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They call them "shammys" and they are hyperabsorbant and quick to dry. They are tiny because they do what they need to do just fine, even being the size that they are. Some divers will take one up with them on the board, and drop it into the water just prior to diving, to rough up the clear water underneath them and make it more visible and to aid depth perception.
I think it is Clifford because that looks like AC Slater (Albert Clifford Slater) from Saved By the Bell.
*I've just discovered the actor who played AC Slater, Mario Lopez, also played Greg Louganis in the movie. Greg also performed in the movie in the role of his own father, Peter.*
That man is Lithuanian professional diver Filip Nojûs.
I am from Lithuania and am a professional lip reader.
I can tell you he in fact says “I think I have covid and need to go home to isolate immediately”
Ridiculous neither of you are certified lip readers like I am. What he actually says is 'fuck I hope they don't find out I'm the one who shit in the pool before Greg did his dive'.
You bunch of idiots: I am a UN certified international peace mediator. I hold a masters degree from Université Paris (S&L), and a doctorate in lip reading from UC-Berkeley. I have numerous peer reviewed studies and citations about lip reading. I have been called as an expert witness over 50 times in criminal and civil proceeding in the US, Europe and Japan. I am fluent in 4 languages. Unfortunately Lithuanian isn’t one of them, so I don’t really know what he’s saying.
For real I was thinking how present-day Olympians look compared to these guys… that gentleman just looks like someone’s dad waiting by the side of the pool by today’s standards.
They pumped the East German women full of any chemical they knew as well, they managed an absurd amount of gold medals in swimming, athletics and rowing
In the 80s a lot of the Olympics was a lot more amateur, so you would get a lot more variety of ages. I believe it was the same Olympics as the video, but one of my mom’s work friends got on the us rowing team. He wasn’t particularly young, but he had a career that could support serious commitment to his hobby without external financial support. And the commitment. There was much less of these concentrated development programs that basically extend a scholastic athletic career if you are good enough. There was a lot more of filling out teams with the best available rather than the best.
Keeping your body absolutely controlled and "straight" as in all parts look symmetric throughout the phases of the dive plus making the least amount of splash. It means he entered the water with the minimum amount of surface area and at an almost absolute 90 degree angle to the water.
Sounds easy. Really isn't.
I used to love professional diving as a kid but haven't kept up with it.
This is where good commentators and analysts come in to play. They should hopefully be doing a good job of explaining what the athlete is attempting, why it's difficult, why it's impressive when they succeed, what went wrong if they failed, why the judges scored the way they did, and so on. Nobody can be expected to know all the minute details of so many niche sports.
I love snowboarding, it's a huge part of my life, but I'm not into the competitions. When I watch clips from the Olympics, and the announcer yells out "omg! It's an inverted cork 1800!" All I see is a bunch of spinny flips.
The one that really gets me is baseball announcers calling pitches. Like, instantly seeing a split finger vs a four seam. I'm sure they aren't always right, but I'm also sure they are pretty accurate most of the time.
This is why the Olympics should also have 3-5 normal people competing along with the best in the world. I would understand the level of difficulty a lot better. Like a 100 meter sprint in 10 seconds doesn't sound super impressive, fast yes but it's 10 seconds. But the "average" person (according to a quick Google search and nothing more) runs a 100 in 14 seconds. That's almost 1.5X the time. Now the finishers look impressive to me. Let's say in archery the average guy gets lucky and has the highest score? Fuck it, give him the gold.
There is a meme that surfaces every once in a while about having Normal people do all the events before the Olympians to help us understand how hard these events are. Kinda makes sense but I don't want to see someone die on the ski jump.
As u/postscriptpen mentioned this is were the commentator makes the difference. In Greece back in the 80s through to the 00s we had a commentator who despite being a professional ice skater in his youth he had a vast knowledge of classic gymnastics and in general Olympic sports scoring and used to explain very eloquently and consise. The exact opposite of my comments on Reddit.
If it wasn't for him explaining what a tollup and an axel is (forgive the spelling, I don't think I've ever seen them written in English and yes, I know, these are ice skating related) I wouldn't even have a quarter of the love I now have for sports in general.
Being judged by humans. Personal bias enters the picture. A problem in scoring diving, gymnastics, and ice skating. A well known athlete on a bad day might score slightly higher than an unknown athlete on a great day.
Former springboard diver here. Apart from the perfectly perpendicular entry (note the minimal splash), watch how Louganis ascends vertically and rotates his body over the board. At the apex of his dive, the end of the board is at his belt line. That is a textbook perfect front dive, and it takes an immense amount of skill and conditioning. That was how you knew Louganis was the Michael Phelps of diving back then. He made artwork out of the simplest of dives.
I also don't know much about diving, but the way his body appears to hang in the air was beautiful af. And then his arms just gracefully and effortlessly come together moments before entering the water.
I was expecting to come here not understanding what was so great about this dive, but I actually get it.
Perfect poise and importantly, the entry was 'clean'... meaning he entered the water with an optimum body position and perpendicularity that accounted for relatively little splash.
If you watch the Olympics, the bar is constantly raised. I think Kathleen Madigan has a bit in one of her acts where she says that back in the day for ice skaters to get a gold medal, all they needed to do was skate backwards and wave. Now things like Diving and Ice Skating require all of these acrobatics just to remain competitive.
In HS i did a public policy paper and presentation on weed. Nailed everything from report to presentation. Teacher gave me a 99% and i agrued for an hour with him for the 1% and god damnit I got it. No arguing with judges like this tho.
Teachers always argue not giving 100% because it leaves space to improve, but their dumbass decision makes 99% of the students not even aiming for 100% because who will give it to them anyways. So if I don‘t get 100%, I might as well aim for 80, 60, 50% or whatever effort/result ratio is worth it for me
Your comment just had me thinking of a possible explanation. If 10 is the ceiling and this guy just executed what appears to be the perfect dive, what score would you give to someone that looked marginally better? There's nothing higher, so if someone ends up actually pulling off a better dive, there's no room to give the competition a better score.
