What Is Olympic Diving and How Does it Work?

The Paris 2024 diving tournament takes place at the Paris Aquatics Centre where 136 divers (68 men and 68 women) will compete in eight medal events – men’s and women’s individual 3m springboard, men’s and women’s individual 10m platform, men’s and women’s synchronised 3m springboard, and men’s and women’s synchronised 10m platform.

But what is Olympic diving and what’s the history of this iconic event? It’s a story that can be traced back to the Victorian age. Here’s your Olympics diving guide.

Humankind has been diving into water from the time of the early hunter-gatherers for food, but it’s almost impossible to know when it became a pastime. A sixth century BC fresco in the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing in the Monterozzi necropolis near the ancient city of Tarquinia depicts people climbing rocks and diving into the water. Around the same time – perhaps a little later into the fifth century BC – a fresco in the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum, an ancient city just south of modern-day Naples, displays a scene of a person diving into the water from what looks like a scaffold-type structure. So the idea of diving clearly goes back a long way.

In more modern times, during the early nineteenth century Swedish and German gymnasts used water as a soft landing so they could perform increasingly elaborate moves in midair. However, it wasn’t until the 1880s in England when the first competitive diving competitions were held.

In 1895, the National Graceful Diving Competition was held, predominantly consisting of English and Swedish divers. This led to the formation of the Amateur Diving Association in 1901.

Diving at the Olympics debuted for men at St. Louis 1904 and has been a permanent fixture in the Olympic programme ever since. The original platform event was known as ‘fancy high diving’. At London 1908, a springboard event was added. Women’s platform diving was introduced at Stockholm 1912, with the springboard event added at Antwerp 1920.

By 1928, there were two men’s and two women’s individual events. These were 3m springboard and 10m platform, called fancy diving and high diving respectively. Diving at the Olympics has essentially remained the same since that point, aside from the inclusion of synchronised versions of both at Sydney 2000, taking the total number of Olympic Games diving events to eight.

Olympic Games diving events are judged based on a combination of factors which assess the divers’ performance. Here is a basic overview of how each event is scored:

Men’s & Women’s Individual Springboard & Platform

Execution Scores: A panel of seven judges evaluate the execution of each dive, and each judge gives a score between 0 and 10 in half-point increments.

Difficulty: Each dive – of which there are hundreds of variations – has a predetermined difficulty rating based on its complexity, known as DD, or Degree of Difficulty. The DD is a multiplier that affects the final score.

Scoring Process: The highest and lowest scores from the judges are discarded. The remaining five scores are added together and this total is then multiplied by the difficulty rating (DD) of the dive to get the final score.

Men’s & Women’s Synchronised Springboard & Platform

Execution Scores: A panel of eleven judges evaluate the execution of each dive. Three judges score the execution of the first diver and three score the execution of the second diver. Five judges score the synchronisation of the pair.

Difficulty: Like in the individual events, each dive has a predetermined difficulty rating based on its complexity. The DD is again used as a multiplier, and the sum of the scores from the judges is multiplied by the DD to get the final score.

Scoring Process: For execution, the highest and lowest scores for each diver are discarded, leaving four scores. For synchronisation, the highest and lowest scores are discarded, leaving three scores. The remaining seven scores are added together and this total is then multiplied by 0.6 to normalise the score (because of the larger number of judges).

Up to and including Tokyo 2020, the participating nations have shared 391 medals, and diving at the Olympics has been dominated by the USA, who have 141 medals (49 gold, 46 silver, and 46 bronze). Second in the overall medal table is China with 81 medals (47 gold, 24 silver, 10 bronze), and third is Sweden with 21, made up of 6 gold, 8 silver and 7 bronze.

We hope you enjoyed reading this diving Olympics guide and don’t forget, you can catch all the action from Paris 2024 on discovery+!