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Diving

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Diving is one of the most spectacular, graceful and dramatic sports on the Olympic program.

Who could forget the drama of Greg Louganis's springboard win at the 1988 Seoul Games, nailing his final dive to claim the gold medal after striking his head on the board during the preliminary competition and requiring stitches?

Or the breathtaking city skyline backdrop at the diving competition in Barcelona in 1992?

How can you fail to marvel at the amazing visual spectacle of synchronised diving, introduced to the Olympic programme at the Sydney Games in 2000?

There is no doubt it takes not only grace and elegance to make a world-class diver, but guts as well.

When platform divers hit the water, they are travelling at about the same speed as cars cruising suburban streets.

One mistake can be fatal, and even the elite make mistakes. In the early 1980s, Sergei Chalibashvili died after his head struck the platform while attempting a reverse 3-1/2 somersault in the tuck position.

Divers are judged on their ability to perform manoeuvres in the air between the take-off point and the pool, one of the key scoring criteria being the ability to enter the water smoothly.

These manoeuvres include pikes, tucks, twists and somersaults and can be performed in forward or reverse directions.

Of course, times have changed somewhat since the sport's earliest times. Diving competitions began in Britain in the 1880s, after the sport began in Europe in the 17th century as a training drill for gymnasts.

Those early competitions were held in ponds, with divers forced to compete for space with other pond users.

The sport made its Olympic debut at St Louis in 1912 under the label "fancy diving".

By today's standards it was anything but fancy, but it was obviously popular. In 1908 springboard diving joined platform diving on the program and by 1920 men and women were competing in both forms of the sport.

As the sport developed, the complexity of the dives increased, with pikes and tucks becoming popular.