Photojournalist tracks the revival of a sport that gets little recognition here

There are more poetic ways to describe that split second between taking off from the platform and knifing into the water. But 15-year-old national diver Jonathan Chan pithily deconstructs that blur of perceptions to: "Sky, water, sky, water, and splash."

"Your eyes see things, but your brain doesn't," says Myra Lee, one of three local divers who competed in 2010's inaugural Youth Olympics Games (YOG).

This singular concentration is necessary not just to keep dizziness at bay but, more crucially, to avoid landing flat - or "splatting" - against the water.

Splatting, according to Myra, feels like "running into a wall without getting any serious injuries like your bones being broken, but the intensity of the pain is still there". "And if you splat once, you're bound to splat the next few ones because you're scared" and tense up, she adds.

There must be something exhilarating and intoxicating about it, that has kept a group of six teenagers coming back to the Toa Payoh swimming pool six days a week, for four hours a day to put their bodies through a gruelling routine. And all for a sport that receives relatively little official or public recognition in Singapore.

In 2009, Singapore Diving was established under the Singapore Swimming Association, and tasked to recruit and ready divers for the YOG. With little more than a year to go, a coach was hired, a learn-to-dive programme drawn up, and recruitment begun by word-of-mouth and through the Singapore Gymnastics Association. It made sense, given the skills required, to start with trained gymnasts.

Forced out of the national gymnastics team by a hamstring injury, for Myra this was opportunity come a-knocking. Mum Jaime Lee thought simply stopping would have been a waste of her daughter's 10 years of training, so she arranged for a tryout.

It was tough for Myra to adjust to the idea of landing head-first, but the uniqueness of the sport quickly made her feel like she was a cut above the rest.

"It's not a sport that everyone can do ... We have to have aerial awareness, and you don't see any sport doing somersaults other than diving, gymnastics and cheerleading. So it gives you this satisfaction to know that you're, like, up there," said the 18-year-old Anglo-Chinese Junior College student, one of the six currently on the national squad.

Another eight divers are on the development squad, training with a view to making the cut for the national team.

It is not an easy road for those who hope to take up the sport seriously.

Mark Lee, 18, who forms one half of a synchronised pair with his twin Timothy, took up diving a year ago after he bowed out of gymnastics in Secondary 4. "In the first week, training was so intense that I sweated and sweated until I lost 4 to 5kg."

Juggling schoolwork and training is a daily struggle for most of the divers.

"You find yourself very stressed," said Myra. "You're behind everyone in class because all my classmates, they go home after class and have a long period of time to catch up on sleep and to study. We don't have that luxury.

"Sometimes, I come to diving thinking, 'Oh no, I have this much homework to complete tonight', or 'If I fail tomorrow's test, how am I supposed to pass my mid-years?'. So you get these thoughts in your head, which distract you from diving, and when you cannot focus, you don't do well in training. And you end up very frustrated at yourself."

Drop-outs from the team aren't common (one or two a year), but SSA vice-president (diving) Lee Kok Choy said it's a case of "recruit two, lose one".

The larger goal, now, is to get more Singaporeans to participate in diving, both competitively and recreationally.

"For us to not have divers, when Myanmar has divers, Laos has divers and Indonesia has divers, I think it's a crying shame" said Mr Lee.

His vision: To form a large enough community of divers, among whom about 40 will train at a highly competitive level.

To get there, however, after the initial momentum of the YOG, the sport of diving needs to have more successes at junior and regional competitions such as the SEA Games, he says.

Which is why the diving team's failure to qualify for the national squad at last year's games in Indonesia was a disappointment.

But nine months on, seeing the divers' improvement since, he is "quite certain" of qualifying for the next SEA Games in Myanmar next year. "We want to reach a point where we're sure we'll get medals in Singapore 2015. If we get silver in 2015, we should be going for the Olympics in 2016. And definitely for the Olympics in 2020."

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