Olympic Diving Controversies
From judging bias to Greg Louganis, controversies are a part of any sporting event and diving and the Olympics Games are no exception.
Although this controversy would not surface until six years after the event, the announcement that Greg Louganis was HIV-positive during the competition in Seoul in 1988 sent shock waves through the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the diving world. Had he not hit the board and opened up a two-inch wound on his scalp, the fact that he knew that he was infected would not have surfaced. But what was the issue was that only a handful of people knew his secret, and that did not include IOC or U.S. diving officials.
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Germans Protest Sheldon's Victory in the First Olympic Diving Competition
American George Sheldon won the first Olympic diving event but not without a fight: his victory was protested by the German team. Apparently the Americans and Germans could not agree on what constituted a proper dive. The Germans, who landed on their stomach and chests on many of their dives, felt that the difficulty of the dive took precedence. The Americans on the other hand believed that the entry was the most important element of the dive. Protests were filed by the German team but in the end the American’s victory was upheld by a U.S. official named James Sullivan: the same James Sullivan whose name appears on the award give to the nation's top amateur athlete.National Bias Gets in the Way of Competition in 1924
In the women’s platform competition in Paris, national bias came from not one judge, but three. The scoring at that time was done using ordinals – a method where the judge would place the divers in the order in which they felt they finished. The Danish judge awarded first place to the Danish diver, the Swedish judge awarded first place to the Swedish diver, and the American judge awarded first place to all three American divers! In the end, the British and French judges placed the Americans placed first and second and the U.S. was on its way to seven consecutive Olympic platform titles.Simaika Announced as the Winner but Desjardins Gets the Gold
At the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, Farid Simaika of Egypt was announced as the winner of the platform competition. After the Egyptian national anthem was played, the officials determined that they had made a mistake in awarding Simaika the gold medal. Pete Desjardins of the U.S. won the competition according to the scoring system of using ordinals instead of total points, and the mistake was corrected. Consequently, Desjardins earned his second gold medal of the games.Joaquin Perez's Victory in 1956 Protested by the U.S.
Mexico's Joaquin Capilla Perez won the platform gold in Melbourne on his final dive, edging U.S. diver Gary Tobian by 0.03 points. U.S officials protested the result, claiming that the Soviet and Hungarian judges were biased: a claim that Perez would later agree with. The protest was rejected but it led to changes in the rules that allow judges to be removed because of bias or incompetence.Soviet Judge Removed from 1960 Competition For Showing Bias
The rule that came about because of the protests lodged in Joaquin Perez 1956 platform victory was put into action in 1960. After the preliminary round in the men’s springboard competition, a Soviet judge was replaced for being biased in her scoring.Soviet Diver Repeats Dive Amid Protests and Wins the Springboard Gold
In an Olympic Games scarred by the absence of the U.S. due to a boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the springboard diving competition was also marred by controversy. Eventual champion Aleksandr Portnov of the Soviet Union was allowed to repeat one of his dives after he claimed he was distracted by crowd noise. Three of his competitors protested the decision claiming that they were subjected to the same noise. Their protest and the final decision of FINA, the international governing body for aquatics, caused the medal ceremony to be delayed for two days.Greg Louganis's Announcement that He Was HIV Positive in 1988
Although this controversy would not surface until six years after the event, the announcement that Greg Louganis was HIV-positive during the competition in Seoul in 1988 sent shock waves through the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the diving world. Had he not hit the board and opened up a two-inch wound on his scalp, the fact that he knew that he was infected would not have surfaced. But what was the issue was that only a handful of people knew his secret, and that did not include IOC or U.S. diving officials.
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