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The 2010 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is this summer’s premier cliff diving showcase! Red Bull proves that you don’t need a traditional cliff to host a cliff diving competition – because past stops have led divers to jump from castles, cranes, and ships.

For the next stop, divers will jump into the Earth itself! Specifically, on June 6th, the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series stops in Chichen Itza (which translates: At the mouth of the well of the Itza) in Mexico. The area is known for its sacred sunken wells, including the Cenote Ik Kil which will serve as the venue for the competition.

Orlando “The Duke” Duque is the 9-Time World Champion of Cliff Diving. In this season preview by Red Bull, The Duke, dressed as his nickname’s persona, takes a carriage tour of Salzburg. The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series begins this Saturday in La Rochelle (FRA).

Found via the Springboards And More Diving Blog, it looks like FINA recently released a new DD table. The new table includes DD calculations for new, more difficult dives that were previously thought to be beyond the limits of human capability. Now, as the international difficulty of dives increases – these “super difficult” dives are now included in the chart.

As stated on Springboards And More:

“With the newer and increasingly more difficult dives being performed in international competition as well as the rumors of “super difficult” dives being attempted in the farthest corners of the world, it was time that FINA updated the Degree of Difficulty Tables.” (source)

The new chart is also available online from FINA.org. As Steve points out, the highest calculated DD provided is for 309 Reverse 4 1/2 sommersault pike from 3m springboard: an astronomical 4.8!

For your convenience, I’ve also translated this post into swimmer-ese:
Divers are doing really hard dives, so FINA updated their list of competitive dives.

Cliff Diving’s Highest D.D.
Cliff diving isn’t recognized by FINA – probably because there are only a handful of athletes who choose to compete in the discipline. With that in mind, I previously embeded a video from the Red Bull Cliff Diving series in which Gary Hunt (GBR) performs The Hardest Dive Ever Done… 5268D, Back Triple With Four Twists with a DD of 6.2! Compare this to other dives in the cliff diving competition that range from 2.4 to 5.8.

Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series participants demonstrating perfect flying squirrel position in a celebration following the season’s final stop.

Recently I was talking with one of my e-friends, and what started as a simple question turned into a lengthy discussion (on my part at least). The topic was jumping from extreme heights into water, chances of survival, and if being an experienced swimmer would increase your chances of survival.

I have several thoughts on the matter, and I’ll try to explain my thought process before coming to a final conclusion. All of this is, of course, open to discussion.

Height of the Fall
The height of the fall into water is probably the most important variable, because it determines the eventual speed at entry and therefore the force of the impact.

Most people around a pool are familiar with the height of the 10m diving platform. If you were to step straight off the side, you would fall 10m to the water (if you jump up and off, add your vertical jump height to the equation). To calculate the final velocity (v_f) using the free fall equation (v_f=g

Orlando Duque of Columbia was leading the overall competition going into the final stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Athens, Greece. Englishman Gary Hunt was in a close second, and gaining ground over the past few stops because of his tremendous degree of difficulty. Duque had to place 4th in order to take the overall title – and that’s just what he did. In the end, it came down to a tie of 127 overall points each for Duque and Hunt. Duque would be awarded the win because he had the most overall victories, a technicality described in the rules in case of a tie.

It was a battle of consistency vs. radical degree of difficulty, and in the end experience paid off for nine time world champion Duque. However, Gary Hunt won the Athens event by a margin of 22.3 ahead of Russian Artem Silchenko (who took the overall bronze with 111pts). Hunt is the only person in the world competing a triple quad (back 3 somersaults, 4 twists) and the news release from Red Bull said he came up with another new dive for the final in Greece. Hunt plans to start training on the 10m platform in anticipation for next year’s series.

Some more info from the Red Bull news release:

As cliff diving originally derives from Olympic diving, the series

Found via the AllVoices.com post “Real Life SUPER MAN In Switzerland…???“, these pictures show Czech Republic’s Michal Navratil (currently 7th after seven stops) entertaining the crowd during the Sisikon, Switzerland event.

Although the article accompanying these photos might lead you to believe Michal wore the cape during competition, this is unlikely because the athletes are taking the Red Bull Cliff Diving Series very seriously – as there were only 12 athletes selected to participate.

The Red Bull Cliff Diving Series concludes on September 20th, 2009 in Athens, Greece. For more, check out www.redbullcliffdiving.com.

Gary Hunt, of Great Britain, decided going into the 6th stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving Series that he would attempt the hardest dive yet performed in diving competition. In a video by RedBull.com, Gary said he never set out to be the champion, but that he just wanted to learn some new dives during the season.

Gary said that the dive requires a height of at least 26 meters to perform correctly, so he chose the Hamburg, Germany event to perform the dive. For competitions with lower “cliffs” he is comfortable with a back triple with three twists.

The Red Bull Cliff Diving Series has made 2 stops out of 6 so far this summer, and the competitors have yet to dive from an actual cliff! The first stop, in La Rochelle, France, had the divers leaping off a platform attached to the side of a castle.

Last week in Rotterdam (Netherlands), the divers took the plunge from 26 meters off a platform attached to a crane.

In spite of rain and high winds, 15,000 spectators came out to watch the high dive competition in Rotterdam.

RedBullCliffdiving.com has tons of media and information about the Series, which continues through the summer with a final stop in Hamburg, Germany on August 29th.