In 2024, Rhiannan IffIand extended her invincible status for yet another season, collecting her eighth Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series title in a row along with a fourth World Aquatics Championships gold medal. After exploding onto the scene in 2016 with a debut victory in Texas, the 33-year-old has gone on to rack up unparalleled records in the sport. With 41 victories in 51 stops, 49 podiums, two unbeaten seasons and numerous other streaks and high-scoring achievements, the Australian has simply been untouchable for the best part of a decade.
Despite dominating once again last year, winning six out of eight World Series events and wrapping up the title with a stop to spare before being crowned on home soil in Sydney for the second time, the Newcastle native described it as her most challenging season yet. “The biggest challenge has been trying to hold onto the motivation, the drive, the training, staying mentally focused for such a long season.”
Reflecting further on her career though, she admits, “I find it really important to take a step back and look at my world from the outside in, and try to remember how proud I should be of what I have achieved and how far I’ve come as a diver.”
An avid trampolinist from a young age, Iffland began diving at the age of nine. “Anna Bader from Germany was my hero,” she says. “Before I was involved in the world of cliff diving, I watched an event which Anna was involved in and was amazed that a female had such courage to be involved in a sport like this. From then on it was a dream to be a part of this amazing sport. After meeting Anna I was welcomed to the sport by her—such a talented, courageous, happy and humble athlete.”
Nonetheless, she admits to being “petrified” the first time she clambered up onto a platform. Soon enough though, she was competing regularly from three and 10 metres, before utilising heracrobatic skills to entertain crowds on cruise ships in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. It was during this time that she was first introduced to high diving.
What’s her family’s attitude towards her dangerous passion? “They’ve always loved it and have been my biggest supporters from the start!” she laughs.
“Though, I’m pretty sure my mum watches with one eye closed—it can’t be easy seeing your daughter up at those heights. They’ve always recognised the passion and effort I’ve put into this, so they’re thrilled to see me living my life through this sport.”
As to what advice she would give that 10-year-old girl if she could go back and meet her? “Embrace the journey. Set goals, but don’t get so caught up in chasing the big ones that you forget to celebrate the smaller milestones along the way. Remember, life is a marathon, not a sprint.”
THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION
Cliff diving is a highly technical pursuit that requires a unique combination of strength, flexibility and acrobatic skills. Iffland says that a lot of cliff divers get their start in diving, gymnastics or even a circus background. But no matter where they’ve come from, it takes a lot of work and persistence to get to the Red Bull platform.
“It’s not like we walk straight up to 21 metres and do the dive. It takes a lot of work to master the basics and then take it step by step to get there.”
To prepare for the World Series, her training schedule varies throughout the year. Pre-season sees her in the pool five or six days a week at the NSW Institute of Sport, training with the diving team. In these sessions, she’s working on take-offs, twists, rotations—doing it over and over and over again until it becomes second nature. Add in three or four gym sessions, as well as some gymnastics-based training with trampoline somersaults.
While there are lots of similarities to Olympic diving, there are plenty of differences too. Given the extra height of the platform, cliff divers need to land feet first rather than headfirst to absorb some of the impact. That means adding in a half twist or more of a rotation to ensure their feet hit the water first.
Then there’s the mental discipline required to launch yourself off cliffs on a regular basis.
“Mentally, it’s a whole different ball game,” she told Red Bull last year. “There’s a lot more going through your mind when you’re standing on 20 metres in comparison to 10 metres. So when I made the transition [to cliff diving], that was the hardest thing to adapt to at first, and to understand that it was a normal reaction that when you’re standing there, you are going to go through the rush of emotions, adrenaline, fear …all of those sorts of things.”
The mind-body connection is an important one in cliff diving—not only during the adrenaline-fuelled events, but also to adapt back to life on dry land between competitions.
“I’ve been working with [Red Bull’s elite performance coach] Nam Baldwin this year to not only learn how to deal with the competition nerves but also, when an event finishes, trying to regulate how I’m feeling mentally, and then get straight back into a regular training schedule. The more you do the training physically and in the pool, the more confident you feel when you go into a competition. So body
and mind really connect.”
THE RUSH
Even though Iffland has been cliff diving for eight years now, she says the rush of fear and adrenaline still feels the same as it did in the beginning—but she’s learnt how to manage it these days.
“When I started, I was always thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to go away once I get more experience under my belt.’ The thing is, it never changed. But what I’ve taught myself is to do the thinking process before actually stepping onto the end of the platform. Because if there’s
too much going on in your mind, then it’s hard to focus on what you have to do technically, and to do it right. So when I am standing on the end of the board, it’s just focusing on a couple of key things that I need to do depending on the dive.
“Obviously, there’s always the inner voice that’s telling you what could go wrong, or telling you that it’s scary, or telling you that you should be nervous, but as long as you can control those things, it’s kind of just focusing on what you need to do.”
The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series sees the world’s best cliff divers make eight stops around the globe throughout the year, including Takachiho Gorge in Japan and Sydney Harbour. And then there’s the historic town of Polignano a Mare on Italy’s southern coast.
“Diving off somebody’s balcony and then walking through the cobblestone streets of the small town Polignano is amazing,” she says. “The World Series has been going there for a long time, so the fans always show up and the energy is always amazing. It’s such a beautiful place.”
That’s not to say that life on tour is all sea and sunshine. Iffland says that all dives are challenging in their own way, and she still remembers the scariest dive of her career in Chile six years ago.
“I was going into the final and I was injured in the penultimate stop, but I still had a chance to take out the World Series title. Basically, I didn’t do any training dives because I wasn’t sure how my injury was going to hold up, so I decided I’d go straight into the event. That first dive of the event, after not training for a month, was probably one of the scariest dives that I’ve done in my career. But in saying that, it also taught me a lot—to listen to my body and trust my mind that I knew what I was doing.”
In 2019, Iffland enjoyed the type of year most athletes can only dream of, winning all seven World Series stops to complete an historic perfect season. Remarkably, she then returned following the pandemic break to do it again in 2021, this time adding a first ‘perfect 10’ dive to her growing list of records.
In recent seasons, the champion has come under increasing pressure from Canada’s Molly Carlson, who not only broke her 13-stop winning streak in 2022, but is also the only diver to keep her off the top of the podium since 2018, doing so twice last season.
THE DIVE HOME
In a few short weeks, Iffland will face another significant milestone: competing for her eighth world title in a World Series event in front of her home crowd in Sydney. How does she prepare for such a monumental moment?
“This summer, I was training in Madrid up until [the most recent World Series event in] Turkiye, and now I’ve arrived home and I’m going to get back in the pool at Olympic Park, and back to the gym. I’m just going to go hard for it, train the best I can and really try to enjoy the atmosphere and the energy that this event is going to bring.”
Having stated her intentions to continue cliff diving for at least the next five years, Iffland could soon match the legendary Gary Hunt’s haul of 10 titles, perhaps surpass it. For now though, “my main goal for 2025 is to focus on staying consistent while easing the pressure I put on myself.
“After eight title wins—I’m not getting any younger—I’ll hope to look for new ways to push my limits with my dives, just to keep it fun and fresh.”
You can watch the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Finals here in Sydney free 9 and 10 November at Mrs Macquarie’s Point.
