44 meters! New world record in death diving

The 22 year-old Frenchman Côme Girardot is the new holder of the world record in death diving. The athlete from Bordeaux jumped from the 44-meter-high cliff of the Cimbarra waterfall near the central Spanish town of Aldeaquemada in heavy wind conditions. After a three seconds flight, he dived into the water with both hands and feet at a speed of 106 kilometers per hour.

VIDEO Death Diving

"The hardest thing is always overcoming the mental barrier at the start," said Girardot, "in the jump, the airtime was way bigger than I expected and I experienced my biggest adrenaline rush ever!"

A dozen of his fellow competitors on the Dods Diving World Tour helped with the preparation and implementation. "We are a big group of friends," said Ken Stornes from Norway and Lucien Charlon from Switzerland, who were on duty as lifeguards. Stornes had set the world record at 40.5 meters in December 2023 and Charlon improved it to 41.7 meters in August.

Dods Diving (from the Norwegian Dods for death) was invented in Norway in the 1960s and is a discipline of high diving, it differs from the classic variant, in which the feet usually hit the water surface first, in that, hands and feet are immersed simultaneously. During the jump, the maneuvers in dods diving are more similar to tricks in snowboarding or skateboarding, in contrast to high diving, whose difficulties are more comparable to those in gymnastics.

PANORAMA Côme Girardot Death Diving Jumping
Kliknutím otevřete velké panorama. FOTO: Paul Hannah - Smaragd