SPORTS | Striving for excellence
23 June 2008
An Interview with Famed U.S. Diving Coach Ron O’Brien
Trained Greg Louganis to gold medal performances in ‘84 and ‘88 Games
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Reprinted with permission of the United States Olympic Committee from the Summer 2008 issue of Olympic Coach magazine. Olympic Coach is a free service of the USOC for all coaches. To subscribe: http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/ksub.nsf
One of Diving’s finest coaches, Ron O’Brien has an Olympic Coaching career that is hard to imagine. He has served as the Head Olympic Coach for seven straight Olympic Games and an eighth as an Assistant Coach. For 23 consecutive years, an O’Brien coached athlete captured a National Championship. As a collegiate athlete, he competed in gymnastics and diving for The Ohio State University (OSU) and he served as their diving coach for 15 years. The diving well at OSU has been named as a tribute to the success of Ron O’Brien.
You developed Greg Louganis and many other prominent divers from a very young age through their career. What were some of the key stages of developing him as an Olympic champion?
Helping him deal with personal issues in his teen years and keeping him focused on reaching his potential while going through some tough times. After he won two gold medals at the 1984 Olympic Games, I had to get him to refocus on becoming the most prolific diver in history. We discussed what previous great divers had accomplished, that he could exceed all the records for number of national and international titles and become the greatest diver in the history of the sport.
What are some of the changes that are occurring globally in Diving and how are they affecting the US ranks?
Over the past 20 years, other countries (China and Russia especially) increased the amount of time in training and with government support changed diving from a part-time to full-time situation. In the US, because of our commitment to education, our training time and emphasis on sport stayed relatively the same. We have now learned to better balance school requirements with training, so that our training time has increased for many of our divers to 35+ hours per week.
The difficulty of the dives has continued to increase, for both men and women. A diver wishing to compete for a gold medal needs to spend a great deal of time improving their physical profile to be able to execute these difficult dives. Many of our divers now place a lot more emphasis on their exercise program.
One of the famous sporting moments was when Greg hit his head on the diving board. As his coach, what went through your head at that time and how did you get him re-focused on the next dive?
My first reaction was for his safety, as I didn't know the severity of the injury. Once the doctors determined that it was a laceration and there wasn't anything more serious, I asked Greg if he wanted to continue. His answer, "we worked too hard to get here I don't want to quit now". He expressed concern that given the low score received on the dive he might not qualify for the finals.
I told him I would go out and check his position, which I did, and reported that he was still in 3rd place and would make the finals if he continued. The doctors temporarily stitched his wound and said he was clear to do his last two dives. At that point he and I took a walk down a dark corridor to an adjacent swimming pool not being used. He jumped into the cold water to jolt himself back to reality.
We joked about the situation and I told him hockey players get 50 stitches in their face and then go out and finish the game, surely he could do two more dives. I knew from our long history together that Greg has a great sense of humor and that is the best medicine for him when under stress.
His next dive was the same type of dive (reverse) he did when striking the board, so I strongly urged him to move the dive out away from the board more than usual. He did the best dive of all the competitors in the preliminary contest, but it was still too close to the board. His last dive was also a reverse type of dive, so I more than strongly told him to make sure his distance from the springboard was exaggerated. He did the dive well and safely. The rest is history!
What has kept you coaching at such a high level for so long?
A love of the sport and how intensely individual it is. The challenge of solving the problems involved in such a complex performance sport. The concept of pursuing personal perfection, both in me and the athletes under my direction was a driving force. I coined a philosophy about perfection as the years went on and perfection was unattainable but still the goal, "Seek perfection, learn to accept less and be kind to your self along the way."
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