Chinese divers have dominated international diving competitions in the female ranks for nearly three decades. Most of those athletes start competitive training around age 10.
So, when a 20-year-old Krysta Palmer approached University of Nevada diving coach Jian Li You about taking up the sport, you can understand how the Wolf Pack coach may have been a little skeptical. That was late 2012 but the skepticism quickly faded when Coach You watched Palmer throw herself into the sport and improve exponentially in a short period of time.
“She left a message on my office phone. I didn’t get it, but she came to my club and asked if she could try diving,” You says. “She looked older than most girls getting into diving. I asked how old she was and she said 20. I said, ‘Why don’t you walk on to my college team, and she did. She learned very quickly.”
Quickly might be an understatement. Palmer was among the top 15 divers in the conference within six weeks and she catapulted herself into the top three after just a year. In 2015, her junior collegiate season, Palmer won three individual diving titles at the Mountain West Championships. She was named MWC diver of the year after both her junior and senior seasons en route to earning NCAA All-American honors both years.
Palmer remembers those early days well.
“A friend of mine took me to the community pool in Minden and he was a diver,” Palmer says, reminiscing about her diving start. “He wanted to see what I could do in the water. We splashed around the local pool for a while …. [Soon after] Coach You saw a lot of talent in me. Within three months after walking on at Nevada, I was offered a spot on the team.”
It was a meteoric rise through the U.S. competitive diving ranks for Palmer, a Carson City native, who graduated from Douglas High School in 2010. She even qualified for the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials. Palmer qualified for the Olympic trials again in 2020 and this time she earned a spot on the team headed to Tokyo.
Of course, the Covid pandemic had other plans, forcing Olympic athletes around the globe to wait a year. Palmer took advantage of the extra year of training. After a slow start during the Olympic prelims, she ended up earning a spot in the finals where she captured a bronze medal in the three-meter springboard. She became the first American woman to earn a diving medal since 2004 and the first to do so in this particular event since 1988.
“Once I was able to flip my mindset and get focused that I had a whole extra year to get better and improve my strength and consistency, the extra time was a huge benefit,” Palmer says. “Going into 2021, we didn’t know where everyone was at around the globe in terms of training. I stuck with my own plan, stayed present, and didn’t let other things distract me from what my goals were.”
Of course, there is a secret ingredient in Palmer’s recipe for starting a diving career at the age of 20 and medaling in the Olympics just nine years later. Palmer was a strong gymnast as a youth and transitioned into a world-class trampoline athlete as a teen. She was a national champion on the trampoline in 2009 and on the U.S. National Team that competed across Europe. Injuries cut her trampoline career short but the flips, tucks, turns and spins all translated to diving.
The other key to Palmer’s quick transition was her mental ability to compete. Coach You raved about her mental toughness and that she already knew how to compete at an elite level even before trying a single dive. You said not having to spend a lot of time on the mental piece allowed them to focus on everything else that goes into honing world-class diving skills.
There are hundreds if not thousands of high school and college divers. It would be normal to wonder if there’s anything special Palmer would point toward—to attribute her ascension into world-class diving stardom.
“I can’t pinpoint one specific thing,” Palmer says. “I trained physically and mentally to be a top-level athlete. I always had high goals… and Coach You built my foundation. She always says she built me like a used car. I had the parts. She just put them where they needed to be.”
When Coach You is not sharing her time between diving instructor and used car mechanic, she’s often helping Palmer plan and execute a busy training schedule. Palmer says she trains six days a week, and five of those include dry-land training, in addition to her time in the pool. She hits the weight room three days a week to improve muscle endurance and work on injury prevention. She also mixes in some cross-training and cycling, but she still makes time to give her body a break.
“I don’t do much on Sundays,” Palmer says. “It’s important for both my mind and body to rest. Especially now that I’m into my 30s, it’s crucial for me to focus more on recovery.”
When Palmer looks back on her Olympic experience she does so with much gratitude. It would be hard not to. Still, there was one thing she’d change and that’s one of her biggest motivating factors to earn another Olympic berth. Since the 2020 Tokyo Games were postponed a year and impacted in many ways by the pandemic, her family was not part of the experience. With spectators prohibited in 2021, Palmer’s family was relegated to watching her compete on television like millions of other fans around the globe.
That won’t be the case when Paris hosts the 2024 Games later this year.
“It’s going to look different,” Palmer says. “I’m excited and motivated to go to another Olympic Games… I was definitely sad my family could not go with me [to Tokyo]. I got to experience my Olympic dream, but I knew I wasn’t done. My parents have played such a huge role in helping me get to this level. They’ve motivated me to become what I am today. I use that as fuel, especially on tough training days. They are part of my soul. I want to go back and have my family there and present.”
Palmer knows she still wants to compete and Coach You thinks there is plenty left to compete for in 2024. “Krysta has worked very hard,” You says. “I’ve never seen anyone that talented work that hard. A lot of the talented athletes are lazy. She just loves diving… diving is about a performance. It’s a show, and she knows how to put a show on. That’s a big part of her success. She looks better at this point in her training than [pre-Olympics] in 2021. There’s still four months to go before the U.S. Trials. She’ll be ready.”
While the Olympics are forefront in Palmer’s focus this spring. She readily admits she thinks she can continue to compete, beyond the Paris Games. But what about life after world-class competitions? Palmer has a degree in kinesiology and earned her MBA, but she has not allowed herself to think much beyond ‘maybes’ outside of the diving board and pool.
“It’s hard to say where my journey will take me,” the 32-year-old says. “I’m leaving that in God’s hands. I love doing speaking engagements, getting out in the community, and telling my story. Maybe that could be life after diving. I could see coaching in college athletics. I would love to start building a real estate portfolio, maybe open a gym. I just know I have to live out this dream before making new ones … I’m trying not to grow up too fast.
EDITOR’s NOTE: For the Palmer fans in northern Nevada, the standout athlete will be releasing her signature ‘Home Means Nevada’ t-shirts through the HMN company this spring. You can follow her social media to stay up to date on product releases and all things Palmer. Instagram: KrystaPalmer and X: PalmerKrysta
