Everyone knows how to do a cannonball, or at least everyone who spent his summers splashing around in his local pool trying to impress girls. But does the world’s easiest dive become a legitimate sport if you add a gang of German adrenaline junkies, a dose of acrobatic skills, and a 30-foot-high diving platform to it?
Splash diving is a freestyle discipline in which your task isn’t to slice elegantly into the water without disturbing the surface but the opposite: the bigger the splash, the better.
Christian Guth:
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How many splash divers do you think there are?
If I had to guess I would say something between 500 and 1,000, 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: takeoff, overall execution, and landing. For different freestyle elements (handstand, palm flip, or a grab) you get a different mark—from one to ten—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.
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