Shade Global

INDY Star

David Boudia is becoming a new father and trying new events. Although it can be tedious to bide time in between Olympic Games, the Noblesville diver says that is not the case.

“I have had such a fresh perspective change this year in training and a new-found passion for this sport, which has a lot to do with my amazing wife and now soon-to-be daughter,” Boudia said via e-mail from a training camp in Shantou, China. “They both make me want to go into training and work hard for them.”

Boudia, 25, and wife Sonnie are expecting their first child in September. In Shanghai, he is competing in three events at the World Cup; individual and synchronized 3-meter, plus synchro 10-meter with Carmel 18-year-old Steele Johnson.

The year’s most important diving meet opened Tuesday with Johnson and Murphy Bromberg, Bexley, Ohio, finishing fourth in the mixed-gender team event.

Oddly, what Boudia is not doing is his signature event, individual 10-meter, in which he won Olympic gold in 2012. He also won a bronze in synchro 10-meter with teammate Nick McCrory in London. But Boudia said he intends to continue synchro training with Johnson at Purdue.

McCrory has relocated to Bloomington to train under Indiana University’s Drew Johansen, who coached him at Duke. Boudia said he is receptive to training with McCory in synchro 3-meter.

Boudia won the national title on 3-meter but doesn’t plan to compete in that event leading up to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

“This year is more so the ‘off’ year in diving and a very good time to experiment with new dives and/or new events, and we are taking full advantage of that,” he said.

He withdrew from the last two legs of the World Series, a six-meet format featuring prize money, so he could concentrate on the World Cup. He referred to a question about a possible injury as “minor tweaks” and said he was “taking a step back and training smarter rather than train through it.”

He loves competing in China, where he won a World Cup bronze medal in 2008 and a World Championships silver in 2011. His popularity is such that he is approaching 900,000 followers on Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

“We always have a packed house at competitions, which is not always the case in the States,” Boudia said. “I think that is why I have been able to do so well on my biggest opponents’ turf. The fans love the sport and respect the beauty that diving is, and you can tell by the amount of support they give the other divers.”