Team USA won its first gold medal today at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, but it did not come from the competition pool.
It came from 27 meters in the air in Sentosa island, south of mainland Singapore. James Lichtenstein leveraged a fantastic last dive in the High Dive competition to take a last-minute lead for gold. Lichtenstein finished with a final score of 428.9, just three points ahead of Spain’s Carlos Gimeno, who led the competition before over-rotating . It was both Liechtenstein and Gimeno’s first appearances on a Worlds podium.
Liechtenstein and Gimeno seem to have found a winning formula: they both performed the exact same set of six dives during the final, but in different orders. Watch one of Liechtenstein and Gimeno’s dives below:
Romania’s Constantin Popovici, the 2023 World Champion of this event, rounded out the podium with 408.70 points, over 20 points behind Lichtenstein. Mexican veteran Jonathan Paredes took 5th with 407.40 points. The minor medal winners from last year in Doha, Catalin-Petru Preda (ROU) and Gary Hunt (FRA) placed 5th and 6th. The defending champion, British diver Aiden Heslop, did not compete.
Lichtenstein is 30 years of age and hails from Chicago, Illinois. He competed in trampoline during his youth before discovering high diving while at the University of Notre Dame. Since then, he has risen in skill and popularity throughout his twenties. In 2022, he was invited to join the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. Lichtenstein now holds two pieces of major international hardware: this gold and a silver from the high diving World Cup in Bahrain last year.
“…I am absolutely thrilled right now,” Liechtenstein said about today’s result, though noting he wasn’t pleased with his fifth dive. “I know I can dive well, but to put it together when it counts is a thrilling feeling.”
How great! Congrats to him!
An amazing achievement. Congratulations!