Diving boards at hotel swimming pools have been outlawed - with 'elf and safety fears ruining kids' holiday fun
Published: | Updated:
As a youngster, and an oldster too, I have always enjoyed a good hotel diving board – by which I mean springboard.
I’m not talking about the ones you see at the Olympics that are three metres high – and certainly not the terrifying ten-metre platforms of Tom Daley and co.
The ones I have always had a penchant for are the one-metre springboards or lower that catapult you a short distance through the air.
There is something pleasingly liberating about this brief period of ‘flight’, knowing a soft watery landing awaits.
Your choice of dive, of course, depends on your level of acrobatic skill. At one stage in my youth I could perform a somersault landing feet first, which was not strictly speaking a dive.
However, it was a thrilling sensation and I can recall the joy of plunging below the water, resurfacing and doing it all over again.
When was the last time you spotted a diving board at a resort pool? They're increasingly rare, says Tom Chesshyre
Normal dives, with least splash possible, had a purist’s aesthetic. Then there were enjoyable backwards efforts, involving a leap of faith, as well as occasional ‘bombs’, when you grabbed your knees, formed a tight ball and cannoned into the pool.
You did not have to be young for any of this – aside perhaps for ‘bombs’ (for the sake of dignity). The hotel diving board was for all. But these days they have almost entirely disappeared, removing a large amount of the fun to be had at hotel pools.
Not just for those taking part, but for sunlounger onlookers too, as a certain voyeuristic pleasure was to be had in observing whatever feat came next.
What has happened? It’s all down to ’elf and safety, of course, and a fear of being sued.
Sadly, diving boards do sometimes result in accidents – and they can in extremely rare circumstances lead to life-changing, spine-damaging injuries. These can occur when divers fall back on springboards or strike the pool floor. Resulting lawsuits are likely.
The big clear-out was in the mid-1980s and 1990s when hotel insurance premiums for pools with diving boards shot up.
And even if a hotel were to shell out for legal cover, another consideration remained: safety regulations had proliferated around the same time, often requiring costly lifeguards.
Are we denying the latest generation core memory pool fun because springboards have been deemed too risky?
Larger pool sizes began to be stipulated for those with springboards, usually with at least 3.5 metres (11.5ft) of depth. And a ‘diving zone’ 10.5 metres (35ft) long is meant to prevent divers hitting the slope rising to the shallow end.
In this more litigious, safety-conscious era, hoteliers decided enough was enough. One by one, hotel diving boards were scrapped.
A tiny number of hotels still have them, notably Hotel Cormoran in Cattolica, near Rimini, Italy – though this is almost a one-off. Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, in the south of France does have an iconic board – often appearing on social media – though this is directly into the sea. You may also be able to find the odd rental villa with a pool with a springboard.
But that’s about it. Now it’s all waterslides (safer), swim-up cocktail bars (usually safe, if you don’t overindulge) and fancy infinity pools.
Perhaps it’s time, though, for a few more hoteliers to ‘take the plunge’ and bring back diving boards. Pools are just not the same without them.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.