Career
He earned a silver medal at the European Youth Championship in 1978 in Florence, diving from the 10-meter diving platform. Chalibashvili died at the age of 21 following an accident during competition at the 1983 Summer Universiade (1983 World University Games) in Edmonton, Alberta, when he hit his head on the platform while attempting a reverse 3½ somersault in the tuck position. He fell into a week-long coma and subsequently died of heart failure, never having regained consciousness.
The total score obtained for the jump was 0.0, after a French judge placed an estimate of -3.5.
Well-known diver Greg Louganis was a participant in the competition and witnessed the incident. He remembered what had happened as follows:
I had a premonition.
I closed my eyes and plugged my ears. I knew something terrible had happened when I felt the tower shake.
I heard screaming. I ran to the edge of the platform and saw a lot of blood in the pool.
I wanted to jump in after him, but people were yelling, "Don"t touch him! Don"t touch him!" I couldn"t watch anymore. Bob Rydze, the United States. diving coach at the Edmonton games, blamed the tragedy on the athlete"s coach, saying that Chalibashvili had been having difficulty with the dive all week in practice. In answer to a journalist"s question as to why Rydze did not warn Soviet coaches, he replied that he would have appeared to be interfering in the Soviet coaches" business.
According to reports, Chalibashvili"s coach was his mother, Thais Muntean, who worked at the department of water sports at the Georgian State Institute of Physical Education (now dissolved and converted into a chair at the State University).
She was absent from the competition. A few years later a similar dive killed Nathan Meade (1966-1987), an Australian athlete in training.
Greg Louganis earned a gold medal with the same dive at the 1988 Summer Olympics.