Diving: Double the difficulty

By PETER JESSUP

High diving is like car racing in one respect - there's the potential for serious bodily injury.

That makes synchronised diving better value for money, the possibility of more splat for your bucks.

Diving authorities hope synchro will give the dying sport a new lease of life.

Certainly the participants like it, having someone with whom to share the horror of the 10m drop.

On Thursday the Chinese proved themselves masters of this first-time Olympic sport, Li Na and Sang Xue taking gold in the women's 10m platform - to go with the two silvers the country had already won in the women's 3m springboard and men's 10m platform.

Chinese head coach Liu Henglin said the whole team had been nervous, but once Xiong Ni took gold in the individual they started to "release" a bit and morale soared.

On their second dive, Li Na and Sang Xue were awarded four 10s by the nine judges, the others scoring them at 9.5 for a highest score of the round of 58.20 ( highest and lowest are dropped and the sum multiplied by a factor of difficulty). Going through more difficult manoeuvres than the rest, they scored close to 80 in their third and fourth dives and left the competition behind. They finished with a total of 345.12 points, the Canadians 312.03 and Australia 301.50.

Sixteen year old Li Na said she had "cried from the bottom of my heart" after winning but wasn't surprised at the perfect 10s. "During training we did just as well. That's not really our best performance, it's what we normally achieve."

Confident stuff. Her coach Zhang Ting put the success down to more time on the job that anyone else was prepared to give.

"We practice very hard - a lot of training." And they are together 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in state training camp.

In contrast, Canadian silver medallists Emilie Heymans and Anne Montminy got together only eight weeks ago. Their dive list was "the only ones we can both do," Montminy said.

"At first we started compromising on technique, but it didn't work."

That's obvious. The Chinese don't even need the "one, two, three, up," count that the rest go through, seeming to know that instinctively. They're making a big splash by not making any splash.

Behind the Chinese, the Americans and French started well then fell back, and the Austrians, Canadians and Australians started to move up after the third and fourth dives.

The Australian team of Loudy Tourky and Rebecca Gilmore were in fourth as they walked the stairs for their last drop.

"I knew we were behind but I also knew we had a high degree of difficulty," Tourky said of their back two and a half somersault with half twist. She thanked the crowd for its support and repeated a comment made by Australian 3m springboard synchro bronze medallist Dean Pullar, who said "I doubt we would have nailed that when we needed to without the crowd."

It must be hard for judges - how much does the cheering, 10 times louder for the locals than it is for anyone else, affect the points they award?

The two bronzes of Pullar and partner Robert Newbury, and Tourky and Gilmore, are the first medals Australia has won in diving since Paris in 1924.