China loses men's 10m platform synchronized diving!

[cashew]

I woke up to shocking news.

I'm not sure I've completely digested the news yet.

But, this is a case of no complaints. The fourth dive was terrible. There was no recovering from that with the kind of margins that exists at the Olympic level. It doesn't matter if the rest of the dives were still heads and shoulders above everyone else, the error on the fourth dive was absolutely horrifying. Honestly, the fact that they were still able to get silver despite the terrible error (the synchronization was completely off, it was like watching Americans dive) tells you the quality of the rest of the dives.

The thing I'm not happy about are people complaining that the athletes didn't have the right mental resilience to win, which is bullshit. These two were previous Olympic gold medalists and have won the international championship in synchronized diving. They've more than proved their mental mettle. What the team needs to do now is figure out why the error occurred and how to prevent this from happening ever again.

And the trend of Chinese men's failing at getting golds that they should be able to get continues. Air pistol, air rifle, now synchronized diving? What's next? Gymnastics? Table tennis? This is a horror show. 😱 Someone get these athletes a sports psychologist and fix this problem.

I still can't get over that fourth dive. Seriously, what is going on in the Chinese diving camp?

---

Edit to add: OK, you know what? I think I'm getting over it. Even Messi misses penalties. Sometimes, disasters happen. Even more so in sports. The fact that China has managed to win men's 10m platform synchronized diving gold medal in four Olympics in a row is already an achievement. And the dream of winning all of the diving golds was always a long shot. We'll come back 3 years later and be stronger. 💪

中国跳水队加油！