10M Platform Diving
22 August 2004, early evening
I’ve been a fan of platform diving since I met my friend Tiffany. Her obsession with China’s thoroughly brilliant diver Fu Mingxia was quite infectious. China had two great divers in this years Olympics, Li Ting, and Lao Lishi. They both were amazing to watch. I was hoping Li Ting would do better, she ended up placing 6th. Her last dive was incredible though; flawless. It was the highest scoring dive of the heat with a score of 91.80. Lao Lishi got the silver medal, just shy of the Australian Chantelle Newburry. The competition this year was also interesting to watch since Canada had two women in the finals, Emille Heymans and Myriam Boileau. Heymans was looking like she might be in medal contention till she mucked up her last dive. So yet again, Canada comes up short. Least we won a gold in gymnastics.
Emilie Heymans’ 4th dive was close to flawless and it catapulted her from 6th to 2nd in that round. Too bad she messed up her last one. Those handstand dives are crazy eh?
by martha on August 22 2004, 9:22 pm #
I think we’ll be lucky to get ten medals this time around. Nothing from swimming and only one from rowing…
by Ryan on August 22 2004, 10:01 pm #
I hope that after these Olympics Canada smartens up and better funds their athletes. Or we could all move to Quebec, where they actually provide financial aid to their athletes.
Anyways, there’s still hope for a few more medals. =)
by sh!ma on August 22 2004, 10:19 pm #
The brains that run our Olympic team sent the smallest team in 30 years ‘cause they only wanted “good” people to go. Certainly the new stringent qualification requirements aren’t helping us rake in the mdeals. Moreover, all the “young talent” who could compete but aren’t “good enough” aren’t being given this opportunity to develop themselves. So I think we’re trying really hard to suck for the next couple summer Olympics too.
by Ryan on August 22 2004, 10:55 pm #
I think “Olympic Experience” is a big load of shit. You compete all year round in other tournaments, being flown to the other side of the world for a competition when you aren’t really considered a real contender is a big waste of time.
That being said, Canada’s medal performance IS pathetic. To fix that, Canada should focus their funding from major, real events (that the rest of the world is also interested in) and instead fund the obscure lame ass sports such as synchronized diving, wheel chair racing and trampolining. I’m sure there are more medals to be had by specializing in the crappy ass “sports” that no one else is interested in.
You know I’m right.
by Ju-Lian on August 23 2004, 12:06 am #
There was a special on CBC during the olympics and funding… Apparently high performance sports was alloted $30 mil from the government to spend by the end of the year. but they’ve only spent $1 mil so far. Much of the reason is that there is no public support for sports in canada. Canadians want everything else fixed first. I think they should spend the money, winning more medals would certainly raise more national pride.
I agree with Ju-Lian partly… olympic experience is a load of shit. But, i also think that athletes need to go to big competitions as well. They need to get used to the increased pressure, higher level of competition, and all the other distractions you don’t get just competing with your friends. It also gives you a chance to see where you stand compared to others as well as learn from some of the best. i.e. it’s one thing to play paintball and another to fight in an actual war…
by Gary on August 23 2004, 12:51 am #
I don’t think you can just say we are under funded, and if we were better funded we would suck less. Canada has so many favourites in the rowing competition, and all of them ended up not performing. I don’t know if more money would really improve a situation like that. This was what I was trying to get at with my comment about our performance in diving. The diver was quite good, she just hammed up her last dive. It seems like in this Olympics Canada is having trouble going the distance. I don’t think more money would fix that. (Well, besides perhaps facilitating more competitions, which I also agree can’t do any harm.)
And Martha, I thought that Dive was amazing too. I think the commentators were saying that it is one of the most difficult dives you can do, and that it is usually only done by the men. (Though I wonder if in a sport like diving if the difference between the men and the women is so great.)
by ramanan on August 23 2004, 1:27 am #
Funding would certainly help. It would allow them more time in the pool/court/boat etc, better trainers, better equipment, practices… More practice would make them more consistent, which would result in less hamming of dives.
I think its more an issue of Canada as a country doesn’t care for sports. We’re so multicultural that we just support our home country instead of Canada. People move to Canada for the health care and standard of living, not for sports or national pride. Maybe if we were all really Canadian we would care more about how Canada does. Nobody ever says they’re Canadian. Like if people ask me where i’m from and i say Canada, they’re like ‘no, what’s your background?’. There are no Canadians to support Canada.
by Gary on August 23 2004, 2:26 am #
I don’t know about that. I was at a big family get together today, and everyone was interested in seeing how Canada was doing at Diving and High Jump (sucks Boswell didn’t advance). Mind you, Sri Lanka doesn’t really have much to cheer for at the Olympics.
by ramanan on August 23 2004, 3:01 am #
i was listening to an interview on cbc with some sports psychologist, and he was saying that canada under spends in a lot of areas, but there is a prominent lack of attention paid to the psychology of high competition sport. this guy is canadian, and would love to tour with the canadian team, but ends up touring with other nations because they’ll hire him and canada won’t. he proceeded to analyze interviews with some canadian olympians to assess their mental states at the olympics. the responses given by the canadians in interviews were pretty defeatist. it was interesting to say the least.
on a separate note, i think the current state of the olympics sucks. it’s basically a collection of world championships in individual sports. what they need to do is make the olympics an internationally unique event. they should have 30 different sports, and each competitor has to compete in 10 randomly selected events and their scores are compared. this way, ‘olympians’ wouldn’t be runners or javelin throwers or ballroom dancers or keel-less sculls rowers or super grand slalom skiers. instead, olympians would be super crazy athletes who are intensely trained in 30 olympic sports. i think it would make it interesting and renew the esteem that has been lost over the years. the olympics needs to be a place where only a select few compete. you don’t need to see the same beach volleyball players you just saw at the world championships 3 months ago.
by rishi on August 23 2004, 12:43 pm #
I don’t know if one person training to be a sort of jack-of-all-trades super athelete could set the records most athletes set though. People can run 100 meters in under 10 seconds. That’s sick.
by ramanan on August 23 2004, 9:17 pm #
that’s the whole point though. the decathalon has a 100 meter dash as one of the events, but decatheletes are not expected to outperform sprinters. they’re decatheletes. i’m saying the olympics should be tailored for olympians. not just a world sporting event which includes each and every damn “sport” under the sun.
by rishi on August 23 2004, 9:53 pm #
I think that’s what the decalaton and triathelon and stuff like that is for. :-)
Also, I think there is a bit of an Olympic experience. It is the premier sporting event across almost all sports/countries (things like tennis being the exception) and as such the level of competition and the attention on the atheletes is much higher. The scope of the competition is huge (thousands of atheletes in the Olympic village from many different types of sports, instead of scores of athelete all from the same sport like “world cup” type events). Further, many sports don’t have large competitions like World Cups, etc. which would even be comparable to the Olympics. (e.g. As far as I know, there is no boxing World Cup, and most of the boxers probably don’t end up as professionals or compete for NCAA Universities, etc.) so the Olympics is one of the few large competition that have.
by Ryan on August 24 2004, 1:18 am #
Shima and I just watched Alexandre Despatie win his silver medal. His last dive needed to be flawless and it was. Nice to see Canadians not buckling to the pressure.
by ramanan on August 24 2004, 7:13 pm #