Diving (sport)

Diving is the sport of jumping or falling into water from a platform or springboard, usually while performing acrobatics. Diving is an internationally recognized sport that is part of the Olympic Games. In addition, unstructured and non-competitive diving is a recreational pastime. Competitors possess many of the same characteristics as gymnasts and dancers, including strength, flexibility, kinaesthetic judgment and air awareness. Some professional divers were originally gymnasts or dancers as both the sports have similar characteristics to diving. Dmitri Sautin holds the record for most Olympic diving medals won, by winning eight medals in total between 1992 and 2008. The Tomb of the Diver, dating to 470 BCE, contains a single enigmatic fresco clearly depicting a young man diving into a curling and waving stream of water. Although diving has been a popular pastime across the world since ancient times, the first modern diving competitions were held in England in the 1880s. The exact origins of the sport are unclear, though it likely derives from the act of diving at the start of swimming races. The 1904 book Swimming by Ralph Thomas notes English reports of plunging records dating back to at least 1865. The 1877 edition to British Rural Sports by John Henry Walsh makes note of a "Mr. Young" plunging in 1870, and also states that 25 years prior, a swimmer named Drake could cover . The English Amateur Swimming Association (at the time called the Swimming Association of Great Britain) first started a "plunging championship" in 1883. The Plunging Championship was discontinued in 1937. Diving into a body of water had also been a method used by gymnasts in Germany and Sweden since the early 19th century. The soft landing allowed for more elaborate gymnastic feats in midair as the jump could be made from a greater height. This tradition evolved into 'fancy diving', while diving as a preliminary to swimming became known as 'Plain diving'.