Holly Springs High grad and diver Andrew Capobianco riding new high to Paris Olympics

Andrew Capobianco is a planner. That’s part of why he loves diving — the predictability. He loves feeling the rhythm of the board and matching it. Once he leaps in the air, while it may appear chaotic, he’s “super in-control.”

Capobianco manipulates his spins and twists. His flat palms pierce the water’s surface. On his best dives, there’s almost no splash, yet he hears the gunshot-like sound as he pops below the surface.

“You accelerate through the water and then you’re just, kind of like, chillin’ under there,” Capobianco said.

He makes it sound easy. But despite his pinpoint accuracy and perfectionist tendencies, Capobianco’s journey back to the Olympics has been characterized by unpredictability.

His ability to adapt has allowed him to advance.

Capobianco, a Holly Springs High School graduate, captured a silver medal in synchronized springboard at the Tokyo Olympics. At the time, Capobianco dealt with a back injury that made it hard to train. He still feels that pain. And last December, after years of treatment and injections for swelling and inflammation, he underwent tendon surgery on his left knee.

Oh, and he’s also broken both wrists over the years.

Still, Capobianco said he feels stronger than ever. And it’s not because everything has gone according to plan.

It’s because it hasn’t.

‘I just had so much pressure’

Capobianco pulled into his driveway in Bloomington, Indiana, and broke down. It was late 2021 and the redshirt senior at Indiana University was mere months removed from the Tokyo Olympics. This was the post-Olympic depression he’d been warned about. Big, ugly tears came down.

“What is it son?” Mike, his father, asked.

He can’t just come out and complain. His parents didn’t raise him that way. So here’s the caveat:

“I love my teammates. I love my coaches. I love everyone. I know everyone means well.”

But?

It felt like he couldn’t go a day without someone saying it: “Andrew, you’re gonna win the Big 10 for us! You can win NCAAs! You’re gonna win another medal!”

He went from chasing the best American divers — like his teammate Michael Hixon and the gold-medalist David Boudia — to having the target on his back the last three years.

Capobianco is, according to Team USA head coach Drew Johansen, “the best diver in America.” But that comes with a burden.

“Even his own teammates, who are spectacular divers, everyday coming in are watching him,” Johansen, who also coaches at Indiana, said. “They’re competitive. And so it’s hard for him to just have an off day or a relaxed day, even in his own pool.”

Beyond that, Capobianco is a people pleaser. Every time he performed well — with the Olympics being the pinnacle — it made his loved ones happy.

Capobianco attached his self-worth to diving. It became too much.

“It reaches a breaking point where you do have to talk about it,” he said. “I just had so much pressure from all angles.”

If he stopped diving, Capobianco’s parents said, they’d support him.

He was dubious, saying “if I quit diving tomorrow, you would be upset.’”

Quitting? That simply wasn’t an option. Capobianco doesn’t quit on things.

He didn’t know it at the time, but Capobianco would soon be forced to step away from the pool.

And it may have saved his career.

’Living in the pressure cooker’

En route to the library in spring 2022, Capobianco’s electric scooter struck a brick, sending him flying. His left wrist hit the ground. Capobianco immediately knew it wasn’t good.

A doctor confirmed Capobianco broke his wrist and thumb, requiring surgery. The World Aquatics Championships that summer were out of the question.

But the mental and physical break, in retrospect, were needed.

“It allowed me to be a normal human being for a while,” he said. “And realize that there’s so much more to life than training.”

Capobianco stepped away from competing. That summer, he began coaching a local junior dive club, allowing Capobianco to reconnect with his passion in a new light.

“He’s living in the pressure cooker now,” Johansen said. “So when he gets to coach a little 12-year-old here in Bloomington and teach him how to do a back dive, that joy fills his body again and that gives him a little more balance.”

The kids at Capobianco’s club find it funny when competitors ask their coach for autographs. Oftentimes they fall in line, approaching Capobianco in a mocking, sing-song voice.

“They’re like ‘Can we get a picture with you?’” Capobianco said. “And I’m like, ‘Shut up.’”

Teasing aside, the Olympian takes his role as a coach seriously. He gets nervous at his athletes’ meets and feels “so much ownership” over how they compete. Capobianco knows how much each child cares about the result. They want to be perfect. He feels the same.

Capobianco, when he was their age, couldn’t bear making a mistake on his homework assignment. Even if he erased, he could see the mark. Time to rip it up and restart.

Missing a dive was “the end of the world.”

“Even if I missed just one,” Capobianco said. “It would snowball.”

Capobianco is still a perfectionist. His penmanship is meticulous. He’s replaced his large, physical planner with a rigorous schedule on his phone’s calendar app. Capobianco marks what time he wants to wake up and when he eats meals — all of which he preps weekly.

“Doing things on the fly isn’t really great for me,” Capobianco said. “I need to have it planned out.”

Capobianco’s performance at the 2024 Olympic Trials, admittedly, did not go to plan.

‘What is delayed is not denied’

Capobianco pushed through his wrist injury to repeat as Big Ten Champion and claim a third national title in 2023. There was the bad knee, yes, but he’d been able to pause his post-surgery recovery in February to compete at the World Aquatics Championships. Capobianco even took up Pilates to improve his focus.

But at this year’s Olympic trials, Capobianco and partner Quentin Henninger missed out on the lone U.S. spot in synchro, finishing just 2.37 points behind Tyler Downs and Greg Duncan.

Doubt crept in.

Capobianco thought back to a Dawn Staley quote: “What is delayed is not denied.” He went into his phone settings and made the mantra his background.

He would not be denied.

In the two days between the synchro and individual competition, Capobianco was “selfish.” He kept to himself, listening to slow pop music and watching the TV series “The Flash.” If anyone talked to him on the pool deck, Capobianco “probably would have cried.”

“When you have a disappointment like that, it’s just so much going through your head that you’re not able to just ground yourself,” he said. “So I don’t know, like, specifically what I did. I just went into autopilot mode.”

The approach worked. Back in his competitive zone, Capobianco attacked the 3-meter springboard final. He cruised through the first three rounds before approaching his hardest dive: a back three-and-a-half tuck. If you want to reach the podium, said Johansen, this dive is crucial.

Capobianco missed.

A botched entry opened the door for his competitors. But, still, Johansen “got a little smile.”

Why?

“I knew he was gonna crush the next two,” he said. “And in his younger days, that might not have happened. But the Andrew Capobianco that’s diving right now is firing on all cylinders.”

Capobianco maintained his lead and, carried by his final two dives, beat out the competition by 26 points.

At the time, he was “pissed” about his one miss. But now, Capobianco can look at the experience with a sense of gratitude. Everything didn’t go to plan, but he was OK. Capobianco failed, and yet, he will be an Olympian.

“Having that performance at trials made me feel really confident in what I can do this summer,” he said. “I dive my best when I’m feeling like that and I’m not really trying to lose that feeling.”

So, Capobianco, how are you feeling about Paris?

“We’re going to not miss that dive there.”

Sounds like a plan.

This story was originally published July 8, 2024 at 3:01 PM.