If you dive from twenty-seven meters, in about two seconds you reach an average speed of ninety kilometers per hour. When you step onto the platform and look out to sea, the divers waiting for you in the water to make sure you are okay after the dive are little more than four black dots that move the blue sea beneath you. In front of them, the water is sprayed from the sheer rock by a jet positioned specifically to make the point of entry into the water more visible to those who have to dive. Standing on the platform at twenty-seven meters is like being on top of a building about nine stories high. Even a breath of wind makes a difference, it can make you lose your balance, especially if you have to stand vertically on the edge and upside down. This is what the athletes of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series who compete every year in the numerous stages of the competition around the world. We were with them at Polignano a marewhere for the eleventh year, the race stopped, once again bringing the athletes to dive from the splendid setting of the famous terrace overlooking the sea. One of the most photographed in the world. From there, on the Red Bull platform that lights up at night in a show of colored lights that give life to the typical Apulian parades, the 24 athletes in the race, including the three Italians Elisa Cosetti, Andrea Barnabà and Davide Baraldi, they literally took flight. Before our eyes and those of thousands of people who came to follow the competition live. Some directly from the water, some lying on the seashore, some from the surrounding terraces.
We too, with the appropriate fall protection harnesses, took a few steps on the platform. The belly recedes as soon as the horizon around fills with the thousand shades of blue of the sea. Then the vertigo rises from the navel to the throat, those who can do it also look down, it was not our case. But we had clearly in front of us the sensation that all the Italian athletes we interviewed described to us smiling. And almost closing their eyes as if to find that moment again: “flying”.
“Diving is a real flight”, the man from Trieste told us Andrea Barnaba, 20 years old and a passion for diving that began as a child at the seaside. “The only time I’ve done something similar was when I jumped with a parachute.” While he talks about himself, Andrea Barnabà already has in his eyes the concentration of the flight he will take in a few hours. “I’ll be with my belly towards the water, I have to push forward, then do the rotations forward, then the last part is the barani: so four somersaults with a half twist forward.” The barani is a technical gesture exclusive to diving from great heights and allows the movement that the athlete makes after the various twists to enter the water with his legs and not with his head. All movements that are performed while plummeting towards the sea, a virtuosity of body and mind that is difficult to explain in words.
This is well understood in those few seconds of absolute silence that follow the athlete’s entry into the water after the dive and the resurfacing surrounded by divers. The wait is perhaps a fraction of a second, sometimes a whole second and those who are out of the water hold their breath because the impact with the water, at that speed, is unpredictable. Only when the athlete’s head emerges from the water and he raises his hand to signal that he is okay, then the audience also breathes again. And applause breaks out. “Certainly every time I get on the platform, as soon as I look down even during the race and I see these tiny dots, every time I feel a little lump in my throat“, continues Barnabà who in the Polignano stage placed sixth and concluded the competition collecting a bonus point for having performed the best dive of the competition in Round 2 and the first 10 of the judges in 2024. “I’m always a little scared before diving but it’s normal. In fact, it’s the thing we say that keeps us lucid to avoid making mistakes, in fact it often happens that those who get hurt are those who go too calmly on the platform. Fear is always part of our dives but every time I try to control it: for a moment I close my eyes, I leave aside all those who are waiting for me, I take a deep breath, I try to free my mind and I think only about the most important things that will allow me to dive as best as possible. In most cases, they are technical corrections, the tightness of the abdominals and legs, for example. I only think about one thing, without filling my head».
For Elisa Cosettialso a talented young woman from Trieste, 21 years old, the spark with the high diving board ignited during a performance in her city, Trieste. “Even though I was already doing diving as a sport, I felt like the spectators I see here in Polignano who hold their breath and are amazed while we dive. I didn’t expect to feel that sensation and I was fascinated by it”. In just a few years Elisa Cosetti, who was the first Italian athlete to compete in the women’s division of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, making her debut in the 2021 season finale in Polignano a Mare, she arrived at the 2022 European Championships where she won the bronze medal. «Luckily Alessandro de Rose (European bronze last year in Rome, ed.) trained in Trieste in the same pool where I went and even though we had never spoken until that moment because we trained at different times, I asked him for information and he was immediately available», says Elisa, with big eyes and hair that touches her shoulders. «The first time I went up from 20 meters it wasn’t so shocking because we were in Austria where there is a platform that moves from 10 to 20 meters so you can dive from one meter to another and at these heights one meter more or one less doesn’t change much. I had done my first dive from 10, then 12, 15 meters and I didn’t even realize, when I got to 20 I said: “wow”».
After that dive, Elisa Cosetti, who loves Green Day’s music and enrolled in university, despite training every day from 8 in the morning to 3 in the evening, to graduate in industrial design, has never stopped. “The impact with the water is very strong, so we do a lot of gymnastics but no weights. The muscles that we need to develop a little more are definitely those of the neck, then the aductors, because when you enter the water, even if you enter straight, if you don’t keep your legs together they can open and you tear the aductors. The same goes for the arms. Then the abdominals and dorsals. If you enter perfectly straight you don’t feel anything and you realize you’ve made a really good dive, as soon as you enter a little forward or a little backward you feel the impact. It happened to me in the second competition during the World Cup, when I did the last dive I was too nervous and I got a bit of a bum injury and the next day I couldn’t sit down on the plane.”
Before arriving at the competition, athletes train by literally breaking down the dive they will do. “We can’t dive from twenty meters every day because there are no facilities so we train in the pool and break down the dive”continues Elisa. «I do the seven-meter starts in the pool, so I do all the rotations and then there is the barani which is a somersault with a half turn. When we get here we have to combine the two movements. I try to bring the sensations I feel in the pool to recreate them. The color of the water makes a difference, in the sea it is better: the water is darker and softer because it is salty».
«On the platform maybe even a second before I have some uncertainty then when you are at the tip you are in a bubble. You detach yourself from everything and when you are in the air you feel free and the most beautiful sensation besides that of freedom is flying. When you enter the water you get an adrenaline rush, you realize what you’ve done and it’s beautiful.” David Baraldifrom Como, 23 years old, started diving at six years old and made his debut in Polignano in 2022. Between one dive and another he is about to graduate in Sports Science. During the first day of the stage in Polignano he had a small injury and as a precaution he decided not to continue the competition. «The next goal is the World Cup and maybe get into the top ten. I’m working on a new dive that has a higher difficulty coefficient and consists of three back flips and three twists. It’s one of my favorites».
Alongside these young athletes for a few months there has been an exceptional coach, the cliff diving champion Alessandro DeRose. «It’s more difficult than I imagined because when you’re an athlete you take it for granted that movements are natural, when you start explaining certain movements to athletes the complexity of this discipline emerges». Alessandro De Rose, winner of the stage in Polignano in 2017 (he was the first Italian diver to win the high diving competition), bronze at the 2022 European Championships, in sports jargon he is the idol and also the athlete to beat. «I started at Zoomarine doing shows, I was a pirate in water parks, then in 2013 I was invited to the Marmeeting and when I tried the 27-meter dive I fell in love with it. It’s an emotion that can’t be described, you’re on that platform alone with yourself, between mind, body, nature. Nothing exists anymore, it’s just you flying in the air. I still dive even though I was refused after the injury. Now I need to find myself again.”
Source: Vanity Fair
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