Diver Pulls Off 4 1/2 Somersaults With a Tuck

Wu Feilong of China completed a rare 4 1/2 somersault in tuck position to win the 10-meter platform diving title Wednesday at the World University Games in Sheffield, England.

Although Reuters was calling this the first such dive in international competition, U.S. diving Coach Ron O’Brien was certain there had been one previously but was unsure of the details. Mark Lenzi of the United States made the same dive at the 1989 Olympic Festival in Oklahoma.

Wu needed his spectacular dive, which involves a 3.5-degree of difficulty, to win a tight battle with Jesus Mena of Mexico. Wu finished with 576.90 points, Mena with 575.13.

“I think it’s great,” Pat McCormick, a winner of four gold medals in diving for the United States in the 1950s, said of Wu’s performance. “The next thing you’ll see is a 5 1/2. I know the girls can do a 3 1/2 now, and it won’t be long before they do a 4 1/2.

“I saw a 4 1/2 (somersault) 40 years ago, but it wasn’t allowed in international competition because the majority couldn’t do it. You were limited then because they didn’t feel it was fair to allow it.”

Although Wu may have landed in rarely charted waters, O’Brien isn’t ready to label him the Roger Bannister of his sport just yet.

“It’s possible this is the first step to the next level of diving,” O’Brien said by phone from his Florida home. “But you are not going to see it in Barcelona (at the 1992 Olympics). Perhaps sometime between Barcelona and Atlanta (site of the ’96 Games). If he (Wu) could do it on a regular basis, that would be a breakthrough that would encourage others.

“But the idea is still to get the most points, not the highest degree of difficulty. The margin of error on a dive like that is a lot smaller. Under pressure, hitting it is a lot more difficult.”

Is anybody else ready to try it in international competition?

Mary Ellen Clark, a U.S. diver who will compete in the upcoming Pan-Am Games in Cuba, isn’t sure.

“If someone is not afraid to try it, it makes other people think, ‘Wow, I bet I can do it, too,’ ” she said from her Florida home. “I’m sure I can make it, but I don’t know what I would look like. You would be foolish to do it if you couldn’t get 9s on it. If you wind up with 5s, it’s not worth doing.”

O’Brien agrees.

“If you try it and don’t win because of it, people are not going to jump up and do it,” he said. “Are you doing it to do it or are you doing it to score points?”

Wu led the 10-dive competition early on but slipped to seventh with only three rounds left. A fine effort in his next-to-last round lifted him into medal contention, but when Mena scored 74 points with his final effort, Wu looked out of reach of first place.

Then he came up with the dive of his life.

In other competition at the World University Games, the U.S. women’s basketball team romped to an 88-62 victory over Spain to complete the tournament with seven consecutive victories and a gold medal, and the U.S. men’s team beat Canada, 96-56, to win the gold.

In the women’s game, the Americans broke from a 22-22 tie with Spain to take a 42-29 halftime lead.

Ruthie Bolton, the former Auburn guard who scored 40 points against Romania earlier in the tournament, had 22 against Spain.

In track and field, sprinter Jon Drummond was one of four Americans to earn gold medals. Drummond won the 200 meters, Derrick Adkins took the 400 hurdles, Steven Fritz topped the decathlon with his highest points total and Alan Turner won the long jump with his second-best jump ever.

Of the four U.S. winners, Drummond was the most noticeably exuberant. After crossing the finish line in 20.58 seconds, he clapped and jumped and waved his arms, imploring the crowd to do the same.

“It was all that jumping around out there got me tired, not the race,” said the Texas Christian University student. “It’s all about showmanship. If the crowd doesn’t enjoy you, they don’t enjoy your event.

“I’d rather lose and have people like me than win and be disliked.”

Adkins, a Georgia Tech senior, blew past the opposition in 49.01 seconds, beating Yoshihiko Saito of Japan by 1.01 seconds.

“I knew the fastest guy in the race was the Japanese in the lane inside of me,” he said. “So the strategy was to go out hard the first hundred and stay in front.”

Already holding a two-step lead with 100 meters to go, Adkins cruised easily through the tape with arms extended.

“I felt pretty good coming into the home stretch,” he said. “At that point I pretty much knew I had it.”

In the decathlon, Fritz finished 360 points ahead of Kris Szabadhegy in leading a one-two U.S. finish. Fritz had 8,079 points, a personal best.

“I was pretty surprised with my total,” said Fritz, whose previous personal best was the 7,978 he registered in finishing fifth at TAC this year.

“With the rain, the wind and the cool weather, I didn’t expect to score what I did,” he said.

Turner’s leap of 26 feet 10 inches in the long jump was only 1 1/4 inches short of his personal best.

“I’m very happy with my second best jump ever,” said the Indiana University athlete.

Michelle Collins of the University of Houston won a bronze medal in the women’s 200 as Taiwan’s Wang Huei-Chen and Norway’s Solvi Olsen finished 1-2. Collins’ time was 23.47, compared to Huei-Chen’s 23.22.

Dutch competitor Gretha Tromp won the 400 hurdles gold to go with her silver in the 400. Tromp’s hurdles time was 55.40. Australian Alison Inverarity won the women’s high jump at 6-3 1/2.