Why did Shi Tingmao cry after winning the championship? Because the women's 3m board is the most important item to lose

Shi Tingmao cried after winning the championship.

On August 1, as Shi Tingmao continued to show her perfect performance throughout the race in the final jump, the 29-year-old successfully defended the Olympic women's 3m board title - her teammate and partner Wang Han won the silver medal. After winning the championship, Shi Tingmao burst into tears in Wang Han's arms, which also made many netizens joke that the champion actually needed comfort from the runner-up. Of course, the netizens' statement is just a joke, but it is undeniable that Shi Tingmao's victory has helped the Chinese diving team defend its dignity in the absolute advantage project!

In the Chinese Olympic delegation, the Chinese diving team is undoubtedly an absolute dream team, and if another "fist event" is selected in the dream team, it is undoubtedly the women's 3 meter board, after all, from Gao Min's gold medal in the women's 3 meter board at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games to Shi Tingmao's victory in Tokyo, the Chinese athletes have achieved an amazing 9 consecutive championships in this project, which is a miracle that Chinese divers have not achieved in any of the events!

In the women's 3m board event at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Li Yihua and Li Qiaoxian advanced to the final with 1st and 6th places respectively, but they finally finished 4th and 5th in the final and regretted missing the medal – the championship was won by Bernier from Canada.

This is the debut of the Chinese women's 3m board event in the Olympic Games, and it is also the last time that the Chinese women's 3m board athletes let the gold medal fall aside. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Gao Min and Li Qing won the gold and silver medals in the event, and compared to the perfect Gao Min, Li Qing, who finally won the silver medal, was equally exciting, because she finally led the United States by only 1.14 points , McCormick's mother, who had won the women's 3 meter board and 10 meter platform in the 1952 and 1956 Olympic Games.

At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Gao Min finished third in the women's 3m preliminary round, while another Chinese athlete, Tan Shuping, failed to pass the qualifying round. But after entering the final, Gao Min, who "fought alone", showed the style of "Diving Queen" and finally let Rashko, who was the first in the preliminary round, hate the final with a lead of nearly 60 points.

In the subsequent Olympic Games, Fu Mingxia (1996 and 2000), Guo Jingjing (2004 and 2008), Wu Minxia (2012), Shi Tingmao (2016 and 2020 Tokyo) helped the Chinese diving team continue to be strong in this event, and looking back at the performance of the Chinese Diving Dream Team, there is really no event like the women's 3m board, which has won the gold medal stably in 9 consecutive Olympic Games.

In the men's 10m event, Sun Shuwei did not win the gold medal for the Chinese diving team for the first time until 1992, and so far the Chinese diving team has "only" 4 gold medals in this project; in the men's three-meter board event, Xiong Ni won the first gold medal for the Chinese diving team in 1996, but at the 2012 London Olympics, Zakharov also broke the "monopoly" of Chinese athletes on this project; in the women's 10-meter platform event, Wilkinson (2000) and Newberry (2004) also interrupted the Chinese diving team's "monopoly" on the project.

Due to the short time it takes for the double event to enter the Olympic Games, the Chinese diving team has never achieved such a long consecutive championship in any event. Therefore, if the Chinese diving team is the crown of the Chinese Olympic team, then the women's three-meter board event is undoubtedly the most shining diamond in this crown!

Perhaps only by understanding this long and successful history can we understand why Shi Tingmao is in tears: the project with absolute superiority in the three-meter board is the most stable gold medal project for the Chinese diving team, but it is also the most unaffordable project for the Chinese diving team!