SYDNEY – If you thought the world of Olympic sports couldn’t get any wackier, wait until Saturday. That’s when the latest made for television Olympic event – synchronized diving – makes its debut.

The simple question that should be going through everyone’s mind at this point is: Why? With the Olympic line-up already jammed up with legitimate sports and other, equity-based additions that are much more deserving and understanding, like women’s hammer throw, pole vault, water polo and modern pentathlon, how did synchronized diving get in?

“It came about six to eight years ago to make the sport more fan friendly,” Van Austin, the manager of the U.S. Diving team, was saying yesterday as the U.S. divers were being rolled out before the media. “People in the sport were afraid that there was too much time between dives while the judges were tallying the scores, and therefore, not enough action,” Austin said. “So now they’ll have more action, more dives, to fill up the program.”

At the 2000 Summer Games, fans have been snatching up the synchronized diving tickets faster than the regular diving tickets, Austin noted. He went on about how the event will be scored, about how there will be five judges looking only at how synchronized the two divers are as they plunge from the 10-meter platform to the water below, compared to four judges rating the quality of the dives.

According to the U.S. diving team media guide, synchronized diving is the first event added to diving since 1920.

Michelle Davison, 21, a member of the U.S. diving team, is asked how she knows when to start the dive if, presumably, she is looking forward and not at her partner. The object of synchronized diving, if it is not painfully obvious from the event’s name, is to have two Olympians execute the same dive simultaneously, their every tuck, twist, pike and splash occurring at the same time.