Montreal is hosting Red Bull's Cliff Diving World Series, featuring 85 km/h free falls
A first for Canada! 🇨🇦
Catalin Preda of Romania prepares for an armstand dive at the 2023 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.
This summer at the Old Port's Grand Quay, you'll be able to watch as world-class divers free fall up to 88.5 feet — almost three times the Olympic diving height — at speeds of 85 kilometres per hour.
For the first time, Red Bull is set to bring its Cliff Diving World Series to Canada. Montreal is one of just eight cities selected to host the upcoming 15th anniversary edition of the competition, which celebrates reaching over 100 tour stops since launching in 2009.
If you've never seen the Cliff Diving World Series before, whether live or on TV, Red Bull describes the event as "redefining the boundaries of human capability" — and watching videos from previous years, like the ones below, definitely prove that to be true.
What is the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series?
On its website, Red Bull explains that cliff diving is an "elite extreme sport." The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, it says, is a competition where 12 men and 12 women compete to see who can earn "maximum championship points" at every event.
Male athletes dive off a 27-metre platform while female divers dive off a 21-metre platform.
Each diver is judged by a panel on their technique, acrobatics and artistic moves.
At the end of the season, one male and one female diver are crowned the winners. They are awarded the King Kahekili trophy as well as prize money. To give you a sense of how much, in 2016, VICE reported that divers earned about US$39,000 per event but that wasn't accounting for who won.
Will any Montreal athletes be competing?
Molly Carlson, a 25-year-old Thunder Bay, Ontario native who now calls Montreal home, has been rapidly rising in the Red Bull diving ranks since 2021.
The Olympic silver medallist finished in second place at last year's Cliff Diving World Series losing out to Australia’s Rhiannan Iffland. She went on to place first at the 2023 High Diving World Cup.
The Red Bull website says, "As the only World Series diver other than Iffland to win in the last 27 stops, expect to see Carlson pushing the Aussie all the way again in 2024" so there's a good chance we'll be seeing her competing on home turf in Montreal.
Where can I watch some cool videos to get pumped up?
We recommend checking out these videos of the highest scored dives from the the 2023 season finale in Auckland, New Zealand.
Men's Division
Women's Division
You can see the entire 2023 season finale on YouTube here:
Diving in Auckland Harbour - Season Finale New Zealand | Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series 2023www.youtube.com
Watch from Molly Carlson's POV as she dives 20 metres and picture her diving 21 metres at the Red Bull World Series:
Finally, here's a video of U.S. athlete Ellie Smart diving off a helicopter because it doesn't get much cooler than that:
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
