Called »The Duke«, and known as »The Godfather of Cliff Diving«, Duque started out diving in swimming pools before turning to cliff diving. Over the years, Orlando, 42, has won eleven world titles, and made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. Duque literally dedicated his life to cliff diving. With a 30-year diving career and 20 of those as a cliff diver, the Colombian high diver hopes to help recognize the sport as an official part of the aquatics family, and see cliff diving in the next 2024 Summer Olympics. Here’s the second part of our interview with Orlando Duque.

Is training a big part of your daily routine?

Training is continual, I train non-stop. We have a limited time in the air. Once I jump, I have less than 3 seconds and I have to utilize those 3 seconds the best way possible. My legs need to be very strong so I can gain a little more altitude. I need to make sure that I’m very fast, so while I’m falling I’m still able to spin very fast and complete my dives. Then, due to the height, when I hit the water, I need to be very strong to handle the impact because it will be really hard. The body has to be in very good shape. The water will push you around, but you have to be strong enough to be able to handle that.

Do you think the mental game is important?

Yes, very much. If your body is very fit, but your mind is not up to it, you won’t get the right result. When you’re standing on a high cliff looking down, you start to really worry, your mind is what’s going allow you to do the dive. Your body basically freezes because your brain is sending a message  -‘be careful, you could kill yourself. Step away, stay there, don’t jump.’ But in your head, you know you can do it, you know you’re prepared to do it. So it is actually your mind that allows you to do that. I do some mental training. For example, I can see my dive in my head, I see myself from far away, I see myself from inside my eyes doing the dives. I do breathing exercises when I’m on the cliff or on the platform ready to dive. When I start to get worried, I know I can visualize my dives, I know I’m prepared to do it. I just breathe nice and slowly, and then I’m in a different mood and ready to dive.

As a cliff diver, you know that the risk of losing your life is imminent, how do you overcome fear?

You have to trust your preparation. You have to trust your training. I know the risks, I think I probably understand them better than anybody else. I also understand that I’ve done all the preparation. If I’m on this cliff, trying to do this dive, it is because I know I’m prepared to do it. I’m pushing as hard and as high as possible, but I think without going over that limit. Making sure I’m very close to this limit, without really going over it because we have no protection. In some other sports, there’s the fortune of having some sort of protection, whether it’s a helmet or boots, or even in big wave surfing now, they have floating devices on wetsuits. In cliff diving, we don’t have anything. So I have to trust my preparation, I have to make sure that I’ve done it, and then I can perform.

You recently said in an interview: »If I climb to top, I’m ready to dive, there’s no turning back.« That’s what we call determination.

I make that choice. If you’re playing football, you’re in the field and the balls comes to you, you have no choice, the ball is coming to you. So it’s my choice. I wake up in the morning and I know I’m going to dive, I know I’m ready. If I’m climbing up to the place that I’m going to jump it is because I’m ready to jump. Unless there’s some sort of safety issues in the water, there’s some floating debris, animals or a boat and I cannot dive, nothing else can stop me. But if I’m standing ready to dive it is because I’ve gone through all the preparation. The mental preparation has started, the mental stress has started. When I wake up in the morning, I can feel my heart beating faster because I know that I will be competing. 

You spend so much time in the water, how would you describe the intimate relationship that you built with the sea?

Without water, I can’t do anything. It just gets to that point. Water is what allows me to do my sport and to enjoy the life that I live. If there’s no water, there’s no chance. It’s called gymnastics and it’s a completely different sport. Water is probably the most important element. Everything that happens in the air, I’m controlling. But water is what allows me to do it safely. When you hit the water, after a hard impact, it can be really heavy depending on how high you’re jumping from. Then, the water is trying to tear you apart but you can handle it. Then, underwater, everything is quiet. Underwater, everything is nice, everything is okay. It’s really enjoyable. The best feeling is being underwater after a successful dive. And you’re pretty much ready to do it again. It’s exactly what allows me to do my sport.

What does the environment look like once you’re underwater?

Like I said before, I have a little bit less than 3 seconds in the air. There’s so much action, there’s so much stress, the wind, the speed, there’s so much going on. All these things, when I hit the water, disappear. Underwater, everything is quiet, everything is calm. Your first reaction is like ‘Okay, everything is okay’. Then, you realize, ‘Oh this feels so good!’. In the water, sometimes, from over excitement, I’m shaking. It’s just because the feeling is so intense. And it doesn’t have to be competition. What I try to explain to some people sometimes is that it’s more about the dive. Sometimes, it’s just a beautiful place, nice rock, it doesn’t have to be too high, 10-15metres. I jump in the water and it just feels good. To me, it’s tempting, it’s attracting. I want to jump, I want to be in the water. The time I spend in the air is so short that when I’m in the water is actually when I’m experiencing the best feeling of the dive. Because it is where I probably spend more time. 

Today, you’re considered a legend in the sport, you won 13 world titles, and have two Guinness world records to you name. What are your next projects?

