Australian Rhiannan Iffland scored a second successive victory on Sunday, maintaining her unbeaten start to the 2023 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Paris to bolster her lead in the overall standings.

Diving into the Seine River right across from the iconic Eiffel Tower in the French capital, Iffland extended her winning streak to nine events across two seasons, once again holding off her closest challenger, Canada’s Molly Carlson, to secure her 32nd career victory, while Germany’s Iris Schmidbauer put in a career-best performance to nail down her first podium place.

A tight battle between the top two women came down to the final dive from the 21m platform, with the six-time champion knowing she needed to stay 0.5 points ahead of her rival across the judges’ scorecards. As it was, Carlson could only earn 7.5s for her final dive, before Iffland ripped into the Seine to claim 9s from the panel and an 11-point victory.

“This is exactly how I wanted to start the season. Start strong and have a little bit of room to play around at the end. Today I knew I had to come out here and put down a good dive, because I had the really low DD. I really had to fight. When I was up there though, I was just taking it all in and then trying to stay in my zone, but enjoy the experience at the same time,” said Iffland, who now has 21 victories in the last 22 stops.

Perhaps of some comfort to Carlson for another near miss will be the 10 World Series points she earns for the weekend’s highest scoring dive, a Reverse 2 Somersaults Tuck in the first round. She now trails Iffland by 80 points in the overall standings.

Meanwhile, third-placed Schmidbauer was overcome with emotion after securing her first podium place with the day’s best dive: “It's been a dream of mine for so long. I've been working so hard towards it, and I missed the podium a couple of times - one time by 0.1 point - and to make it finally in front of the Eiffel Tower is just like a dream coming true.”

From the picturesque Parisian backdrop, the cliff diving elite will next travel to a World Series classic in Polignano a Mare in two weeks’ time. Known as the ‘home of European cliff diving’, the beautiful Italian town will welcome back the athletes for a record 10th time as the season really begins to hot up.