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Displaying items by tag: Red Bull Cliff Diving

Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, is all set to host a leg of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series 2024. This July, the global event will witness the world’s best cliff divers competing against each other on the beautiful Causeway Coast. This will be the first time Northern Ireland will host such an event, and it's going to be a spectacular one.

The event, which is free for the public, will take place on the fourth stop of the series. Ballycastle, situated within the Glens of Antrim, is an area of outstanding natural beauty. The choppy Atlantic waters of Ballycastle will prove to be a danger and a delight for the divers competing. The beautiful backdrop of the Causeway Coast will only add to the charm of the event.

The mid-season point of the series, this stop will test the divers' limits as they contend with challenging conditions, including fearsome winds. The roster of 24 male and female divers will dive and twist through the air from heights of up to 27 meters, plunging into the cold Atlantic at over 85 kmph.

As Afloat previously reported, The event is expected to attract tens of thousands of people, all hoping to witness a spectacle like no other. The competition will get underway at 4 pm on both days, and it's sure to be an unforgettable experience for everyone.

Previous stops of Red Bull's iconic World Series on these shores were held at the famous Serpent’s Lair in Inis Mór, and Dublin hosted the event for the first time in 2019 with a record-breaking attendance in Dún Laoghaire. The series headed back West to the cliffs of Downpatrick Head on its last stop in Ireland in 2021.

The reigning champions, Rhiannan Iffland from Australia and Constantin Popovici from Romania, will be the ones to watch out for. However, as this is the 15th season of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, there are sure to be plenty of thrills and spills throughout the season as the divers battle it out to claim the coveted King Kahekili Trophy.

The full calendar of the 2024 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is as follows: Athens, Greece - May 26th, Boston, USA - June 8th, Polignano a Mare, Italy - June 30th, Ballycastle, Northern Ireland - July 19th & 20th, Oslo, Norway - August 10th, Canada - August 25th, Antalya, Turkey - September 29th, and Sydney, Australia - November 10th.

#ISLAND NEWS - Champion cliff diver Orlando Duque paid a visit to Cong in Co Mayo recently to give a taster of what we can expect when Red Bull Cliff Diving comes to the Aran Islands this August.

As the video above shows, the nine-time World Champion from Colombia dived from the unusual platform of a helicopter hovering high over the water at Ashford Castle.

But it will be just his fellow competitors, the rocks and the waves to contend with at the Serpent's Lair in Inis Mór on 3-4 August at the fourth stop of the 2012 World Series, as previously reported on Afloat.ie.

“The Serpent’s Lair is one of those places you only hear stories about,” said Duque ahead of the first ever World Series in 2009. “Finding this place and being able to dive there was one of the highlights of my career."

Published in Island News

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago