Cliff Diving
Cliff diving legend Rhiannan Iffland on her most challenging season so far
The eight-time King Kahekili trophy winner on the highs and lows of the 2024 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series season, and what’s motivating her to keep coming back for more
Откъс от статията
Let’s be honest. When the 2024 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series season concluded in Sydney this month, it came as no great shock that it was the one and only Rhiannan Iffland standing on top of the winner’s podium.
The Australian’s victory in front of her home crowd was the ultimate finishing touch; an apt ending to a hard-fought schedule of World Series stops across the globe that marked her eighth consecutive champion title and 41st career event win. In fact, Iffland had the luxury of heading into her home stop with the 2024 title already firmly in her grasp, having officially taken the overall win at the penultimate stop in Türkiye in September.
Iffland receives the news that she's won an eighth King Kahekili trophy
© Romina Amato/Red Bull Content Pool
Iffland’s eighth consecutive King Kahekili World Series champion trophy is an unmatched accolade. No diver in the women’s category has claimed the coveted prize since 2016, the very same year that the Australian came in hot as a wildcard and went on to win her rookie season. So the record-breaking, history-marking cliff diver from Down Under has nothing left to prove, right? Or does she?
Turns out, even with eight titles in the bag, Rhiannan Iffland is NOT done.
01
2024: The most challenging season so far
Iffland’s World Series track record is littered with records – most overall wins (eight), most first-place finishes (41), most podiums (49), most starts in the women’s category (51), longest winning streak (13 over two seasons), first diver in the women’s category to score perfect 10 (in Downpatrick Head, Ireland, 2021)… the list goes on. The 33-year-old has spent eight seasons dominating the women’s competition in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, having only conceded the podium top step 10 times in her whole cliff diving career, since 2016.
It pretty much doesn't get much better than this. Heading into 2025, Iffland is still very much at the top of her game, fending off the new generation and inching the benchmark higher and higher. In the past five seasons alone, the Australian cliff diving legend has never been absent from the podium, with her lowest overall event ranking coming in at second place, and even then, it’s only happened four times since 2019 (when Canada’s Molly Carlson broke that record 13-win streak in 2022).
Yet, despite Iffland’s continued domination in the sport, she describes 2024 as her most challenging season yet. In 2024, Iffland picked up six out of eight event wins, battling and losing the first-place finish just twice to her Canadian King Kahekili trophy rival Carlson.
Winner Rhiannan Iffland leaps from Kinbane Castle cliff
© Dean Treml/Red Bull Content Pool
But for Iffland, the challenge of the sport isn’t purely focused on the 21m platform, and those three seconds of gravity-defying, acrobatic insanity, or even the punishing forces of the 10G entry into the water below. For a good proportion of the year, the gruelling schedule of the World Series becomes a kind of lifestyle, complete with its own set of mental and physical challenges.
02
Maintaining the motivation
“This season in particular has been much longer than previous years, “ Iffland explains, citing the eight event stops that kicked off in May and recently wrapped in early November. “In general that’s been the biggest challenge. Trying to hold onto the motivation, the drive, the training, staying mentally focused for such a long period of time. But I’ve been lucky to have had a support team and network and friends around me to make that a little bit easier,” she adds.
Not one to dwell, Iffland is quick to flip the narrative. “But I guess in a sport as enjoyable as cliff diving, it kind of gets easy to overcome those challenging things,” she laughs.
“I think one of the other things that’s been challenging for me this year is definitely the travel, spending so much time away from home, ” she admits. The 2024 World Series took permanent diver Iffland, along with 11 other women and 12 men, across three continents and multiple time zones.
Hear Iffland discuss her early career highlights on Beyond The Ordinary podcast:
From the east coast of the US, across Europe and to the season finale in Australia, the divers have covered thousands of miles travelling to awe-inspiring diving locations around the globe. During that time, she’s not only competing, but constantly training, maintaining condition, planning and practising new dives, avoiding injury, as well as all the media engagements and the spotlight that comes with being a living legend in a sport.
“I was based away from home for six months, just because travelling back and forwards to events and to the World Series was going to be a bit much,” Iffland explains.
03
The lowest point
On the face of it, it can be tough to imagine the reigning World Series title holder feeling any kind of stress or pressure in competition, given her ability to pull win after win out of the bag. When out on the platform, from the outside looking in, Iffland appears simply unshakeable.
But there’s an extra level of pressure to perform when you have a reputation for big dives, high scores and consistency - for greatness. And for record-breaker Rhiannan Iffland, anything that scores less than outstanding can often be scrutinised, just because winning is so normal for the Australian.
“Obviously being in that position sometimes feels like you always have the target on your back!” she admits. So to combat the extra level of forensic examination, means the diver from Down Under has had to hone her ability to see the bigger picture; to always be able to maintain perspective.
“I find it really important to take a step back and look at my world from the outside in, and try to remember how proud I should be of what I have achieved and what I have, and how far I’ve come as a diver,” Iffland continues. “Staying composed mentally and physically all comes down to doing the training - doing the hard work, putting in the hard yards and trusting that you’ve done that, and stepping up there confidently knowing that you’ve left no stone unturned.”
