China's Wu Minxia throws her towel prior to compete in the final of the women's 3m springboard diving event at the London 2012 Olympic Games in London, Aug. 5, 2012.
Slipping on the diving platform can happen to even the most well trained Olympian. In 1992 German diver Albin Killat looked like a lock for the gold medal, until, on one of his last dives, he slipped and ended up doing an embarrassing belly flop—much like Germany’s Stephan Feck, who this year who flopped on his back, dropping him well out of medal contention. That’s why you see divers carefully using a small synthetic chamois cloth to dry off before stepping off the board. Any swim chamois will absorb water off a swimmer’s body dive after dive, but the preferred cloth of many divers is the Sammy ($13.95), named after Greg Louganis’s coach Sammy Lee, who popularized the clothes in the US diving community in the 70s.