What Is A Duraflex Board? (And Why Every Pool Has The Same One)
Duraflex is a brand of aluminum springboard, and it's what essentially every competitive pool in the world uses.
If you've watched diving at any level, from a high school dual meet to the Olympics, you've been looking at one, although those high school pools may have very old ones!
Why one brand dominates an entire sport
This sounds like a monopoly problem, and depending on how you look at it, it could be. But in some ways it's actually a feature.
Diving is a sport of feel. You spend years learning exactly how much a board bends, how long it takes to come back, and where you have to be to catch it.
Standardization means a diver who trains in Ohio can compete in Texas and the equipment under them behaves close to identical.
There are already variations in the board from one manufacturer, based on manufacture date, material batches, and even the local environment that the boards are in, meaning individual pools.
Why aluminum
Older boards were wood, and wood has problems. It absorbs water, it warps, it changes with temperature and humidity, and it degrades over time. A wood board in June doesn't behave like the same board in December.
Aluminum is consistent. It doesn't soak up the pool, it doesn't warp, and its spring characteristics stay predictable across years, even decades, of use.
Not to mention the technological improvements too. The tapered shape, the fulcrum, the standardization of the board itself with grip.
There have been a lot of improvements over the years.
What about boards for a home pool?
These are different products entirely.
Residential diving boards are usually fiberglass or acrylic over a wood or composite core, mounted on a much simpler stand.
They're built for jumping into a backyard pool, not for generating the height a competitive dive needs.
The requirements in pool size for a full Duraflex diving board would be much greater than the small backyard diving boards you or your neighbor may have.
They also don't have a movable fulcrum, which is a big part of what makes a competition board so bouncy.
Other things you're probably wondering
- What is the fulcrum and what does moving it do?
- How high are diving boards?
- How deep is a diving pool?
- Springboard vs platform diving
- DG