Byline: Daniel King and Leo Spall
TOM DALEY will have to perfect the most difficult dive in the world to win gold at the London Olympics. And in Sheffield in 14 days' time, the teenager from Plymouth will perform the dive for the first time in competition -- at the British Gas National Cup meeting -- and take another important step on the path he hopes will lead to glory in 2012.
Daley is taller and more muscular than when he became Britain's youngest world champion as he claimed a sensational victory in Rome last July at the age of 15.
paper bag printing But, incredible though that achievement was, it would never have happened if either Australia's Olympic champion, Matthew Mitcham, or China's Qiu Bo had nailed their final dives, when they both attempted -- and botched -- the dive Daley is now striving to master.
The Twister was invented 12 years ago by Leon Taylor, the British Olympic silver medallist who is now Daley's friend and mentor. The bewildering blur of twists and turns forces Daley to perform two and a half back-somersaults with two and a half twists during the 1.5 seconds between launching himself from the 10 metre platform and entering the water at 40mph.
The importance to Daley of mastering the dive is the high scoring potential that goes with it. Divers score points according to the difficulty of their dive and style marks given by seven judges. The two highest and two lowest marks are discarded, with the remaining three added together and multiplied by the difficulty tariff to give a final score.
Daley, who sat some of his GCSE exams last week in order to free up the summer for competition, said: 'It's a big risk doing the dive, but it's a risk worth taking. If you manage to pull this dive off, as Matthew Mitcham did at the Olympics, then it can be crucial.
'In Rome at the world championships, there were only just over 10 points between first and fourth. This dive could decide who wins in London. Becoming world champion puts it into your head that you could be Olympic champion.
'It's just a matter of going out there and trying my best. Diving is an onthe-day sport.'
Olympic champion Mitcham knows the truth of that. In Beijing, after China's Zhou Luxin had botched his attempt at The Twister, Mitcham produced a near-perfect effort of his own, earning a record score for Olympic competition -- 112.10 -- and so coming from a massive 32.50 points behind to claim gold.
Then in Rome, first he, then Qiu fluffed it, leaving Daley as champion because he had performed his less difficult final dive almost flawlessly.
Since the end of his summer break, the process to take Daley's repertoire to the next level has stepped up several gears with a programme which performance director Alexei Evangulov warns could 'break' the body of a young man who has grown six inches in height -- he is now 5ft 7.5in -- since Beijing.
'He is at the peak of puberty, so it is very dangerous to make him do all the difficult dives,' said Evangulov.
'We have to be careful. We have to work gradually and very carefully and not break him.
'He needs to grow up with his dives. His quality of dive is perfect -- that is why he beat divers whose programmes had a much higher degree of difficulty.
'Next time, it won't be so easy so we decided to increase the difficulty, and that is dangerous for him physiologically. He can get injured and this is the danger of overloading him.
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