China Dominates U.S. in London Olympics Test Event for Diving
With 155 days to go before the start of the London Olympics, China is dominating the diving pool.
After three days of competition, China has won all four events at the Diving World Cup in London. Qin Kai and Luo Yutong won the men’s synchronized 3-meter springboard on the first day. Chen Ruolin, a double gold medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, took the women’s 10 meter platform event on the second day. Last night, Olympic and world champion He Chong dominated the men’s 3-meter springboard, before Chen paired up with Wang Hao to win the women’s synchronized 10-meter platform. The meet, which finishes Feb. 26, has eight events in total.
“Their training regime is just incredible,” U.S. diver Laura Ryan said yesterday in an interview at the new London Olympic Aquatics Centre. “They’ve just been building for a long time.”
Ryan finished tenth with partner Amy Cozad in the women’s 10-meter synchronized platform finals.
China, which first competed in diving at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, only trails the U.S. on the sport’s all-time Olympic medals table. The Chinese won a record seven diving golds in Beijing and swept all ten gold medals at the 2011 world championships.
“We train very hard and have high standards,” Chen Ruolin told reporters. “I am happy to have won, but I cannot think about the Olympics yet. I will keep practicing.”
Britain’s Tonia Couch said other competitors have difficulty keeping up with the Chinese divers.
Fantastic
“They’re just fantastic,” said Couch, who won a bronze medal in the women’s 10-meter synchronized platform finals with partner Sarah Barrow yesterday. “We don’t try to beat them: we just try to beat ourselves, try to beat our score that we’ve just done.”
The six-day FINA Diving World Cup, the last qualification opportunity for the London Games, has drawn 220 athletes from 40 countries. It also doubles up as a test event for 2012 organizers.
Just like during last week’s track cycling event at the nearby Olympic Velodrome, the crowd cheered loudly whenever a British athlete was performing.
“They are so good here,” Jack Laugher, a former junior world champion diver from Britain, told reporters. “There are thousands shouting especially when you do a good dive. It makes you feel really, really happy.”
Construction Challenges
The Aquatics Centre, which took four years to build and is located next to the Olympic Stadium, was designed by Iraqi-born and London-based architect Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The building was “one of the most complex engineering and construction challenges” at London’s Olympic Park, local organizers said in a press release.
The 269 million pound ($421 million) venue, described by Hadid in a Bloomberg interview last year as “some sort of sea life creature,” has a wave-like roof with a longer single span than Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Once the Games are over, its two temporary wings will be taken off and it will be turned into a facility for the local community, schools and clubs as well as for elite swimmers and swimming competitions.
“It’s definitely incredible, it’s not like any other pool we’ve ever been in,” U.S. diver Amy Cozad, who praised the natural light inside the pool, said in an interview.
To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Rossingh at the Olympic Aquatics Centre through the London sports desk at drossingh@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Elser at at celser@bloomberg.net
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