More silver success for GB as Toulson and Cheng add to medal tally

Lois Toulson and Eden Cheng teamed up to secure another silver medal for Great Britain at the European Aquatics Championships.

The pair finished second in the Women’s 10m Synchro final with a total score of 290.58, just 16.86 off the top spot.

It was a strong start but a slight slip from Cheng resulted in a poor score for their third dive, the forward 3 ½ somersaults with pike, putting them in last place heading into the penultimate dive.

The GB duo were back on form with an impressive inward 3 ½ somersaults with tuck, scoring 72.00 and placing them back into third, just 0.5 ahead of Germany.

After scoring 74.88 for their fifth and final dive, it was clear Toulson and Cheng had saved their best till last with the back 2 ½ somersaults, 1 ½ twists with pike.

It looked certain Great Britain would finish in third on the podium, but a mistake from Ukraine’s Kseniia Bailo and Sofiia Lyskun saw them move up into second place.

A silver medal matches their recent performance at the FINA Diving World Cup in Tokyo where the pair again earned a silver medal and secured an important Olympic spot for the upcoming Games.

Taking the gold medal was Russia’s Ekaterina Beliaeva and Iuliia Timoshinina with a score of 307.44.

On the performance, Cheng said: “I’m very pleased and also very proud of myself for being able to work my way, psychologically, through the remaining rounds.

“After that slip I was frustrated with myself, as that has never happened before, ever, so I was just trying to be present in the moment and take it dive by dive rather than what had happened before.

“You train for these kind of incidents I guess, so I just tried to hold on and make the dive.”

Toulson added: “I was really happy with how we performed and after that mishap I could see Eden was a bit shaken, but I’m really proud of how she managed to do her last two dives really well.

“It was a good lesson to learn here and we still managed to come away with that silver medal, so I’m really pleased.”

Great Britain now have four European diving medals so far in this competition, three silver and one bronze.

Noah Williams and Andrea Spendolini-Siriex secured the first in the mixed 10m Synchro, followed by Jack Laugher’s silver in the 1m Springboard.

The only bronze medal so far also came from Spendolini-Siriex after her performance in the Women’s 10m Platform final.

Heatly and Laugher miss out on podium places

James Heatly and Jack Laugher both progressed to the final of the Men’s 3m Springboard but missed out on podium places.

Laugher, who struggled in the preliminary round, started well with a score of 85.00 for his opening dive and a brilliant forward 4 ½ somersaults with tuck in the fifth earned him 91.20.

However, mistakes on Laugher’s second and fourth dive meant he headed into the final dive in sixth place.

His final dive, which saw him score 99.45 in the prelims to soar up the leaderboard, was a forward 2½ somersaults, 3 twists with pike.

The Olympic silver medallist was unable to hit the same heights in the final, scoring 62.40 which brought his total to 423.10, resulting in a sixth place finish.

Fellow GB teammate James Heatly finished just outside the medal places in fourth after a consistent display.

Heatly’s stand out dive was also the forward 4 ½ somersaults with tuck, which saw him score a sensational 96.90, the second highest scoring dive of the final.

The Edinburgh Diving athlete finished with a total of 464.60, an eventual 20.05 behind Germany’s Martin Wolfram who took bronze.

Both the gold and silver medals went to Russia. Evgenii Kuznetsov put on a near perfect performance to seal the win, his score totalling 525.20.

His teammate Nikita Shleikher was the European silver medallist (505.80).