When Aussie Matthew Mitcham won gold with highest-scoring dive in Olympic history

To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a survey. The response was overwhelming! We chose 50 of them to re-live, one a day, before new memories are made in Paris. Scroll on for today's memory.

Matthew Mitcham steadied himself on the platform and gazed down at the water, knowing the dive of his life was required to snatch Olympic gold with his final routine.

The highest-scoring dive in Olympic history followed.

The Australian launched off the platform at Beijing 2008 and produced a back two-and-a-half somersault with two-and-a-half twists, leaving judges and millions of spectators in the venue and across the globe stunned.

Watch the video at the top of the page to see the moment Australian diver Matthew Mitcham won Olympic gold!

Four of the seven judges gave him a perfect 10. His score was 112.1. China's Luxin Zhou had the lead but was suddenly placed second. The men's 10m platform gold medal belonged to Mitcham.

The 20-year-old became the first Australian male to win Olympic diving gold since Dick Eve at the Paris Games of 1924.

And his dive remained the highest-scoring in Olympic history until the Tokyo Games in 2021, when China's Yang Jian topped it.

Once Mitcham was out of the pool, he crouched down and shed tears of delight.

He's not only remembered for his mind-blowing dive, but for becoming the first openly gay male to win Olympic gold.

"There have been other Olympic gold medallists since, and my Olympic record will be broken one day, but no one will ever be able to take away the fact I was the first openly gay male Olympic champion," Mitcham told the BBC many years later.

"It was the most amazing feeling and my proudest achievement."