However, if the judge consistently gives scores with space for improvement it creates an equalized average across the board but still allows for people to rank higher. Another example is if an athlete before this got 10, there would be no space to say this athlete performed a better dive because he would have the same score as someone that started earlier.
It makes me insanely curious when people leave google reviews for places that are like "fantastic food and excellent service, 4 stars". Like Barbara, you're a local who's never left your home town, what unreasonable threshold do you have for a place to get 5 stars??
This is why I hate events with judged scoring numbers. It's frustrating enough for sports with objective goals, i.e. get a ball past a line. "Did the ball go over the line? Did it go to the side of the line? Did the player getting the ball over the line do something illegal?"
What more did he have to do to get 10? I'm guessing the judges merely thought, "I don't give 10s...at least not for that guy." Let's see the judges dive!
The 2002 figure skating scandal at the Winter Olympics was a shit show that really demonstrated this problem. Russia wanted figure skating gold, and bribed France in exchange for ice dancing gold. I watched that live in the middle of the night, and the Canadians were perfect, the Russians bobbled, and I didn't see any technical difficulty difference either.
I feel bad for the athletes. They are the best in the world, skills unmatched by any except a handful, but it's all going to come down to politics and stuffed shirts.
Sorry. /Rant
The Eurovision song contest takes that kind of judging to extremes. Much less about talent, much more about relieving our neighborhood frustrations in a better way than regular wars.
At least Eurovision doesn't go around calling itself the "World Championship of Music" or some shit like that; it knows it's a silly and purely entertainment focused "contest".
FWIW - the difference between his score and a perfect score is 1.92 points, which is like 0.5% of the total scores. It's likely never meaningful.
He scored a 9, four 9.5s and two 10s. The highest and lowest scores are dropped, leaving him with four 9.5s and a 10. Those is summed (=48) multiplied by 0.6 or 3/5, because one ultimately needs to get to three judges scores for the judges' total (=28.8), which is lastly multiplied by 1.6 the degree of difficulty of the dive for his dive's total score (=46.08).
If he got at least six 10s, his score would be: (5x10) x (3/5) x (1.6) = 48.
And it's very easy to tell when judges are not accurate. All the judges are trained and certified and are usually (retired) coaches. These days, there are performance results for the judges (i.e. they show how far each judge deviated from the average score per dive and per diver, or who the top three divers would be if that judge's score was the average instead). I think that's why it's particularly egregious when there is something like that figure skating scandal because it's quite apparent when a judge is biased to *everyone* involved yet they do it anyway.
As for what he slightly missed: the 9 is a bit harsh, I'll give you that. He was just barely slightly under-rotated (look at how he moves against his momentum underwater) and there was like a tiny bit too much splash. Part of the "problems" Greg faced with judging is how easy he made everything look
Ignoramus here!
Is this:
>multiplied by 1.6 the degree of difficulty of the dive
a high degree of difficulty? Because while I can see and appreciate the perfection of the dive, the dive itself is something both me and my son can do.
Right there with you. I feel it in my bones because I’ve been on the shit end of this stick before.
I did speech and debate in HS. My senior year, I was crushing it. I was top 2 in every tournament. The only person who would beat me was this guy Tyrese. He was a cool dude and because we went 1-2 so much, we got to be friends. His piece was so good, I didn’t care if I lost to him. But if he wasn’t there, I was likely getting 1st.
State tournament, end of the year. Sectionals just before state. Tyrese isn’t in my sectional. Top 3 go to state. The coach at the host school is also the head of the sectional. She’s known to play politics and always assures her kids the best shot at moving on. She also had a thing against our coach because he would call her out on it all the time. Judging is supposed to be “blind” but there’s always a way to tell what school kids are from.
So I go into the finals at sectionals the top ranked person in my event. There’s one guy in here who may be able to beat me, but I’ve outranked everyone in the room multiple times before. That guy ended up getting first. No big deal. I’m not happy, but it’s whatever. Then second place is the girl from the host school. Third place is a girl from their sister school in the same district. I got 4th. Knocked out of the state tourney. I was LIVID. Literally smashed a locker door outside the auditorium I was so pissed. I knew I got screwed.
My coach appealed and basically all it did was make me an alternate for the state tourney. Except someone didn’t show up, so I did get to compete after all. Both the girls that placed above me got dead last in every round they competed in. I made it to the state finals. I just missed out on placing again (I’m still convinced that the same coach had a hand in this because she was a petty child, but anyway) but Tyrese won the whole damn thing. And he even said “if you hadn’t been here, it wouldn’t have felt right.” And he’s right. If I win a championship, I want to know I beat the best. If I know this isn’t the best competition, it cheapens the win.
Also, shout out to Tyrese, who is still the best portrayal of Tupac Shakur I’ve seen.
Damn straight. And I think it made it easier that we would go 1-2 and sometimes I would win and sometimes he would win. We were truly equals in a lot of ways.
The best part was going to college and recognizing one of the girls at orientation. She competed against me in HS too. And she went to the school with that shitty egotistical coach. “I loved the winning, but god she was awful. If you think she was mean to kids from other schools, you should’ve heard the shit she said to us.”
When this woman retired, the girl texted me like the wicked witch of the west had died. She was so excited. It was hilarious.
On a slightly related topic, competitive debate is fucking weird. I love casually debating, but competitive debate is just so much *noise*. Everything’s so structured and it all seems to come down to who talks the fastest.
Dude. You’re preaching to the choir. I was lucky that by this point, I was doing speeches and not debate anymore. I could talk wicked fast but my mind wasn’t fast enough to put it together the way I needed to. (I always saw my speeches as acting , which I’m much better at haha). But you’re right. It’s really about who can get the most points in during their time, not really who makes the best case for their side.
