Three twists and four saltos chained from a diving board located at a height of 27 meters: for the past 10 years, Gary Hunt has won the “Red Bull Cliff Diving” competitions with this sequence.
"It's my secret weapon", he confides with a shy smile at the edge of the Maurice-Thorez swimming pool in Montreuil.
It is here that for ten years he has been training, day after day, to stay at the top of the planet in this extreme discipline.
VIDEO.
Gary Hunt, the legend of high-flying diving aims for the Paris 2024 Olympics
Finding diving boards reaching a height of 27 meters is not easy, it is even impossible in France, outside natural sites. So, you have to cut the figures into several pieces to be able to repeat them in a swimming pool. And Gary's training ground is Seine-Saint-Denis: "In Île-de-France, the Montreuil swimming pool is the only one to have such a beautiful platform". “At first, I was a swimmer, but when I saw that those who were diving seemed to have a lot more fun than me, that convinced me,” he says. The native of Great Britain quickly moved towards high-flying diving and met his future wife while he was preparing a show at Walygator Park, near Metz. "We settled together in the Paris region and little by little, I started training with the French team",he explains.
He took advantage of the Brexit announcement to apply for his French naturalization, which he obtained shortly after.
“I was starting to find it strange to live in France with a Frenchwoman, to train with the French team but to compete for Great Britain,” says the 37-year-old Franco-British, “and so I won my first competition for France this summer, in Mostar.
It was strange but magical ”.
He is now training hard for diving at 10 meters, with his sights set on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
