China have won 46 of the 56 gold medals in Olympic diving this century. Here’s why
For the first time at an Olympic Games, China’s diving team has been perfect. For the first time at any Olympic diving competition, one nation has won all eight gold medals on offer.
China made headlines for the wrong reasons coming into these Games but since the swimming ended and the diving competition began at the Olympic Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis, they have barely made a splash. And this after all, is the whole idea in diving.
To watch Cao Yuan, a 29-year-old master diver who on Saturday won his second, consecutive Olympic title off the 10m platform, was to see the gulf that separates China’s best from the best of the rest of the world.
China’s Cao Yuan completed a clean sweep for China across all diving events in Paris.Credit: AP
There is nothing that Cao does off a platform that other divers can’t do. His dives on paper, in their variation of twists, somersaults, tucks and pikes, were identical to the repertoire of Australia’s Cassiel Rousseau. The difference is that none of the other 11 Olympics finalists could perform their dives with the metronomic consistency of Cao.
Rousseau, a 23-year-old world champion, finished fourth. While still wet on the pool deck, he explained that the sport requires five dives from women and six dives from men in each event. There are seven judges who score the dives, examining each for the tiniest of flaws to deduct points from 10.
“To be fully consistent...to be getting eight and a halves, nines, even 10s six out of six times, that is just incredibly difficult to do,” he told this masthead. “For me, there is always a dive that is just missing out slightly. I wasn’t really hopeful to nail six out of six.”
Australia’s Cassiel Rousseau takes the plunge off the 10m platform.Credit: AP
Rousseau’s hope for a medal came a cropper when he didn’t get his entry quite right on his fourth dive, a back-facing, three-and-a-half somersaulting effort with a pike. It is a difficult dive he had been struggling with in the lead-up to Paris.
After he entered the water with a thwack, his scores dipped to between five-and-a-half and six. He knew then that unless someone else bombed out, there was no way back to the podium. That didn’t stop him celebrating when he nailed his final dive – his most technically difficult – and performed a little jig on the pool deck.
A breakdown of Cao’s scores in this competition show that, from judges on every dive, he never posted less than eight out of 10. Thanks to this remarkable consistency, he finished nearly 40 points ahead of the silver medallist, Rikuto Tamai from Japan. Britain’s Noah Williams won the bronze medal. Rousseau finished 16 points behind Williams.
Rousseau says watching someone like Cao dive is one of the reasons he loves the sport. He knows the Chinese can be beaten – he beat two of them in the 10m platform at the 2023 world championships in Fukuoka – but the fact he was the only non-Chinese diver to win an event at those championships tells you how difficult a task this is.
Roussea says that for practical reasons, he cannot train as hard or as long as his Chinese rivals.Credit: Getty Images
It also underlines the extraordinary performance of Australia’s Maddison Keeney in Paris when she split two Chinese divers to win silver in the women’s 3m springboard.
China’s clean sweep in Paris is the culmination of a domination that dates back to the Seoul Olympics in 1988, when Greg Louganis, a legend of diving and US sport who made a guest appearance at the Saint-Denis pool on Saturday, was still competing.
It is the product of a centrally based, intensive Soviet-style sports system that identifies children from around the Chinese provinces with athletic potential, gathers them into national training centres in Beijing and teaches them the skills and discipline required to win Olympic gold.
The system is highly controlling. From a young age, children are separated from their parents and only return to their home provinces for a week or two a year. Instead of attending a normal school, they take abridged classes with other aspiring athletes and spend most of their day being instructed in sport.
It is a model well suited to diving which, alongside gymnastics, is the most labour-intensive Olympic sport. Of 56 gold medals awarded in Olympic diving this century, China have won 46.
Rousseau describes China’s achievement in Paris of an incredible feat and the product of hard work. He also reflects that, to beat China’s best divers requires a level commitment beyond what is practically feasible for him and most other divers around the world.
”For me, it is bit hard to put as much work in as the China can,” he said. “I have to work and I have to study. Trying to fit everything in and get a medal in diving is a bit difficult for me. The Chinese have the support systems set up for them to be able to train for longer and harder than I am able to do.”
When Rousseau returns home to Brisbane, he will resume his psychology studies at Griffith University and his part-time work as a receptionist at a wellness centre.
He is grateful to both his university and his employer for giving him time away from studies and work to compete at the Olympics. He also knows that unless something changes, China’s best divers will remain next level.
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