And now: four and a half somersaults, starting from the arm stand position.
When he got to the top of the platform, Tim looked out at the audience. Isaac’s head was turned in his direction, so Tim imagined they made eye contact again.
Tim didn’t have anything to prove, he realized. He’d won this event four years ago and performed very well here. He was one of the best divers in the world and had been for five years. He was young enough that he probably had another Olympics in him, barring injury. He loved this sport, loved hurling himself through the air. But this wasn’t redemption. He wanted to show he was still good, but he’d done that. So if he won gold or silver, it didn’t matter. He wanted the gold, yes—he wanted it more than anything in the world right then—but he didn’t necessarily have control over whether he won it. Diving wasn’t a race; there was no objective indicator of who was the best. Just a group of flawed humans giving numerical values to each athlete.
All Tim could do was dive to the best of his ability.
He took a deep breath, tossed his shammy toward where Donnie stood, and walked to the end of the platform. He got into the arm stand, slowly lifting his legs into the air. He held the arm stand for a long moment. Then he bent at the waist and threw himself off the platform. He got into his tuck quickly, somersaulting through the air. He sighted the water, knew he had control over this dive, and when it was time, he kicked out and straightened. Hitting his hands on the water hurt like a bitch, but he knew he’d gotten his body position right, that he went into the water vertically.
And there it was. The best dive he could have executed.
He swam to the side of the pool and pulled himself out. The audience roared. Tim liked that, though he knew better than to think the volume of cheers would be reflected in the scoring. But then the score flashed on the scoreboard: all nines and tens. Final score: 134.4.
Tim walked by the coaches’ area. Donnie grinned and said, “That’ll do, pig.”
Tim rolled his eyes.
He was done now, so he didn’t bother with the showers or hot tub. Instead he found his shammy and stood near Donnie to wait for the last dive.
Liu was performing a back four-and-a-half, according to the scoreboard, which had a degree of difficulty 0.3 below the dive Tim had just done. Tim did the math. If Liu got all tens, he’d score a 135, which would be enough to win. And Liu could get tens across the board; Tim had seen him do it before. Even if he didn’t, the two-point lead Liu already enjoyed might be enough.
It would be close.
Liu got into position at the end of the platform. Then he jumped in the air, his body position perfect, his somersaulting clean. He kicked out, straightened his body, and went in straight but… splash.
A lot of splash.
Physics dictated that splashes like that could only happen if Liu had done something wrong—if his entry position hadn’t been quite right, if he’d moved his feet at the last second, if he’d failed to enter vertically. It was hard to tell what had happened, even in the replay on the screen, but what it meant was that Liu’s final dive was not perfect. Liu needed 133 points to win gold.
His score: 121.5.
Tim had won the gold medal.
Holy shit.
Donnie hugged Tim before Tim even really knew what was happening.
He wasn’t a fluke. He’d won that gold medal fairly at the last Olympics, even though everyone tried to talk him down—he was cute, he’d had a good day, the wind had thrown off everyone else. But Tim had just proved he’d belonged in the diving finals four years ago, and he belonged in the final now. He was the best platform diver in the world, and no one could take that from him. He’d worked his ass off, he’d thought through every part of the competition, and he’d put everything he had into his six dives today. This was his. He’d earned it.
Isaac was in the audience. Tim tried to see him, but he was at a bad angle in relation to the stands and couldn’t really see anybody, including his own family. But his parents had been there to see this. And Isaac had been too.