Iffland somersaults into Lake Vouliagmeni, Athens at the 2024 season opener
© Romina Amato/Red Bull Content Pool
So after starting the 2024 season losing the win to Carlson by just 0.10 points, the Australian was quick to clap back, answering the “loss” of second place at the season opener with back-to-back wins at the second and third stops. In fact, Iffland is the first to confess that, despite all of her success, she still doesn’t consider herself the benchmark for the women’s sport. If anything, her performance is very much driven by the non-stop competitiveness of cliff diving, and some good-natured rivalry:
“I love what I do. I love being competitive,” she says. “I don’t consider that I’m competing against myself, because all the other divers are hot on my heels, and they have been all year. And this drives me. You know, competition is really good. It keeps you pushing. It keeps me pushing and it keeps me improving.”
As much as it can appear otherwise, Iffland does in fact have her limits, and the 2024 season saw the Australian cliff diver starting to break that threshold. When the fifth stop of this year’s World Series rolled around in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, Iffland admits that she began to feel the strain of the mental and physical fatigue setting in.
Watch Iffland's groundbreaking dive from a hot-air balloon:
1 мин.
Rhiannan Iffland's world-first dive from a moving hot air balloon
The Australian cliff diving champion completed her jaw-dropping feat at New South Wales’s Lostock Dam.
Unusually, Iffland finished Round 1 in Oslo down in fourth place, before flipping and switching first and second place over the remaining three rounds of diving. A huge final dive handed Iffland her fourth consecutive win of the season, but this victory had been anything but easy.
By the following stop, the sixth World Series event in Montreal, Canada, Iffland would find herself finishing in second place behind Carlson for the second time that season, after trailing behind the Canadian in all four rounds of diving.
…it was becoming more and more difficult to regulate my emotional state between events, to come back and bounce back straight after an event…
“Honestly, the lowest point of the 2024 season was probably the halfway mark of the series,” Iffland explains. By this point, the divers had been bouncing around the globe, squeezing in five World Series events in around 11 weeks before the schedule slowed to a more mellow pace in September.
Iffland's reserves were running low during the mid-season
© Dean Treml/Red Bull Content Pool
“I started to feel very tired and it was becoming more and more difficult to regulate my emotional state between events, to come back and bounce back straight after an event and start training immediately. I think by the halfway mark I started to feel the little niggles and injuries really show through,” she admits.
04
Resilience… and a revival
Iffland’s resilience is, however, one of the strongest weapons in her arsenal, and by the seventh and penultimate stop of the season, having enjoyed a month of respite from competing, the Aussie returned to the World Series locked and fully loaded for a win.
Antalya was the perfect setting for Iffland's eighth record title win
© Romina Amato/Red Bull Content Pool
“Antalya was an incredible event,” the 33-year-old explains. “The place was beautiful, I was completely surprised by how amazing Türkiye the country is, and how amazing the event was. I also had nine of my good friends from home [Sydney] there supporting me. So, to win and share the whole experience with them was amazing,”
Iffland went on to take victory at the penultimate stop, securing her King Kahekili trophy, and scored her fifth win of the season at the finale, again supported by friends and family at her home event in Sydney – the perfect sign off for one of her toughest seasons.
“I don’t think there could be a better way to end the 2024 season. Competing on home soil with family and friends around, going to spray some champagne with them and enjoy the season that has been. It was incredible,” Iffland recalls. “And in Sydney we have one of the most iconic and most beautiful harbours in the world, so standing up on the platform and looking out at that is quite breathtaking and marvellous in a way.”
The most enjoyable part about it all was having the support and the energy from friends, family and fellow Aussie fans in Sydney
“I was super stoked to live in that moment again, as I learned in 2022 that it was an incredible feeling. That was very powerful and had really motivated me to keep going for the next two years,” she finishes.
Relive that Sydney season finale in More Than a Dive:
52 мин.
Season finale in Sydney
The season wraps up in Sydney, Australia, where the men’s and women’s champions will be crowned.
05
Overcoming doubts
With a track record like Iffland's, where winning is the norm rather than the exception, the Aussie athlete would be forgiven for thinking that the odds of landing the number-one spot at each competition are pretty much always stacked in her favour.
But while Iffland has self-belief by the bucketload, there’s not a trace of arrogance or egotism. Partly because it’s just not in her nature, and partly because cliff diving has a tendency to keep even the most seasoned and successful athletes humble. So even on the back of eight King Kahekili trophies, the Australian record-holder is always first to acknowledge that pocketing another title is anything but a given.
Moments of self-doubt creep in... but not for long
© Dean Treml/Red Bull Content Pool
“You never know. Diving is such an inconsistent sport. You have to show up at every single event and perform well , and at the start of the season you never know exactly where you’re at, especially for me because I don’t train on 20 metres,” she says. “So it’s hard to gauge where you’re actually at physically and mentally. And you just never know how you’re going to cope with the competition and all the different elements that each location brings.”
