SWIMMING AND DIVING FEATURE: DAVID BOUDIA AND STEELE JOHNSON Golden Partnership? Boilermaker divers’ relationship could equal big-time success BY KYLE CHARTERS was only a kid, one who said little, instead stuffi ng his nose into his Game Boy [email protected] during those long car rides to and from training. On the opposite, Boudia, now a 25-year-old devout Christian, husband and avid Boudia only wanted to go home. father, was loud and liked the attention. He wore an earring and backwards hat, D It was 2006, or thereabouts, and the 16-year-old had already put in pimped out his car with rims and blasted his music. eight-plus hours at the pool and was ready to get out of there. Only one hold “I was a punk,” Boudia said. up: He had to wait as Steele Johnson, six years his junior, overcame his nerves That’s how Johnson saw it, too. enough to take a plunge off the tower, 10 meters above the pool. They couldn’t “He was a jerk,” he said. “He’s a way different person now, resembles almost leave until Johnson jumped, per coach’s orders, and he kept stalling. nothing like what he was back when he was 16 through the age of 19. He was So Boudia gave him an assist, or at least that’s the way he saw it then, bar- defi nitely a wild child and he knows it. He just was what a stereotypical teenager ricading the exit door from the platform to force Johnson to take the only other seemed like at that time to me. He was just too cool for everyone. way down. “… But now it’s great, because he’s an awesome guy to be around.” The terrifying way. Maturity closed the gap, as did several incidents along the way. There The hit-the-water-at-33-mph way. was the time in 2008 when Thomas Finchum, Boudia’s partner at “It is really high and a 10-year-old should not be doing 10-meter, the Games in Beijing, was injured, and the 12-year-old John- but I was,” said the now 18-year-old Johnson, as he competes in son jumped in his place during a his fi rst season as a Boilermaker diver. “He just locked the door practice. The dives synced shut and said ‘You’re not coming down until you do the dive.’ So up well, leaving Johnson it worked. I did the dive and we got to go home.” to wonder whether they’d And a relationship was born. Back then, Boudia took on the be able to compete to- role of an older brother — and chauffeur — picking up Johnson, gether one day. along with current Purdue junior Mary Beth Dunnichay, at about Then, more recently 6:30 a.m. on weekdays on Indianapolis’ north side to get them down- at the World Cup in Chi- town to the USA diving center an hour later. There, they’d put in their na last summer, John- “work day,” before Boudia drove them back in the evening. son was a little nervous The relationship now has morphed into a partnership, — freaked out might be a as the Boilermakers are likely to compete better description — before together in the 10-meter synchronized they had to perform a platform event at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The two have competed together a couple times already, including earning the bronze at the FINA Diving World Cup in China last summer. It’s a strong bond. “I’ve never had a real brother,” said Boudia, a gold medalist in the individual platform in the 2012 Lon- don Games, where he also fi nished third with then-syn- chro partner Nick McCrory. “So we have this brother relationship, where I’ll dog him like crazy and he’ll dish it right back out, but at the end of the day we’re really good friends, really good teammates, so w e have this good partnership together and it helps in the training atmosphere. “Nine years ago, I never would have thought that this 9-year-old kid would be a training partner, so it’s amazing to see him de- USA Diving velop through the past years.” The shared backgrounds of Steele Johnson and David Boudia have helped them to early synchronized success; the duo It was hard to picture back then. Johnson fi nished with bronze at the FINA Diving World Cup in China in July. f ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 3 59 Along with his synchronized event with Boudia, Johnson hopes to qualify as an individual in the platform at the Rio Games. Meanwhile, he has collegiate competitions at Purdue, where he’s already off to a good start. In only his fi rst semester, Johnson is a three-time Big Ten Diver-of-the-Week and has twice been named the conference Freshman-of-the-Week. Soldati says the Carmel, Ind., native has the physical gifts needed to be a top-fl ight diver: He’s fl exible and has good body alignment, but there’s more. “He’s got a fi erce tenacity. Mentally, he trains to win and wants to win,” said Soldati, the 10th-year diving coach at Purdue. “Sometimes I have to tone him down on that, thinking it’s not about the win but about being the best you can be. He’s a fi erce competitor and is tenacious in his training.” Tom Campbell Johnson has his eyes set on the Rio Games in 2016, both with Boudia and as an individual. And he’ll look for colle- Johnson displayed those characteristics ear- giate success at Purdue, as well. ly. When he was 9, he was invited to train at the USA Diving facility in Indianapolis, and opted out front four-and-a-half, a high-diffi culty dive that involves four full rotations, then of public school to be homeschooled, allowing for another half to get nose down to the water. the rigorous hours of practice. But he showed nearly right away that the choice “(It’s my) hardest and scariest dive and I hadn’t hit it at all when we were was a wise one. there,” Johnson said. “David saw that I was getting really nervous and he was At the 2006 Junior East Nationals, Johnson came in with few expectations, like, ‘Hey, Steele, look over there.’ And across the pond behind the platform competing against older, more experienced divers in the 11-and-under division there was a basketball court, and there were like 100 people playing basketball on the 1- and 3-meter springboards. down there on the courts. He’s like, ‘See that?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And he “We didn’t think much about him winning it,” Race Johnson said. “People were said, ‘Those people right there don’t care if we do this dive well or not, so don’t like ‘This kid is no one.’ But he went in and won it. The guy who was supposed to freak out.’ win it came up and said afterward, ‘You got lucky. Tomorrow, I’m going to beat you “During the competitions he says stuff like that all the time and it helps cool on 3-meter.’ And Steele goes in and just destroys the kid the next day. That’s when me down and the dives go as they are meant to go. But he defi nitely knows how I fi gured out, ‘Oh, he’s pretty good at this,’ and then it just skyrocketed.” to build me up and keep me calm, and I feel like I’m learning how to do that with Johnson has had plenty of success over the years, becoming a seven-time him too.” senior national champion with USA Diving, including the 2014 platform winner That kind of knowledge, the ins and outs of how best to motivate one another, at the Winter Nationals Dec. 21 in Columbus, Ohio, where he defended his title. can only be forged over time. And Johnson and Boudia have more of it before And he’s a 15-time junior national champion and four-time title winner at the they compete fi rst at the USA trials, then at the Rio Games. junior Pan-Am Games. It’s helpful too that the duo has had the same coaching, fi rst with John Wing- But it was his move to Purdue a couple years ago that gave him a needed fi eld in Indianapolis, then Adam Soldati at Purdue, helping them to naturally diving jolt. After a poor performance at an event in Australia, where he fi nished sync up. And they can continue to train together, at the Boilermaker Aquatics ninth in both the synchro and individual platform, he went looking for a new Center, rather than being taught in different locations. Boudia didn’t have that environment. luxury in ’12, with McCrory being a Duke student and training there, while Boud- After taking an unoffi cial visit to Purdue, Johnson committed to the Boiler- ia trained and studied in West Lafayette. makers as a high school junior, then started training under Soldati. “You make it work if they’re not at the same spot,” Soldati said, “but if they’re “We didn’t train for consistency,” he said of his previous coaching. “We at the same spot, it’s that much better; you can literally train together at some trained just to train. We did a lot of dives on 10-meter but not enough basics level every day.