Great Britain’s Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen, women’s 3m synchro bronze medallists at the Paris 2024 Games, moved a step up the global podium today as they took silver at the World Aquatics Championships 2025 behind the Chinese pair of Yiwen Chen and Jia Chen.
Yiwen, 26, who won the 2024 world and Olympic titles in partnership with Chang Yani, added another gold to her collection alongside the up-and-coming 20-year-old talent of Jia Chen, totalling 325.20, with the British pair finishing second on 298.35.
Italy’s Elissa Pizzini and Chiara Pellacani – bronze medallist in the 1m springboard on the opening day of diving – finished fifth on 279.27, one place ahead of Germany’s Jette Muller and Lena Hentschel.
It was a third successive world medal in this event for the British pair, who won silver at the 2023 Championships in Fukuoka and bronze at last year’s edition in Doha.
“We’re very happy and really pleased,” Harper told World Aquatics. “Coming off the back of last year’s Olympic medal, we were definitely setting the expectation of a medal again. But also, we were really focusing on the performance today, so we’re really pleased that we performed well and ended up with a silver medal.
“In a synchro event, we definitely rely on each other for (support). We hold high expectations of one another to really mesh together (during) the event, and we always give each other little words of encouragement in the middle of the event. I think that is a really solid part of our relationship, and also what helps us perform at our best.”
Reflecting on future goals, she added: “Next year, as there are no World Championships, we’re really looking to be at the European Championships and hopefully dominate the event. We’ve never actually dived together in the European Championships, so next year, we’ll work for our first gold there and subsequently, another Olympic medal would be a delight.”
Mew Jensen commented: “It’s been tough, it’s not been a smooth ride, but I think we’re both just really pleased with the performance we’ve put in today. We’re very focused on that today, especially being the first year of the cycle, we’ve still got a ways to go, but I think we’re very happy with where our starting point is.
“We want to prove that we’re a top-three team in synchro diving, and I think we really did put in a very solid performance today, so perhaps even on an average day, we’re up there.”
Britain narrowly failed to take a second medal in the men’s 10m synchronised event, where Robbie Lee and Kyle Kothari finished fourth in a contest where gold, silver and bronze went respectively to China on 429.63, the neutral athletes B pairing of Nikita Shleikher and Ruslan Ternovoi on 428.70 and the United States’ Carson Tyler and Joshua Hedberg on 410.70.
Lee and Kothari, who dropped out of strong medal contention at this year’s European Aquatics Diving Championships in Antalya after the latter lost his bearings on the final dive, finished fourth on 399.27, one place above the European champions, Ukraine’s 19-year-old Oleksii Sereda and 15-year-old Mark Hrytsenko, who scored 391.23.
Germany’s Luis Avila Sanchez and Jaden Eikermann Gergorchuk were fifth on 377.37.
Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
