China Report - Top Official Reveals Secrets of Diving "Dream Team"

(ATR) Hard work and an effective training system are the keys to diving domination, China’s team leader tells Around the Rings.

The diving powerhouse has a real chance to accomplish a clean sweep at the London Olympics after winning all gold medals on offer at last year's world championships as well as this year's World Cup.

Zhou Jihong, the team leader of Chinese diving, tells ATR that a good system makes sure she can raise lots of young talented divers.

"Chinese diving started to surprise the world from the 1980s. Our coaches have accumulated and summarized lots of good and effective training approaches to raise young divers. Meanwhile, our raising system works very well with finding out lots of good talents and gathering the best divers and coaches within the nation to train together and learn from each others," Zhou explained during China’s weeklong Olympic diving trials in Changzhou, adding that hard work is the other key factor.

"Training is the basic reason for success, and raising a good diver needs to take some time. We are lucky that we have lots of good divers at this time, which ensures we can have stable performances at all international competitions."

Chinese divers train eight hours a day, six days a week – much longer than divers from other countries – and started their domination from the 1990s.

The greatest diver in history, Greg Louganis, also played a special role in the rise of Chinese diving.

Louganis won both the springboard and platform gold medals in both 1984 and 1988, while Chinese divers took silver in three of those four events. The inability to beat Louganis motivated Chinese diving officials to reshape their program with coaches studying film of Louganis to determine how to match his technical precision.

Lin Yue, the winner of men's synchronized platform in Beijing, told ATR he watched lots of video of Louganis when he started diving.

"He is always my role model in diving," Lin said of Louganis.

"I watched his diving videos all the time as I started to get involved in this sport. Our coaches were always telling us his story and expected us to have his perfect techniques. He is the god in diving."

As the country’s most successful sports team, the Chinesediving "dream team" has one more Olympic gold medals than any other sport to date.

Zhou, China’s first ever Olympic diving champion, took over the team in 1998 and has since led her athletes to almost every gold medal at the Games. China won five diving gold medals at Sydney 2000, six at Athens 2004 and seven on home soil at Beijing 2008, falling just one short of a clean sweep.

Regarding her target for the 2012 Olympics, Zhou refuses to predict whether her team can achieve the clean sweep in London.

"I have been asking the same question again and again. Honestly, it is very hard to predict the result in London. We have lots of strong competitors, especially in man's events," she said.

"We would like to reach a better result in London than in Beijing, but it is very difficult. Our opponents are strong as well as very competitive. The key factor of being successful is whether all of our divers can give their best shot in London. If they do, we could reach our goal."

She also emphasized that the Olympic Games are completely different than other international events, although her team accomplished great feats at both last year's world champs and this year's World Cup.

"We had home advantage in Shanghai, which helped us a lot. And for the World Cup, our team was well prepared, whereas some foreign teams were just coming back from their holiday," said Zhou.

"The Olympic Games is very different and winning the gold now does not necessarily mean we could win at the Olympics," she added.

Zhou, meanwhile, also refused to announce her whole Olympic squad, although most of the divers have confirmed their placements in London, including defending champions Wu Minxia, Chen Ruolin, He Chong and Qin Kai as well as world champions Qiu Bo, Wang Hao, Luo Yutong, He Zi, Cao Yuan, Zhang Yanquan and Hu Yadan.

The only placement still in doubt is men's 10m individual platform, in which Olympic gold medalists Lin Yue, Huo Liang and siver medalist Zhou Lvxin will be fighting.

According to Zhou, the full Olympic squad of Chinese divers will be announced in early July when the Chinese Olympic delegation is united.

With reporting in Changzhou by Tencent's Norman Li

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