Cliff Diving
Shortly before taking the plunge in Texas, Anna Bader takes another challenge.
The world’s foremost high diving competition, the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, is in the US state of Texas for the second stop of 2014, but the first for the women in the inaugural season of World Series competition featuring both male and female athletes.
Among those launching themselves from a 20-metre-high platform will be Anna Bader, winner of the first Red Bull Cliff Diving women’s competition in Italy last year. RedBull.com sidestepped the rattlesnakes and tip-toed around the tarantulas to find out a bit more about the 30-year-old before she takes the plunge into Texas’s Possum Kingdom Lake.
When was your first cliff dive?
I started competing in 2005, but my first cliff dive was in Jamaica when I was 17.
What would you be if you weren’t a cliff diver?
I’ve started training as a teacher. I want to be a teacher who cliff dives – and perhaps the first one in the world! I’m training to teach English and geography in a school in Germany. It gives me a nice balance because obviously in winter time it is too cold to cliff dive.
Where’s the best place you’ve ever dived?
I love Switzerland… the way the rocks look – it’s very Alpine – although it’s also fricking cold! Last year in Malcesine, in Italy, was also really cool. It’s really hard to pick just one.
What’s the best dive you’ve ever done?
I think it was the back armstand I did at the World Championships in 2013 in Barcelona. There was a big crowd and to do a dive well like that was amazing. That was probably the best dive I’ve done in my life.
You’re the favourite for the women’s 2014 World Series. Can you win it?
There’s a lot of pressure on me because I won the first women’s competition last year in Italy, but I know the other girls and I know they’ve really hard dives. I want to be somewhere up at the top but I know that it’s going to be really hard. They are ready and so am I.
For the latest from the Lone Star State, visit the World Series’ official website at redbullcliffdiving.com