Athletes - Diving

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	Athletes - Diving

Diving refers to the sport acrobatically jumping or falling into water. Diving is an internationally-recognized sport, which is part of the Olympic Games. In addition, unstructured and non-competitive diving is a common recreational pastime in places where swimming is popular; sometimes the term jumping is used to disambiguate this activity from competitive diving.

While not a particularly popular participant sport, diving is one of the more popular Olympic sports with spectators. Successful competitors possess many of the same characteristics as gymnasts, including strength, flexibility, and kinaesthetic judgment.

In the past, the success and prominence of Greg Louganis led to American strength internationally. More recently, however, the greatest diving nation is China, which came to prominence several decades ago when the sport was revolutionized by national coach Boxi Liang and has lost few world titles since. Other powers are generally those which import Chinese coaches, including Australia and Canada, home to the poster boy of the sport in recent years, Alexandre Despatie.

Competitive Diving

Competitive diving usually consists competing in one of three venues: one metre, three metre, and tower. Tower, or platform diving, allows the diver to select from one of three levels - five metre, seven-and-a-half metre (called seven metre) or ten metre. On occasion, in non-collegiate and non-Olympic environments, there are professional competitions at higher levels.

One and three meter dives are performed from a springboard. Five through ten meter dives are performed from concrete or wooden platforms known colloquially by divers as "tower." In most regional, national and international competitions, there are two springboard height competitions, at 1 meter and 3 meter, as well as a platform competition in which all three tower heights can be combined. In Olympic competition, however, there is only the 3 meter springboard and the 10 meter platform.

Divers may perform a variety of dives, performing somersaults and twists in various directions and from different starting positions (see Components of a Dive below). Divers are judged on whether and how well they completed all aspects of the dive, the conformance of their body to the requirements of the nominated dive, and the amount of splash created by their entry to the water (less being better). A perfect entry, with no splash, is called a "rip," after the loud tearing or clapping sound it creates (as well as the sometimes painful bursting feeling on the hands of the diver). Theoretically, a score out of ten is supposed to be broken down into 3 points for the takeoff, 3 for the flight, and 3 for the entry, with 1 more available to give the judges flexibility. However, since judges must give their scores instantaneously, they base their scores more on a gut instinct and overall impression than actual calculations.

The raw score is multiplied by a difficulty factor, derived from the number and combination of movements attempted. The diver with the highest total score after a sequence of dives (which depend on age group and skill level in elite competition) is declared the winner.

While diving is closely related to gynmastics, it differs in one large way: Male and female gymansts compete vastly different skills on vastly different apparatus, while male and female divers compete the same dives on the same boards. Women are often required to perform one less dives than men (10 as opposed to 11, or 5 as opposed to 6), but there has been a movement in recent years to change this fact.

Synchronized diving was adopted as an Olympic sport in 2000. In this event, two divers form a team and attempt to perform dives simultaneously. The dives are usually identical; however, sometimes the dives may be opposites, in what is called a pinwheel. This is an impressive spectacle, and requires great coordination between the team-mates. In these events, synchronicity is valued as highly as technical skill. Thus, if both divers perform their individual dives badly, but in the same way, they will still score fairly well.

Components of a Dive and a Diving List

A dive must be composed of one of four defined positions. They are: (A) layout or straight position--the body is, as the name implies, completely straight; (B) pike position--the body is folded in half, bent at the waist but not at the knees; (C) tuck position--the body is curled into a ball, with the knees brought up to the chin and the heels tucked against the back of the legs; or (D) free position--defined as the use of multiple positions during the flight, usually pike and layout, and used exclusively for twisting dives. There may be any multiple of half-twist rotations and half somersault revolutions performed in these positions.

On the springboards, dives are performed in one of four directions: (1) forward or front--beginning facing forwards and rotating forwards in the air; (2) backward or back--beginning facing the board and rotating backwards; (3) reverse or gainer--beginning facing forwards but rotating backwards, back towards the board; or (4) inward-- beginning facing backwards but rotating forwards, back towards the board. A forward or reverse dive begins with an approach (called a hurdle) moving towards the end of the diving board. A back or inward dive begins with either a standing or rocking motion by the diver standing at the end of the board and facing backwards. However, forward and inward are in fact technically almost identical to each other, as are backward and reverse.

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Athletes - Diving

Competitive Diving

Components of a Dive and a Diving List

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