The initial day of the High Diving competition at the 18th FINA World Championships in Gwangju, including the first two rounds of preliminaries brought different results for the reigning world champions.
Steve LoBue (USA), winner in 2017, is the provisional leader, after excelling in his trademark dive, a front 5 somersaults, for which he got a massive 142.80 points from the judges. In the women’s event, Rhiannan Iffland (AUS), gold medallist two years old, is fifth.
Being the only man in the field capable of executing this combination, LoBue managed to conclude the day with an encouraging advance over his main challengers. At this stage, they are Jonathan Paredes, from Mexico, who also performed a flawless front 4 somersaults 1 ½ twists, which received two perfect 10s from the judges. But as the DD was inferior (4.7, against 5.1 for LoBue), the score of the dive for Paredes was “only†of 133.95. The Mexican great was bronze medallist in 2013 and runner-up in 2015.
