Rhiannan Iffland on the fear that drives a world champion cliff diver

Precision. Power. Perfection. That’s what world champion diver Rhiannan Iffland needs to plunge from 24m cliff and survive. She knows the risks. And yet she jumps. And wins.

Every time Rhiannan Iffland curls her toes over the edge of a cliff, clearing her mind to tune in to the laser focus she needs to survive the 24m dive into the water below, she knows the worst could happen.

Even the slightest shift in what she’s trained the last 20 years to do can result in serious injury. Career ending injury. Life ending injury.

So, jumping off the equivalent of an eight-storey building at upwards of 85km/h is all about power, balance and skill. And the realisation that hitting the water wrong, twisting where she’s meant to tuck or letting her mind think of anything else than what she’s doing can be deadly.

So does the world champion freediver bring herself to … jump?

“That was probably one of the hardest things to learn in the sport, or to master,” she says.

“To control those feelings and fears and thoughts.

Rhiannan Iffland dives from a 20m balcony during the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Polignano a Mare, Italy. Picture: Red Bull

“But over time, I think I learned that – to have nothing in your mind works best.

“And also, there have been times where I’ve been up there and I’ve felt too confident, and I haven’t let that fear in enough that I’ve gone ‘No, I don’t think I should do this right now because I’m not completely focused.’

“So in a way, sometimes having that fear on your side is a bit of an advantage because it sets you into this hyper focus mood and then everything just works or flows a bit more smoother.

“But when I’m on the end of the platform, or when I’m about to dive, I’ve already done all of the thinking – so it’s purely just going, ‘Okay, well, this is what I have to do. I need to swing my arms fast, I need to jump strong.’

“And then you’ll think, ‘Okay, I need to do one and a half twists and then a somersault and then see that water – so it’s very specific things that I’m thinking on the end of the platform.

“It’s not an easy process, but it definitely gets easier with practise.”

Iffland prepares to dive. Picture: Red Bull

Iffland dives from a 20.5m platform on the Institute of Contemporary Arts building in Boston in June. Picture: Red Bull

Being brave enough to take that initial leap into the world of competitive diving came naturally to the 32 year old who grew up in the waters of Lake Illawarra, jumping into every waterway around her and bouncing on her backyard trampoline after school.

She’s been diving since she was 10.

Today, she travels the world diving off high things. The seven-time consecutive Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series champion had her second victory of the season in Italy after taking out Boston earlier this month at the 100th World Series Stop. Next up is Northern Ireland, before heading to Oslo (Norway), Montreal (Canada), Antalya (Turkey) and finishing up in Sydney for the Cliff Diving final on November 10.

Iffland won her first championship in 2016 as a wildcard entrant in her debut year, the first-ever rookie to do so. Since then, there’s not much she won’t do.

In fact – is there anything the adrenaline-loving, eight-time skydiver won’t do?

“I don’t think I have (ever said no),” she laughs, after a long pause.

“I mean, there’s definitely been moments where I’ve been like, ‘No, I’m not I’m not doing this’ but I’ve always gone back and done it.

“But I do draw a line.

“I don’t think I’ll go much higher just because I know what my body is capable of.”

Iffland competes in the Women's 20m High Diving in the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar, in February. Picture: Getty Images

Recently, Iffland finished second at the opening event of this year’s Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Athens, coming back to win the second round of the series in Boston, by a clear 16 points.

The life of a diver isn’t something she dreamt of as a little girl – she wanted to be a police officer, and actually doesn’t rule that out one day – but looking back, the writing was on the wall, so to speak. She trained at Belmont High School in trampolining with former world champion Brett Austine, and used her skills to bounce into diving.

From 2001 to 2006 she trained at the Hunter United Diving Academy before joining the NSW Institute of Sport, training with future Olympic medallists Melissa Wu and Matthew Mitcham. She was a medallist in 2007 at the CAMO International Canadian Championships, in 2008 at the Elite Junior Diving Championships in Melbourne and at the 2009 Australian Youth Olympic Festival.

