By PETER JESSUP
SYDNEY - Yes, the best divers in the world are scared when they stand at the top of the 10m platform, backs to the water, hanging on by their toes and their heels letting them now how much nothingness is behind them.
They hit the water at around 55 km/h and they have all blown it often enough to know what happens when you don't enter with the cut of a knife. It hurts. Hospital treatment is routine.
At the Sydney aquatic centre yesterday, the United States diving team "Siamese twins," Laura Wilkinson and Jenny Keim, were training together in preparation for the first Olympic competition in synchronised diving.
"It's scary up there," Wilkinson said of the 10m platform. "You know all the time you can get hurt."
She ripped a tricep muscle that put her out for months after a fifth place at the Perth world championships, but came back to win the United States nationals this year. Strained necks, backs, shoulders and wrists are to be lived with. The pair collided mid-air and tumbled and entered badly and painfully, but have not broken anything so far.
The pair have a lot in common - they are both 22, both university students, both formerly gymnasts who took diving up in the last five years, and there is not a lot between them in size either, with Wilkinson 1.68m and 52kg and Keim 1.65m and 54kg.
And they like each other. "You have to. If you weren't getting along you wouldn't be co-operating."
And though Wilkinson comes from Houston, Texas and Keim from Miami, Florida and despite the fact that they have been diving in synch only for this year, they know each other's moves through reverse somersaults and inward pikes.
Their coach, Kenny Armstrong, describes them as the Siamese Twins, eating and rooming together, doing the same things, liking the same music.
"It's good for their routine and it's very heart-warming the way they hang together, inseparable," he said.
The pair, who have to be national representatives in the individual event in order to qualify for the synchronised section, say it helps having a partner for the high-dive.
"It's a lot of fun, more fun than being on your own," Keim said, "There's someone to talk to on the way up the ladder and at the top. It helps you relax more."
But she could work on only one correction at a time and they had been struggling to get to their peak - a dive, five minutes in the nearby spa to talk it over, another dive, for a couple of hours.
Keim went to diving after suffering a stress fracture of the spine as a young gymnast.
She did not think of injury, she said. She thinks of Wilkinson and worries whether her timing will be absolutely correct to satisfy the judges.
Wilkinson thinks of a Bible verse, Philippians 4.13: "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me," she said.
When they get to the top they skip along the platform and look at the drop as a confidence builder, according to Wilkinson.
They use small towels to wipe themselves dry. More routine, calming. Then it is like a signal when they throw the towels over the side in unison, and turn to face the drop, again in unison, no thought of the splat the wet towels make as they hit the tiles around the pool.
They go to the edge chins up, backs straight, just as they want to enter the water. There is a collective breath in from the spectators every time, even from Armstrong, who enjoys coaching as much as the women enjoy his coaching.
There are eight teams entered in the synchronised men's and women's diving.
Chinese 16-year-olds Na Li and Xue Sang are favourites for the women's gold after first placings at World Cup events in Australia and New Zealand in the past two years.
Herald Online Olympic News
Diving: Pair admit real fear
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