“VIP tubers” were lined up waiting for the dives to begin. Arguebly the best seat in the house as they were in the front row.
The Judges (although I believe they are officially called “Jurors”) were in this boat to the left of the dive cliff to observe and score. These people are true professionals who know their diving, including Greg Louganis (in the middle with grey hair), former US gold medalist at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games.
Taking about living life on the edge as a photographer! 🙂
Orlando Duque from Colombia was the most likely to win as he entered this last competition of the World Cliff Diving World Series in the lead. This guy was awesome and had real presence with the crowd. He’s pictured here egging on one of the other divers as if to say, “How was that dive?! Not bad, huh?!”
“Hello?!” I’m in the middle of a dive right now. Can I call you back later?”
Imagine being 27.3 metres up a cliff like this in weather of 45 degrees Celsius on a diving board with thousands of people screaming and whistling?! And what did many of them do in this distracting scenario? A handstand before their dives! Talk about incredible concentration and skill!
The top 3 winners after the results were in: Orlando Duque (far left) in 2nd place, Gary Hunt (from the UK) in 1st place and Steven LoBue (far right) in 3rd position.
Gary Hunt, the champion of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series 2012 takes a moment to look up and hold the trophy in our direction! Well done, Gary! This is what he had to say about the final event at Wadi Shab: “”This year has been the hardest without a doubt. Orlando completed only two stops and the year before Artem missed a stop so this year it felt like everyone was on top of their game and you had to be diving really well to win it. Waiting for the final score was one of the most nerve-wracking times of my life. I saw that it was an amazing dive from Orlando and then saw the scores but those few seconds were really nerve-wracking. I didn’t want to calculate it before hand but to see it up on the screen and how close it was… wow! It was just the best competition I’ve ever done!”(taken from the Red Bull website)
A lot of people might not be aware that I was a world-renowned diver myself back in the day. Here’s a quick video for memories sake: 🙂 Sorry, just being silly!
A big thanks to Red Bull for putting on such an incredible event here in Oman! Keep them coming! I’d especially like to thank Stacey for the info sharing and VIP tickets to this event which I truly enjoyed.
Here is an awesome video that one youtuber put together from the Finals:
This video was posted only 4 days ago and already has 5,488 views. That’s about as close as we get to “going viral” here in “the sleepy Sultanate of Oman”. 😉
Andy in Oman 