16-year-old diver stuns judges as her dive with 'no splash' wins gold

Chinese diver Quan Hongchan's performance at a diving world cup last year has resurfaced, leaving viewers absolutely stunned.

With the 17-year-old having just won two gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, winning her second yesterday (August 6) with a perfect score of 10, footage of her performance at the World Aquatic's Diving World Cup 2023 in Montreal, Canada has resurfaced online.

Quan took part in the women's 10m platform yesterday, with her first out of five dives coming in at a perfect score of 10.

The Olympics' website states: "She scored a total of 425.60 points and ranked first for four out of the five dives, with only her third-round dive ranking second among the 12 finalists."

Fellow Chinese teammate Chen Yuxi took home silver with 420.70 points and Democratic People's Republic of Korea diver Kim Mi Rae was awarded bronze, achieving a score of 372.10 points.

And since Quan's monumental win and perfect score, footage of one of her dives at last year's Diving World Cup where the diver - who would've been around 16 years old at the time - doesn't even make a 'splash' has since been shared online.

A video from a spectator at the Diving World Cup in Montreal has been circulating on social media.

A user shared it to Twitter alongside the caption: "Quan Hongchan, wins gold with a dive so flawless the water doesn't even splash."

And in the clip, you can see Quan performing a 'back three-and-a-half somersaults tuck' in the final round of five of the women's 10m platform event.

Her score across the board is near-perfect - a sea of 10's and one 9.5 - resulting in her taking the top spot with a total of 367.00, with China's Chen Yuxi coming in at second place at 342.90 and Great Britain's Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix in third with 287.40.

And it's not taken long for people to flood online in awe of the dive.

One Twitter user said: "How is that even possible, water diving IMO is one of the coolest sports."

"Her ability is completely in another level. Most of the time, her lowest score is higher than most other athletes’ highest scores, which is insane…." another added.

A Reddit user also wrote: "She hacked water, how is it physically possible to jump from that height and not make a splash?"

Others pointed out you can see a tinsy winsy splash, but hey, as another user said: "I get more splashback from my toilet than that."

So haters just stop hating please.

The most bizarre, discontinued Olympic sports

Painting

Back in the day, the Olympics dished out medals for art too, with events including painting and sculpture, as well as music, architecture and even literature.

Making its debut all the way back at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm and continuing until the 1948 London games, juries awarded competitors a total of 151 medals for artistic projects inspired by sport.

Tug of War

Bet you didn't think this playground classic was once part of the Olympics, did you?

Well, it turns out not only was the sport popular, but it stirred up a lot of drama too - with accusations of foul play flying around at the 1908 Olympics in London, with Team USA accusing Team GB of cheating due to their 'illegal' heavy footwear.

A mainstay for around five Olympic games from 1900 to 1920, Tug of War enthusiasts have even campaigned for organisers to reintroduce the retired sport back into the Games.

Hot Air Balloon Racing

Launching at the 1900 Olympics, hot air balloon drivers would compete in races scoring how far they could travel, altitude reached, ability to land within the correct coordinates and - to top it all off - who got the best photo from the balloon.

The sport ended up being canned after a ban on motorised sports was brought in.

Live Pigeon Shooting

Also making its debut at the 1900 Olympics, the event was pretty self explanatory - a load of pigeons were released into the air as the competitor tried to shoot as many as possible. Grim.

The event only appeared at the Games once, and all in all, it's estimated that Olympic hopefuls killed around 300 pigeons.

Pistol Duelling

It doesn't take much guessing as to why this event was scrapped, but back in 1906, people clearly didn't bat an eyelid at competitors waving pistols around and shooting at each other.

It began with competitors shooting at dummies, but two years later organisers decided to shake things up and have them shoot at each other with wax bullets. Ouch.

1908 would be the last time the sport was included in the Olympics, so I'm guessing they quickly realised it was a bad idea - wax bullets or not.