Gary Hunt

Gary Hunt

Medal record
Men's High diving
Representing  United Kingdom
World Championships
	2015 Kazan	Men
	2013 Barcelona	Men
Men's diving
Representing  England
Commonwealth Games
	2006 Melbourne	10 metre platform synchro

Gary Hunt (sometimes listed as Roger Gary Hunt, born 11 June 1984) is an elite sports diver, specialising in cliff or high diving, and is the 2015 World champion in the event, where he holds the championship record. With a silver in the 2013 edition of the event, Hunt is the most successful male diver in the short history of the FINA recognised event.

Hunt is a former Olympic hopeful and Commonwealth diver who has a number of medals at Great Britain National Diving championships^[1] and placed 3rd in the 10m Synchro event at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.^[2] He chose to focus his diving career in the niche area of Cliff Diving, and has enjoyed an extremely rapid rise to the top of the sport. In 2010 he won the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, the premier championship within the sport, showing complete domination throughout the series and is thus considered to be the current reigning World Champion.^[3][4][5][6] He has a reputation for being a daredevil, pushing the sport to new extremes and inventing spectacular new moves to stay ahead of his competition.

Cliff diving career

2009 season

2009 marked the beginning of Gary's professional career in the sport after several years of training and competing in high diving events to build up his confidence and technique. He was quick to impress and finished 3rd, 3rd, 2nd and 2nd in the first 4 events of the series in France (La Rochelle), Netherlands (Rotterdam), Croatia (Dubrovnik) and Italy (Polignano A Mare).^{[7][8][9][10]}

His impressive start to the season meant he was in 2nd place in the overall championship at the halfway stage, 18 points behind 9-time World Champion Orlando Duque who had been dominating the 2009 season once again.

At the 5th event of the series in Turkey (Antalya), Gary introduced his first new dive – a previously unattemped back piked 3 somersaults with 4 twists.^[11] The dive has a difficulty rating of 6.2 and is the most difficult dive to be performed in any form of competitive diving. Although he was only able to finished 3rd at this event,^[12] the new dive got a huge amount of attention, opened the eyes of the cliff diving community and began to cement Gary's reputation as a fearless daredevil who was going to push the sport to new levels.^[13]

At the 6th event in Germany (Hamburg), Gary achieved his first win, again using the triple quad. With Orlando Duque suffering from minor injuries and finishing 4th, Gary closed the gap in the overall championship to 12 points.^[14]

At the 7th event in Switzerland (Sisikon), Gary came 2nd by the narrowest of margins but was again able to stay ahead of Orlando Duque who finished 3rd. Gary closed the gap in the championship to 9 points and was the only diver that could potentially beat Orlando going into the final event.^[15]

At the 8th and final event in Greece (Athens), Gary introduced his 2nd new dive, another very technical dive with a very high difficulty rating – a forward piked 4 somersaults with 1.5 twists. With his second win of the series, and with Orlando finishing 4th, Gary tied Orlando on points in the overall championship. However, Orlando was awarded the overall championship due to the fact that he had won more individual events over the year.^[16]

2010 season

After finishing joint 1st in 2009, Gary immediately resumed his rise to the top in 2010. Now confident with his 2 extreme dives,^[17] Gary dominated the first event of the year in France (La Rochelle) and won comfortably, achieving scores of 10,10,10,9,9 for his final dive.^[18][19]

At the second event of the year in Mexico (Ik Kil), Gary extended his lead on the series with another win. Once again his extreme dives with their high degree of difficulty were credited as the reason for his success.^[20][21]

With a good lead in the overall championship, Gary began to think about how he could do something new and daring once again. He planned to introduce another first in the world of cliff diving – a running take off, hoping that the extra momentum would allow him to change his front piked 4 somersaults 1.5 twists into 4 somersaults 2.5 twists.^[22]

At the third event of the year in Norway (Kragerø) Gary made it three wins out of three events.^[23][24]

Gary felt that the fourth event in Italy (Polignano A Mare) was the right time to unveil his new move – the running take off into front piked 4 somersaults 2.5 twists.^[25] As a requirement of the series, any diver wishing to use a new or unconventional dive must demonstrate the dive to the judges in practice sessions prior to the main competition in order to prove that they are capable of executing the dive. The judges have the power to stop an athlete using a particular dive in competition if they feel it is likely to be dangerous, and there was a lot of talk of this nature surrounding Gary's new dive. Gary was able to execute the dive during this practice session, finishing a little short but doing enough to convince the judges and once again made history in the sport with the first ever running take off.^[26] Unfortunately during the main competition Gary performed the dive during the 3rd round of dives and received the most serious injury of the 2010 world series, when his entry point into the water coincided with the crest of a wave, meaning that he finished very short and took a large impact to his chest and head. He was taken to hospital with minor concussion but released later the same day with no further injuries or symptoms.^[27] Despite this, he was still able to finish 3rd at the event, due to a near-perfect triple quad during the 2nd round of dives.^[28]

Following the accident in Italy, Gary chose to shelve the running take off dive for the time being, and returned to winning ways at the fifth event of the year in Switzerland (Sisikon) with another dominating performance, and another first for the series – Gary achieved a points total of 417.50, the highest ever and the only score above 400 of the series.^[29][30]

At the sixth and final event in Hawaii (Hilo), Gary finished second to Orlando Duque but only needed one point from the event to win the series, and was crowned World Champion on 12 September 2010.^[31]

2011 Season

Gary defended his title during the 2011 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, which began on 12 March 2011 in Rapa Nui, Chile (Easter Island).

2012 Season

For the third year in a row Gary managed to defend his title with 860 points, just 20 points ahead of Orlando Duque.

2013 Season

Gary narrowly missed the top spot at the end of the season coming second to the Russian, Artem Silchenko.

2014 Season

Gary won his 4th Red Bull Cliff Diving World series.

2015 Season

Gary won his 5th Red Bull Cliff Diving World series.

References

Awards
Preceded by Orlando Duque	FINA High Diver of the Year 2015	Succeeded by Incumbent