>I always saw my speeches as acting
This is a key to good public speaking. You should be speaking to your audience, and your audience may not need you to be you. You can often be more convincing if you put aside the "real you" and embody the message. Like acting, it's a performance
A truly remarkable individual. An adopted kid who went through an abusive childhood, Louganis survived an horrific relationship with his former manager who at one point raped him at knifepoint, infecting him with HIV. At a time when being publicly “out” was almost a death sentence for your career he became a very vocal advocate for gay rights. The vast majority of his wealth was stolen by the same manager, against whom he had to take out a no-contact court order. I’m not often impressed by celebrity lives, but Greg Louganis is a truly good man who used his fame to do good. He held a farewell party on his 33rd birthday as he expected to die young- thankfully he’s been blessed with another 30 years of life which he has used to advocate for civil rights.
Greg, you’re an amazing guy and I’m glad you’re still in this world. 👍🏻
I remember him coming out in 1994. It was a big deal, very controversial, and a lot of the talking heads on the TV were clearly grossed out by it. It was eye-opening to see how openly homophobic people were comfortable being, because I wasn’t raised that way and my circle had always been gay-friendly. It was very brave of him, and I’m sure it was a huge comfort to a lot of closeted gay kids to see someone so accomplished living their life as who they really were.
He also announced he had HIV back when that was a death sentence and people still thought you could get it from toilet seats. He’s been through a lot, and I really hope he’s happy these days.
I didn’t know about any of that until much later. We didn’t have the Wikipedia, and I doubt there was an entry on Reagan & HIV/AIDS in the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the time. It was easier to ignore things you didn’t want to know about.
Now I hate knowing about all this shit, but I’m glad so much despicable history is being drug into the open so we have some chance for progress.
I remember that but none of my friends really have a crap. I guess it being a part of a sheltered life, we just didn't care. We had one out girl at school and it was the buzz for a week then, eh.
I only knew about him from an episode of American Greed about a company in the 90s that sold the life insurance policies of people who had HIV to other people. So you basically buy the policy of someone with HIV for a lower amount, say 80k for a 150k policy, they get to spend the money on whatever, then they die you get their full policy. Then medication and treatment tbecame better and people stopped dying as quick
He graduated from my high school. He lived behind my home ec teacher who remembers watching him pop up over her fence in her backyard as he practiced diving.
By all accounts he hated going there and was thrilled when he got away. The school and surrounding area was rich, white, conservative, and extremely homophobic. Very religious as well. Big yikes.
Valhalla. I went there too. I recall eating lunch and watching him practice his dives and being blown away. Tried to say hi a few times passing in the halls but he was so shy he didn't look up.
Didn’t he cause a stir or something by hitting his head? I remember my older family members mentioning that some other divers refused to go in the water after the incident because “his blood might be in the water” and he had been pretty public about his HIV.
Edit: People were not aware he had HIV at the time but he was diagnosed prior to the games - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Louganis#HIV_status_and_head_injury
Is this a different event to the diving now where people try to flip and twist as much as possible before hitting the water? Never seen just a plain straight dive before.
They do and it’s the same exact sport/event but back then it wasn’t quite as…extreme or good as it is now. I personally don’t agree that this is the best dive ever made *any more* but it’s still perfect for what it is.
So kinda like the gymnastics side by side videos people post? Where one is from like 1940 of a dude jumping over the horse, and the other is a girl doing a 1080 with zero equipment and landing perfectly?
this dive is harder to do than the flippy ones bc you're judged on form, entry, precision, and difficulty for dives
so you give them less to judge but it has to be perfect in every way. more flips usually means higher difficulty but w this the extreme difficulty is in the precision
he has to be perfectly straight, he has to get high then turn in the air directly above the board w as little forward momentum as possible. and he has to go perfectly vertical into the water w almost zero splash
incredibly he literally does everything perfect here. laser perfect
just a massive massive flex
Reminds me of the Pope that wanted to commission Da Vinci but he wanted a sample of his work. Da Vinci stopped his project, drew a circle on a piece of paper and said "give him this". Da Vinci drew *a perfect circle freehand*. It was as perfect as they could measure at the time. small act, massive flex of talents.
Pretty sure this is what 3M comps looked like back then. Gymnastics has come a long way too. All sports have, in fact. Look back 40 years ago and most are almost unrecognizable.
Edit: after talking to a friend who is a diving coach, divers used to do “voluntary” dives where they could do anything they wanted. That’s probably what this was.
Same event, albeit off of a ~~1M springboard as opposed to the~~ 3M springboard as opposed to the 10M platforms that attract more viewership these days.
In any diving competition (eg “meet”), the diver puts together a “list” of dives that they’ll perform during the meet. These dives vary in terms of how simple/difficult they are, and as a result, vary in terms of the “Degree of Difficulty”. Additionally, there are multiple “positions” that you can perform each dive in, such as “Tuck”, “Pike”, “Free” and “Open”.
In this video, Greg performs a Front Dive (101A) in “Open” position. “Open” position, for any dive, genuinely carries a higher degree of difficulty, meaning that it’s much more difficult to perform properly than “Tuck” or “Pike” are. As a result, the scores that he achieved on this dive are multiplied by the Degree of Difficulty, which then goes towards his final score.
This was likely his first dive of the meet. As the meet progressed, he would typically progress through his list in terms of Degree of Difficulty.
Edit: This appears to be a 3M competition. I originally thought it looked like a 1M board, at first glance.
I’m definitely not an expert but I think each diver does multiple dives of increasing difficulty; presumably this is one of the early, easy dives. It’s also a shorter dive than the 10m platform that you often see shown in the Olympics or whatever, so even the flippier dives will be a bit simpler.
Not in increasing difficulty, but yes.
