Williams, who had stood third, drop him down the order as he managed a score of only 33.30.
Sereda recovered his equilibrium with a score of 86.40 for his Armstand Back Double Somersault 2½ Twists Free (6245D) worth 3.6 DD.
But his fine effort was eclipsed by the next dive as Ternovoi, just as he had in his victorious 10m synchro competition, scored hugely on his Back 3½ Somersaults Pike (207B) dive with a DD of 3.6, scoring a staggering 100.80 – thus taking over the mantle of highest scorer for a single dive in these Championships from Rosler.
Ternovoi extended his lead with a total of 428.80. But the German challenge was not done.
Rosler responded with an 86.95 to move back into medal position as he went from eighth to third with a total of 391.65.
His team-mate Eikermann Gregorchuk had an even better contribution to make as he scored 94.35 with his Forward 4½ Somersaults Tuck (109C) dive worth 3.7 DD to remain in second place on 415.85 – 12.95 behind Ternovoi as the competition moved to the last of the six rounds.
Sereda’s final dive, despite being worth 77.40, was not enough to get him back into the medals as he finished on 449.90, behind his younger team-mate Hrytsenko on 454.90.
Again Ternovoi stepped up to register another blast of a score which had his followers on their feet once again – as he registered 95.40 for his concluding Back 2½ Somersaults 2½ Twists Pike (5255B) dive with 3.6 degree difficulty to reach a towering total of 524.20.
The NAB athlete was mathematically beyond reach, but the two Germans still had points to prove.
Rosler, who took silver in this event last year, concluded with a score of 89.10 to earn bronze with a total of 480.75. Eikermann Gregorchuk then rounded off a competition of dizzying quality with a score of 97.20 from his Back 2½ Somersaults 2½ Twists Pike (5255B) with DD of 3.6 to take silver on 513.20 – 11.15 adrift of Ternovoi.
Speaking about his spectacular fifth round effort, Ternovoi said:
“It was a great dive. I was very nervous before it because one of the hardest rounds for me. So achieving it was a huge success.
“It depends on the situation, but today I tried not to see the scores. I knew roughly what was happening but I didn’t follow all the dives.
“Winning the 10m synchro meant a lot of course, but the great success for me was the individual gold because previously I have had problems in this competition.
“There have been not a lot of mistakes in the team event, but in the individual I have been nervous and there have been some problems.
“So I am happy that my name is known, but that wasn’t the goal. That was to earn gold for the team.”
Pellacani and her 21-year-old partner were models of consistency in the opening women’s 3m synchro as they gained in assurance the harder the dives became, moving from second place to equal second and then taking over the lead for the last three rounds for a total of 308.07.
That gave them a margin of victory of 29.67 over the Ukrainian pair who were surprise winners of this title in Antalya last year as juniors. Now respectively 19 and 17, Diana Karnafel and Kseniia Bochek claimed silver with a total of 278.40.
The German pairing of Lena Hentschel and Jetta Muller, silver medallists in Antalya, took bronze this time on 274.59 ahead of the NAB’s Uliana Kliueva and Nadezhda Trifonova, with Poland’s Aleksandra Blazowska and Kaja Skrzek finishing fifth on 240.67.
The big surprise was the failure of the Great Britain pairing who won Olympic bronze here in this event two years ago, and added world silver last year, to make any kind of impact.
After heading the field after the opening round, where they scored 49.20, the British pairing failed to register a mark for their next two efforts, with Harper – who had won as assured silver behind Pellacani in the 3m individual event – losing her form completely.
Dive two saw her take on too much speed and land flat; dive three saw her fail to leave the board while her partner was airborne. With focus clearly blown, these two fine divers withdrew after three rounds.
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Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
