No coach, no agent, no ego: the incredible story of the ‘Lionel Messi of cliff diving’

In early May 2009, 12 men arrived in La Rochelle on the west coast of France, carrying a few pairs of Speedos in their luggage. They had not come to swim but, as they liked to put it, to “fly”. Their sport, which involves diving from cliffs, buildings or bridges, always comes with an atmosphere of nervous excitement, but this time the stakes were higher than ever before. Cliff diving had long been at the obscure end of extreme sports, a pursuit for thrill-seekers with day jobs. Now, the energy drink company Red Bull was launching what it called a “cliff diving world series”, with eight events scheduled across the summer that would attract hundreds of thousands of spectators. Here was a chance at fame and, if not fortune, for the very best of the divers, a modest living.

In traditional pool diving, the highest event is the 10-metre platform, and even Olympic divers can find the height unsettling. In La Rochelle, the organisers had affixed a short platform to the ramparts of the medieval Saint Nicolas Tower, 26 metres above the frigid sea – as high as an eight-storey building. In their three seconds of flight, the divers would reach speeds of more than 50mph. At that speed, a head-first entry is too dangerous. They would need to break the water with their feet, trying to make as little splash as possible. In each of their three competitive jumps, the divers could take off facing forwards, backwards or, most terrifyingly, from a handstand position. As they fell, they would do as many twists and somersaults as they dared in order to impress the judges before hitting the sea. Make a mistake and it was like you’d “run full speed into a wall”, as the Colombian Orlando Duque, the favourite to win the new series, explained at the time.

The Duke, as he was known, was 34, charismatic and handsome, with a long ponytail that trailed behind him as he flew. His main rivals were veteran high divers who’d come from as far as Australia, Russia and the US. There were a few novices, too, including one from England. Gary Hunt was 24, skinny and pale. He was still so inexperienced from such heights that he wore two pairs of Speedos for extra protection. A Red Bull photographer later recalled that when he approached Hunt that year “he often looked at me with a suspicious, sidelong glance and quickly shuffled away”. Hunt was an introvert, but there was another reason for his reticence. He was emerging from a mental breakdown following the death of his best friend two years earlier.

Hunt went on to take third place in La Rochelle, and as the 2009 season progressed, it became clear that he was a natural. Like all the best divers, he had an acute sense of aerial awareness, always knowing where he was in the air, even as he spun and somersaulted. No matter how elaborate his routine, he was able to enter the water safely. Then there were the qualities that set Hunt apart: his preternatural calmness and his imagination. One of the major challenges of cliff diving as a competitive sport is that it is very difficult to practise in advance from the full height. At the time of Hunt’s first season, there were no training facilities with platforms high enough. (Today, there are just three, in Austria, the US and China.) For that reason, high divers had only ever performed routines that could also be done from a 10-metre platform in the pool. Hunt wanted to try something more ambitious, an unprecedented dive that made the most of the elevation from which he would be falling. He realised that there was only one way to proceed. He would have to practise his new dive in pieces, and then, on the day of competition, put it all together for the first time.

At the fourth event of the tour, in Antalya, Turkey, Hunt felt ready to try. Before the start, when the athletes informed the judges what dives they would perform, Hunt described a routine that had never been attempted before in any sort of diving: a triple somersault, with four twists – the triple quad. It would be, as Duque put it, “the most difficult dive ever done”.

Not everyone was pleased. The score for a dive is calculated by multiplying the judges’ marks for execution by a number rating the degree of difficulty. One of Hunt’s rivals publicly complained that he was trying to win by degree of difficulty, which was “not the right way”. Other divers worried he would get hurt. “We were like, dude, slow down, don’t push yourself, this is high risk,” recalled Hunt’s friend and fellow competitor Steve Black. He knew what he was talking about – his previous job included performing at a stunt show where he was set on fire before leaping into a tank of water in the dark.

Hunt ignored the criticism and the advice. He didn’t win with his triple quad in Turkey, but he did in the next competition. At the last stop of the season, he introduced another new dive, and won again. Overall that season, he finished tied on points with The Duke, who was crowned champion, having won more of the individual competitions. Hunt was content. He hadn’t set out to win the series, he told an interviewer during the season, but to explore his potential.

Going into the 2010 season, he was more confident: he ditched his second pair of swimming briefs. After winning the first three events, he announced another radical innovation: a running take-off from the platform. It worked in the practice rounds in Polignano a Mare, a seaside town on Italy’s heel, but in competition his timing was slightly out, and his chest and head slammed into the water. The safety divers, who wait in the water for the diver to land and then follow them under in case they get injured or lose consciousness, helped him on to a jetski and he was treated in hospital for concussion. For two weeks he couldn’t move his shoul