BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS: DAY 3 : Chinese Youth Has Winning Platform : Women’s diving: Fu Mingxia, 13, is almost 50 points better than silver medalist Elena Mirochina of CIS. Mary Ellen Clark of U.S. finishes third.

For 2 1/2 hours under the midday sun Monday, it was the most breathtaking sight in Barcelona:

Fu on the hill, the diving platform high atop Montjuic, with Gothic cathedrals and 17th-Century castles off in the distance behind her, the world at her feet.

Fu Mingxia, a Chinese schoolgirl who won’t turn 14 for three more weeks, won the Olympic women’s platform diving gold medal so decisively and so easily that the post-competition buzz turned quickly to how many in all she might be able to collect.

Three?

Four?

If she dives for as many years as Ft. Lauderdale’s Mary Ellen Clark, who, at 30, earned the bronze medal Monday, Fu will have a chance for five, taking her final turn on the victory stand during the summer of 2008.

“I’ll do the best I can,” promised Fu.

At 13 years 11 months, Fu is the second-youngest gold medalist in Olympic history. Another diver, Marjorie Gestring of Los Angeles, was 13 years 9 months when she won the women’s springboard championship in the 1936 Berlin Games.

But no one has been so dominant so young. Fu’s cumulative score after eight dives in the final round was 461.43--almost 50 points better than the 411.63 posted by silver medalist Elena Mirochina of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and 60 better than Clark’s 401.91.

Fu could have cannonballed her last dive and no one would have touched her.

With equal measures of admiration and fear, U.S. diving Coach Ron O’Brien said he believed his sport had just been ushered into a new era.

“I think Fu Mingxia set a new standard for degree of difficulty for women’s diving in the 10 meters,” O’Brien said. “She proved that those dives can be done successfully. It’s similar to (Greg) Louganis in ’83 and ‘84, when he went to a new level with his dives.

“Anyone who’s going to be competitive from now on is going to have to do those dives.”

Fu’s final four attempts were rated between 3.0 and 3.3 in degree of difficulty, 3.5 being the highest. One dive included a backward 1 1/2 somersault with a 3 1/2 twist. The three others, executed from the forward, backward and inward positions, featured 3 1/2 somersaults.

“She just doesn’t miss,” Clark said. “Even in practice, time and time again. She’s so consistent. That helps in this sport.”

Clark would know, having taken the circuitous route to the medalists’ stand. Clark was in seventh place after two dives, in second after six, and then she bombed her seventh, angling into the water for a 39.36 score, 11th out of 12 divers.

That left her fifth with one dive remaining. This one she hit--a backward 1 1/2 somersault with a 3 1/2 twist that sent the crowd roaring. Her score: 64.68.

Still, Clark needed help to move up, and Zhu Jinhong of China provided it.

Seemingly locked into a silver medal, Zhu botched her final attempt, a 3 1/2 somersault that she finished with the backs of her legs slapping the water. None of the seven judges scored her higher than 4.5 and Zhu slid past Mirochina and Clark into fourth place.

Ellen Owen of Bellevue, Wash., the other American to reach the finals, finished seventh with an overall score of 392.10.

So, what makes Fu so good?

Fu is small, 4 feet 11 inches, and slender, 92 pounds. Those two attributes usually bode well off the platform.

“She works hard, she’s thin and she’s strong,” said Fu’s coach, Yu Feng. “That enables her to spin and turn more quickly than the others.”

And part of it is training, which is done at a private diving school in Beijing, an 18-hour train ride from her parents’ home in Hubei. Fu sees her parents twice a year. She works out 10 hours a day, occasionally in driving rain.

When asked about such sacrifices, Fu simply shrugs. “If you can dive in the middle of a rainstorm, you should be able to dive much better when the weather was good,” she said.

Diving Medalists

WOMEN’S PLATFORM

GOLD Fu Mingxia (China)

SILVER Elena Mirochina (CIS)

BRONZE Mary Ellen Clark (United States)