“I was a bit of a beach baby,” she says of her childhood.

“It was just natural, growing up there.

“As a kid, I was always into any sport that was put in front of me, and just those endless days hanging around by the lake and being a super active kid.

“It is phenomenal, and it is very cool that I’ve created this life for myself.

“In the beginning, having aspirations of heading to the Olympics and competing in 10m diving, I never really saw what could be.

“And I decided to take different avenues and different roads to go into entertainment and then into the world of Red Bull cliff diving, and made a different and a very unique career for myself from something that I was passionate about and the sport that I love.

“I never would have expected as a little girl to be doing what I’m doing now – but I’m definitely glad I didn’t close the door and I walked through all the open ones.”

Iffland dives from the cliff at Bahia De Patzisotz, with San Pedro volcano in the background, during the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series "Dive into Guatemala" at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala in April. Picture: Red Bull

When she finished her 10m career, she thought it was over. Little did she know, she was just getting started.

“I never did anything to prove anyone wrong, but in my sporting career, there was definitely those people that thought that I was a bit nuts, or you have setbacks like that – especially when I finished my 10m career,” she says.

“I thought it was over, I didn’t think I’d ever compete again.

“I just did it purely because I loved it, and I wanted to keep testing myself.

“I wasn’t done with the sport yet.

“I hadn’t even begun, but I didn’t know it yet.

“I think one of the biggest things is being able to take a chance.

“It was a bit different when I left Olympic diving, because it was so structured.

“And when I went out to cliff diving, it was kind of more driven by myself, so I think that’s honestly where I found a lot of success.

“I learned a lot very quickly, and I was driven because I wanted to do it.”

Before joining the cliff diving circuit, Iffland worked as an acrobatic trampolining and diving entertainer on cruise ships in the Mediterranean and Caribbean and trained at a theme park in Lyon, France, where she eventually got to heights of 20m.

Then in 2015, she was granted a wildcard entry to the opening event of the 2016 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series – which she won.

It was the first time a rookie had taken home the gold – and it was a sign of good things to come.

Iffland competes in the Women's 20m High Diving in the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar, in February. Picture: Getty Images

She still remembers, all these years later, the moment it “clicked”.

“I was following the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series for a couple of years, especially when the women were introduced – I thought to myself, I could do that,” she says.

“Initially I wanted to do it for a couple of years and then come back and join the police force – but now here I am, seven years later, still doing it.

“I knew that I’d done the training and had the skills, but I think that the moment that it clicked was at the end of the first season I did in 2016 where I won the World Title and I realised … I can make a career out of this.

“I can keep going and help push the sport for the women and make it bigger and grow it.

“It’s crazy to look back now and think that was only seven years ago.”

Diving at such heights is an incredibly dangerous sport – making it hugely technical.

It has to be. That’s why she trains six days a week, with up to 60 dives a session – it’s all about getting it right before she swan dives at heights that make most people sick.

“It is a very precise sport and it’s very technical,” she explains.

“I think all the cliff divers, all the high divers, we are all fully aware of the risks that are involved in diving from those heights – but it’s like any sport – injuries happen.

“For me personally, I do everything I can to mitigate the risks and just know that when I’m standing there I want to be as prepared as possible and as mentally prepared as well, to be able to stand there and hold it all together.

“A lot of work goes in behind the scenes, and it’s not only in the last seven years, it’s been over a long 20 years, so you build those fundamentals and you do the training for a long time, it becomes a bit like second nature, and your body just takes over.”

That means you have to be disciplined. And the more experience she has in her legs, the more she understands what her body needs to do what she does – safely.

“It’s knowing what my body will need and knowing how many repetitions I’ll need to do or how much training I need to do to work on something to get it perfect,” she says.

“In pre-season that means the gym in the morning, or dry land, for instance, like gymnastics skills, and then in the afternoon, it’s two to three hours of diving – probably about 50 to 60 dives a session.

