Olympic Diving

136 Divers compete for 8 gold medal places

In total, the Olympics will host four different types of aquatic events; diving, swimming, synchronised swimming and water polo. Despite the long history of swimming as a sport, it has only been recognised as a competitive sport in the last two hundred years.

The governing body for the swimming events in the Olympic Games will be the Federation Internationale de Natation.

Diving is gaining in popularity and to a certain degree is more closely linked with gymnastics. There are two main heights for the diving board, 3 metres and 10 metres. Judges determine the scores that the divers have earned based on the difficulty of the dive and how well it is performed. More recently there have been synchronised diving events where points are awarded to pairs of athletes based on their performances and how well they performed together.