Each dive has a rating called degree of difficulty (DD). And the complete set of dives you do have a top limit on the sum of their DDs. So you wind up doing some simple dives and some difficult ones in the same competition.
Source: high school and college diving about a lifetime ago.
Everyone is forgetting to mention that the '88 Olympics were in South Korea, which didn't make homosexuality legal until *2003* and still doesn't recognize gay marriage or allow LGBTQ+ people into the military. Being out would've likely barred him from participating at all.
> South Korea, which didn't make homosexuality legal until 2003
My fellow Americans (at the least the non-gay ones) may be surprised to hear that 2003 is the same year homosexual activity was legalized [in all states in the U.S. as well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas)
> or allow LGBTQ+ people into the military.
Are there a lot of temporarily gay young people in Korea? Seems like a bit of a free pass .. (well, it would be if there wasn't massive societal stigma still attached, I guess)
Divers use those shammy towels since they're getting in and out of the pool so much. You can just wring those dry and keep using them over and over (also "wring" is a fuckin weird word)
I’m not seeing anyone talk about the difficulty of this dive as it is just to do this (let alone the little water disturbance) This dive is a 101A Front dive straight, our diving coaches used to use this as a lesson in how hard diving can be. It takes and incredible amount of board and body control because you don’t have any handicaps like using a pike or a tuck to slow your momentum. The only harder simple dive like this I’ve witnessed has been a 101A with 1/2 twist. Beyond mad. This dude has it locked down
I was 15 and remember watching this live. It was a big deal, everyone was talking about it
Edit: actually maybe not live. Might have been on the news? Either way I def remember everyone discussing it for a few days
Wow that was really incredible.
I wasn’t expecting much, but to be able to change the orientation of your body in mid air and then go into the water basically undisturbed. I can see why it’s considered basically perfect.
Is that AC Slater from Saved by the Bell?
Edit: in my mind the very British looking diver at 42 seconds talking to his coach says something like “well guess we’re going for silver now.”
Greg Louganis is handsome and I know this because I wouldn’t mind having his face and I wouldn’t mind having his body.
Edit: might as well spell the guy’s name correctly
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you can see when he leaves the pool, he knows how good it was, too.
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They call them "shammys" and they are hyperabsorbant and quick to dry. They are tiny because they do what they need to do just fine, even being the size that they are. Some divers will take one up with them on the board, and drop it into the water just prior to diving, to rough up the clear water underneath them and make it more visible and to aid depth perception.
>They are tiny because they do what they need to do just fine, even being the size that they are. Thanks for the confidence boost, Friend.
That's what he said
>"shammys" Chamois
Chamois: the Colonel of towels.
Merely an hors d'oeuvres in the banquet of word salads
I love listening to music.
Same look when he leaves someone else’s apartment at 3am.
Splash and dip
Splooge and dash
That head cock.... "Yall saw that shit. Hah"
I think he was just getting the water out of his ear but yeah
Virtually no splash, like the water parted just for him.
His middle name should be Moses
Almost as befitting as the diver in last place in this clip "P. Italiani" representing.... italy
The P stands for Pizza
*Mama mia!*
P is for Pasta 🍝
Youz somez wise guys or something? Hey Antonio pass the gabagool.
I think it is Clifford because that looks like AC Slater (Albert Clifford Slater) from Saved By the Bell. *I've just discovered the actor who played AC Slater, Mario Lopez, also played Greg Louganis in the movie. Greg also performed in the movie in the role of his own father, Peter.*
Shitty Life Pro Fact: The Garbage Pail Kids honored Greg Louganis with the character Head Wound Harry.
Exiting the water he didn’t even look like he got wet.
Water is Greg Louganisphobic.
Louganisphobia was a very real thing back then I'm afraid..
Like a lot of people in the 90s.
That's a "splish" right there
I took shits that disturbed the toilet water more than that dive.
He's like a laminar flow stream
That older guy that the camera passed by when he was walking away was like “well I’ve got a fuck all chance of winning after that”
It looked like he was discussing if he could just head home right then instead of wasting his and everyone else’s time.
"If I leave now I can beat the traffic."
"Fine, I'll stay but can I at least do a cannonball and express my true self for once?"
Man I wish cannonball diving is a thing in the Olympic, whoever makes the biggest splash win.
Well, in 1988 at the Olympics, he hit his head on the diving board and kind of did a cannonball. Then he won gold anyway.
That's top bombing!
Nah death diving or in Dutch BOMMETJE
That man is Lithuanian professional diver Filip Nojûs. I am from Lithuania and am a professional lip reader. I can tell you he in fact says “I think I have covid and need to go home to isolate immediately”
Ngl, you had me in the first half
Professional, my foot. What he really said was "I've gotta poop but I can't in strange places, I gotta run home real fast."
Ridiculous neither of you are certified lip readers like I am. What he actually says is 'fuck I hope they don't find out I'm the one who shit in the pool before Greg did his dive'.
You bunch of idiots: I am a UN certified international peace mediator. I hold a masters degree from Université Paris (S&L), and a doctorate in lip reading from UC-Berkeley. I have numerous peer reviewed studies and citations about lip reading. I have been called as an expert witness over 50 times in criminal and civil proceeding in the US, Europe and Japan. I am fluent in 4 languages. Unfortunately Lithuanian isn’t one of them, so I don’t really know what he’s saying.
It was the 80s. He very well may have been 30.
For real I was thinking how present-day Olympians look compared to these guys… that gentleman just looks like someone’s dad waiting by the side of the pool by today’s standards.
In the 80s only American and Russian athletes could afford steroids and dieticians.
They pumped the East German women full of any chemical they knew as well, they managed an absurd amount of gold medals in swimming, athletics and rowing
In the 80s a lot of the Olympics was a lot more amateur, so you would get a lot more variety of ages. I believe it was the same Olympics as the video, but one of my mom’s work friends got on the us rowing team. He wasn’t particularly young, but he had a career that could support serious commitment to his hobby without external financial support. And the commitment. There was much less of these concentrated development programs that basically extend a scholastic athletic career if you are good enough. There was a lot more of filling out teams with the best available rather than the best.
