Monday, Oct 3, 2022 • 10min
Meet the 20-year-old built to dive off 27-metre-high platforms: Aidan Heslop
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Aidan Heslop is built for cliff diving – and it shows. The British athlete fell in love with the sport at the age of 10, and is now helping push it into a new era for a new generation. Hear how he got hooked after watching Gary Hunt in action and made it his goal to compete in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. He achieved that ambition when he became the youngest diver ever to compete in the Series at 16. Now he's scoring 10s and setting the bar ever higher with his inventive diving techniques. His next goal? World Champion.
This is a long read taken from Red Bull.com. Read this article at https://www.redbull.com/int-en/aidan-heslop-cliff-diving-beyond-the-ordinary-podcast-profile
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/aidan-heslop-cliff-diving-beyond-the-ordinary-podcast-profile
Discover more about Beyond the Ordinary and find every episode at redbull.com/beyondtheordinary
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(4)
Christian
Aidan Heslop
Gary Hunt
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Transcript
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Christian
00:07
Meet the 20-year-old built to dive off 27m high platforms. How British athlete
Aidan Heslop
fell in love with Cliff diving and is helping push the sport further. This is a long read taken from RedBull.com,
written by Tarquin Cooper, read by Christian.Share
00:27
It's the Summer of 2012 and
Aidan Heslop
is watching a video of Gary Hunt
about to take his third Red Bull Cliff
diving World Series title. It's the first time 10-year-old Aiden
has ever seen cliff diving and he's spellbound.Share
00:43
For the past three years, he's been diving in his local paul in
Plymouth
in the southwest of England
, but suddenly he realizes that this is the sport for him, and all it takes is a mate sharing a video and the fire is lit.Share
01:02
Today
Aidan Heslop
is one of the world's high divers, creator of what is officially the world's hardest high dive and one of a group of young athletes taking the sport into a new era. And among his competitors is Owen Weymouth, the childhood friend who first showed him that video and who was taking part in his sixth year in the World Series, Aiden
remembers it like this:Share
Aidan Heslop
01:25
I saw the first-ever video of
Gary Hunt
doing a new dive in one of his competitions: I was hooked. I was always quite a hyperactive kid. I was always running around the garden or like jumping on beds from sofa to sofa, you know, and I was never really clicking with any sports. It was just like a natural talent for diving from the various start.Share
Christian
01:47
And from the very beginning,
Aiden's
goal has been to compete in the Red Bull Cliff diving World Series
.Share
Aidan Heslop
01:53
I've progressed still in my perimeter diving, but everything I've done in one more diving up until this point has been to benefit my
high diving
.Share
Christian
02:03
The result is a finely tuned 80kg cliff diver's body, with a resting heart rate of 41 that is perfectly conditioned for diving off a platform 27m above a wild sea.
Share
02:15
Since he was very young, says cliff diving legend and World Series Sport director
Orlando Duque
.Share
Orlando Duque
02:19
A we knew he was ready for big things, in terms of strength, speed. The difficulty of his dives, he's shown in this first full season what he's, what he's capable of and I think there's more to come in the future. I'm curious to see where he's gonna go, what he's going to try or if he's going to focus on polishing those dives that he's doing now.
Share
Christian
02:42
Aiden's
rise has coincided with a steep change in the evolution of the sport as the dives have significantly changed. There was a time when most divers were simply doing whatever they could do after 10m board with the addition of the bar on the move that lets athletes land on their feet typically this was the triple half, three somersaults with a half twist.Share
03:03
The hardest dive was a triple quad, which is three somersaults and four twists. It was the first dive invented specifically for Cliff diving by
Gary Hunt
and it was the dive that got Aiden
his first podium in 2019.Share
03:18
Fast forward to June 2022, and
Aiden
is taking part of the Boston
tour stop on the World Series for this dive, he needs a run-up and launches himself into the air from the platform. In the three seconds that it takes to hit the water. He manages to execute a dive consisting of four forward somersaults with 3.5 twists pike before an almost perfect landing on his feet. It's enough to secure him his first World Series victory.Share
03:44
Fair enough, when you consider it's been described as the
World's
most difficult high dive.Share
03:49
The degree of difficulty or d d as it's known in the sport is calculated by the type of takeoff number of somersaults and twists and the position during the somersaults and the entry this particular dive has previously earned him the gold at the FINA
high diving
event in Abu Dhabi
in December 2021.Share
Aidan Heslop
04:09
Nowadays the sport is getting pushed so much so it's really not the case anymore that it's the 10 m dive. Just adding that little bit extra. I mean I do the hardest dive in the World at the minute and if anyone wanted to do that same dive minus the Barani on 10 m, you'd have to be superhuman, it's just physically impossible.
