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Since winning her first cliff diving event as a wildcard entry in 2016, the young woman, who grew up in NSW’s Lake Macquarie region, has ruled the sport and should clinch her sixth straight title at the world series final in Sydney on October 15. Iffland has prevailed once more.įor that is simply what the 31-year-old does, over and over again. She surfaces from the river’s cool depths with a huge grin. It’s a heady display of athletic power and balletic poise compressed into three seconds flat. Suddenly, her arms thrust to her sides, her legs bend, and she explodes into a backflip, jackknifing into a rapid blur of three somersaults and two twists before arrowing feet-first into the water. Credit:Romina Amato/Red Bull Content Pool Iffland en route to victory in Paris in June.
For a moment, she stands there, utterly still. The crowd turns silent as she positions herself backwards with arms wide, manoeuvring her feet until just the tips of her toes balance on the platform, her heels facing the murky water far below. Yet walking onto the platform opposite the Eiffel Tower, Iffland beams at the spectators and waves. Any deviation can result in a fractured skull, broken limbs or worse. After plummeting at speeds of more than 85 kilometres per hour, if a diver’s body position isn’t perfectly aligned, the water surface becomes like concrete. Over a succession of up to four dives, female cliff divers must propel themselves from a 21-metre height – the men from six metres higher – and are given a score that’s multiplied by the degree of difficulty of their dive. Much like knife-throwing or Russian roulette, the world’s oldest extreme sport makes for inherently dramatic viewing. After failing to clinch the opener in Boston, the Australian is trailing in second place. Rhiannan Iffland is the reigning champion, but today finds herself in an uncustomary position. Yet the heatwave hasn’t deterred a noisy crowd of 20,000, who jam the banks and bridges of the Seine in the 16th arrondissement, where flashing signs implore them to “ s’hydrater réguilèrement”.Ĭraning sunburnt necks, they stare high above the river, where a blonde woman in a blue swimsuit steps onto a platform for the second round of the 2022 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. From a blank sky, the sun hits the boulevards like a hammer, pushing the thermometer close to 40 degrees.
I t’s a mid-June afternoon in Paris, and the city is woozy with summer heat. This story is part of the October 1 edition of Good Weekend See all 13 stories.
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