“During the season it’s a bit different, the load is a little bit less with training, because you’re up there, and you’re doing the dives.”

What she does is enough to make any parent faint – and she laughs about feeling bad for her mum when she has to watch her dive.

“I’m one of three kids and we’re all quite different with different interests – but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think my mum worried about me.

“I’m pretty sure she knows the dangers of the sport and she knows what happens, but they’re really supportive and they have been from day one,” she says of mum Sharon and dad Peter.

“But I’m still convinced that Mum watches with only one eye open. Sometimes I feel bad for putting them through it.”

In 2017, Iffland had to be rescued from the river after diving from the Stari Most Bridge in the Bosnian city of Mostar. Smashed by the impact, her groin muscles were torn and she blew out both knees. An eight week predicted recovery turned to five, when she still took out top place in the Cliff Diving World Series.

“Injuries, they suck, but they’re inevitable, especially with what I do,” she says.

“For me, it was tough, because you never actually know. You can have an expected recovery time, but you never know how your body’s actually going to respond.

“Injuries … are just part of the process. And they happen quite regularly, and you learn to deal with it.

“I think as an athlete now, being a bit older, I do a lot more to avoid those things happening – in a way, you have to train smarter not harder to avoid those things.

“But that was a scary one for me because I really wanted to finish the season and I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it.

“And at the end of the day, those things teach you a lot about who you are as a person and as an athlete and you’ve just got to kind of do your best to not only look at the negatives in the situation, as hard as it is.”

Being one with nature – as she was as a little girl learning to surf in the beaches of Lake Macquarie – grounds her. Even when she’s perched 24m up.

“You just can’t fight nature, because it will always have the upper hand,” she says.

“Something I really love about this sport is the technical side, but then you have the natural side as well, dealing with all those natural elements and having the opportunity to do the sport in two different ways.

“You’re free cliff diving, and you’re in nature, and yet you’re completely doing it and disconnecting, and then there’s the competitive side of it as well – that’s probably one of my favourite things about the sport.

“But I definitely prefer the uncontrolled environments.

“It’s not as exciting and thrilling to be diving into the pool every single day – but at the same time, it’s necessary to have the right skills and to get the training, so I need a balance of both, but I definitely prefer being out and about in a unique place doing what I do.”

She’s dived all over the world – but the place that is forever etched in her mind is in Katherine Gorge in the Northern Territory.

“That was a moment of my career where I went, ‘Oh, my gosh, am I actually here?’” she recalls.

“And it was just such a cultural experience as well – and diving in my own back yard was not something I would have expected to be doing. I think I really learned a lot from that journey, because it was myself out there diving, so it was really great.”

And while having the waters of Italy or Greece as your office sound heavenly, particularly in the depths of Sydney’s winter – it’s the comforts of home she misses too.

Like mum’s cooking, of course.

“Lake Macquarie will always be home,” she says.

“It is a hard thing, because a lot of my friends often say, ‘Oh, you must be so excited’ – and I am excited – but you always want what you don’t have.

“I love what I do and I love the travel and I wouldn’t have it any other way – but at the same time, I do miss my family and friends.

“That’s probably the biggest thing. And sometimes it gets a little bit lonely on the road as well, when you don’t see your family for a long time.

“But it’s definitely well worth it.”

The current world series will come to a head in Sydney on November 10 when Iffland will contest her number one spot in the world – but she doesn’t like to think too far beyond that, when she can help it.

“I’m kind of at that stage now where I’m thinking, what should I think about in the next 10 years?” she says.

“That’s a thought on a lot of athletes minds for sure. For me at the moment, I’m going to get through the next couple of years and keep enjoying it.

“I definitely can’t see myself stepping away from the sport – I’d love to stay involved in some way, shape or form, and it could be that the next step is moving into coaching or moving into another position.

“My options are open.”

The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series grand final will be held in Sydney on November 10