San Francisco Frontiers - China's Olympic divers inspire next generation at Beijing pool

China completed a clean sweep of all eight Olympic diving gold medals in Paris on Saturday -- a historic first.

And their success is inspiring others back home.

At Muxiyuan sports centre, home to Beijing's top diving school, around a dozen young divers jumped, twisted, and plunged into the water from boards ranging from a few centimetres to 10 metres high.

Children as young as seven stood, unnerved, at the edge of a platform nearly two stories above the water, taking a breath and then leaping into the air.

With legs stretched, toes pointed, and arms extended, they barely made a ripple in the pool.

Among the dozen or so children was 12-year-old Zhang Jiarui, who began diving three years ago after seeing Chinese diver Cao Yuan win gold at the Tokyo Games.

"I was a bit naughty when I was a child, so my parents sent me to practice gymnastics," she told AFP.

"When I saw the Chinese diving team walk up to the top of the Olympic podium on television, I fell in love with diving and decided to give it a shot."

While most school children are on summer holidays, Zhang and her peers train more than seven hours a day.

Many have already been plucked from less prestigious diving schools around the country, and the best among them will go on to compete under the Chinese flag.

"If you rest too long, it can affect your training," she explained.

During the academic year, "we have classes in the morning and training in the afternoon", she explained.

"We have to study harder to keep up."

- 'Innate qualities' -

Chinese divers have won 22 of the last 24 Olympic golds and China has been the most successful diving nation at every Games since 1984.

Coach Cao Ke is responsible for a group of divers aged eight to 10, from which he tries to identify future medal winners.

"We primarily look for innate qualities such as strength, explosiveness, and spatial awareness, as well as their feeling for the water," he said.

"We also consider their attitude towards training and their competitiveness in simulated competitions."

As the trainees practised their pikes and somersaults, coach Cao Ke observed from the pool's edge.

"You're leaning back a little too much," he gently told one girl practising a backwards dive.

The young athletes then moved into a gymnasium with diving boards, crash mats, and trampolines, as Cao used ropes and harnesses to suspend them in diving poses and adjust their form.

Not all of them have what it takes -- Cao said he will eventually identify those with the potential to become elite athletes and cut those that don't make the grade from the programme.

"Diving requires meticulous attention to detail. It takes time to refine each movement to perfection," he explained.

"There's no secret weapon of Chinese diving. It's because of really everyone's hard work."

- 'Train hard' -

China's diving domination is built on a ruthlessly efficient talent pipeline.

"In China, they start professional drills from five or six years old," Ma Jin, the Chinese head coach of Mexico's national diving team, told AFP.

"Abroad, they are only playing (at that age), and don't have very specialised early training."

Quan Hongchan, who won two golds in Paris to go with one in Tokyo when she was just 14, began diving aged seven, supposedly after a coach spotted her playing in a school playground.

Cao Yuan -- who won the men's 10-metre platform final in Paris -- started diving when he was just five.

Chinese diving has an "incomparable" advantage in "research, nutrition, physio, training, facilities, and equipment," Ma said.

Muxiyuan, for instance, employs specialised chefs to prepare meals for the young athletes.

The school's yoghurt is made exclusively for the students and unavailable to the public, another coach told AFP.

Hongping Li, a former Olympic diver for China, said the fact that most of the country's "coaches were top divers themselves of national or Olympic calibre," gave them another advantage.

Zhang told AFP she would "train hard" so she could join her compatriots on the Olympic stage.

"I want to bring glory to the country."

D.Robinson--SFF