Chinese divers bag gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics. (Photo : Getty Images)
China's gold medalist divers draw a picture of success and sacrifice for the country as it continues to dominate the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, already bagging three medals from Diving events.
The current trend in Rio Olympics showcases China's gold-worthy divers which only intensifies onlookers' curiosity as to how much these athletes have sacrificed to get to where they are now.
In fact, TIME even featured the exact reason why Chinese divers are the best in the world not only to show their skills but to shed a light on how much these athletes had sacrificed to bring honor and a shiny medal back home to China.
Rio 2016
On August 10, Team China officially garnered a total of three gold medals in the diving events thanks to their synchronized women divers Chen Ruolin and Liu Huixia.
According to NBC Olympics, the dominance of the Chinese athletes have reached as far as the synchronized diving events on Tuesday where Chen and Liu scored an impressive 354 points from their performance in the women's synchronized 10-meter platform.
Twenty-three-year-old Chen made history during this event which gave her a fifth Olympic gold medal during her five-year career in the global sporting event.
The conclusion of the event also made her the first non-teenager to take gold in the women's synchronized 10-meter platform, bringing China's gold medal count to 16.
While it is still 3 medals less than the leading United States team, the Chinese delegates in Rio still have a good chance at bagging the championship.
Sacrifices
Since she was 11 years old, Chen had practically lived to dive. Earning the gold at the Rio Olympics with her partner Liu had been an inspiration to five-year-old Tang Zixuan from the central province of Hubei in China.
According to TIME, Tang is considered as one of Huangshi State Sports School's diving prodigies.
"I enjoy eating bitterness," the young diver with calloused little hands told the outlet. "Eating bitterness" for the Chinese means for being able to endure suffering to achieve a certain goal.
Speaking to locals, the outlet explained how divers in China benefited in the country's "state-run, Soviet-style sports system" which allows parents to send off their children to sports academies where the government will take care of them and hone them into Olympic-caliber athletes.
While such system had already softened after the government implemented the one-child family planning policy, the country is still able to maintain state-run sports academies that rely on winning athletes for better budgets.
Because of this, Chinese athletes in general have been trained to the fullest even if it means earning lots of callouses and bruises from training or even being a stranger to their own family.
