10 Questions: Desharne Bent-Ashmeil on the British diving phenomenon, ‘school brain’ and ‘diving brain’ – and her Antalya hopes

Desharne Bent-Ashmeil, 20 will be one of Great Britain’s key performers when she takes part in the European Aquatics Diving Championships Antalya 2025 which start on Thursday (May 22) and conclude on Wednesday (May 28).

After placing fourth twice at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham the Londoner produced a breakthrough performance as an 18-year-old the following year.

She and 19-year-old Amy Rollison won women’s 3m synchro springboard gold at the 2023 EA Diving Championships that took place within the third European Games in Poland.

At last year’s European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade Bent-Ashmeil came away with three of Britain’s four diving golds as they topped the medals table with a total of seven.

She is due to seek a third consecutive 3m synchro title with Rollinson in the scenic Turkish resort and to defend the mixed 3m synchro title with Ben Cutmore.

The European Championships have been a happy hunting ground for you – a breakthrough gold in 2023 with Amy Rollinson, and three of the four British golds in Belgrade last year. Some act to follow! What are your hopes for Antalya?

“I feel like I’ve had a bit of a challenging lead-up – I’ve been busy with exams and a bit of illness. But I’m still going to try my best to put together a consistent competition list at Europeans.”

Britain finished narrowly ahead of Spain and France in Belgrade. Do you think you can stay top of the medals table in Turkiye?

“Yeah definitely, I think we have a very strong team – everyone is capable of getting medals and it’s just about putting out our best performances and taking each opportunity as it comes.”

British divers have enjoyed huge success in recent years at Olympic, world, European and Commonwealth levels. How do you explain this growing success story – are you all inspiring each other to greater levels?

“I think especially in training it can be hard sometimes to find motivation, but we build each other up if someone is feeling down. It’s kind of like a family we have in each of our High Performance Centres and on teams.”

You have partnered Amy and Ben Cutmore to golden success in synchro. Did you “click” with both of them straight away, or were your collaborations different?

“Amy and I have been doing synchro on and off since 2020, and we didn’t originally train at the same club so we’d just pick it up a week before competition – we’ve always had a similar ‘click’ to our diving.

“With Ben he’s very good at adapting to springboard and  we did synchro at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. With that experience in common we decided that we could compete at Europeans last year which proved to be a success.”

Houdini said to get out of bed was the hardest thing he could do. What is the hardest thing about your day?

“For me it is probably switching my ‘school brain’ to ‘diving brain’ and then vice versa when between university and training.”

What has been the proudest moment of your career – so far?

“Probably my individual [women’s 3m springboard] title at Belgrade 2024. It was the first time I’ve done a routine that good – everything from pre-routine and right through the competition just flowed really well.”

What has been the biggest challenge of you career – so far?

“I would say diving is very mental sport, so just being in the right headspace to even train sometimes is hard. I put my trust in God to not have fear, because diving can present those feeling sometimes.”

Who has been your sporting inspiration – either in your own sport or any other?

“I would say Maddison Keeney and Jennifer Abel – I was big fans of their diving and still am!”

If you hadn’t become a diver what do you think you would have been?

“Prior to diving I did gymnastics, but I think I would probably be a swimmer or an artistic swimmer. When I first started diving I was debating between the aquatic sports but I decided to go for diving as it was most like gymnastics.”

What would you like to have achieved by the end of 2025?

“I’d just like to work on moving my consistency in training into under-pressure competition environments. I find sometimes there’s a bridge between those two things and my aim is to find a consistency within my competition routines.”

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics

The post 10 Questions: Desharne Bent-Ashmeil on the British diving phenomenon, ‘school brain’ and ‘diving brain’ – and her Antalya hopes first appeared on European Aquatics®.