MEN'S SYNCHRONISED DIVING: Keith Dugganwatched the British 14-year-old

TOM DALEY, the precocious and pint-sized diving sensation from Britain made his Olympic debut yesterday. The Plymouth teenager has the image of a budding boy band star or a candidate for the next Harry Potter movie and in his Speedo's he looks like any English kid on holidays on the Costa. But in Beijing, he is big news. All week, Daley has been swimming in the celebrity stream and he helped to draw a bumper crowd to the Water Cube for the men's 10 metres Synchronised Diving final.

When he reviews this combined final experience in the years ahead, Daley will absorb it as a hard lesson in the realities of national expectation by the Chinese duo, who gave a master-class in this strange aquatic sport of aerial discipline. The British team finished last in the final of eight countries but there was always the sense that Daley was selected with the London Games in mind.

Daley seems like a smashing young lad and he has posted such eye-catching performances at European level that he may have an outside chance of a medal when he competes in the solo dives next week - but not on this evidence. In front of a huge London press presence, Daley smiled bravely and declared that he had had "great fun out there".

There is no doubt that the sight of such a young kid lining up at the precarious height of 10 metres is bound to become one of more memorable images of Beijing. The platform looks pretty high to begin with and Daley is so slight that you are torn between sitting back to watch him and shouting out for a lifeguard.

Although Daley is 5ft 1in, he has become such a gigantic presence that his senior diving partner, Blake Aldridge, is now accustomed to standing in his shadow. But although Aldridge maintained a patriotic stiff upper lift on his disappointment and was admirably protective of his young protégé, he couldn't quite hide the fact that his chances of a medal may have been hindered by the fact that he was working with a diver who was more boy than man.

"I felt this was my time for a medal," he said resignedly when asked about the prospects for London in four years time. "I knew after our first dive that it was going to be difficult here. But I have a great partner with me and obviously I will try and keep going as long as my body doesn't break up."

And there is no doubt that 10-metre diving is not a practice you would want to get wrong. These guys hit the water at speed. The day most of us find ourselves performing a triple twisting inwards three somersault flip is the day that we will wish we hadn't taken that extra step forward for the perfect photo of the Niagara Falls.

Many people like to lapse into a kind of graceless plummet off the side of the swimming pool on holidays or make a madcap jump off the edge of a pier. But this is a different world. Like so many Olympian sports, synchronised diving is strictly for devotees and is, essentially, an underground pursuit.

It is undeniably dramatic but by round six all except the specialist fans probably feel that once you have seen one inward one and a half somersault pike, you have seen them all.

Deep down, unless you are cheering for a particular team, you do harbour the secret hope of seeing someone do a Louganis off the edge of the board - as long as there are no serious injuries, of course. And there does seem to be a gratuitous amount of showering and Jacuzzi jumping going on in between dives.

During those breaks, the mind inevitably begins to turn over the weightier possibilities of high diving. What would happen, for instance, if someone cycled a bike off the platform? Like most of the water sports, synchronised diving masks a savage regimen of practice and repetition in the pursuit of perfection.

The Chinese pair were hotly tipped for gold and they did not disappoint their legion of home fans here. Yue Lin and Liang Huo both practice for seven hours a day and in each of their six dives, they looked not so much like two people as one person diving with a hologram likeness.

They cruised ahead on the technical scorecards and by the sixth round, the other competitors might well have opted for a belly-flop for all the chance they had of catching the local lads.

The Chinese boys are another good indication of how completely the national mindset has changed in recent decades. Huo was born in Shanghai in the year of the Tiananmen Square showdown. Now, at 19, he lists his hobbies as shopping and computer games and web surfing, like any Western young person.

As will be the story of these games, the Chinese divers reflect the success of the national Olympic programme here and while they are young enough to be around for the London Games, the question is if they will still be good enough to make the cut.

After all, with China's population, one imagines that they can keep producing kids like Lin and Huo, a succession of performers capable of keeping the People's Republic in gold medal standard.

Although several Chinese athletes have quietly protested about the overwhelming expectation placed on them as the host city chases a first place on the overall medals table, the Chinese divers found that if anything, Britain's teenager allowed them get on with the business of winning relatively unbothered.

At some point in early May, the natural human interest in Daley turned into a bit of a circus and walked through line after line of television and radio people, the worry was that all the fuss might in some way ruin him. He wasn't quite a little boy lost in Beijing yesterday but this frenzied expectation may have happened a year too early.

At least he learned in the Water Cube that they do not hand out Olympics medals for being adorable. And for a youngster who has been dogged by nerves before big events, he handled what must have been a surreal day with a show of composure that would be the envy of many Hollywood child stars. "I kind of expected it to be like that so I wasn't really shocked," he said brightly as the Chinese anthem filled the arena.

"We put our best into it out there and it just didn't happen for us. But it was a great experience and even though we didn't win, it was a great experience."

Aldridge was slightly more pessimistic and analytical in his assessment. "I was a bit splashy and Tom was a bit shaky."

In synchronised diving, those extra drops of water and the slightest tremor in a limb can make a world of difference on the scorecard. Britain will probably have to wait another four years to see the maturation of young Tom as an Olympic diving champion. In the mean time, he has another week of celebrity status in the athlete's village before he makes his debut in the individual event. He has talent and pluck but he may do well to heed the words of Liang Huo, who stands, like the Plymouth boy at a mere 5ft 1in.

"I'm a little short and that may affect my execution in the air, but it will be okay if I pay attention to it."

Not all Chinese wisdoms hail from the era of the dynasties. And in any case, Huo belongs to the most contemporary national ruling class: the Chinese Olympic dynasty.