The last few Olympic Games haven’t been great for American divers, and London 2012 is shaping up to be similar. No one on the U.S. Olympic diving team will walk out of the Aquatics Centre with a gold medal around his or her neck.

The last time an American won a diving medal of any kind was when Laura Wilkinson won gold in Sydney 2000 in the women’s 10-meter platform. For the men, Mark Lenzi won bronze in the 3-meter springboard in 1996.

Since then, the sport has been dominated by the Chinese.

Even David Boudia, the best American diver since Greg Louganis, couldn’t beat China’s Qiu Bo at the 2011 FINA World Championships. Qiu won the 10-meter platform competition by over 40 points over Boudia.

Looking at the other American qualifiers for 2012 doesn’t inspire much more confidence.

Troy Dumais will be making his fourth straight Olympic appearance, but the last major honor he received was silver at the 2009 Worlds in the 3-meter springboard and 3-meter synchronized competitions.

On the women’s side, Cassidy Krug and Christina Loukas have a chance to win bronze at the most, assuming they execute to perfection in London. It would take a miracle for them to win anything more in their first and second Games, respectively.

U.S. divers haven’t performed well enough in major competitions to make them favorites in any competition at the Olympics.

Contrast that with Qiu, the reigning FINA Male Diver of the Year, who scored 25 perfect 10s and a total of 609.2 in the 10-meter event in the 2011 FINA Diving World Series in Beijing.

He and all of the other Chinese gold medalists—in all 10 events—from the 2011 Worlds will be in London.

Really, it’s not just the Americans who have no chance to dive their way to a gold medal. Nobody else has a shot, either.

The Chinese are just too dominant.