GERMANY: Eye-watering belly flops are the order of the day at the Splash Diving World Cup

They dive from a ten meter platform and their major goal is not a perfect somersault. At the Splash Diving World Cup in Hamburg on Sunday (July 29) it was all about the bigger bang. The main criterion to win the rather painful contest is to make some waves -- and splash as much as possible. Painful as it may be to hit the water bottom first, it is a sport that needs to be taken seriously, says referee Uwe Schlicker: "Splash diving is a fun sport that has to be taken seriously, like snow boarding. People didn't take that seriously in the beginning but it takes the athletes a lot to participate in a world championship," Schlicker told Reuters. At the second Splash Diving World Cup, teams from Germany, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, the Philippines and the United States fought for the title. Christian Guth from Bavaria succeeded in impressing the jury most and was elected Splash Diving World Champion. His motivation was a certain lack of challenge when going swimming in summer: "I always thought it was kind of boring to just swim laps or lie around in the open air swimming pool in summer," Guth said. "So we just decided to climb up on the diving platform to see what else can be done. And we realized that water is a great element. It has a big surface tension, but once you break through, it cools immediately. And we started to try new somersaults and jumps," added Guth. But in the end, it came down to impressing the fairer sex, the newly crowned world champion said: "It just gets to the point where you want to dry and splash the girls watching by the edge of the pool." Apart from the serious contest, participants were called to take part in a show contest of high diving --- the exact opposite of splash diving, that involved a 30 meter diving platform hoisted up by a crane. Only the bravest mastered the challenge, among them high diving vice world champion, Joey Zuber from Australia, who afterwards praised the qualities of his German rivals: "The pain tolerance of the Germans... They don't feel nothing in their arses, you know what I'm saying?" In high diving, the contestant must dive as artfully as possible, preferably without any splashing.

ITN Source | August 2, 2007

Tags:. .painful. .goal. .certain. .germans. .championship