Canada's Lysanne Richard places 5th in high diving return
The 2016 World Cup champion missed last season recovering from neck injury
Lysanne Richard made a strong return to the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, sitting third entering Sunday's final round of the women's 21-metre competition and settling for a fifth-place finish in Hell's Gate, Tex.
The native of Chicoutimi, Que., sat out the entire 2017 season with a neck injury that first surfaced in June 2016.
"Because of my neck I wasn't able to do that many dives before the competition,'' said Richard, a 36-year-old mother of three who scored 264.90 points. "I have to go gradually when I come back from an injury like that. My last dive is my most difficult and it's just not at the level I need it to be yet.''
Adriana Jimenez of Mexico won the gold medal with 302.20 points, followed by Jessica Macaulay of Britain (302.10) and Germany's Anna Bader (301.80).
Richard, who was forced to withdraw from the FINA World Championships last July, burst on the scene in 2016 with a pair of World Series victories and a World Cup title.
The 2016 FINA female high diver of the year is a graduate of Montreal's National Circus School and an acrobat with Cirque du Soleil.