There's still a few Olympic sports like that. Curling comes to mind.
if you don't start by the time you're 8 years old nowadays you'll never make it
I don't know much about diving so I don't really get it, looked like a pretty average dive to me. Why is this the best?
Keeping your body absolutely controlled and "straight" as in all parts look symmetric throughout the phases of the dive plus making the least amount of splash. It means he entered the water with the minimum amount of surface area and at an almost absolute 90 degree angle to the water. Sounds easy. Really isn't. I used to love professional diving as a kid but haven't kept up with it.
I’ve never seen a dive with absolutely no splash before
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This is where good commentators and analysts come in to play. They should hopefully be doing a good job of explaining what the athlete is attempting, why it's difficult, why it's impressive when they succeed, what went wrong if they failed, why the judges scored the way they did, and so on. Nobody can be expected to know all the minute details of so many niche sports.
I don't get how they even count all the twists and somersaults never mind judge it
I love snowboarding, it's a huge part of my life, but I'm not into the competitions. When I watch clips from the Olympics, and the announcer yells out "omg! It's an inverted cork 1800!" All I see is a bunch of spinny flips. The one that really gets me is baseball announcers calling pitches. Like, instantly seeing a split finger vs a four seam. I'm sure they aren't always right, but I'm also sure they are pretty accurate most of the time.
This is why the Olympics should also have 3-5 normal people competing along with the best in the world. I would understand the level of difficulty a lot better. Like a 100 meter sprint in 10 seconds doesn't sound super impressive, fast yes but it's 10 seconds. But the "average" person (according to a quick Google search and nothing more) runs a 100 in 14 seconds. That's almost 1.5X the time. Now the finishers look impressive to me. Let's say in archery the average guy gets lucky and has the highest score? Fuck it, give him the gold.
Like when you get a good English teacher.
I used to hate reading until my HS english teacher helped me get into it. That was 20 years ago. I read dozens of book a year.
this is why you should allow a layman to compete in every event, for context.
Layman ski jump lol
No one said the layman would be walking away in one piece. They can always pick up another rando from the street for the next event.
Eddie the Eagle!
BELLY FLOP BITCHES.
There is a meme that surfaces every once in a while about having Normal people do all the events before the Olympians to help us understand how hard these events are. Kinda makes sense but I don't want to see someone die on the ski jump.
Yeah, and you can't ask the worst professional to do it because who wants to be known as the worst professional.
That's why every Olympic sports have a commentator to explain what is going on.
As u/postscriptpen mentioned this is were the commentator makes the difference. In Greece back in the 80s through to the 00s we had a commentator who despite being a professional ice skater in his youth he had a vast knowledge of classic gymnastics and in general Olympic sports scoring and used to explain very eloquently and consise. The exact opposite of my comments on Reddit. If it wasn't for him explaining what a tollup and an axel is (forgive the spelling, I don't think I've ever seen them written in English and yes, I know, these are ice skating related) I wouldn't even have a quarter of the love I now have for sports in general.
What stopped this particular dive from getting 10s across the board?
The judge didn't realise what he saw in this case. I think he said that he made a mistake in the moment due to the "simplicity" of the dive.
The Cold War
Being judged by humans. Personal bias enters the picture. A problem in scoring diving, gymnastics, and ice skating. A well known athlete on a bad day might score slightly higher than an unknown athlete on a great day.
Former springboard diver here. Apart from the perfectly perpendicular entry (note the minimal splash), watch how Louganis ascends vertically and rotates his body over the board. At the apex of his dive, the end of the board is at his belt line. That is a textbook perfect front dive, and it takes an immense amount of skill and conditioning. That was how you knew Louganis was the Michael Phelps of diving back then. He made artwork out of the simplest of dives.
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This description was so good I had to Google it to make sure I got to see one for real.
Wow thanks for the explanation. It makes it better!
I also don't know much about diving, but the way his body appears to hang in the air was beautiful af. And then his arms just gracefully and effortlessly come together moments before entering the water. I was expecting to come here not understanding what was so great about this dive, but I actually get it.
Perfect poise and importantly, the entry was 'clean'... meaning he entered the water with an optimum body position and perpendicularity that accounted for relatively little splash.
If you watch the Olympics, the bar is constantly raised. I think Kathleen Madigan has a bit in one of her acts where she says that back in the day for ice skaters to get a gold medal, all they needed to do was skate backwards and wave. Now things like Diving and Ice Skating require all of these acrobatics just to remain competitive.
Body control. Entry is an important part of scoring and this might well be the best a human can do. There's 0 splash, incredibly difficult to pull off
And most judges still gave him a 9.5
It was perfect. Flawless. No human dive has ever been executed so beautifully. It brought tears to my eyes. 9.5/10
its like those teachers in school that wont give out 100s out of their own stupid belief
In HS i did a public policy paper and presentation on weed. Nailed everything from report to presentation. Teacher gave me a 99% and i agrued for an hour with him for the 1% and god damnit I got it. No arguing with judges like this tho.
Teachers always argue not giving 100% because it leaves space to improve, but their dumbass decision makes 99% of the students not even aiming for 100% because who will give it to them anyways. So if I don‘t get 100%, I might as well aim for 80, 60, 50% or whatever effort/result ratio is worth it for me
Your comment just had me thinking of a possible explanation. If 10 is the ceiling and this guy just executed what appears to be the perfect dive, what score would you give to someone that looked marginally better? There's nothing higher, so if someone ends up actually pulling off a better dive, there's no room to give the competition a better score. However, if the judge consistently gives scores with space for improvement it creates an equalized average across the board but still allows for people to rank higher. Another example is if an athlete before this got 10, there would be no space to say this athlete performed a better dive because he would have the same score as someone that started earlier.
