Yes, cliff diving is a real sport, and one that a Latinx pair aced over the weekend in Azores, Portugal, as part of the second stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. On the women’s side, Mexican diver Adriana Jiménez grabbed the gold after posting a commanding 303.50 points to win the season’s only direct off-the-cliff competition in São Miguel, shining off of the 21-meter (69 feet) platform. You can watch Red Bull’s recap video of the event here.
Jiménez, who missed the first stage of the competition in Ireland, did not hold anything back on her first outing of the season, displaying the skill that keeps her a champion in FINA Height Jumps. Sunday’s victory was her first World Series gold in 15 tries.
“I am very proud of myself for winning in the Azores. It was fantastic and, to be honest, I was not expecting it. It’s a wonderful result,” shared the 32-year-old cliff diver after taking the gold. The diver ousted defending champion Rhiannan Iffland and this year’s favorite, Anna Bader, for the top prize.
Jiménez is now ranked second in the competition behind Iffland after her win on Sunday. In the previous three years, she has finished 3rd, 6th, and 5th overall. This year, she looks poised to challenge for the top spot on the podium, as the World Series heads to Italy later this month–following that, the World Series ends with the trifecta of the United States, Bosnia Herzegovina, and the finale in Chile on October 21.
Meanwhile, in the men’s competition, Colombian diver Orlando Duque raised the gold in the Lusitania competition. Duque is one of the favorites to win year in and year out, but he had never won in Portugal, so this gold should be doubly nice for the 42-year-old.
For those unfamiliar with cliff diving, divers perform 4 dives from a height ranging between 21 to 28 meters, performing a variety of dives not dissimilar from Olympic high dive. As far as scoring goes, five judges score each dive based on a scale of 0 to 10 in half-point increments. The highest and lowest judges’ scores are discarded and the remaining three scores are added and multiplied by the degree of difficulty for that dive. That produces the total score for each dive. All of the total scores of all the dives are then added together to produce the diver’s overall total score for the competition.