Platform, Women

China’s Fu Mingxia had won the 1990 Asian Games and Goodwill Games before her 12th birthday. She then won the 1991 World Championships on platform. She was so young that the diving authorities changed the rules requiring divers to be 14-years-old during the Olympic year in order to compete. She made that, turning 14-years-old only 20 days after the Olympic platform final. Fu was unchallenged in Barcelona, winning both the qualifying and final rounds by huge margins. She was helped by her optional dives, all of which had a degree of difficulty of 3.0 or higher, with two at 3.2 and one at 3.3. She clinched the title on her penultimate dive, a back 3½ tuck (3.3), scoring 8s and 8.5s to move well ahead of her teammate, Zhu Jinhong. But on the final dive, Zhu missed badly on an inward 3½ tuck, dropping out of the medals, which went to Yelena Miroshina (EUN-silver) and Mary Ellen Clark (USA-bronze).

Clark was the second-oldest competitor in the event and was second after six dives, but then blew an inward 3½ tuck. She would return in 1996 to repeat her bronze medal performance, overcoming difficulty with vertigo. Fu would return to Atlanta and win both diving events, adding a fourth gold medal in the 2000 springboard, and a silver in synchronized springboard. She would also repeat as World Champion on the platform in 1994.

Silver medalist Miroshina never competed internationally after Barcelona. On 18 December 1995 she died after a fall out of her ninth-floor apartment in Moscow, at only 21-years-old. The details are murky, as it is uncertain if this was a suicide or she fell or was pushed.