Without China, promises from Italy and Australia jumped better than everyone else

A handful of days before the start of the World Swimming Championships (25m), one of the most important water events of the year that will take place in Melbourne starting December 13th, divers aged 14 to 18 rose from the trampolines of Montreal, the Canadian city that hosted the 24th edition of the FINA World Junior Jumping Championship.

More than 200 athletes competed at the Olympic Park Sports Center between November 27 and December 4 in a competition that received 175,000 dollars from the Government of Canada as part of a program that aims to promote this activity and inspire young people, in addition to guaranteeing sports safety.

Young Chinese people, giants of the discipline and top winners in this youth competition, failed to appear in Montreal due to current travel restrictions due to Covid-19, according to the organization’s information to Around The Rings. Nor had they been presented in the previous edition of this competition. For their part, Russians and Belarusians were unable to participate because they have still been subject to the veto imposed by FINA since March.

In this context of resounding absences, one of the deepest traces in Canadian water was nailed by Australian Charli Petrov, who awarded two gold medals thanks to her victories in the specialties of the women’s and synchronized platform. She achieved it at 15, the age of Michael Phelps when he reached his first Olympic final in Sydney 2000 and Chen Yuxi when she won the synchronized event in Tokyo 2020. “There was definitely a lot of pressure,” Petrov warned after her move. In August of this year, at 14 springs, the native of Melbourne had already established herself on a synchronized platform at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

The Republic of Ireland is not part of the Commonwealth, but it did make up the medal table for the first time in a world-class jumping championship. Jack Passmore won the silver medal on a 1-meter trampoline, in which he finished just 16.1 points behind the Italian and star of the tournament Matteo Santoro, a name that is essential to schedule in capital letters and highlights: he also won in the jump from 3 meters and in the synchronized test to win the fifth world junior diving gold of his career. In addition, at the age of 15, he had already won a silver medal at the 2022 World Swimming Championships and two medals at the European Swimming Championships.