Olympic diving is very exciting and yet also very confusing. If you are like me, and your diving experience consists of childhood belly flops at the public pool, then you probably have a lot of questions about the sport, its customs, and its attire. Here are some answers.
How has the sport evolved since its inception? Has diving gotten more acrobatic over time?
Yes! You are very observant. According to FINA, the international federation that supervises Olympic diving, athletes first began diving competitively in the 18th and 19th centuries, with their competitions modeled after the “traditional activities of a guild of salt boilers in the German town of Halle.”
What?
The FINA Diving Officials Manual says, “They practised their diving feats from a bridge over the river Saale and showed off their skills at festivals.”
Also:
One of their foremost divers, named Tichy, was instrumental in forming the first diving association in 1840 with links to the German gymnastics movement. They were known as “Tichy’sche Frösche” (Tichy’s frogs), and most members were gymnasts.
Ah, yes—the great Tichy. Please continue.
Olympic diving debuted in the 1904 St. Louis Games, when American George Sheldon won gold in the “fancy diving” event in an upset victory over the German favorites. As FINA put it, Sheldon “displayed a simple technique but hit the water with a neat, straight entry, an aspect neglected by the Germans who uncorked a spectacular array of acrobatic, somersaulting dives but did not worry how they concluded them.”
According to FINA, the sport really began to take off in the 1970s with the advent of the FINA World Championships, which sounds like something FINA would say. Since then, the sport has gotten more and more acrobatic and impressive, as you might expect, given that it is no longer just the afterwork pastime of a bunch of German salt boilers.
How much splash is too much splash? How do you minimize splashing?
The worst thing you can do in diving is enter the pool with a splash. (Well, I suppose it would be worse to miss the pool entirely, or to somehow get stuck on the diving board after getting crippled by existential panic, but work with me here.) As a large, ungainly human, you are bound to enter the water with at least some kind of splash. You can minimize it, though, with a technique called the “rip entry.” Let’s hand it over to American diver Abby Johnston, who offered a good explanation to NBC:
When you go through the water, you wanna have your hand completely flat and then you wanna move your wrists and your arms out to the side, because that creates a hole for your whole body to go through. So you push through the water, flick your wrists and then you do a little flip underwater just to keep it all below you—all that bubble, all that air from going up into a splash. So it’s a complex and quick little move. The dive doesn’t end above the water. It’s a lot going on down below, flipping over.
Here is a set of drills you can do to achieve a rip entry yourself:
Good luck!
Why are the divers’ towels so small?
First of all, it’s not a towel—it’s a chamois, or “shammy.” The shammy is a super-absorbent piece of cloth that sops up water. Because it is so small, a diver can wring it out after use and know it will be more-or-less dry by the time of the next dive. A larger towel might not get entirely dry in time.
So sort of like the towels the ShamWow guy used to sell?
Yes, basically the same thing.
Whatever happened to the ShamWow guy?
The ShamWow Guy, aka Vince Offer, was arrested in 2009 after fighting with an alleged prostitute in a Miami hotel; he was not ultimately charged with a crime. In 2013, Offer told NBC News he was about to start selling the “InVinceable” kitchen cleaner. It’s available for a good price on Amazon.
Got it. So why are the divers’ bathing suits so small?
Aerodynamics and comfort, basically. As a male diver, you will spend a lot of time twisting around in midair, and you don’t want your junk to fall out, or to get tangled in your suit while you’re somersaulting.
Why do some divers use the shower and some use the hot tub?
It’s a matter of preference.
Why do they need to use the shower or a hot tub at all?
Because the water in the pool is very cold, and also because diving is terrifying. The hot water of the shower or hot tub is warming and relaxing. It helps the diver focus before his next dive, and convince himself to go back up the dive tower and perform again instead of doing the sensible thing and running away.
Do the judges look at replays or are they somehow able to see every little detail at real speed?
The judges do not use replay. They must rely on their eyes and their short-term memory. There are seven judges for each individual diving event. There are 11 judges for each synchronized diving event, five of whom focus exclusively on the divers’ synchronization, and six of whom focus exclusively on execution. The judges do not confer before entering their scores.
How does the scoring integrate difficulty and execution?
FINA has a very intricate table that establishes the degree of difficulty for every conceivable dive. The harder the dive being attempted, the higher the degree-of-difficulty score. The divers will announce which dive they plan to perform before they perform it.
The judges are expected to evaluate a diver’s approach, takeoff, elevation, execution, and entry into the water. The approach should be smooth, balanced, and “aesthetically pleasing,” which is why you see very few herky-jerky diving approaches these days. The takeoff must also be balanced and controlled, while the elevation should be, um, high. The dive must be executed with grace and precision and should conform to the judges’ “expectation of what the dive should look like in the air.” Finally, the diver should enter the water gracefully and with limited splash.
After the dive is completed and the scores are in, the top and bottom two are discarded, and the remainder are added together and multiplied by the degree of difficulty to arrive at the final score.
There are a bunch of different dives, yes?
There are five main dive groups: front, backward, reverse, inward, and twist. (There are also handstand dives, which we’ll get to in a second.) With front and backward dives you flip the same way you’re facing when you come off the board. In a reverse dive, you face forward and flip backward; vice versa for an inward dive. With a twist you add at least a half-twist to either of the aforementioned categories.
But! There are also four body positions: straight, pike, tuck, and free. Straight is self-explanatory. In a tuck, you tuck your knees to your chest as if you were a human cannonball. In a pike, you keep your legs and knees straight and bend at the waist in a jackknife position. The free position is reserved for twist dives, and combines elements of the other positions.
Why don’t more people do dives starting in handstands? Those are awesome!
Good question! Handstand dives are exclusively performed off platforms, not springboards. You don’t want to perform a handstand dive off a springboard, because it is dangerous.
Do divers have to get special insurance?
In a manner of speaking, yes. When a diver registers for membership with USA Diving, the umbrella organization for American competitive divers, he or she will receive secondary accident insurance coverage at no extra charge.
Do the divers ever find anything at the bottom of the pool?
No.
If I’d like to make a living finding stuff at the bottom of pools, is there a job at the Olympics for me?
Yes.
