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by Ron Fimrite
At the Seoul Games, Greg Louganis seemed not quite the invincible diver he had been four years earlier in Los Angeles. In 1984 he had won the springboard event by an astonishing 92.10 points over his nearest rival—the largest victory margin in Olympic diving history—and had then defeated his platform competition by 67.41 points. Overall it was a performance, said two-time Olympic diving champion Sammy Lee, "that I doubt will ever be equaled. Not in my lifetime or [to a youthful reporter] yours."
With his final platform dive, Louganis claimed his rightful place in history.
photograph by
But at 28 Louganis was having problems in Seoul, and there was some question whether he should still be regarded, as he had been for a decade, as the greatest diver of all time. On his ninth dive in the springboard preliminaries, a reverse 2-1/2 somersault in the pike position, he leaped nearly straight upward, instead of propelling himself outward, and hit his head on the board coming down. He flailed clumsily into the water, blood pouring freely from a gash on the back of his head. Even though he recovered to win the event, the mishap had clearly shaken him both physically and emotionally. And as he approached the platform competition seven days later he still wore a protective patch over the wound.
The platform dives would be the most critical of his career, for if he won he would become the first male diver to win gold medals in both diving events in consecutive Olympics. (The men's platform final will be held tonight at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center.) His principal platform competition would come from a Chinese diver, Xiong Ni, who was half Louganis's age. Xiong, in fact, was leading by three points after his final dive.
Louganis chose for his closing effort the most difficult of all platform dives: a reverse 3-1/2 somersault in the tuck position—known as the Dive of Death because five years earlier Sergei Chalibashvili of the Soviet Union was killed attempting it (his head struck the concrete platform). Louganis had competed in that meet and had been among the horrified observers as Chalibashvili plunged to his death. "I had a premonition," he recalled. "I closed my eyes and plugged my ears. I knew something terrible had happened when I felt the tower shake. I heard screaming. I ran to the edge of the platform and saw a lot of blood in the pool. I wanted to jump in after him, but people were yelling, 'Don't touch him! Don't touch him!' I couldn't watch anymore."
With the memory of that horrible moment fresh in his mind and with his head still throbbing from his own accident, Louganis ascended the 10-meter platform to attempt the Dive of Death. Its degree of difficulty—3.4, compared with the 3.2 of Xiong's final dive—would figure in his favor in the scoring. It would, that is, with a nearly perfect dive.
The crowd at the Chamshil Indoor Swimming Pool was eerily quiet as Louganis, approaching the final dive of his Olympic career, prepared for the supreme effort. Ever the showman, he first patted himself on the hips and then brushed a hand nervously across his lips. Then he soared with all of the old power and artistry, his taut 168-pound body knifing through the water with scarcely a following ripple. The judges awarded him a score of 86.70. He had beaten Xiong by only 1.14 points.
Weeping in relief, Louganis collapsed in the arms of his coach, Ron O'Brien, who had consoled him after the springboard accident and urged him to continue. "You couldn't have written a better script," said O'Brien. "That was the biggest dive of his career."
It was also Louganis's crowning achievement in the Olympic Games. He had once again made history. He had also proved that his courage in the face of uncommon stress was the equal of his extraordinary athletic prowess, a quality that reappeared in 1994, when Louganis revealed in his autobiography, Breaking the Surface, that he was HIV positive. As for the Seoul Games, Louganis left as he had entered—as the greatest diver of them all.
SI Olympic Dailies
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