Diving into the Commonwealth Games

I’m not interested in sports AT ALL, so you might be surprised to learn that I went – and enjoyed! – going to the Commonwealth Games on Friday night.

We bought the tickets about a year ago, when locals were invited to enter a ballot. Even though we aren’t sports fans by any stretch of the imagination, we figured we had to attend “something” with the Games occurring practically in our own backyard.

And we were fortunate enough to win seats to the Diving final – specifically, the Women’s 1m Springboard, and the Men’s 3m Synchronised Diving events.

We were caught up in the atmosphere, watching each dive and trying to gauge each performance (even though we know nothing about diving!).

The crowd groaned if competitors stuffed up, as we all felt their disappointment; while there was applause and approval for well-executed dives, no matter what country they represented.

And of course, there was plenty of cheering and excitement when the Aussie athletes did well (taking silver and bronze in the women’s event, and bronze in the men’s) .

The only thing we missed out on, was the opportunity to join in with our own national anthem as Australia didn’t win gold. I reckon that would have been pretty awesome, as even just watching on TV gave me goosebumps!

We were so glad we’d made the effort to get along to the Games, and in fact now wish we’d managed to go to more events.

We couldn’t help but admire the skill of the divers – my photography skills truly don’t do it justice which is why there are no pics here of actual dives, LOL.

If I’d been diving, I would have received a negative score – but hubster reckons I would have scored one point just for hitting the water (I don’t think so somehow but it was sweet of him anyway!).

What I Learned from the Commonwealth Games

The highest scoring dive of the night was by Alicia Blagg of England, with an impressive 62.4 (out of a possible 70). And yet – she didn’t win a medal, coming in at 7th after all the competitors had completed their 5 rounds.

Unlike Alicia, the three medalists (Grace Reid from Scotland in first, Georgia Sheehan and Esther Qin from Australia second and third respectively) did not score higher than 60 for any of their dives. So why did they win?

Consistency.

Grace and Georgia consistently performed at a high – though not outstanding – standard, with every single one of their dives scoring in the 50’s.

Esther, in third place, was much the same with a couple of scores in the high 40’s.

At the end of the day, they didn’t win based on one outstanding dive. Consistency was the key to their success.

My mate Nicola, a triathlon and the founder of Inspire Athletic, agrees.

I think there’s something in that for all of us, don’t you?!