Top Yorkshire pairings land world medals as City of Sheffield's Jordan Houlden keeps knocking on the door
While two of Yorkshire and Great Britain’s most prolific double acts continued their medal-laden careers, it was an athlete who finished outside the podium places who arguably had the better World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.
Jordan Houlden of the City of Sheffield Diving Club continued knocking on the door of the highest honours with fourth-place finishes in both the 3m and 1m individual springboard competitions.
Starting with the 1m, Houlden – already a Commonwealth Games medallist – missed out on a spot on the podium by just 0.35 points.
“I felt a little bit unlucky on that last dive not to get those little points but that at the end of the day it’s diving – you've got to battle each other, and that's what keeps pushing you to do better,” he lamented.
Undeterred, he returned to the pool four days later to breeze through the prelims and semi-finals to register another fourth-place finish in the 3m springboard.
“I felt great, there were a few dives in there that were a little iffy, but I think I put a solid performance together,” said Houlden, who was fifth in the same event on his Olympic debut last year.
“The standard was absolutely amazing. You’ve got to just keep bringing your A-game.”
There was more medal success though for his City of Sheffield club-mates, new and old.
Jack Laugher and Anthony Harding, the Paris Olympic bronze medallists who have relocated from City of Leeds, won bronze in the 3m synchro.
Harding said: “We’ve had a difficult year with different amounts of time off and coming back after the Olympics with a change of clubs, but we wanted to come here and get another medal under the belt on our journey towards LA.”
Harrogate’s Laugher, who was winning a ninth medal at his eighth world championship, said: “Me and Anthony, and especially Anthony in the final, pulled out a really good performance. I think I’ve still got a few bits to work on but I’ve gained a lot of knowledge.”
And long-time Ponds Forge diver Yasmin Harper made it three world championship medals in a row alongside Scarlett Mew Jensen in the women’s 3m synchro, as they upgraded their historic Paris bronze to a Singapore silver.
“We are delighted,” said Harper. “I think today we definitely set the expectation that we wanted to come in and hit our best performance of the year. We've done that.”
On her partnership with Mew Jensen, Harper added: “It's just having absolute trust in each other. We know each other so well.”
Elsewhere, Huddersfield’s Lois Toulson and Sheffield’s Maisie Bond were fifth in the 10m synchro.
Yorkshire had two representatives in the swimming pool in Singapore, both at opposite ends of their careers. Pontefract’s Max Litchfield is embarking on a fourth Olympic cycle having three times reached the final of the 400m individual medley, only to agonisingly finish fourth on each occasion.
Back on the road to a fourth Olympics, the former Doncaster Dartes and City of Sheffield swimmer finished seventh in the 400m IM final.
“I need to look back at what we did differently [to this morning] and what went wrong,” said Litchfield, who had swum better in the morning’s heats.
“At the end of the day it’s the first year of this cycle building into LA so we’ve still got a long way to go, and we move it on from here.”
And Leeds’ Leah Schlosshan, who now swims at Manchester where she is studying having spent much of her formative years at the City of Leeds Swimming Club, took plenty from her first major senior international meet.
The 20-year-old was eliminated in the heats of the 200m freestyle but returned later in the week to anchor the women’s 4x200m relay team to a fifth-place finish.
“I tried to block out the noise of the fans, but the girls can vouch I was so shaky on the changeover,” said Schlosshan. “The atmosphere was great and I really enjoyed it.”