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Diving makes a huge splash in the psyche and the strategic Olympic game plan  for the sporting powerhouse of China.
Competitive diving is seen as the jewel in the crown by many in the mainland - and for good reason. Out of the total 112 gold medals the country has collected at six Summer Olympics, the national diving squad has mined 20 precious medallions from  the diving pool.
During the diving World Cup last week in Beijing, also designated as an Olympic test event, enthusiastic spectators thronged the iconic Water Cube arena.
The 'Dream Team'  bagged seven of the eight golds on offer. Who, many asked as they watched in admiration , can prevent a fantasy coming true and complete sweep  in six months?
But as with all fantasies, nothing is as it really seems. The almost-superhuman success of the divers is coming at a physical price, according to medical experts.
A thesis published in the November 2007 edition of Chinese Sports Medicine revealed that 26 of the 184 divers selected for the national team between 2000 and 2006 suffered from serious 'retina ailment', a condition that can lead to blindness.
Of the 26 inflicted with the dangerous condition, 20  were 10-metre high-platform specialists, the survey - carried out over six years - claimed.
The report made detailed data about the damage wrought on  divers by the harsh training regime public for the first time, and was carried out by a joint group of physiologists from the State General Sports Administration and Beijing Tongren Hospital.
They blamed excessive pressure on divers' eyes upon water entry - especially in the higher 10m platform events - which caused an unusually high incident of torn or even detached retinas.
The article also claimed the divers' relentless 'immerse-and-reemergence' in and out of the pool's chlorinated  water also contributed to the injury.
Some notable names among the casualties are Hu Jia, the Athens 2004 10m platform winner, and Guo Jingjing, arguably the most popular women's athlete on the mainland with two Olympic gold medals.
Hu told the  media last December that at one stage after his retina detachment diagnosis in 2005, doctors warned him if he continued his career, he would eventually lose his sight.
Even before the survey began, Hu's worsening injury mirrored that suffered by Sun Shuwei, the 1996 men's 10m platform gold medallist. His career ended when his left  retina became detached - a symptom that is surgically  reversible if diagnosed early enough.
However, the condition often goes unnoticed  until it's too late.
Xiao Hailiang, half of the team winning the synchronised springboard event in 2000 alongside Xiong Ni, was also forced to retire after his retina became too severely damaged to be treated.
The report made few headlines in the domestic media and any serious concern was played down. And it failed to answer if this was a common threat to all divers from all nations or unique to the Chinese.
The foreign coaches and team doctors who spoke to the Sunday Morning Post at last week's World Cup said the problem was unique to China.
'The pressure on the eyes jumping from the 10m platform is 850 times higher [than that experienced naturally],' said German team doctor Sabine Krueger.
'Eyes get hurt only among those who have an extreme defect in the first place. I have not heard of such a high number of [detached retina] cases among our divers,' he said, adding that the German diving system screened out those who were susceptible to the condition.
Team Canada performance director Mitch Geller said: 'We had the odd one or two with such injuries but they were isolated cases. I believe this is the same experience among my European colleagues.'
Geller said he believed over-training was only one cause of the high injury rate among the Chinese team.
'I'm not sure if it's something genetic or a result of [excessive] training volume,' he said. 'Chinese divers tend to train much more than the rest of us.'
Most international divers train for 20 hours a week. Chinese divers, at national and provincial level, train for five to six hours a day, six days a week from an early age.
Xinhua reported last week that every member of national team made 60,000 dives a year on average - a figure released by proud national team officials eager to showcase to the mainland public the sacrifice the athletes make in return for Olympic glory.
The mainland doctors' thesis suggested the young entry level might be doing as much harm as over-training.
'We found that more than half of the divers  with the injury began  training before the age of eight,' the thesis reads. 'It suggests those who start practising diving at an early age are more prone to retina injury later in their career.'
But recruiting  divers at an early age for professional training is one of the crucial cornerstones of China's supremacy.
Li Guosheng, a retired professor from the Beijing Sports University who consulted in the research, retreated from an initial consent for an interview. 'I won't talk at this sensitive time because my comments could affect the training regime of the national team, which is now in its final sprint towards Olympics success,' said Li.
Yu Fen, a former national diving coach now supervising a club at Tsinghua University, did agree to talk, though she glossed over the harsh training system of the past. 'The sports authorities are now carrying out regular eye checks as mandatory,' said Yu, who nurtured such stars as four-time Olympic gold medal winner Fu Mingxia.
She added: 'The experience is that the earlier you detect a problem, the more effective the remedy would be.'
Yu said Guo was a beneficiary of the new eye checks. Her right eye retina was diagnosed as having a detachment injury in its early stages in 2001. She underwent surgery and became the star she is today.
'The sports authorities have also tried some new tricks, like creating artificial waves in the diving pool to ease the water entry pressure,' Yu said.
But fears remain that the current and next generation of China's gold medal divers might be sacrificing their eyesight for the nation.
Practice makes perfect
Only the most committed are picked for the diving squad
National team members on the mainland make this many dives per year on average: 60,000



An eye for a gold medal