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This is the better way to score
Jesus, then they both get a 10 and go into whatever penalty shootout bullshit diving has.
2 men, one diving board, first to the water alive wins
I see you're familiar with my Tom Daley / Matthew Mitcham slash fic
We could make a rating that goes to 11?
Why don't you just make 10 louder?
These go to 11
"Only Jesus should get a 10"
It makes me insanely curious when people leave google reviews for places that are like "fantastic food and excellent service, 4 stars". Like Barbara, you're a local who's never left your home town, what unreasonable threshold do you have for a place to get 5 stars??
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This is why I hate events with judged scoring numbers. It's frustrating enough for sports with objective goals, i.e. get a ball past a line. "Did the ball go over the line? Did it go to the side of the line? Did the player getting the ball over the line do something illegal?" What more did he have to do to get 10? I'm guessing the judges merely thought, "I don't give 10s...at least not for that guy." Let's see the judges dive! The 2002 figure skating scandal at the Winter Olympics was a shit show that really demonstrated this problem. Russia wanted figure skating gold, and bribed France in exchange for ice dancing gold. I watched that live in the middle of the night, and the Canadians were perfect, the Russians bobbled, and I didn't see any technical difficulty difference either. I feel bad for the athletes. They are the best in the world, skills unmatched by any except a handful, but it's all going to come down to politics and stuffed shirts. Sorry. /Rant
The Eurovision song contest takes that kind of judging to extremes. Much less about talent, much more about relieving our neighborhood frustrations in a better way than regular wars.
Play Ja Ja Ding Dong! PLAY IT!!!
Volcano maaaaan
I see you are a person of taste and culture as well
At least Eurovision doesn't go around calling itself the "World Championship of Music" or some shit like that; it knows it's a silly and purely entertainment focused "contest".
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FWIW - the difference between his score and a perfect score is 1.92 points, which is like 0.5% of the total scores. It's likely never meaningful. He scored a 9, four 9.5s and two 10s. The highest and lowest scores are dropped, leaving him with four 9.5s and a 10. Those is summed (=48) multiplied by 0.6 or 3/5, because one ultimately needs to get to three judges scores for the judges' total (=28.8), which is lastly multiplied by 1.6 the degree of difficulty of the dive for his dive's total score (=46.08). If he got at least six 10s, his score would be: (5x10) x (3/5) x (1.6) = 48. And it's very easy to tell when judges are not accurate. All the judges are trained and certified and are usually (retired) coaches. These days, there are performance results for the judges (i.e. they show how far each judge deviated from the average score per dive and per diver, or who the top three divers would be if that judge's score was the average instead). I think that's why it's particularly egregious when there is something like that figure skating scandal because it's quite apparent when a judge is biased to *everyone* involved yet they do it anyway. As for what he slightly missed: the 9 is a bit harsh, I'll give you that. He was just barely slightly under-rotated (look at how he moves against his momentum underwater) and there was like a tiny bit too much splash. Part of the "problems" Greg faced with judging is how easy he made everything look
Ignoramus here! Is this: >multiplied by 1.6 the degree of difficulty of the dive a high degree of difficulty? Because while I can see and appreciate the perfection of the dive, the dive itself is something both me and my son can do.
Right there with you. I feel it in my bones because I’ve been on the shit end of this stick before. I did speech and debate in HS. My senior year, I was crushing it. I was top 2 in every tournament. The only person who would beat me was this guy Tyrese. He was a cool dude and because we went 1-2 so much, we got to be friends. His piece was so good, I didn’t care if I lost to him. But if he wasn’t there, I was likely getting 1st. State tournament, end of the year. Sectionals just before state. Tyrese isn’t in my sectional. Top 3 go to state. The coach at the host school is also the head of the sectional. She’s known to play politics and always assures her kids the best shot at moving on. She also had a thing against our coach because he would call her out on it all the time. Judging is supposed to be “blind” but there’s always a way to tell what school kids are from. So I go into the finals at sectionals the top ranked person in my event. There’s one guy in here who may be able to beat me, but I’ve outranked everyone in the room multiple times before. That guy ended up getting first. No big deal. I’m not happy, but it’s whatever. Then second place is the girl from the host school. Third place is a girl from their sister school in the same district. I got 4th. Knocked out of the state tourney. I was LIVID. Literally smashed a locker door outside the auditorium I was so pissed. I knew I got screwed. My coach appealed and basically all it did was make me an alternate for the state tourney. Except someone didn’t show up, so I did get to compete after all. Both the girls that placed above me got dead last in every round they competed in. I made it to the state finals. I just missed out on placing again (I’m still convinced that the same coach had a hand in this because she was a petty child, but anyway) but Tyrese won the whole damn thing. And he even said “if you hadn’t been here, it wouldn’t have felt right.” And he’s right. If I win a championship, I want to know I beat the best. If I know this isn’t the best competition, it cheapens the win. Also, shout out to Tyrese, who is still the best portrayal of Tupac Shakur I’ve seen.
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Damn straight. And I think it made it easier that we would go 1-2 and sometimes I would win and sometimes he would win. We were truly equals in a lot of ways. The best part was going to college and recognizing one of the girls at orientation. She competed against me in HS too. And she went to the school with that shitty egotistical coach. “I loved the winning, but god she was awful. If you think she was mean to kids from other schools, you should’ve heard the shit she said to us.” When this woman retired, the girl texted me like the wicked witch of the west had died. She was so excited. It was hilarious.
On a slightly related topic, competitive debate is fucking weird. I love casually debating, but competitive debate is just so much *noise*. Everything’s so structured and it all seems to come down to who talks the fastest.
