A new training base for Olympic diving ace Jack Laugher, but World gold remains his target

For 15 years, Harrogate-born Olympic champion Jack Laugher had City of Leeds written next to his name. Now it says Sheffield Performance Centre, as it does alongside those of Anthony Harding and Lois Toulson.

After Adam Smallwood, their coach at the John Charles Aquatics Centre in Leeds, moved up to a similar role in Edinburgh, Laugher, Toulson and Harding migrated down the M1 to Ponds Forge.

There they are now coached by Tom Owens, who enjoyed success last summer when his star pupil in Sheffield, Yasmin Harper, won an Olympic bronze medal in the 3m synchro in Paris.

Harper is headed to Singapore this summer, as are her City of Sheffield clubmates Jordan Houlden, Maisie Bond and Tilly Brown.

Laugher, 30, who still does some of his training in Leeds, is heading to his eighth successive world championships in search of a ninth medal and an elusive first gold.

The ex-Ripon Grammar School pupil enjoyed the ideal preparation for his latest attempt to land world gold as he and partner Anthony Harding secured the British men's 3m springboard synchro title.

The Paris 2024 bronze medallists shone at the Aquatics GB Diving Championships in Birmingham earlier this month, racking up a score of 426.69 to win by a huge margin from nearest challengers Leon Baker and Hugo Thomasin (352.53).

"It was good," Laugher told Olympics.com after stepping off the podium. "There were a lot of positive things in there.

"I think for me and Anthony, we've stepped down the difficulty of our list from Paris just because we took a long time off and getting back to our best has just taken a bit longer than we thought, which is absolutely fine.

“But we're still hitting some really good scores, which we're really happy with.

"We've just shifted a few dives around, in comparison to what we were doing in earlier in the year and I think it was actually a really good performance.

"I know that we can add some more to it, and we can definitely be fighting for the medals at the World champs."