Team USA Diver Alison Gibson Speaks Out After Painful Dive Gone Awry Earns Her 0.0 Score: 'I Fought with Everything I Had'

Alison Gibson slammed her feet on the springboard during her first dive at the Paris Olympics, earning her a score of 0.0

Team USA diver Alison Gibson is leaving the Paris Olympics with some bruised feet — but with her pride still intact.

Gibson, 25, shocked the crowd at the women’s 3-meter springboard competition on Wednesday, Aug. 7 when her first dive in the preliminary round went horribly awry and she ended up slamming her feet on the springboard while mid-somersault.

The failed dive prompted an audible gasp from the crowd, and earned Gibson a score of 0.0. But despite the gaffe, she carried on, and ultimately finished her remaining four dives, finishing 28th of 28 athletes.

In a lengthy Instagram post shared the next day, Gibson said that in 15 years of diving, “this has never happened to me.”

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“My feet were bleeding, my heels were painfully bruised from hitting the board, and everybody on the pool deck thought I was going to scratch. But I didn’t scratch. I kept my chin up and I kept fighting until the end of that event,” she said in a voiceover. “This was far from the outcome I wanted, but I fought with everything I had to represent my country as well as I could and I'm proud of that.”

Gibson said that while it might seem like her dive was “an embarrassing failure” to those on the outside, she saw it as anything but, and hoped that her perseverance would inspire others to keep going “even when you fall short.”

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“Our worth is not defined by one painful moment,” she said in the caption of the post. “I am who I am because of the journey it took to get here. And I will not let the shame and pain of this moment define me and my worth.”

Gibson made her Olympics debut in Tokyo in 2021, but finished in last place in the event. Though she briefly retired for two years, telling the Austin American-Statesman that Tokyo was a “gut-wrenching experience,” she ultimately came out of retirement in the summer of 2023 to give Paris a go.

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