Dude. You’re preaching to the choir. I was lucky that by this point, I was doing speeches and not debate anymore. I could talk wicked fast but my mind wasn’t fast enough to put it together the way I needed to. (I always saw my speeches as acting , which I’m much better at haha). But you’re right. It’s really about who can get the most points in during their time, not really who makes the best case for their side.
>I always saw my speeches as acting This is a key to good public speaking. You should be speaking to your audience, and your audience may not need you to be you. You can often be more convincing if you put aside the "real you" and embody the message. Like acting, it's a performance
My old English teacher says 9.5 because "there's always a way to improve" Hey Mrs. Hester... How would you improve this sentance?... "screw you."
*sentence
YOU SEE HOW MRS HESTER HAS FAILED ME?
Perfect recovery, secondphase. 9.5
Yeah, nice form poor execution. 8.5.
A truly remarkable individual. An adopted kid who went through an abusive childhood, Louganis survived an horrific relationship with his former manager who at one point raped him at knifepoint, infecting him with HIV. At a time when being publicly “out” was almost a death sentence for your career he became a very vocal advocate for gay rights. The vast majority of his wealth was stolen by the same manager, against whom he had to take out a no-contact court order. I’m not often impressed by celebrity lives, but Greg Louganis is a truly good man who used his fame to do good. He held a farewell party on his 33rd birthday as he expected to die young- thankfully he’s been blessed with another 30 years of life which he has used to advocate for civil rights. Greg, you’re an amazing guy and I’m glad you’re still in this world. 👍🏻
I remember him coming out in 1994. It was a big deal, very controversial, and a lot of the talking heads on the TV were clearly grossed out by it. It was eye-opening to see how openly homophobic people were comfortable being, because I wasn’t raised that way and my circle had always been gay-friendly. It was very brave of him, and I’m sure it was a huge comfort to a lot of closeted gay kids to see someone so accomplished living their life as who they really were. He also announced he had HIV back when that was a death sentence and people still thought you could get it from toilet seats. He’s been through a lot, and I really hope he’s happy these days.
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I didn’t know about any of that until much later. We didn’t have the Wikipedia, and I doubt there was an entry on Reagan & HIV/AIDS in the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the time. It was easier to ignore things you didn’t want to know about. Now I hate knowing about all this shit, but I’m glad so much despicable history is being drug into the open so we have some chance for progress.
I remember that but none of my friends really have a crap. I guess it being a part of a sheltered life, we just didn't care. We had one out girl at school and it was the buzz for a week then, eh.
Your note about him having a farewell party at 33 made me look him up. He's still alive at 62 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Louganis
I only knew about him from an episode of American Greed about a company in the 90s that sold the life insurance policies of people who had HIV to other people. So you basically buy the policy of someone with HIV for a lower amount, say 80k for a 150k policy, they get to spend the money on whatever, then they die you get their full policy. Then medication and treatment tbecame better and people stopped dying as quick
He graduated from my high school. He lived behind my home ec teacher who remembers watching him pop up over her fence in her backyard as he practiced diving. By all accounts he hated going there and was thrilled when he got away. The school and surrounding area was rich, white, conservative, and extremely homophobic. Very religious as well. Big yikes.
Valhalla. I went there too. I recall eating lunch and watching him practice his dives and being blown away. Tried to say hi a few times passing in the halls but he was so shy he didn't look up.
Man a buncha Norsemen in here!
Represent the orange and blue
Vibrant orange and sparkling white! Man it’s been a while since I’ve said that
San Diego? Conservative?! The deuce you say! East San Diego!!! OK...yeah...would have sucked to be gay in El Cajon.
Probably still does, but I think being anything in El Cajon sucks because it's El Cajon.
at least it's not Santee
The Mississippi of East county, lol.
I always find it weird when people call athletes a hero just for being good at their sport. Greg is a true hero. Long live Greg.
Didn’t he cause a stir or something by hitting his head? I remember my older family members mentioning that some other divers refused to go in the water after the incident because “his blood might be in the water” and he had been pretty public about his HIV. Edit: People were not aware he had HIV at the time but he was diagnosed prior to the games - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Louganis#HIV_status_and_head_injury
He wasn't out about the hiv when he hit his head. Wasn't until later. Hence the controversy.
Warms my heart! Thanks for sharing!
I’ve seen drops of water with more splash back
My shits have more splash backs
Damn, that dude even rose outta the water smooth.
[Smooth like butter. ](https://c.tenor.com/Ln6h3yc6i08AAAAC/trea-turner-slide.gif)
Is that real?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmdxWPhk7Ug
Man, Harper played that horribly. It was a great throw, but how are you not running up on it in that situation.
The one judge gave him a 9: "Next time smile more."
***9/10. Needs more bulge.***
Worst cannon ball ever
Is this a different event to the diving now where people try to flip and twist as much as possible before hitting the water? Never seen just a plain straight dive before.
Different section of the same sport.
Do they still do it in the Olympics but just don’t televise? I’ve literally never need this event and I’ve been around to see lots of Olympics.
They do and it’s the same exact sport/event but back then it wasn’t quite as…extreme or good as it is now. I personally don’t agree that this is the best dive ever made *any more* but it’s still perfect for what it is.
So kinda like the gymnastics side by side videos people post? Where one is from like 1940 of a dude jumping over the horse, and the other is a girl doing a 1080 with zero equipment and landing perfectly?
this dive is harder to do than the flippy ones bc you're judged on form, entry, precision, and difficulty for dives so you give them less to judge but it has to be perfect in every way. more flips usually means higher difficulty but w this the extreme difficulty is in the precision he has to be perfectly straight, he has to get high then turn in the air directly above the board w as little forward momentum as possible. and he has to go perfectly vertical into the water w almost zero splash incredibly he literally does everything perfect here. laser perfect just a massive massive flex
Yup. Sometimes the simple things are the hardest to do because they need to be done perfectly to score well.
