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Inside Olympic Sports
Posted: Tuesday April 25, 2000 01:15 PM Dashing diver Mark Ruiz took over the indoor nationals with two come-from-behind wins By Brian Cazeneuve
With his engaging enthusiasm and Ricky Martin looks, 21-year-old Mark Ruiz is
pumping some fresh air into U.S. diving. Last Friday at the national indoor
championships in Minneapolis, Ruiz was pumping his fist, too, as he bobbed to
the surface after his final dive in the three-meter springboard final. The dive,
a reverse tuck 3 1/2 with a half twist, had barely rippled the water. A wave
of copycat fist pumps swept through the crowd even before the judges awarded
their marks, which were between 7.5 and 8.5. The scores gave Ruiz, who had stood
seventh with four dives to go, 650.64 points for the competition, 1.38 ahead of
runner-up David Pichler.
The next day Ruiz went into the finals of the 10-meter platform having finished seventh in the preliminaries, but he rallied to win again. Shortly after that he teamed with Pichler to win the synchronized 10-meter event. Ruiz taught himself to dive by flinging himself off ropes and tree branches into a lake in his hometown of Toa Alta, Puerto Rico. His mother, Lydia Torres, used to sneak him into hotel pools to swim, though Ruiz kept crawling out of the water so he could flop back in again. He was four when he first dived off a 10-meter platform and nine when he finally joined a club, bought a Greg Louganis diving video and started taking ballet classes because his coach told him Louganis had. When Ruiz was 12, Torres moved him and her other two children to Orlando to find better training for Ruiz. "You have to kick him out of the pool to get him to leave," says Jay Lerew, Ruiz's coach since 1997. The three titles in Minneapolis gave Ruiz a career total of 16, a distant second among U.S. male divers to Louganis's 47. "Mark has a natural feel for diving," says Louganis, "and he isn't resting on his accomplishments." Ruiz is a prohibitive favorite to make the U.S. Olympic team on springboard and platform; in Sydney he is a good bet to improve on his sixth-place on the 10-meter at the 1998 worlds in Perth. Last year he came from behind on his last dive to win the three-meter title at the Pan-Am Games, edging Fernando Platas of Mexico by less than a point. In close competitions, it seems, Ruiz has a flair for pump and circumstance. Issue date: May 1, 2000
For more Inside Olympic Sports see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, April 26. Click here to subscribe to SI.
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