Lifestyle

This Russian Olympic Diver Successfully Back-Flopped Her Way To Zero Points

by Jake Cappuccino
REUTERS

Somebody cue up the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" theme music because this Russian Olympic diver could really use a laugh at herself after her awful individual 3-meter springboard dive shut her out of further competition.

Nadezhda Bazhina's dive truly was less of a dive and more of a back flop with somersaults.

You can watch her back flop in the clip from NBC, and you'll immediately understand why Bazhina received zero points (not just zero, but 0.00 points) on her fourth attempt.

What's crazy is everything looks OK from the side and then you just see Bazhina smacking into the water, like, you know it's bad based on just how ugly her entrance into the water was.

And even if you missed the back flop itself, the announcer's audible groan and Bazhina's coach's face are just as telling.

NBC

Damn, this coach just has no idea what happened or how it happened. All I know is her coach isn't mad, her coach is just disappointed.

Well, watching other clips that have the dive from different angles helps reveal what's going on.

In the clip at the top, it seems Bazhina basically slips off the side of the diving board right as she's about to jump, killing her takeoff and thus totally killing her dive.

From a front angle, the dive is even more painful to watch. You can see just how much the dive was already messed up before Bazhina's feet even left the diving board. Seriously, instead of jumping straight up and straight away from the board, Bazhina ends up jumping like 3 feet to her left.

It just goes to show there are no mistakes in the Olympics, and a single zero will end any person's journey to the medal platform.

Citations: Now that HAS to hurt! Russian diver makes a splash with an embarrassing back flop... and gets ZERO points (Daily Mail), Russian Nadezhda Bazhina back flops in 3m prelims (NBC)