● Hot shot
16 MEN’S FITNESS JUNE 2017Being a professional sportsman sucks sometimes. While others whoop
it up on a pleasure cruiser, drinking company-supplied alcohol and taking pics
of your airborne arse, you’re putting that very same arse on the line by plunging
from a 27m-high volcanic cliff. Just as English diver Gary Hunt is doing here
at Islet Franca do Campo, in the Azores archipelago of Portugal. Of course, the
pay-off is that if Gary survives without losing any bark and pulls a neat shape or
two on the way down, he’ll bag the glory that comes with winning the Red Bull
Cliff Diving World Series — a title he’s already jagged six times. But no matter how
many times he brandishes that championship trophy, the buttock-clenching fear
of jumping from the equivalent of a nine-storey building never leaves him. “I’ve
been to competitions where my mind is ready to jump, but my body isn’t ready,”
he says. “I’ve had to stand back off the platform because my legs were shaking
so much.” Yes, the lot of a diving god is a perilous one indeed.Air devil