Splashes Of Class And Acts of Heroism

Flying through air and water, the stars and upstarts are dazzling

He was 8 points ahead of Tan Liangde of China, which was about where you would expect Greg Louganis to be after eight dives in the springboard preliminaries. This is something like saying the sun was where you expected it to be at noon. Next up was a moderately difficult reverse somersault that he was accustomed to nailing for 8s and 9s, but this time it went wrong. He jumped almost straight up instead of up and out, spun too close to the board, cracked his head on the board's edge as he rotated backward, and wobbled raggedly into the water....

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