Matthew Dixon and Noah Willams land ‘unexpected’ bronze for Great Britain

Matthew Dixon and Noah Williams set a new personal best as they secured an ‘unexpected’ European Diving Championships bronze medal in Ukraine.

The British duo finished 0.60 points behind second-placed Ukraine and were 4.74 adrift of the gold medallists Russia in a thrilling Synchronised Platform final.

After four rounds of the competition in Kiev, it was a three-horse race for the title with Dixon and Williams second behind the Russians, who had a comfortable lead.

But Aleksandr Belevtsev and Nikita Shleikher then made a mistake with their fifth dive which gave a glimmer of hope to the British duo and local favourites Oleksii Sereda and Oleh Serbin.

However, they scored 83.16 for their final dive to seal top spot on the podium.

Ukraine leapfrogged Dixon and Williams into second spot with their last jump which earned 86.40 points – the highest of the competition.

But Dixon and Williams knew if they could nail their final dive – a four-and-a-half somersaults – they could have taken the title.

Despite a great effort, they only scored 84.36 points but were happy to settle for a brilliant bronze.

Dixon said: “We didn’t expect that medal because everything can happen on the given day – we just tried to do our best dives and see what happens. 

“That was a really good competition. We got personal bests, we got the bronze medal and we are really happy with it.”

Meanwhile, Katherine Torrance finished in 10th spot in the Women’s 3m Springboard final.

She failed to hit the heights of her preliminary round performance which saw her qualify in second spot with a score of 288.45 – only 1.35 behind Russia’s Kristina Ilinykh.

Torrance finished on a total of 244.80 – 45.35 adrift of the medal positions.

Scarlett Mew-Jensen missed out on a place in the final after finishing in 14th in the preliminary stage on 235.05 points.