Paris 2024 - Day 25 (August 10th) - Men's Platform Diving

We’ve got a 10 AM event at the Centre Aquatique in Saint-Denise, so we grab a quick breakfast on the go at our favorite patisserie and then head to Metro Line 13. Today’s event is the semifinals of men’s platform diving. This is an event that is not for the faint of heart. The platform is 10 m (almost 33 feet) above pool level and the divers hit the water at up to 35 mph!

This is the final Olympic diving event. So far, Team China has taken 7 golds in 7 events. There is a reason for this. The Chinese have mastered the ability to make a rip entry. There are two parts to doing this: First, you have to hit the water with your two hands together, palms parallel to the water, making a “hole” in the water for your body to go into, and second, after hitting the water, you spread your arms out (like swimming down) to pull your body into the hole in the water. If done properly, there is almost no noise and no splash. I don’t really have a great picture of a great rip entry, but here are some pictures of what to do and what not to:

You can sort of see the arms out to the side in the first picture. In the second picture, the diver was not vertical when he went into the water and as a result, made a tsunami.

We’ve got 18 athletes competing for 12 spots in the finals including two each from China, Italy, Mexico, Great Britain, Canada and Australia. Scoring is a function of the degree of difficulty of the dive and the scores received for the dive. Each diver makes six dives, the first three of which are compulsory.

Taking pictures of diving reminds me of taking pictures of bobsleds. These divers are going very fast and even with a camera shooting 8 frames/second, I get a lot of pictures that look like this:

After two dives, the only question remaining was which Chinese diver would finish first, defending gold medalist Yuan Cao or Hao Yang. They were that much better than everyone else. In the next tier were Rikuto Tamai from Japan, Cassiel Rousseau from Australia and Rylan Wiens from Canada. Here are some of my pictures:

Long before today, I’d asked Beth and Sean to give me at least one day with some pin trading. It is the reason that I’m hauling around a bag full of pins in addition to all of the ones that I’m wearing. So, after the event, we head to the Parc de la Villette. This is the 3^rd largest park in Paris and is home, for the Olympics, to a number of NOC houses. The biggest draw is France House and the line to get in there is gigantic! The other houses are a diverse group: Slovenia, Brazil, Mongolia, Canada, Czechia, Serbia, Slovakia, Netherlands and Chinese Taipei. But I am here because the Olympic collector’s organization AICO has set up The Collector’s House. Sean and Beth set off to see other parts of the park while I go into the Collector’s House.

Inside are some collector’s exhibits including a huge collection of Olympic pins from Czechia provided by Dr. Branislav Delej, the 1^st VP of AICO and a guy that I work with on my pin project. Since I also have a big collection of Czech pins, I’m really interested in this collection and find that I’m missing a lot of pins! Most of the room is taken up with tables that collectors have preregistered to use where they can trade or sell pins. Given the relative lack of pins available to purchase, these tables are very popular with new French collectors looking to find pins. From my perspective, most of the collectors at the tables are acting like pin vacuum cleaners. They have mostly old Olympic pins to trade and are looking to get as many Paris 2024 pins as possible. There are now many collectors who sell their excess pins on auction sites like eBay to help offset their Olympic travel and ticket costs. I’m not interested in buying or trading with these guys so I go outside and open up my pin bag and hope that someone will come by and want to trade. While I was waiting, I was talking to a nice guy from Greece who is actually a professional pin dealer – that is his only source of income! Next to him was a collector from China that I met at a pin show in Los Angeles last year. He was interested in my pins and had a lot of pins to trade that appeared to come from the Olympic village. He also speaks almost no English, so we had a google translate conversation. He had a couple pins that I had seen online and wondered whether they were legitimate, so I asked him. At first, he thought that I was questioning his reputation as a collector, but eventually, he understood what I meant. He said that he had wondered the same thing and to help prove that they were legitimate, had taken pictures of an athlete wearing those pins. I tried to explain my frustration that any collector could make pins and convince an athlete to wear those pins in order to legitimize them. He didn’t quite get what I meant, but at that point, another member of the Olympin Collector’s club that I belong to and who speaks Mandarin came by and offered to translate. I explained what I wanted to say and the two of them launched into a long conversation. At the end, the Chinese guy agreed with me, and we went on to trade some Paris 2024 NOC pins. At about that time, Sean and Beth reappeared and brought me an ice cream to help me beat the heat. I introduce Sean to the Chinese guy, and they have a long conversation in Mandarin. At the end, he tells Sean to tell me how great it is that Beth and I helped Sean to learn Chinese! Beth is talking to the Greek guy. He must have enjoyed the conversation because he offers my pins in exchange for her!

While Sean is talking, I notice that a large group of gendarmes taking a break have sat down next to me. I hear a woman sitting nearest to me speaking English, so I ask her how she is enjoying the Games. She said that it is mostly work for them, but that she was thankful that there had been no serious incidents so far. I asked her where she was from and how she came to be assigned to the Olympics. She said that she was from Holland (near Rotterdam) and that she had been selected because she speaks French and had applied to a program that gives police officers in one EU country experience working in another country. Before she goes back to work, she gives me a Dutch police pin.

At that point, Beth and Sean leave to go home and give me another couple hours to play. I make some trades, mostly with new collectors and fend off some trades from people who want my best pins in exchange for their non-Olympic pins. Overall, I had a great time and wish that I could have spent more day's trading.

When I get up to leave, I discover that the subway station that we arrived at was only open for inbound traffic, so I’ve got a long walk to the nearest Metro station. During my trip, I get a text from Beth who tells me to get off at the station nearest our favorite gelato shop. It has been blazing hot all day so I’m happy to comply! Steps for the day: 13,614.