Diving Disciplines

Diving refers to the sport of acrobatically jumping or falling into water. Diving is an internationally-recognized sport that is part of the Olympic Games. In addition, unstructured and non-competitive diving is a common recreational pastime in places where swimming is popular.

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 kinesthetic judgment.

In the past, the success and prominence of Greg Louganis led to American strength internationally. More recently, the greatest diving nation has been China, which came to prominence several decades ago when the sport was revolutionized by national coach Boxi Liang. China 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.

Most diving competitions consist of three disciplines: 1m, 3m and tower, aka platform. Competitive athletes are divided by gender, and often by age groups as well. In tower events, competitors are allowed to perform their dives on either the five, seven and a half (generally just called seven) or ten meter towers, although high level meets, including the Olympic Games and world championships, usually require all dives to be executed from the ten meter.

One and three meter dives are performed from a springboard. Five through ten meter dives are performed from concrete or wooden platforms, and such platforms also exist at one and three meter heights as training tools.

Divers must perform a set number of dives according to various established requirements, including 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 gymnastics, it differs in one large way: Male and female gymnasts 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.

Dives involving a twist during the somersault may be either front, back, reverse or (rarely) inward, but are considered a fifth direction altogether. Similarly, on platform only, dives in the front, back, or (rarely) reverse directions, with or without twist, may be performed starting from an arm stand (i.e., handstand) rather than from standing on the feet. Arm stand dives are considered a sixth direction.

A diver's "list" refers to the dives they compete. In high level meets, athletes are required to perform dives in all five of the directions on springboard, and five of the six on platform; children may only be expected to perform three or four, and men often have to perform enough dives that they must repeat one direction.

The diver's list is divided into two halves, referred to internationally as compulsory dives and optional dives. The compulsories are not, as the name suggests, dives strictly identified by the rules; rather, they are simply the easier dives, intended to exhibit technical mastery. However, since there are so few to choose from and since there is a limit on the total sum of the compulsory dives' degrees of difficulty (see Degree of Difficulty); most divers around the world have the same compulsories. The optionals are more difficult and therefore allow more freedom to show off sheer strength and skill, but given competitive standards, athletes of a similar competitive level will often have the same or very similar optionals.

All of the athletes are elite and skilful enough to perform compulsories admirably, but differences in ability become much more evident when optionals are performed. Therefore, it is not uncommon, in high level competitions, for optionals to be competed first, in preliminary rounds (as a way of separating the excellent divers from the very good ones) and compulsories to be performed only in final rounds, or for compulsories to not be done at all.

Each dive has a "dive number" - a code that describes its direction and number of twists and somersaults. Note that changing the position of the dive (tuck, pike, etc.) does NOT affect the dive number. A letter (A for straight, B for pike, C for tuck, or D for free) is appended to the end of the dive number to indicate the position in which it is to be performed. In competition, all the dives an athlete competes must have different dive numbers.