SINGAPORE — A hush would fall upon the OCBC Aquatic Centre whenever any of the nine divers from China, competing in this weekend’s FINA Diving Grand Prix, took to the diving board during training today (Oct 15).

Indeed, it seemed as though the other 37 divers from the remaining eight countries here for the event would stop what they were doing just to study the slick moves of the athletes from one of the world’s most successful diving nations, and try to pick up a tip or two.

And this was despite the fact that the Chinese diving team that is competing this weekend is not even the country’s elite “A” team, but is made up mostly of divers aged between 18 and 22 sent here to gain international experience.

Yet, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this batch of divers — which includes world junior champion Wu Chun Ting — could go on to become future Olympic gold medallists.

The secret to the country’s success in diving, said Chinese diving coach Wang Xiao Song, lies in the deep tradition of the sport which dates back to the 1980s.

“You could say our pioneer batch of divers, who were already the leading divers in the world back then, left behind a lot of valuable experience, techniques, and methodologies that we picked up on,” he said.

“We build on their foundations, and continuously improvise on them. That’s why we can maintain our high standards for so long.”

Chinese divers also train up to eight hours a day — sometimes more — for six days a week, he said. Many start from young and receive training in all events across all categories: in the springboard and platform, from heights of 1m to 10m. According to Wang, Chinese divers are not segregated by age during training. For example, junior world champions are made to train with their seniors to instill humility and stimulate their progress.

China’s divers won six out of eight gold medals at the 2012 London Games, and Wang is confident that they can win most, if not all, of the gold medals on offer in Rio next year.

Despite the improvements shown by their rivals from Russia, Germany and North Korea, Wang is not concerned: “We just focus on our own training, and on grooming our ­divers. We are happy to see others improve, but we are also always ­improving and making adjustments to our training methods.

“So we are not afraid of these competitors.”