The Chinese divers moved closer to the sweep of all the eight golds at the Beijing Games as Chen Ruolin brought in seventh gold yesterday by winning the women's 10m platform.

China's Chen Ruolin on her way to a win in the women's 10-meter platform diving final on August 21. [China Daily]

Emilie Heymans of Canada settled for the silver, while China's Wang Xin, the reigning world champion, took bronze.

It was the only gold medal that China's "Diving Dream Team" failed to win at the last two Olympics. Fu Mingxia last won for China at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

American diver Laura Wilkinson beat Li Na at the 2000 Sydney Games, while Australian Chantelle Newbery stunned Lao Lishi to win the 2004 Athens gold. Both Li and Lao finished second.

Here is the comment from Yu Fen, former Chinese national diving coach:

In the 10m diving competition, Chen Ruolin claimed the gold with 447.70 points, while Emilie Heymans of Canada took the silver with 437.05 and another Chinese athlete Wang Xin snatched the bronze. Best wishes to the 31-year-old, Wilkinson, who didn't win a medal.

The Chinese divers didn't have a clear advantage in the degree of difficulty. Sydney Olympic champion, Wilkinson, displayed a set of dives whose difficulty degree reached the highest, 17.2, 1.1 higher than those of Chen and Wang. The difficulty level has been rising quickly in the last two Olympic Games, so the Chinese diving team should aim to strengthen the stability of dives and create more difficult movements in order to keep dominating in diving.

Chinese divers have good entry because of their small size. The stability of Chen and Wang's diving movements have been easy to achieve, but the series of their forward entry dives have shortcomings in that the high degree of difficulty is hard to get. Wang is not technically perfect in her entry with her tight arms and loosened legs. I wrote to her privately to give advice on how to solve these problems three months before the Olympics.

Wang and Chen will step into the period of adolescence right after this competition. Only if they handle problems together alongside their emotional, physical and technical changes successfully, can they keep their leading advantages.

However, I'm afraid that it'll be difficult to win in the next Olympics if we use this set of dives in such a difficulty level. For example, Fu Mingxia's winning of both the platform and the springboard after she returned in the 1999 World University Games in Palma, Spain resulted from the training method of "platform advances with springboard".

There are a lot of athletes in the world diving with a higher difficulty than ours. Once the foreign athletes perform to a higher standard, we'll meet bigger challenges to grab this gold if we stop to promote the stability and difficulty. The problems coming with the adolescence of our women divers will make their sporting life span shorter unless they're well managed.

http://yufenblog.blog.sohu.com/97856023.html