Chinese teenage sensation Quan Hongchan produced three perfect 10-point dives in a dazzling display to win the Olympic women's 10 meters platform gold medal on Thursday, a performance illustrating China's dominance in the sport.
China claimed gold in all of the women's diving events since the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Quan, 14, the youngest Chinese athlete in Tokyo, beat teammate Chen Yuxi with 466.20 points.
She was awarded perfect 10 points from all seven judges for her second and fourth dives.
For her fifth effort, six judges gave her 10 and one 9.5, but that was still enough for a maximum mark of 96.00 points.
The teenager, who is only being eligible to compete at the Olympics thanks to the Tokyo Games being postponed a year as diving requires participating athletes to be over 14 years old, said she didn't expect to win as the Tokyo Olympics is her first time to compete overseas.
Overwhelmed by the number of journalists, Quan, who began the sport in 2014, reacted to the journalists' questions with simple and sometimes amusing answers.
Speaking of how she managed to make three perfect 10-point dives, which made limited splashes when diving into the pool, Quan said the team director just asked her to sleep early before the test.
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"It is as it is. I don't have any feelings for it and I didn't expect to make the dives with 10 points," Quan told reporters. "The team director told me some key elements before asking me to sleep early before the final."
Thursday's result means Quan became the second youngest woman to win a gold medal in the women's 10 meters platform after her predecessor Fu Mingxia triumphed at the age of 13 at the Barcelona Games in 1992.
Quan said her parents had previously "told me not to be nervous," which also contributed to her solid performance on Thursday.
"My parents told me not to be nervous. They said it doesn't matter if I get a medal or not. Just be myself. Those words really helped me," Quan noted, saying she planned to eat latiao, a popular Chinese street snack, to celebrate the win.
Born in a village in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, Quan is an ordinary teenage girl who, just like any other Chinese teen, likes to eat snacks and play games on her phone. Both of her parents are farmers, the family is very poor.
“The motivation that keeps me training is to make money, a lot of money, because my mother is sick and now the treatment needs a lot of money,” Quan said at the press conference.
In another interview, her answer also moved many netizens.
The reporter asked her: "where do you usually go to play during your holiday?"
"I just stay at home because I don't have any money," she said. I haven't been to an amusement park or a zoo before."
Now Quan Hong Chan's hometown, some enterprises in Zhanjiang have sent rewards, including a house, a shop and 200,000 yuan in cash.
Wish her a prosperous future and a better family life.