The season’s first stop on European soil was a return to the World Series’ all-time favourite location – La Rochelle. The town with the apt name of ‘little cliff’ was the lynchpin for the world’s cliff diving elite for the fifth time in the seven years of the series and it was Gary Hunt (516.00pts) who took an impressive win ahead of his nearest rivals. Second-placed Aldridge debuted a brand-new dive in World Series competition on Sunday - his reverse double somersault with five twists has now overtaken Hunt's own triple quad as the hardest dive in the sport to date, with a Degree of Difficulty of 6.3. Executed successfully, it has the potential to catapult the former Olympian to the top and so it proved in France. The 8s from the judges helping to ensure that Blake, with a total of 460.35 points, joined Hunt in making it an English one-two on the podium for the first time in the World Series. Orlando Duque (456.20pts) completed the top-three with a second successive third-placed finish in the World Series, but there was disappointment for former champion Artem Silchenko, the winner of the last event staged in La Rochelle in 2013, as the Russian missed out on a place in the final having lost his head-to-head with Hunt.
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