Diving at the 2012 Summer Olympics

In the 4 years since the Beijing Olympics China had continued their almost total domination of the sport. After winning 7 out of 10 titles at the 2009 World Championships they achieved a complete sweep of the gold medals at the 2011 championships on home soil in Shanghai. So the question on everybody lips prior to the London Games was simply “Could China win take an unprecedented 8 out of 8 Olympic titles?”

When the dust had settled at the London Aquatics Centre the answer was no - but the Chinese team got extremely close. The women’s team matched their feats of the Beijing Games by winning all the available 4 titles but the men suffered two surprising defeats. Firstly when Ilya Zakharov of Russia, the 2011 world championship silver medallist, produced a magnificent final dive to edge ahead of his Chinese rivals on the springboard and then in the platform event American David Boudia prevailed in a classic three way duel against Chinese and British opposition.

The most successful divers were, to nobody’s surprise, the Chinese pair of Wu Minxia and Chen Ruolin who each won an individual and synchronised pairs title. Elsewhere there was a first ever diving medal for Malaysia, a legacy of the facilities constructed to host the 1998 Commonwealth Games.