A new format, a potential five-peat, the absence of the men’s defending champion, and the return of a long-time legend are the major angles to watch when high diving launches 24-27 July at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.
In the women’s final on 26 July in Sentosa, the runaway favorite to win will be the four-time world champion Rhiannan Iffland, 33. Undefeated at the world championships since 2017, the 33-year-old Aussie will vie for a five-peat. Already, Iffland won the first two stops of the 2025 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. No other woman has made the podium more than once this year, including Iffland’s most consistent rival, Molly Carlson of Canada, who took silver at the past two world championships.
Incredibly, Carlson will be competing in Singapore despite what she called a “near-death” experience on June 27. In training at the Red Bull stop in Polignano a Mare, Italy, she misjudged the edge of the tower, slid off the platform, tumbled like a rag doll, yet somehow managed to orient herself and land feet-first in the water.
“One of my nightmares came true,” Carlson wrote on Instagram. “I never imagined in my life that I would ever slip off of a high diving platform... I’m SHOCKED at my reflex skills to find my feet like a cat and be okay.” But the fall still left her with a “massive bruise” on one of her feet so she withdrew from the Italian event.
No one else in the women’s field in Singapore has ever won a world championship medal – so expect a tight battle for second and third.
Meanwhile, on the men’s side, the 2024 world champion Aidan Heslop of Great Britain won’t be able to defend his title. In April, the 23-year-old best known for his high-difficulty dives pulled out of the Red Bull opener in the Philippines due to a herniated disc in his lumbar spine which had been bothering him for a long time.
"I did the classic male thing of just trying to forget about it and pretend it didn't exist,” he wrote on Instagram. Then, on May 18, Heslop announced: “That’s a wrap on 2025…I’ve been battling a back injury for nearly a year now. Sadly…surgery is unavoidable, which means I’ll be out for 4 - 6 months. It’s 100% the right decision. Taking a year off to secure another 15 pain-free seasons is a trade I’m willing to make. See you on the other side.”
While several men could take the win, including 2023 world champion Constantin Popovici of Romania, 2019 bronze medalist Jonathan Paredes of Mexico, or Carlos Gimeno of Spain, the most likely medalist of all might be high diving’s O.G.: Gary Hunt.
Hunt, 41, has made all but one world championship podium in the history of the event. He won two golds and the inaugural 2013 silver for Great Britain, then captured the 2023 bronze and 2024 silver (behind Heslop) for France. After Doha, he fulfilled his long-time goal of competing in the Paris Olympics on the 10m platform. Now back at 27m, Hunt has already won the first stop of the 2025 Red Bull tour and placed second at stop No. 2. In Singapore, he could become a six-time world championship medalist in the men’s final on July 27.
The new format will keep things moving. Here’s a breakdown: Prelims will be longer. (Everyone will make four dives instead of two.) From there, the top 14 men and top 14 women will advance to the final, but nobody will have a clean slate. The two compulsory-dive scores will carry over into the final (so dive 1 and dive 3 from prelims – both of which have a maximum degree of difficulty.) Finalists will make two more dives (with unlimited DD), and the highest combined score determines the winner. In short, four of the six dives will count toward the medals: the two compulsories from prelims plus the two optionals from the final.