Back from the fall, Chelsea Davis eyes trip to Beijing
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Chelsea Davis turns her back to the pool, all 10 toes clinging to the board as it gently rocks up and down.
She extends both arms. Then, with a sudden, powerful thrust, she flings herself toward the water, whipping around 2 1/2 times with her head tucked tightly against her knees as she whizzes by the board, seemingly just inches away.
Scary stuff, huh?
"There's always the issue of fear in every diver's history," Davis said Friday, sitting along the pool at a Grand Prix meet in balmy south Florida. "There's always going to be that one dive that's scary for someone."
For Davis, that dive is 405C — specifically, a 2 1/2 inward somersault from the tuck position.
While competing at the 2005 world championships in Montreal, Davis made a crucial mistake just as she was pushing off, which left her too close to the springboard when she came spinning by. She slammed into it face-first, breaking her nose in 10 places, fracturing her right cheekbone and spraining her back.
Her body flopped helplessly into the water with a gruesome thud. When she came back up, blood was pouring down her face — a horrifying, worst-case scenario for any diver, but especially a teenager taking part in her first major international meet. Some fans turned away while she was being tended to.
"I did not know I was going to hit when I was in my dive," she said. "When I hit the board and then hit the water, I looked down like, 'What just happened?' Then I saw blood everywhere. I was like, 'This can't be happening, not here.'"
Nearly three years removed from a scary miscue that has been viewed more than 130,000 times on YouTube, Davis has fully recovered from her injuries — both physical and mental — and is working toward a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. She advanced through the preliminaries and semifinals of the 3-meter board in Fort Lauderdale, qualifying for a spot in Sunday's final.
In the only final Friday, Russia's Yulia Pakalina, an Olympic gold medalist, and Anastasia Pozdniakova won the 3-meter synchronized with a score of 316.62 points. They edged out the Chinese team of Qinxin Zhao and Li Ting, second with 313.20, while Sharleen Stratton and Briony Cole of Australia took third at 303.96.
For the host Americans, Christina Loukas and Amanda Miller were fourth, while Mary Yarrison and Abby Johnson settled for sixth.
Davis, of course, is still asked about Montreal. She takes the questions with a good-natured smile, saying the botched dive helped her grow as a person.
"I just want to make it a more positive thing," said Davis, whose only physical remnant from Montreal is a small scar across the bridge of her nose. "I've worked my way back up there. I've shown people that accidents happen. You can't control everything."
Davis never considered giving up the sport; after all, nearly every diver has had some sort of encounter with the board (remember Greg Louganis at the 1988 Olympics?), but most times it occurs in the anonymity of practice, and is usually no more than a scraped foot or hand.
"I wanted to get back up on the board as soon as possible," Davis said. "I had done that dive thousands of times before. I knew how to do it. I knew what I was doing."
Two days after her infamous dive, Davis couldn't even open her eyes because of the swelling. She needed six weeks to fully get over her injuries, and a couple of weeks more to muster the courage to climb back on the board again to attempt 405C. She couldn't run away from it, since all divers are required to perform an inward dive as part of their program.
"The first one was scary to get off," she conceded. "I was just replaying it in my head. After I got that first one off, it was fine."
Davis said it helps that she knows exactly what she did wrong in Montreal. She leaned forward a little too much before pushing off the board, which left her too close as she was coming down. She wouldn't make the same mistake again.
"Usually when you feel that way, you just push back a little more," Davis said. "But I was just like, 'I'm going to go for it.' I had so much energy and excitement in me. I just got too close."
The accident was one of several factors that threw Davis' career off course for a couple of years. She had stress fractures in her right foot, a common diving injury that kept her from competing for about four months — a longer layoff than she had to take after the 2005 worlds. She also changed coaches, went off to college at Northwestern, then had to get used to a new school after transferring to Ohio State.
Last August, the worst blow of all: her mother, Barbara, died after a lengthy illness.
"It's actually been a motivation to me," Davis said, struggling to hold back the tears. "She was a big part of my diving."
After failing to qualify for the 2007 world championships, Davis improved steadily over the past year. She won the NCAA championship on springboard, then qualified for the Fort Lauderdale meet with a fourth-place showing at the U.S. spring nationals.
On Friday, she was fifth out of 31 divers in the prelims, then placed third in her semifinal heat to claim a spot in the finals. During both rounds, she pulled off 405C without a hitch.
"But on the inside," she said with a bit of a chuckle, "I'm very nervous. I wouldn't say I'm afraid. I'm just focusing on what I have to do right."
One of Davis' U.S. teammates, Allison Brennan, said all divers must overcome some degree of fear. It's a harrowing sport that penalizes those who play it too safe.
"I've hit the board at times, and I'm always very gun-shy about getting up there again," Brennan said. "There's a very fine line from being perfect and being too close."
Amazingly, Davis managed to go nearly three years without seeing a video of her accident. Then, about a month ago, a television station in Columbus, Ohio, was doing a report on her success at the spring nationals. Naturally, they replayed her collision with the board in Montreal.
"I didn't look away quick enough, so I saw it," she said. "It was just like, well, I knew what happened. It was not a surprise. I knew it was coming."
"You just have to get over it. That's what makes a diver really tough."
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