I’ve been lucky to have a really good career and great results. But I don’t just sit and remember that. Of course, I want to keep winning, that’s why I keep competing. Next year, we’ll have the World Championship, I would like to win that again. I won the first Gold medal in 2013 so I would like to repeat it. It’s the highest honor we have in our sport.. One of the biggest projects is trying to include high diving in the Olympic Games. It has potential. I may not be able to compete at 42, but I can play a role in making sure that it is included and some of the other younger divers get to show the sport I love in the Olympics. I think that would be a really cool project to work on the next few years. And in terms of diving, I always had this idea in my head: I want to do this road trip, starting in South America, then maybe check out some European places, and Africa. On the road, I want to explore more. A lot of my events lately are fly there, dive, get on a plane, fly out again. So I want to do it on my time, that would be something fun too! 

Credit photos:

Jason Halayko / Predrag Vuckovic

Romina Amato / Marjan Radovic / Tomislav Moze News

The post The Godfather of Cliff Diving – part 2 appeared first on PANTHALASSA.

Recently, Dubai hosted the Red Bull Cliff Diving in Dubai Marina. For the last step of the World Series 2016, world-class cliff divers joined to compete on Pier7, an iconic building offering a panoramic view on the magnificent Dubai marina. On October 28, 2016, Pier7, well-known as the home of some of the emirate’s most popular dining spots, has been transformed into a 27 meters-high diving board. The occasion for Panthalassa to meet Orlando Duque and draw up a portrait of the world’s best cliff diver.

Tell us more about your background and career as an icon in the world of high diving…

I started diving in a pool in Colombia. I used to go to the pools to watch the divers. I really liked the color of the pool, not so much the swimming pool, but I liked the dark blue of the diving pool. As a little kid, I used to go and watch the divers practice. Then, the coaches asked me if I wanted to try. The next day, I was there and I fell in love with this sport. Since then, I just wanted to keep practicing and learning more.

When did you go from classic diving to cliff diving?

I did that for about ten years. I was competing with the national team, doing all the regular competitions. Every pool is the same, every pool looks the same. It does no matter where you are, it’s always the same height and the same conditions. Everything is very similar. So, after a while, it started to get more attracting to be outside, to start different places and start jumping. I was hired to do a contract in Austria, to do a jumping show. While I was there, I started watching the Red Bull World Championship on TV. I though ‘I think I can do that!’ So I started training for that. I went for my first competition in 1999, and I placed second. When I placed 2nd, I thought ‘I think I could be really good at it’. That’s pretty much when it became really serious. I remember telling myself: ‘Now I’m gonna practice really hard, I’m gonna dedicate myself and make it a career’.

You define cliff diving as, I quote, »The more natural form of diving«. Why?

I think so, this is what I always tell people. I love finding one rock that is there. If it’s deep water, we are ready to dive. All I need to do is jump. So it’s a little bit more natural than jumping in a pool. When you’re in a pool, you have to build a platform, you have to build a pool, you have to build all these things. You’re adapting everything for you to be able to dive. Whereas in cliff diving, you’re in nature, I’m adapting myself to the conditions. I’m making sure that I can jump in those conditions. It’s much more natural than anything else.

 What does it feel when you’re up there? How do you describe this adrenaline?

From the heights that I jump, a lot of people would probably never jump. But when you find a little rock on a nice afternoon, you’ll see that a lot of people is jumping. You go to any beach that has a rock anywhere in the world, and you can see people jumping from the very little rocks. That’s where I go to the point of almost everybody has done a cliff dive or a dive at least. And that’s already enjoying cliff diving. I see the world with different eyes. I walk around, I look at the balconies from hotels, I look if there’s a pool, and if I can maybe jump from there. I see a rock, I look how beautiful it is, but I also start looking to see if there’s a possibility to jump. If there’s a bridge, I look down to the river to see if the water is deep enough. I enjoy it so much. To me, it’s finding places to jump, that’s where the fun is.

Is there a part of craziness or everything is under control? 

To do it at the level we’re doing it right now, everything has to be under control. The risk is too high, the maneuvers we’e doing in the air are too complicated. You have to be trained for many years to do what we do. At that level, everything has to be under control. Normal people may need more craziness than skills, cause the skills can take so much time to learn. If somebody wants to jump, it doesn’t have to be super high, maybe just 5 meters-high. To a lot of people, it’s already very high. You need a little bit of craziness telling you in your head ‘Just run and jump!’ But after the jump, when everything goes okay and you’re underwater and everything is fine, you feel like you’re so happy! That contrast is the nicest feeling that you get out of a cliff dive.

Sometimes you dive from a cliff, some others you dive at night from a building in a marina. How exciting is it to discover different places and different atmospheres depending on the location you dive from?

That’s basically the reason that brought me to cliff diving. All the pools are the same; some are inside, some are outside but all the pools are the same. With cliff diving, we change locations every single time. Some are gonna be at night, some are gonna be in a building, some are gonna be from a bridge. Everything changes so much that you need to adapt really quickly. You need to be able to be versatile and well-prepared because we don’t have so much time to get ready to the location. That makes the whole thing much more interesting. To me, that’s what makes it much more challenging and more attracting. A lot of times, I get so focus in my dive that I completely forget about everything else that surrounds me. After the dive, I look around and I’m like ‘Whoa’! It’s one the nicest component of the dive. Yes, I do enjoy very much the dive itself but just exploring all these locations, going around the world, and seeing all these different places is such a cool part of this sport. 

Credit photos: Romina Amato / Jason Halyko / Dean Treml

The post The Godfather of Cliff Diving – part 1 appeared first on PANTHALASSA.