Entering its 12th season, the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series restarts with six exciting locations for an equalized athletes’ roster of 18 nationalities.
With four brand new locations, the youngest ever permanent diver and the same standards for the men and women, the World Series progresses into a new decade after the longest break in history. Featuring reigning champions Rhiannan Iffland (AUS) and Gary Hunt (FRA), the sport that combines acrobatic free falls from up to 27m and speeds in excess of 85km/h, returns reformed following a record-breaking 2019 season.
At venues ranging from natural wonders and visual feasts to historic sites and untouched waters, this rapidly progressing sport will push the boundaries again in 2021 and produce two new champions during six tough and testing competitions.
New to the tour this year are Saint-Raphaël, France, Norway’s capital Oslo, Downpatrick Head in the northwest of Ireland and the location for the crowning of the champions in Baku, Azerbaijan. The setting for the season finale will set aside everything the World Series has seen in regard to showing off the performance-based sport of high diving.
However, before the divers get to experience this exceptional atmosphere, the world-class athletes of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series launch themselves from heights of 27m (men) and 21m (women), hitting the water less than three seconds later, also in crowd classics like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy.
21 months after the last competitive dives from nearly three times the height of the Olympic platform, the season’s first stop will take place in an all-natural setting on the French Riviera this coming June. Cap Dramont, just outside the village of Saint-Raphaël, is a nature preserve that will allow the athletes to take-off from plain rocks and embrace the world’s purest extreme sport to the fullest. Here, record champion Gary Hunt will compete under the French flag for the first time.
Following the flashy red cliffs on the famous Côte d’Azur, the World Series travels to its northern most venue in 2021. As another first, the Norwegian capital city Oslo plays host and will set the stages for the 24 athletes on its iceberg-shaped opera house at the head of Oslo fjord in August.
This season, the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bosnia and Herzegovina stands out as it is the first location on the calendar that is not completely new to the athletes. Their dives into the chilly waters of the Neretva River will once again inspire the local diving tradition and set the route going into the business end of the year.
In September, the cliff divers will find themselves competing from a brand new launchpad on the sheer cliffs of Downpatrick Head in Ireland. With two dives directly off the vertiginous cliffs, the impact of the natural elements on a three-second freefall will be extraordinarily evident.
For the penultimate stop of the season, the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series returns to its European home in the south of Italy. In the place where houses rise from the rocks, Italy’s one and only high diver Alessandro De Rose celebrated his maiden win in 2017, Rhiannan Iffland and Gary Hunt, the reigning champions, were crowned in 2018 and Maria Paula Quintero from Colombia became the youngest female athlete to claim a podium in 2019. The private rooftop terrace will be the take-off point for crucial championship points for the 8th time in eleven years.
Following five stops of astonishing action and competitive challenges, the 2021 World Series concludes with a first-ever visit to Azerbaijan. Where Western Asia meets Eastern Europe in Baku, the champions will be crowned during the sport’s indoor debut in the architecturally appealing Deniz Mall, which features a 12m diameter acrylic pool. Well visible from all levels, this extravagant show stage will put all 24 divers to the ultimate test of aerial awareness at the very end of the year.
As 2021 kicks off, the World Series enters a new era when the same number of male and female athletes have permanent status (8) and they follow the same competition format as well as a whole new generation of athletes pushes into the World Series.
Although 8-time champion Gary Hunt is the one to catch, sports director Greg Louganis believes that it’s all up for grabs this season in the men’s as established divers up their game steadily and newcomers jump on the podium on a regular basis. With two new permanent divers in the women’s division – Colombia’s Maria Paula Quintero, the first teenager to secure a permanent spot, and Iris Schmidbauer from Germany – competition will fierce up for undefeated champion Iffland as well.
2021 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series Calendar
June 12 – Saint-Raphaël, France – NEW
August 14 – Oslo, Norway – NEW
August 28 – Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
September 12 – Downpatrick Head, Ireland – NEW
September 26 – Polignano a Mare, Italy
October 16 – Baku, Azerbaijan
Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series divers 2021
WOMEN: Eleanor Smart, USA; Iris Schmidbauer, GER; Jacqueline Valente, BRA; Jessica Macaulay, CAN; Lysanne Richard, CAN; Maria Paula Quintero, COL; Rhiannan Iffland, AUS; Yana Nestsiarava, BLR.
MEN: Alessandro De Rose, ITA; Andy Jones, USA; Constantin Popovici, ROU; David Colturi, USA; Gary Hunt, FRA; Jonathan Paredes, MEX; Michal Navratil, CZE; Steven LoBue, USA.