Dear Sir/Madame:

My name is Wayne Oras. I am a former diver and have been a teacher and diving coach for some 34 years. As a diver, I was the Big 8 Conference 1 and 3 meter Champion in 1964, '65,and '66 and Collegiate All-America. In 1981 I was a Master's National Champion. My coaching has been in the high schools (District 214 and 211) and park districts in Illinois. I have been the Illinois Swimming Association Diving Chairman for the last 28 years. I was elected into the Illinois Diving Hall of Fame in 1985 and just recently into the Illinois Swimming Hall of Fame.

You may have guessed that I am a advocate for diving. I am having some difficulty in understanding why diving boards are disappearing from many municipal swimming pools. I realize that back in the 1980's there were swimming pools that shouldn't have had diving boards because they were too shallow. Since that time boards were removed from hotel/motel pools by your industry's directive. Which, by the way, was the right thing to do at that time.

Recently since completing a study of my own that is on file in the National Safety Council and PRIMA libraries, I fail to understand why diving boards continue to disappear from municipal pools. Municipal pools are really the only places left where people get their exposure to diving, take diving lessons and some may even join teams. These pools are the very grass roots training grounds for our Olympic event. Without diving boards they will not have any of these opportunities.

I have written to risk management and reporting agencies, pool owner/ operators, program administrators and yours' is the final one to address. Their concerns were focused on the cost of insurance. I understand that your companies are in business to make money. However, I do not think that the intent was to eliminate an Olympic Sport. Between the cost of insurance and the swimming pool industry's shift to water parks, diving boards seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate.

After discussing this issue with the people in the recreation area, I have been informed that when they try to get insurance the cost is prohibitive because they have diving boards. I have been told that insurance companies place pools with diving boards in the highest risk category. This seems rather odd since the diving area appears to be the safest part of a municipal swimming pool.

In my research, I could not find a diving board accident at the recreational level in municipal pools for the last seven years in Illinois. The National Swimming Pool Foundation had similar findings in that there were no municipal diving board accidents in the literature for at least the last five years. This should not be considered unusual since your original objective was to lower the incidents of serious diving injuries. We have accomplished that so the question is when will boards stop disappearing in municipal swimming pools? Has your industry considered restructuring or lowering its rates to reflect this trend? If there hasn't been one of these incidents across the nation in the last five years then maybe it's time to do just that. Basing rates on the assumption that diving is not safe or has the potential for injury is condemning the activity without any factual evidence. This practice continues to cloud the safety issues because it is not reflective of what is actually happening.

My hope is to keep diving boards from disappearing in swimming pools that are safe to dive into. There appears to be some misconception or mis-representation in statistical data that keeps the "so-called" experts spreading falsehoods about diving safety. If the statistics are ever reported and interpreted accurately, diving from diving boards in municipal pools will be shown to be exceptionally safe. When a diving injury occurs, people always have a tendency to look toward the diving boards. It is unfortunate that they look to the wrong part of the pool and even the wrong types of pools.

Residential, apartment complex and private pools have diving boards and are reporting diving board injuries. Your companies may even insure some of these pools. When accidents in these pools are included as "Sports Injuries", people begin to make assumptions that are incorrect and make decisions that have a detrimental affect on the future of diving. Injuries in those pools are not Sports Injuries. The difference between these pools and municipal pools is huge. Municipal and competitive pools have a diving envelope that is larger and deeper than that of the above pools. That alone makes municipal and competitive pools much safer for diving. Many of the municipal and competitive pools follow FINA Guidelines when they are being constructed. Also there is always supervision by lifeguards and instructors. State pool codes regulate municipal pools with regard to depths, distances and even the rate of reduction of the transition slope to the shallow end. Those codes don't necessarily apply to the other pools. Even if diving boards are removed, the real risk of a diving injury remains with shallow water. Shallow water is the place where most of the diving injuries occur. With the trend to build water parks, most of the equipment is placed in shallow water. In my mind, that makes water parks an even higher risk than if a pool has diving boards.

I would beg for your assistance in this matter to ensure that diving boards cease to disappear from municipal pools because of the false claim that it is unsafe or what appears to be extremely inflated insurance rates that these organizations can not afford and still stay in operation.

Thank you for your time and consideration.