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Think you know what a good dive looks like? Test yourself against our Olympic judge


Olympic divers spend years perfecting their dangerous craft, but most of us cheering from the couch know it all comes down to the size of the splash, right?

Turns out there’s a bit more to it than that, so we’ve called in an Olympic judge to take apart a dive piece-by-piece.

Once you’ve got the basics, put your armchair critic skills to the test and see whether you can match our actual expert.

First, your crash course to the perfect dive

We’re focusing on the 10-metre platform event in this story.

Dive-wise, we’ve chosen a fairly common combination: a reverse two-and-a-half somersault tuck. 

While splash size does matter, it will depend on a chain of actions that need to be taken into account.

So let’s check out the elements the judges will be looking for.

First is the starting position, which is all about posture. The head must be in line with the body, elbows straight and feet together. 

The second element is the take-off, which must be bold, high and confident. The diver’s head must also stay a safe distance from the board. 

The third element is the flight phase. This differs from dive to dive, but the dive we’re showing involves a tuck position, where the knees are pulled into the chest. The tuck must be tight.

The fourth element is the entry. The body should be vertical upon entry.

And finally, there’s the splash. The aim is for a ‘rip entry’, which has no splash at all.

Illustration of a diver preparing to jump off the platform.(

ABC News: Georgina Piper

)

Did you get all of that? Now let’s raise the stakes and make this a bit real

Gillian Brooker and Nikita Hains in profile rings.

Our judge is Gillian Brooker (L), the CEO of Diving NSW.

She has over 30 years’ experience in the sport, and is the only Australian judging the diving in Tokyo.

Our diver is 20-year-old Nikita Hains (R), who is making her Olympic debut. 

One of Nikita’s Olympic dives is the reverse two-and-a-half somersault tuck.

It’s one of the dives she’s more confident in, but even the slightest mistake will cost her points.

We’ve asked Gillian to judge Nikita’s dive from the Olympic trials held in Sydney earlier this year.

You’ll see the dive once in real time and again in slow motion so you can take it all in. 

Gillian will give it a score, but not before we let you take a punt and score it for yourself.

Ready? Here we go.

A still image from a video shows the white wash ripple in the water after Nikita's dive

Remember, we’re looking for a strong take-off, good technique in the flight path and a clean, vertical entry.

Did you catch all of that? Let’s rewind and take another look in slow-mo.

A still image of a video shows Nikita standing back up on a platform, poised, arms straight by her side

And this time, let’s see what our judge thinks …

Nikita poised on the platform, a white box marked around her body's outline to emphasise her starting position.

“She’s got quite a good start position,” Gillian says.

“Nikita’s got some beautiful posture, looks fantastic.”

Nikita paused in a jump off the platform before the tuck. A white box and arrows around her emphasise her direction.

“Then I’m looking for a good jump and a good distance from the board …

“She had a reasonably good jump.”

Nikita in the tuck position with arrows pointing to her hand placement on her knees and their distance from her chest.

“I’ve made a slight deduction because I felt her hands were towards the upper knees and if she’d held her legs a little bit lower down she could have pulled the tuck in a bit tighter and got a faster rotation.”

Arms stretched, Nikita hits the water. From the side view, her furthest leg is visible because her body is slightly rotated.

Nikita comes out of the dive a little bit early.

“She’s left the dive slightly short and she’s slightly turned her body on the entry, so I’ve made a deduction there.”

A still from the end of the video of Nikita's dive which shows a ripple of white wash.

And it’s not quite a rip entry.

“She did throw up a bit of splash … just a little hollow in the back, so that gives up more splash.”

As soon as Nikita disappears under the water, judging stops. 

“Divers are a lot like Houdinis, they do all these tricks under the water to bring the water down and minimise their splash or to look vertical, even if they’re not vertical … we don’t take all those things into consideration,” Gillian says.

You’ve just given one score. At the Olympics, you would be one of seven judges giving a score. 

The two highest and lowest scores are forfeited and the remaining three are averaged and multiplied by the dive’s degree of difficulty, and that gives the dive’s final score.

OK, now that you’ve got some new judging skills, let’s play again

We’ve kept it simple and given you the same dive, but this time from a different diver. 

Melissa Wu in a headshot in an Olympic ring.