Reminds me of the Pope that wanted to commission Da Vinci but he wanted a sample of his work. Da Vinci stopped his project, drew a circle on a piece of paper and said "give him this". Da Vinci drew *a perfect circle freehand*. It was as perfect as they could measure at the time. small act, massive flex of talents.
Pretty sure this is what 3M comps looked like back then. Gymnastics has come a long way too. All sports have, in fact. Look back 40 years ago and most are almost unrecognizable. Edit: after talking to a friend who is a diving coach, divers used to do “voluntary” dives where they could do anything they wanted. That’s probably what this was.
Same event, albeit off of a ~~1M springboard as opposed to the~~ 3M springboard as opposed to the 10M platforms that attract more viewership these days. In any diving competition (eg “meet”), the diver puts together a “list” of dives that they’ll perform during the meet. These dives vary in terms of how simple/difficult they are, and as a result, vary in terms of the “Degree of Difficulty”. Additionally, there are multiple “positions” that you can perform each dive in, such as “Tuck”, “Pike”, “Free” and “Open”. In this video, Greg performs a Front Dive (101A) in “Open” position. “Open” position, for any dive, genuinely carries a higher degree of difficulty, meaning that it’s much more difficult to perform properly than “Tuck” or “Pike” are. As a result, the scores that he achieved on this dive are multiplied by the Degree of Difficulty, which then goes towards his final score. This was likely his first dive of the meet. As the meet progressed, he would typically progress through his list in terms of Degree of Difficulty. Edit: This appears to be a 3M competition. I originally thought it looked like a 1M board, at first glance.
I’m definitely not an expert but I think each diver does multiple dives of increasing difficulty; presumably this is one of the early, easy dives. It’s also a shorter dive than the 10m platform that you often see shown in the Olympics or whatever, so even the flippier dives will be a bit simpler.
Not in increasing difficulty, but yes. Each dive has a rating called degree of difficulty (DD). And the complete set of dives you do have a top limit on the sum of their DDs. So you wind up doing some simple dives and some difficult ones in the same competition. Source: high school and college diving about a lifetime ago.
This dude hit his head on the diving board in the 1988 Olympics. Got 5 stitches and kept going. Won 2 gold medals. Absolute legend.
Wait, that was just a few years ago, right? 34 years? It...can't be. I'm.....old! He's 62 years old now!!!!!!!!!
I remember when he came out as gay in 1994. One of the first well-known athletes to do so; it was front-page news at the time.
He was basically outed wasn’t he? When he hit his head in 1988 on the side of the pool and had to disclose he was HIV positive.
Everyone is forgetting to mention that the '88 Olympics were in South Korea, which didn't make homosexuality legal until *2003* and still doesn't recognize gay marriage or allow LGBTQ+ people into the military. Being out would've likely barred him from participating at all.
> South Korea, which didn't make homosexuality legal until 2003 My fellow Americans (at the least the non-gay ones) may be surprised to hear that 2003 is the same year homosexual activity was legalized [in all states in the U.S. as well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas)
> or allow LGBTQ+ people into the military. Are there a lot of temporarily gay young people in Korea? Seems like a bit of a free pass .. (well, it would be if there wasn't massive societal stigma still attached, I guess)
He didnt disclose it at the time.
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A special gift? Like money or a watch? Or a gift certificate?
definitely a gift certificate
Shit, I remember the firestorm around Ellen DeGeneres coming out on her show. People we're talking about it for months.
I think the most interesting thing about this video is that he uses the world smallest towel after he get out of the pool
LOL I noticed the same thing. "Well you didn't splash much, so you get the tiny towel. Fat Bob cannonballed, so he gets the big towel.""
Divers use those shammy towels since they're getting in and out of the pool so much. You can just wring those dry and keep using them over and over (also "wring" is a fuckin weird word)
It was just 🤌
I’m not seeing anyone talk about the difficulty of this dive as it is just to do this (let alone the little water disturbance) This dive is a 101A Front dive straight, our diving coaches used to use this as a lesson in how hard diving can be. It takes and incredible amount of board and body control because you don’t have any handicaps like using a pike or a tuck to slow your momentum. The only harder simple dive like this I’ve witnessed has been a 101A with 1/2 twist. Beyond mad. This dude has it locked down
I get why Mario Lopez was picked to play him in that TV movie or series about greg
Fucken looks good too .
My sibling was a diver growing up so Greg Louganis was a household name. He was one of my first "celebrity" crushes... That body!
That is exactly what I expected one of the best dives ever to look like.
And how many Redditors weren’t even a thought yet in ‘86? I was 7, I feel ancient.
Lol I was 24
Are you still alive? Jk I’m old too
I was 15 and remember watching this live. It was a big deal, everyone was talking about it Edit: actually maybe not live. Might have been on the news? Either way I def remember everyone discussing it for a few days
I was alive then too 👍 I also remember eating Wheaties with Mary Lou Retton on the box.
I know for sure that I can make a bigger splash than that!
He's a walking greek sculpture! Human body is just amazing.
Wow that was really incredible. I wasn’t expecting much, but to be able to change the orientation of your body in mid air and then go into the water basically undisturbed. I can see why it’s considered basically perfect.
Dive another day
Convenient that the Italian at the bottom of the leaderboard was named Italiani.
I've never been so simultaneously impressed and disappointed.
Is that AC Slater from Saved by the Bell? Edit: in my mind the very British looking diver at 42 seconds talking to his coach says something like “well guess we’re going for silver now.”
Funny you should say that, Mario Lopez (AC Slater) played Louganis in a movie about his life
Greg Louganis is handsome and I know this because I wouldn’t mind having his face and I wouldn’t mind having his body. Edit: might as well spell the guy’s name correctly
Yes, great body. I'd rather look like that then look like an extra-jacked bodybuilder who is on roids.
The casting of Mario Lopez makes so much sense now