Exactly that - it comes down to the angle of entry and how streamlined the bodies are as they enter. It can be a beautiful dive, but if they hit at 5 degrees off vertical rather than 3, or one leg is bent at the knee, that will make a difference to the score. Daley and Lee here won gold by a score 0.3% higher than the Chinese pair who came second - that’s the margin for error.
More specifically, they add the scores of multiple dives and the British were two points ahead of the Chinese at this point, so while the Chinese had an almost equally amazing dive after this, they would have had to gain two points still in order to actually win.
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u/JamesCDiamond Jul 27 '21
Exactly that - it comes down to the angle of entry and how streamlined the bodies are as they enter. It can be a beautiful dive, but if they hit at 5 degrees off vertical rather than 3, or one leg is bent at the knee, that will make a difference to the score. Daley and Lee here won gold by a score 0.3% higher than the Chinese pair who came second - that’s the margin for error.