A perfect 10 is a rare score in diving, especially at the ever-challenging men's platform events.
Which makes teenager Zhou Luxin's 11 perfect 10s at an Olympic qualifier in China last week all the more shocking.
The 19-year-old from Anhui, who represents China's Navy team, scored 574.55 points to beat second-placed Lin Yue from Beijing by a margin of 13.9.
Reigning Olympic champion Hu Jia, freshly returned from an injury layoff, was relegated to fifth place after looking strong in the preliminaries.
Zhou completed two 100-plus-point dives including one perfect dive, which earned a full mark (all of the judges awarded him a perfect 10).
Still, that is not his best show. During the FINA Diving World Series held in Nanjing in September, he mustered three 100-point-smashing super dives to win with 582.4. Apart from Lin, who settled for silver with 575.7, no one was able to come close to Zhou, who led the bronze-winning Russian Dmitry Dobroskok by over 100 points.
Zhou's other shining moments include receiving full marks twice en route to winning his first international major title during the World Cup in Changshu, Jiangsu Province last year.
"I feel good. This is just my normal performance," Zhou said at a press conference later.
The emergence of Zhou and other young diving prodigies like Lin is music to the ears of national team head coach Zhou Jihong.
"It just shows how much ammunition we have on the men's platform," he said.
Zhou and the other Chinese coaches have been working hard to organize an all-conquering Olympic team as part of China's bid to sweep the all eight diving gold medals at the Beijing Games.
Zhou's place is all but guaranteed if he continues his good form, but he still needs to prove he can rise to the occasion when it matters.
Competing in his first world championships earlier this year in Melbourne, the nervous Zhou committed a couple of crucial mistakes that let Russian Gleb Galperin push him back to second place. His failure prevented China from cleaning up all the gold on offer.
Chinese divers have won three men's platform titles at the past four Games.
Teenager Sun Shuwei triumphed at Barcelona 1992, as did Tian Liang at Sydney 2000 and Hu Jia in Athens.
