40 years on

After becoming the youngest gold medalist ever at the World Swimming Championships in Perth, Australia, on Jan 4, 1991, Fu Mingxia completed a remarkable diving career that earned her the title “Diving Diva”.

The four-time Olympic winner dominated the women’s platform between 1993 and 2000, collecting four Olympic golds. She announced her retirement after the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

The Chinese diving team, tipped as the “dream team”, has claimed 40 Olympic golds in the last 34 years, ever since Zhou Jihong won the country’s first diving gold in the women’s 10-meter platform at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.

The team won seven gold medals out of the eight Olympic diving events at the Rio Games in 2016.

After Zhou, Chinese female divers such as Gao Min, Guo Jingjing, Wu Minxia and Chen Ruolin have dominated the Olympic diving platform in recent decades.

In August 2016, Wu Minxia splashed into the Olympic record books at the Rio Games to become the first person to win five diving gold medals at four consecutive Summer Olympic Games since 2004.

At age 30 during the Games, she also became the oldest female to win an Olympic diving gold medal.

Wu announced her retirement in December 2016, at the age of 31.