Everyone knows how to dive bomb, or at least everyone who spent their summers splashing around in their local pool trying to impress girls. But what happens when you add several pairs of balls, a gang of German adrenalin junkies, a dose of acrobatic skills and at least a ten-metre high diving platform to it?

Splash diving is a freestyle discipline where your task isn’t to slice elegantly through the water surface without a splash Tom Daley-style, but the opposite: In splash diving, it’s the biggest splash that counts.

VICE: One could say you are one of the founders of the sport – how would you define splash diving?
Christian Guth: Humans have been dive-bombing since the dawn of time but splash diving was turned into a sport discipline in Germany. Why? It really doesn’t hurt? Can you make a living out of splash diving?

How many splash divers do you reckon are there?
If I had to guess I would say something between 500 and 1000, but you’d have to separate those who take part in competitions from those who just love splashing around at a local pool, without ever having heard it is actually a sport.

How do you score in splash diving? I suppose the amount of water you splash out is what matters.
Exactly, but it is not just about that. Even though it’s a freestyle discipline, it is mandatory for every contestant to announce his or her dives in advance. There are four dives: In the first one you are not allowed to perform any acrobatic figures, because it is all about the splash.

Every other dive has its own degree of difficulty depending on the number of somersaults, twists and positions. For example, a double somersault with half twist and a board position during the landing has a degree of difficulty of 2:7. This number is multiplied by the sum of marks from six judges. The highest and the lowest marks are discarded.

The judges assess three parts of the dive: Take off, overall execution and landing. For different freestyle elements (handstand, palm flip or a grab) you get a different mark – from 1 to 10 – from every judge. And of course, the more you splash the better. Points for each dive are added and the diver with the highest score wins. It is quite simple really.

Very simple! Thanks Christian.