Quan's first dive was judged to be unimprovable, with a full 90 marks given. A new Chinese word has been created to describe her performances, translatable as "water splash disappearance technique", and it was not hard to see why.

A decent sized pebble would have caused more of a ripple after her first forward dive with three and a half somersaults and the standards hardly slipped in the following four attempts.

The saying goes, "it's not how you start, it's how you finish." But when you start a diving competition with perfect 10s from all seven judges on your first jump, a lead like that is hard for any competitor to catch.

China's Quan Hongchan made a massive statement with no splash on her first dive of Tuesday's women's 10m platform diving finals. The perfect forward 3 1/2 received a score for 90.0 points after accounting for degree of difficulty.

Her record-breaking dives at Tokyo 2020 were so good a new Mandarin Chinese word was created to describe her performance. The word is "水花消失术", pronounced "shui hua xiao shi shu", which literally means 'water splash disappearance technique.' It reflects her ability to enter the water with barely a ripple.

她在2020年东京奥运会上的跳水成绩打破纪录，非常出色，人们甚至创造了一个新的中文词汇来形容她的表现。这个词是“水花消失术”，发音为“shui hua xiao shi shu”，字面意思是“水花消失的技术”，表示她在入水时几乎不会激起涟漪和水花。

Her journey to the second Olympic trophy wasn't easy as Quan had to cope with puberty after winning the gold medal in Tokyo at the age of 14.

"The most difficult challenge is that I had to change my routines. And I also had to cope with weight gains," Quan said. "But I had a lot of support from my coach who's been giving me guidance and encouragement."

Quan has come a long way to become one of China's elite Olympians and hugely popular back home.

She was one of five children born into a poor rural family. Her father was an orange farmer and her mother worked in a factory until a road accident left her in poor health.

Quan has previously said that she was motivated to win to pay for her mother's hospital bills.

"If I list all of them, we will never finish. I'm very happy to have this gold."

“如果我把这些困难都列出来，那说都说不完。我很开心拿到这块金牌。”

"The future should be thought about in the future," she said. "And I should live in the present."

责编：田梦瑶

一审：田梦瑶

二审：唐煜斯

三审：秦慧英

来源：中国日报双语新闻