Longing for the days of U.S. diving dominance
Posted: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:31 AM
American divers used to dominate the Olympics. Not anymore.
Three events are in the books here – synchronized women’s from platform and springboard and men’s platform synchronized. The best American finish is fourth. The worst Chinese finish is first. China’s most recent gold was won this afternoon by the Chinese women’s team of Wang Xin and Chen Ruolin.
Their bios say that Wang is 17 and Chen 16, but they don’t look a day over 14. They are almost a perfect match. Each girl – these are not women, believe me – stands 4-foot-6. Chen is slightly bigger, weighing in at 66 pounds, two pounds more than Wang. Together, they weigh 128 pounds, which is barely one normal woman.
Small is good in women’s diving and gymnastics, and the girls of the Chinese diving team look just about exactly like the girls of the gymnastics team. None look as if they’ve hit puberty. All would be carded at the door of a sixth-grade classroom.
As long as China keeps turning out tiny little divers like this, no one else has a chance. That was obvious in The Water Cube when Chen and Wang blew the competition out of the water. The gap between them and the second-place Australian team was 28.38 points. That was greater than the 27.06-point gap between Australia and sixth-place North Korea.
In the diving world, the Chinese are the 1927 Yankees, the 1985 Chicago Bears. They don’t just win, they grind everyone to a pulp.
Still, it would be nice if an American could win a medal again.
An American male hasn’t won a diving medal since 1992 in Barcelona, where Scott Donie took silver in the platform and Mark Edward Lenzi took gold in the springboard. No American woman has been on the medal stand in the springboard since the Kelly McCormick took bronze in 1988. U.S. women have done better on the platform, with Laura Wilkinson winning gold in 2000.
But that’s slim pickings compared to what it used to be. In 1984, U.S. women were second and third on the platform, a performance they matched in 1988 in Seoul. If you go way back, it’s more impressive. In the three Olympiads from 1948-56, American woman took eight of nine possible medals, including every gold and silver.
On the springboard, American women took seven of 12 medals from 1964-76 and seven of nine from 1948-56.
The men took eight of 15 platform medals from 1948-64. On the springboard, they took gold in six straight Olympics from 1948-68. Greg Louganis won back-to-back gold medals in the platform in 1984 and 1988.
The United States has won two medals since 1992. This year it doesn’t look like they’ll make that three.
