An unpredictable first round in Athens saw Luxembourg’s Alain Kohl take the early lead ahead of the final rounds of what is expected to be a wide-open competition live on redbull.tv this Sunday.
Kohl’s flying front somersault saw him walk away with the highest score of the day as each of the 12 athletes performed a single dive with a fixed degree of difficulty of 3.6.
“Can I win the competition? That’s a big question, I will try to do my best but we will see,” he said. “I’m aiming for the top six but really I just want to perform my dives as well as I can. I need to improve my flying back for tomorrow and that’s what I’m going to work on now.”
Kent De Mond, the first man up on the 27-metre-high platform, ended the day in third to possibly kickstart his World Series after an injury-disrupted start to the season.
“I was happy with it and not too excited,” he said, “but I watched the rest of the round and everyone kept bombing their entries and I was just surprised that I came up in third. It’s a good place to start, though, and it usually helps the competition when you have a good start like that.”
Compatriot Steven LoBue continues to make an impressive step-up to cliff diving. 2010 World Series champion Gary Hunt has ground to make up, though, after a disappointing first round where he failed to hit a reverse somersault, the dive of choice for four of the competitors before they returned to training.
The session was later suspended after Hassan Mouti missed a new dive – a front quint somersault with half twist tuck, with the Frenchman transported to hospital as a precaution.
Scores after Round One
1. Alain Kohl | LUX | 90.00pts
2. Hassan Mouti | FRA | 86.40pts
3. Kent De Mond | USA | 82.80pts
4. Steven LoBue | USA | 81.00pts
5. Slava Polyeshchuk | UKR | 81.00pts
6. Michal Navratil | CZE | 79.20pts
7. Artem Silchenko | RUS | 75.60pts
8. Sacha Kutsenko | UKR | 75.60pts
9. Cyrille Oumedjkane | FRA | 68.40pts
10. Gary Hunt | GBR | 59.40pts
11. Jorge Ferzuli | MEX | 59.40pts
12. Todor Spasov (Wildcard) | BUL | 37.80pts
