Mexico’s secret sauce: diving coach Ma Jin

Everyone wants to know: how did Ma end up in Mexico? And how has she so successfully applied China’s rigid training methods to a different culture? 

The story begins in Beijing. When Ma was nine, the Chinese government identified her talent on trampoline and instructed her to leave home to train with the strict but renowned diving coach Ren Shao Fen. Ma’s athletic high point was the day she placed third on the 3m springboard at the Chinese nationals. At 17, however, she was forced to retire after a training accident on the 10m platform. She hit her face on the cement tower, went blind for a few days, and her vision was never the same.

So Ma enrolled in a sports university and eventually re-joined Ren to coach the national team.

In 2003, thanks to a Mexico-China sports partnership, Ma was offered an opportunity to coach in Mexico (along with 31 other Chinese coaches in a variety of sports). She took it, and when she landed in North America, she brought the stringent and exacting Chinese training regimen with her. At first, she communicated with her divers via body language because she wasn’t fluent in Spanish.

“I was very strict when I got there,” Ma recalled. “In China, there’s a fixed schedule, very unified, not flexible … but they didn’t like it."

Five years into her tenure, in 2008, she tried to recruit Juan Manuel Celaya Hernandez.

“At the time, I was pretty young; I didn't want to leave my family,” he said. "My parents told Ma, ‘No, we still have to raise him,’ so I skipped that opportunity when I was 10."

Fifteen years later, however, after Celaya Hernandez competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and completed a successful career at Louisiana State University, he hadn’t yet qualified for Paris 2024. 

By then, Ma had relocated from Monterrey to Mexico City.

“I knew she was a hard coach, strict, looking at details every time, so I moved [to Mexico’s capital] on January 3^rd, 2024, expecting to work hard and seize the opportunity to make the Olympic team,” he said.

Yet the transition was still a shock.

“I was constantly uncomfortable,” Celaya Hernandez said. “If I had been working out four hours [a day] previously – with Ma Jin I was working out eight hours. The number of workouts, dives, dryland and conditioning was doubled.

“I think I earned her trust after I slipped off the 1-meter board in training the week before going to the 2024 Super Final in Xi'an,” Celaya Hernandez said. “You can still see the scars on my right leg from-my knee all the way to my toes. I told her, ‘I'm getting in the water. I'm working out anyway.’”

So the next day, he taped the front of his ankle to protect a big divot. Fortunately, his lower shin healed quickly because that’s where he grabs his legs mid-dive. His knee wounds healed a month or two after Xi’an.

At the Super Final, Celaya Hernandez took silver in 3m synchro with the 19-year-old prodigy Osmar Olvera Ibarra, who had been training with Ma since 2018.

Olvera clearly remembered what it was like to meet Ma.

“I arrived when was 13 years old,” Olvera said. “At first, I was afraid. People said she was very strict and practice was really hard. The first day, I came without a backpack. I didn’t think I was gonna train and Ma Jin said, ‘Okay, start.’ Practice was completely different. It was a complete change in training, technique, strength, everything – nothing like it.

“It was complicated, too, because I was used to always doing hard dives, hard dives, hard dives, and with Ma it was basic, basic, basic,” Olvera said. “So I had to switch it up and do easy dives, all basic technique. Then, only two weeks before the meet, you start doing your hard dives. The hard dives felt easier the first week of doing them. After week two, I was ready for competition.”

Just as Olvera had to overhaul his regimen, Ma Jin had to radically adjust her approach to coaching. By the time she started working with Olvera, she was in her 15^th year in Mexico and realized that she had to make her training more individualized.

At that point, Celaya Henandez also recalled, “Ma Jin was learning to tell people, ‘If you want to practice, then I'll pay attention to you. If you don't want to practice, then it's going to be reciprocal. Like, I'm not going to waste my time training you if you don't want to train.’ So she was a little less strict.”

But work ethic was never a problem for Olvera.

“I’m one of the guys that he wants to train – and train hard – all the time,” he said. “I’m very driven. That’s why I made such a good bond with Ma Jin because I want to go hard, and she wants to work hard. So it's pretty even.”

Eventually, both divers qualified for Paris, a second Olympics for each. Leading up to the Games, Celaya Hernandez said Ma never talked about medals, but both men knew that if they competed like they practiced, “a medal was really, really possible.”

Their dream came true on August 2, 2024. Not only did the pair earn the silver medal in 3m synchro, but they came just 2.07 points away from thwarting China’s unprecedented 8-for-8 gold medal run in diving. (The tension at the pool was nearly as palpable as at the 2008 Beijing Olympics where Michael Phelps, also vying for eight golds, nearly lost the 100m butterfly by a fingertip to Milorad Cavic of Serbia.) 

Afterwards, Ma’s reaction to the silver was, “Okay. Good. But it's not a gold medal, so we gotta keep working,” Celaya Hernandez said. “In fact, that’s still the conversation.  All the time, coaches tell Ma Jin everywhere we go, ‘Mexico should have won. Mexico should have won.’ And she gets angry again. It’s like a little jab.”

Nonetheless, Ma has become so valuable to the sport in Mexico that in 2012, the Mexican government awarded her the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor awarded to foreigners. Paris marked her fifth Olympic assignment, and her other notable divers have included four-time Olympian Rommel Pacheco and the 2009 world champion on 10m and two-time Olympic medalist Paola Espinosa. Ma had also trained current team member Randal Willars Valdez since he was 9. Last week, he won gold on 10m at the Guadalajara World Cup (but now trains in Tijuana).

“If it wasn't for Ma Jin, Mexico wouldn't have as many medals,” Olvera said. (Six days after claiming Olympic silver in 3m synchro, he earned bronze on 3m in Paris.)

“I really appreciate Ma Jin and all the opportunities that she gave us,” he added.

Celaya Hernandez, 26, said, “Same here.”

The feeling is mutual.

Asked how much longer she could envision coaching Team Mexico, Ma said, “I will stay because of Osmar and the other team members. Maybe 2028? Osmar has a lot of potential.”

Ma says that China is proud of her success, even when her divers deny China the gold… but “for me, Mexico is like a second home.”