{"id":274479,"date":"2026-05-17T21:26:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/274479\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T21:26:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:26:28","slug":"fort-lauderdale-world-cup-schmidbauer-and-preda-win-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/274479\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lauderdale World Cup: Schmidbauer and Preda win big"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catalin-Petru Preda<\/a>, 34, was the final diver in the men\u2019s competition. He had just seen two world champions get knocked off the podium in the final round. As he prepared to execute the hardest dive in the contest (a 6.1 DD armstand back 4\u00bd), all the pressure was on his long-haired shoulders. Preda not only nailed the dive, but he scored 152.50 points to clinch the win, 55.35 points ahead of the unexpected runner-up Davide Baraldi<\/a>, 24, of Italy, who began the day in sixth place. Jonathan Paredes<\/a>, 36, of Mexico, placed third, less than nine points behind Baraldi. The 2023 world champion Constantin Popovici<\/a>, 37, of Romania, and the 2024 world champion Aidan Heslop<\/a>, 24, of Great Britain, finished fourth and fifth, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s gold medal marked quite comeback for Preda, who was granted a rare re-dive on Friday due to noise interference. The do-over enabled him to score 43.35 more points than his original dive would have earned, but even without that redemptive opportunity in the second round, Preda would have won anyway, mathematically.<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s 20m event also featured a crazy come-from-behind finish. Similar to the men\u2019s competition, only one of the divers who had been in the top three after the first two rounds on Friday finished on Saturday\u2019s podium. For the men, it was Preda. For the women it was Iris Schmidbauer<\/a>, 31, of Germany.<\/p>\n

In the final round, Schmidbauer nailed the second-most difficult dive in the contest to vault into first place, 8.95 points ahead Molly Carlson<\/a>, 27, of Canada, who pulled herself up from fifth place on her final dive and had nearly quit the sport a month ago. Right behind Carlson was American Kaylea Arnett<\/a> who came out of ninth place to score an event-high 106.60 points for her reverse triple pike. \u00a0At that point, only one diver remained: Herculano.<\/p>\n

Herculano, 26, needed more than 95.15 points to claim her first World Cup victory, but a splashy entry on her back twisting triple pike (5262B) scored 62.70 points which left her in seventh place. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the medalists assessed their performances:<\/p>\n

Image Source: Zach Lightsey\/USA Diving<\/p>\n

Schmidbauer, the women\u2019s winner, said, \u201cI always believe that I have the potential to win, to perform.\u201d As a new mom, she added, \u201cI’m still the same person. I still have the same dreams. I am just so happy that [I can] still chase my dream [and] that I finally was able to put it\u00a0together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Runner-up Carlson said, \u201cI am ecstatic with today. Honestly, I almost quit a month ago. For so many years, I was pushing the limits of [my] degree of difficulty, trying to do the world’s hardest dives, trying to be perfect, and it ate me up inside \u2013 as an anxious person, trying to be perfect in a sport that never gives out 10s often.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Honestly, I almost called it [quits] a month ago and then decided, \u2018You know what, let’s just do easier dives, see how we feel, go have fun”<\/p>\n

By Molly Carlson<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I’m super proud of myself for showing up and choosing dives that made me feel comfortable. I bedazzled my suit. I really wanted to go out there and shine and enjoy it. So, for the first time ever, I enjoyed competing, and [land]ed me on the podium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arnett, the American, called her bronze medal \u201ca big boost of confidence, for sure. This was a great, great first competition for me.\u201d Going into the season opener, Arnett said, \u201cI just wanted to take it easy. Don’t do too many reps. Don’t practice too much. Treat this competition more like a practice. I’m really happy to get my big reverse triple back off, ’cause I haven’t done it since September. So that was a big moment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Image Source: Zach Lightsey\/USA Diving<\/p>\n

Preda, the men\u2019s winner said, \u201cYesterday was a good day and today was an even greater day, finishing on top of the podium. Victory just tastes so, so sweet. I’m beyond happy and extremely grateful.<\/p>\n

“I came into the competition with no expectations, just a strong desire to be at my best and to strive to do my best”<\/p>\n

By Catalin-Petru Preda<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I achieved that. So I feel fulfilled. It’s been a lot of work, learning how to manage pressure, how to get the nerves in check and really reframe the pressure for something that I can take advantage of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Runner-up Davide Baraldi, 24, of Italy said, \u201cA lot of times I dreamed to be on the podium, and today when I was seeing the medals, I was like, \u2018Oh, I want one of them.\u2019 I know one day I can take one of them. I didn’t suspect this day to come 1779053188, but I’m very happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Italy, Baraldi added that \u201cdiving from 27 meters is very rare because we don’t have [a tower that high] in Italy. We just dive from 27 meters when we come to training camps here in Fort Lauderdale or Austria, or for the competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Preda\u2019s re-dive, Baraldi said, \u201cI wasn’t watching. I don’t watch competition usually because I want to stay in my in my bubble. But if it was for a good reason, it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Paredes, 36, a three-time World Championship medalist (dating back to 2013), Saturday\u2019s bronze-medal performance caught him a bit off-guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a surprise,\u201d Paredes said. \u201cHonestly, I haven’t expected this. I know my DD is not the [highest], so I’m just diving and hoping for these kind of results. Every time, it\u2019s getting more and more difficult for me; I got more scared every time. But in the end, I\u2019m happy to start the year like that. Tonight, we are heading to Indonesia for the first competition with Red Bull. Jumping on a plane, knowing that you just won a medal, it’s great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Catalin-Petru Preda, 34, was the final diver in the men\u2019s competition. He had just seen two world champions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-274479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}