Word Cup and Olympic Games Analysis of 3m and 10m Diving

INTRODUCTION: Sex differences in world ranked performance has been suggested to follow a diminishing trend that could lead women to reach men’s results, particularly in longer events (reference 1). The same trend has not been consistently reported either for short and middle-distance events, or for technical disciplines (references 2,3). Performance trend analysis could be useful to plan athlete’s careers and to discriminate between men and women developmental patterns. The aim of this study was to analyze the trend of the differences in performances between male (M) and female (F) athletes in Olympic Games (OL) and World Cup (WC) from Sydney 2000 to Tokyo 2020 in 3m springboard and 10 m platform diving. METHODS: Diving competition results were collected from the FINA official web site (reference 4). For the female (F) and male (M) medalists (OL: F=18, M=18; WC: F=15, M=15) of each event Degrees of Difficulty (DD mean, sum, and peak values), age (3m: F=24.4±0.6yrs, M=23.1±0.2yrs; 10m: F=20.1±0.6yrs, M=21.6±0.1yrs) and Total Points (TP) were analyzed. The trends of the differences between male and female were assessed as percentage (%) and slope of the regression line of the results over time (y). RESULTS: Sex differences in 3m DD values continuously increased, particularly in Olympics (DDm from 0.16 to 0.55; DDs from 4.00 to 6.30; DDp from 0.33 to 0.77 with a peak in 2012), while the slope of differences over time in TP decreased in gold medalists (y=-4,2419) and followed a nonlinear trend in silver (y=0,1292) and bronze medalists (y=0,0121). In 10m divers the differences between men and women increased for DD mean (Gold y=0,0095; Silver y=0,0194; Bronze y=0,006) and peak (Gold y=0,0084; Silver y=0,0193; Bronze y=0,0193), while DD sum (Gold y=-0,0155; Silver y=0,102; Bronze y=0,0015) and TP (Gold y=-0,0774; Silver y=-0,5683; Bronze y=1,0428) did not show consistent trends. Age differences between sex decreased in 3m (Gold y=-0,0286; Silver y=-0,4321; Bronze y=-0,2036) and increased in 10m (Gold y=0,3036; Silver y=0,2536; Bronze y=0,179). CONCLUSION: Sex differences in DD tends to widen, suggesting that men technical abilities develop faster than women’s. The differences in TP does not present consistent trend, suggesting that the rise in DD did not guarantee men’s better results. This relatively stable differences between men and women performances agrees with the trend of short and middle-distance sports (references 1,2,3). In 3m springboard diving, where more muscular power is requested, age of both sexes rises over time. In 10m platform, where more technical abilities are demanded, men’s age increases while women’s decreases. This could indicate that man relies more on muscular power, while women can also rely on fast rotational velocity. 1. Knechtle et al. Int J Environ Res Pub Health, 2020,17(10):3651 2. Demarie et al. Int J Environ Res Pub Health, 2022,19:2110 3. Sandbakk et al. Int J Sports Physiol Perform, 2018,13(1):2-8 4. FINA Official Website - www.fina.org