Diving has existed as a sport for thousands of years. In the ancient Olympic Games, divers jumped off cliffs into natural bodies of water. Diving is now one of the most popular sports in the modern Olympics and one of four Olympic aquatics events. Diving typically takes place in an arena with the other three aquatic events: swimming, 
synchronized swimming and water polo. At the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, more households tuned in to watch the diving finals than either the NCAA men's basketball final or the Rose Bowl that year.
Diving events at the Olympics include the men's and women's 10 meter (32.8 feet) platform and three meter (9.8 feet) springboard. At the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games in Australia, synchronized diving, or diving in pairs, was introduced partially due to the success of the synchronized swimming event. Synchronized diving takes place on the same ten meter platform and three meter springboard as the standard diving event and is scored by nine judges rather than the seven for non-synchronized diving; four judges score technical merit while the remaining five score the synchronization of the two dives. In terms of technical merit, the panel of judges score a dive based on approach, take-off, execution, and entry into the water. The judges aren't allowed to consider any other factors in computing their scores.
In springboard diving, each competitor completes a set number of dives – six 
for men, five for women – without a limit on the total degree of difficulty he or she may attempt from a set of five different categories, or types of dives. In the platform event, divers are not allowed to repeat a category during their set of dives, and a sixth category is added: handstand, where the competitor positions his or herself in a handstand on the springboard before leaping into the water below. The springboard that divers launch themselves off from is made of a 16-foot long flexible aluminum board that sits on a fulcrum, or wheel, that can adjust the amount of spring in the board.
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