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She's 14 Years Old And Just Scored 2 Perfect 10s To Win A Gold Medal In Diving

China's Quan Hongchan competes in the women's 10-meter platform final on Thursday at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
Tom Pennington
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China's Quan Hongchan competes in the women's 10-meter platform final on Thursday at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.

Rarely does practice, in fact, make perfect.

But on Thursday, Chinese athlete Quan Hongchan performed two dives that received perfect 10 scores by all seven judges on her way to winning gold in the women's 10-meter platform final.

The 14-year-old's overall score — 466.20 — also smashed the previous record in the event, according to NBC.

Quan became the second-youngest Chinese diver to win a gold medal after Fu Mingxia took home the top prize at the 1992 Barcelona Games at just 13 years old, according to the International Swimming Federation.

Of Quan's five dives in the event, two earned 10s across the board.

Another one of her dives received six 10s and one 9.5. But since the rules of diving call for the two highest and two lowest scores to be discarded to arrive at the final score, it was effectively a third perfect dive.

The young diver reportedly took up the sport to earn money to support her mother, who has an illness that requires year-round care, NBC reported. Quan entered the sport in 2014, later joining a club in China's Guangdong province.

Winning silver in the women's 10-meter platform final was Quan's teammate, Chen Yuxi of China. Australia's Melissa Wu came in third in the event.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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