“Once the ball starts rolling then you get your confidence back. I definitely knew it wasn’t going to be easy at the start of the season,” she says, thinking back to her season opener in Athens. “I don’t really like to doubt myself but, yeah, of course there’s those thoughts in the back of your mind that maybe it’s not going to go as well as you intend.”
It’s always a game of cat and mouse with your brain
Putting in the hard graft has long been at the heart of building the positive mindset that helps Iffland overcome those fleeting, but sometimes persistent moments of doubt. Her hard work has become the foundation of her self-belief, and even when faced with some of the most adrenaline-inducing conditions (think wild rugged cliffs and dark, choppy swirls at the Causeway Coast), it’s partly why she appears so calm and collected on the diving platform.
Iffland trains for all weathers and all conditions: it's all in the prep
© Romina Amato/Red Bull Content Pool
“I try to convince myself that I’ve done the training, I’ve done the work, I deserve to be there and I deserve to be on top. There’s always that little voice that’s saying, ‘Oh you haven’t done enough, what is everybody else doing? Have I kept up with them…?’ So of course I have doubts, but here we are!”
06
The secret challenge seeker
For almost a decade, the pressure to keep delivering outstanding results at the very top level of her sport has kept Iffland focused and motivated, something she attributes to her competitive nature. It’s a trait that’s helped the athletic icon to keep nudging the boundaries of women's cliff diving ever higher, but not always kept her immune from the burden that a champion status can bring.
“Competing for eight seasons and being in my position, there comes a time when you go, ‘OK, how long am I going to hold up this pressure and how long do I want to feel this?’,” Iffland confesses. “Sometimes at the start of the season I say, ‘OK, I’m going to do it more for fun this year. I’m not going to have as much pressure on myself’. But that never happens when you get to the competition!” she laughs.
Cliff diving legends Orlando Duque, Gary Hunt and Rhiannan Iffland discuss how important it is to stay sharp throughout the season:
8 мин.
The fascination of cliff diving
Orlando Duque, Gary Hunt and Rhiannan Iffland discuss how important it is to stay sharp throughout the season.
Iffland admits that having consistently great results all the time is a feeling that you can get used to… but at a price. “I’ve often thought about how I will respond to a bad result. Or how will I respond if I start to not dive as well? And I think that’s one of the things that really plays in my head,” she says.
The Aussie attempts to combat the negative thoughts by approaching each competition as she did at the beginning of her World Series career, explaining that it helps to keep her more composed, mentally strong and motivated to keep turning up and testing her boundaries.
But what spectators – and her fellow competitors – might not realise is that the best women’s cliff diver in history has also been secretly mixing it up by playing her own game at each event over the past couple of years. Iffland clearly thrives on competition and adventure, so to keep the positive vibes at a maximum, she’s taken to adding a little extra personal challenge at each stop.
Watch more spectacular cliff diving films
“Nobody ever knows about them,” Iffland explains, “but it could be as simple as, ‘Oh, I want to try this new dive’. Or exploring something new at the location. I also challenge myself outside of the pool and outside of my training in leisurely things that I do. I like to keep trying different sports and activities to keep challenging myself.”
07
Eight titles and counting… but what’s next?
On the face of it, there’s not much more that the Newcastle native would need to add to her CV to feel fulfilled, if she were to retire from competing tomorrow. But with eight trophies from eight World Series seasons sitting on her shelf, Iffland is still nowhere near ready to even think about stepping away from the sport that she’s shaped, pioneered and conquered for so long.
Wanting to see the hard work pay off is something that keeps driving you and pushing you to your physical and mental limits
“At the end of every season, taking a break and coming back is like starting fresh and starting again. So, it’s kind of easy to stay motivated. I just also love that feeling of adrenaline and having a good competition, there’s nothing really like it. I don’t think I could find something that replaces that,” she reflects.
There’s also the FOMO; the prospect of missing out on facing brand-new challenges from the new generation of insanely talented cliff divers shaking up the sport, something that supercharges Iffland’s competitive spirit.
“Being in my position for a number of years it’s also really nice to hang onto it and then see where the sport’s progressing,” Iffland says. “There’s so many young divers coming in, especially on the female side, that I don’t want to step back yet because I want to see where it goes, and I want to be a part of that.”
Taking a leap of faith into the unknown
© Dean Treml/Red Bull Content Pool
As it stands, there’s no end in sight just yet to what the Australian cliff diving legend could still achieve, and the 33-year-old remains completely driven to keep exploring, challenging and testing her limits. So after lining up some much-needed R&R after the season finale earlier in November, Iffland is already looking forward to what next year’s Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series could serve up, stating that she’s “... excited to go into the 2025 season with an open mind and with some new ideas and enjoy it.”
And beyond 2025?
“I’ve been diving a long time and… honestly, I feel like I’m diving the best ever. I still have a lot more to get out of myself, and a lot more to play with and to push towards. In five years I hope to see myself still in the World Series and still in love with the sport. But, yeah, after that, we’ll see…”
Откъс от статията