Share
Christian
04:30
Gary Hunt
is considered a cliff diving legend, have him taken nine world titles and he agrees that the sport is only going to continue evolving.Share
Gary Hunt
04:38
The level now is really, really high compared with my first competition was 2008.
Share
Christian
04:45
He says the
Red Bull
tv documentary Pushing Progression Evolution of Cliff Diving.Share
Gary Hunt
04:50
I mean we're doing two more somersaults on some of the dives, three more twists on some of the dives. It really has come a long, long way. It's going to get better, bigger.
Share
Christian
05:02
More than a decade of regular competition schedule and consistent diving conditions on the World Series circuit has helped change the game and men and women continue to come in to push the sport further.
Share
05:13
Can Aidan - who in many ways has emulated his diving style on Gary's - be one of those taking it forward? Throughout his career he's been prepared to push and try new dives.
Share
Aidan Heslop
05:25
I think a lot of it came naturally just because of my willingness to try dives. I had a Mexican coach for a while and he was just as crazy as me and he would let me do the hardest dives I could possibly do off the highest boards and I think that's the part which I was progressing through really fast, was just learning all of these new dives because I just had the balls to do it.
Share
Christian
05:48
But
Aiden
is keen to point out, he's not completely fearless and the sport doesn't just reward the brave.Share
Aidan Heslop
05:54
There's definitely some kind of fear and you feel it on every single dive when I go up onto the 27m platform, I know that if something goes wrong, the consequences are going to be huge. The impact from 10m is fairly hard but from 27 it's like hitting concrete sometimes. When you hit the water, the force is so strong that it can rip your legs apart.
Share
Christian
06:19
During his first ever
Red Bull Cliff diving World Series
in Polignano A Mare
in 2018 when he was 16, Aiden
landed badly during one of his training dives.Share
Aidan Heslop
06:29
I can sit down on my cock sick for more than five minutes for the next like two or three months I go up onto that platform every single time, confident in what I'm doing and in my mind it's not gonna go wrong.
Share
Christian
06:46
But there will always be an element of fear. The trick is to not let it overrule your ability to do the dive and to relax as much as possible beforehand. He'll listen to some rap or drum and bass depending on his mood, but always the same song throughout the whole comp.
Share
Aidan Heslop
07:03
I do try and be as zen as possible and just focus on the dive itself, all of the external factors like like the wind and the crowd and everything, I tend to block out.
Share
Christian
07:16
There are also some superstitions he needs to take care of to like wiping his hands on his trunks, just to get his hands a little wet. He explains:
Share
Aidan Heslop
07:24
There is a moment to dive where it's just me and the platform and the dive which is a super important thing for me but my heartbeat is going crazy.
Share
Christian
07:35
In Paris the stop following Boston, Aidan also performed his world's hardest dive.
Share
07:40
Before he took his run up, his heart rate was recorded at 180 beats per minute equivalent to almost his maximum training zone.
Share
Aidan Heslop
07:48
I thought I was calm but it seems to be just my mind overruling and just forgetting about everything including how fast my heart is going.
Share
Christian
07:58
He won one more time the nonstop in
Switzerland
in September and with one last round to go, he has a real shot at landing a first World title.Share
08:09
It's been 10 years since he watched the video of
Gary Hunt
that inspired him to get into cliff diving. It has been a long journey, and not all of it has been easy.Share
Aidan Heslop
08:19
To the level that I'm at now, I definitely put in a lot of work into different aspects.
Share
Christian
08:26
One of the things he's really had to focus on was perfecting his form.
Share
Aidan Heslop
08:30
I was always known as the scruffy kids. I could do the big dives but I just didn't look quite as tired as everyone else and that's what I've had to work on for many years.
Share
Christian
08:42
But this year all the hard efforts seemed to pay off for
Aiden.
In Boston
and again in Switzerland
, he didn't just perform the world's hardest dive. He also won the competition, finishing ahead of the man who for so long was his inspiration.Share
Aidan Heslop
08:58
It's weird, but it's such a cool feeling. You look down and you're like, damn, that's my hero. For the last 10 years stood below me on the podium, he's the first high dive I ever saw. Our techniques are very similar, but just because he's my hero, doesn't mean I don't want to beat him.
Share
Christian
09:15
Aiden's
ambitions don't end with beating his hero.Share
Aidan Heslop
09:18
I think it's to show some dominance in the sport, not just to win a World championships, but to be fairly untouchable to be the person that everyone wants to be.
Share
Christian
09:32
Whatever his fortunes in the months and years ahead, one thing is guaranteed: with this spectacular diving style,
Aiden
is a joy to watch and a diver who can help inspire the next generation.Share
09:50
This article was taken from
RedBull.com
for more articles like this one, follow Beyond The Ordinary, wherever you get your podcasts.Share
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Christian
Aidan Heslop
Orlando Duque
Gary Hunt