This is Olympic veteran Melissa Wu, the kind of diver Gillian says “just has the X-factor”.

Melissa began diving at 10, and by 16 was making her Olympic debut in Beijing.

Now she’s 29 and taking part in her fourth Olympics.

Melissa is also going to perform the reverse two-and-a-half somersault tuck but — just like a real judge — you won’t have the benefit of watching it back in slow-mo, so watch closely!

What you want to remember with this dive is the tighter the tuck, the faster the rotation, which should give enough time to lengthen out for a vertical entry.

OK, let’s take a look at Melissa’s dive…

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Melissa Wu performing a dive(Supplied: Diving Australia)

“She’s ticked all the boxes,” Gillian says.

“It’s a beautiful shape, that tuck shape … then she just times that entry to perfection and just disappears in the water with very little splash.

“For a diver to get a 10 you feel it; I get goosebumps when a diver does the dive for 10.

“To me it was just that tiny little bit scoopy at the bottom.”

Want to play one more time? 

This time our diver is Sam Fricker, who’s also making his Olympic debut in Tokyo.

Sam Fricker in a profile photo.

The 19-year-old comes from a big diving family out of New South Wales. All four of his siblings are also divers. 

In this scoring round we’re going to mix things up even more and give you a completely different style of dive: a back armstand double somersault one-and-a-half twist.

Judging this type of dive begins the moment the diver’s feet leave the platform to press up into the armstand.

They have to remain as steady as possible. Any sign of a wobble can lead to a deduction.

This dive also requires a pike position in the flight path.

In a pike, the legs have to be straight and pulled into the chest.

Keeping a steady balance while standing on your hands on the edge of a 10-metre platform, as the adrenaline courses through your body, is no easy feat.

Let’s see how Sam goes …

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Sam Fricker performing an armstand dive(Supplied: Diving Australia)

“He’s come up confidently [into the armstand], he hasn’t hesitated,” Gillian says.

“I just would like to see him hold that a little bit longer and not wobble as much. And when he pushed off, he pushed too far out, instead of up.”

But there’s a lot more to diving than the scoreboard

It’s easy for us to throw up a number we think a dive is worth, but behind that number lies years of training, getting it right and getting it (sometimes painfully) wrong.

Like a lot of divers, Nikita started out as a gymnast before transitioning to diving. 

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Montage of Nikita Hains over the years(Supplied: Nikita Hains)

“I loved it on day one, and here we are,” she says.

Bungee jumping wouldn’t faze Nikita; it’s the adrenaline rush she gets from diving that has her hooked. 

“Just the ability of my body to throw myself off of 10 metres and know where I am, and spin, it’s a really interesting feeling and it’s really, really exciting that I’m one of the few people that can do something like that,” she says.

To reach the Olympic level requires a razor-like focus, especially when it comes to competition time. 

To pull off a dive, Nikita only allows her mind to focus on one thing.

It will be a cue from her coach, a small phrase like “through your toes” which gives her a feeling or reminds her of a thing she’s going to do with her arms or feet.

A dive can happen so quickly, Nikita says if she has too many thoughts her brain won’t be able to keep up with her body.

“I think when you start to make too many decisions in the middle of the dive, it can be your undoing,” she says.

Although she might seem like a tough judge, Gillian says she finds it hard to take points off the athletes.

“I love what I do and I’m just so in awe of some of these athletes, they’re so brave and so beautiful and our sport is so beautiful.

“I feel very privileged because I get the best seat in the house to watch the sport I love,” she says of heading to Tokyo.

Diving is a high-risk sport and things do go wrong

At the 2020 World Cup trials, Nikita’s head made contact with the platform during an inverse dive.

She was lucky — her cap helped prevent her skin from splitting — but she was left with a concussion.

From 10 metres, hitting the water the wrong way is a very real danger.

“Splatting is also something that we think about… it’s quite dangerous,” Nikita says. 

“I think a lot of people don’t realise how painful the water is. Because of that surface tension, it can feel like concrete.”

But for Nikita the risk is always worth the reward when she hits the water and knows she’s completed a good dive. 

“There’s just an overwhelming feeling of achievement, of happiness, and even if it’s in training or at a competition, that feeling is the exact same,” Nikita says.

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