City of Leeds diver Jack Laugher took the gold medal in the 3m Springboard at the British Gas National Cup for the third year in a row.
Laugher, who has been working on his Reverse dive in the off-season, showed his talent with an excellent second round dive (Reverse 3 ½ Somersaults tucked) to score a total of 94.50.
"I put in some really good dives and scored 95.00 on the Reverse 3 ½ which is brilliant."
- Jack Laugher
The Olympian continued his form throughout the rounds with scores never dropping below 60 points.
He took his gold medal with a total score of 480.60 and commented: “I put in some really good dives and scored 95.00 on the Reverse 3 ½ which is brilliant.
“I almost scored 500 and 500 is my goal and that’s what I want to get to with my performances. I am a bit disappointed because it was in reach but I am alright.
“To be able to come to a competition like this and perform really well on 1m yesterday and 3m today I have done well even with all the bad preparation that I have had.”
Yona Knight-Wisdom (Jamaica, City of Leeds) took a guest silver medal with a score of 423. 60.Oliver Dingley (Southend) won the British Gas National Cup silver with a score of 403.20 withFreddie Woodward (City of Sheffield) securing the bronze with 390.80 points.
City of Edinburgh's James Heatly finished fifth but his score of 374.30 secured the qualifying standard for Team Scotland at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
World finalist Sarah Barrow secured the top spot on the podium for the first time at a British Gas National Cup with an impressive performance in the women’s 10m Platform.
The Plymouth diver performed her dives excellently with her best dive coming in the second round (Inward 3 ½ Somersaults tucked) with a score of 80.00.
Barrow finished with her Back 2 ½ Somersaults 1 ½ Twists piked to give her an overall total of 351.50.
“I was really happy with the final because I came fourth at the Worlds in Barcelona last year and I wanted to come into this competition and do the same as there,” Barrow said.
“It was a PB and about five points more than Barcelona which is great. The target was to score more than 345 which I did. It wasn’t looking too good in the prelim but I managed to improve in the final.
“My performance in Barcelona really made me and Andy [Banks], my coach, feel we could get high at a world circuit.”
Club mate Robyn Birch won the silver with a total of 296.00 while Crystal Palace’s Georgia Ward took the bronze with 291.25 points. City of Leeds’ Lois Toulson won silver in the junior line up with a score of 304.90.
City of Leeds took an impressive victory in the women’s 3m Synchro with Lydia Rosenthall and Katherine Torrance looking confident throughout the final.
The club has taken the title in this event at every British Gas National Cup with different pairs winning the gold each year.
Rosenthall and Torrance continued the club’s dominance of the event with a total of 291.72 points.
The pair looked strong from the start and scored just under 100 points for their required dives.
On the win Rosenthall said: “That was really good, probably the best we’ve ever dived because we haven’t been training that long together. We weren’t really sure what score we could get so we just thought we should go out there and have a go and see what happened.”
Torrance added: “It’s probably been about six weeks training for the 3m Synchro and that would be twice a week so it’s not that much preparation for this. We were definitely both nervous. I think we were trying to play it cool but we were not at all calm! But we dived our best and did well.”
The Men’s 10m Synchro saw Charlie Wood and Lewys Oakley (Southampton Diving) win the gold with a total of 322.32 and Dan Goodfellow and Matty Lee (Plymouth Diving, City of Leeds) take silver with a score of 318.27.