Fu fights on for her fourth gold

It took Fu Mingxia until the fourth round of five to move into the lead in the 3m springboard diving. A 2 somersault with pike (that curious misappropriation of the language that means you push the legs straight out) earned her a range of marks from 8.5 to 9.5 and enough to overhaul her compatriot Guo Jingjing.

For Fu it was a fourth Olympic title, to rank her alongside the Americans Greg Louganis and Pat McCormick in the pantheon of diving champions. Fu insisted that she did not consider herself special, but she is alone in that assessment. She is not so much special as unique.

Fu retired at 18. The only thing that most people retire from at that age is school, but Fu had had enough of international diving, of winning and the celebrity that went with it. Why not? The Chinese prodigy had won her first world title in 1991 in Perth when she was only 12, and when she was so insubstantial that a Romanian gymnast would have looked bulky alongside her.

Fu's first Olympic title came in Barcelona, two years later, when she won the platform diving by the colossal margin of almost 50 points, and became one of the youngest Olympic champions in history.

In Atlanta, Fu won the platform and springboard titles, a triple gold medallist before she could legally drink in an Australian bar, then she gave it all up for college. Her comeback, she has maintained, is for fun and for her.

Somewhat different from the first time around when, if you believe the stories, as a nine-year-old she was whisked away from her parents in Wuhan province to train in Beijing, seeing her mum and dad only twice a year.

The demands of her country hardly made it incumbent on her to make a comeback. Though she has already pocketed a silver medal this week, with Guo in the synchronised springboard on Saturday, she is not stealing all the glory.

Of the seven diving titles settled, the Chinese have taken four golds and four silvers. They are on a roll in this games; Fu may be leading the charge, but the rest of China is close behind.