| Personal information | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Eleanor Townsend Smart | ||||||||
| Nickname | Ellie Smart | ||||||||
| Born | October 20, 1995 [1] | ||||||||
| Height | 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) [1] | ||||||||
| Weight | 56 kg (123 lb) [1] | ||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||
| Country | USA | ||||||||
| Sport | High diving | ||||||||
Medal record
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Eleanor Townsend Smart (born 1995), [2] also known as Ellie Smart, is an American high diver. She placed third at the 2022 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.
Smart was born on October 20, 1995. [1] She grew up in Fairway, Kansas [3] and began diving at age 5. [4] Smart attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas before moving to Texas after her freshman year to more seriously pursue her athletic career in Texas. [5]
She attended the University of California at Berkeley [6] and graduated in 2016. After graduation, she pursued master's degree program in sports psychology. [3]
Smart competed on the diving team for two seasons at the University of California at Berkeley. [5]
In 2017, she made her Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series debut as a wildcard at the opening event in Inos Mor, Ireland. She scored 195.35 points, placing fifth. [5] Smart won a bronze medal in high diving at the 2018 FINA High Diving World Cup, her world cup debut. [7] [8] 2019 was Smart's first season as a permanent diver on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. She placed second at the event in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina that season. [9] In 2022, Smart placed second overall at the Red Bull World Series. [10] She placed third in the Mostar event at the 2023 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, [11] and fourth in the series overall. [12]
She co-founded the Clean Cliffs Project with partner and fellow diver Owen Weymouth. [4]
Smart placed ninth in the women's 20-metre at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships. [13] She was in fourth place after the first two rounds of diving. [14]
Smart splits her time between Fort Lauderdale and Prairie Village. [6]
The La Quebrada Cliff Divers are a group of professional high divers, based in Acapulco, Mexico. They perform daily shows for the public, which involve diving 30 or 41 meters from the cliffs of La Quebrada into the sea below. The depth of water in the "Gulch" can vary from 4.8 to 5.8 meters depending on the waves. The width of the channel varies from 12.8 to 14.6 meters. Timing is crucial for the divers. During the night, they often hold torches while diving. Acapulco cliff diving was regularly featured on weekend sports television programming in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s when the USA High Diving Team competed with the La Quebrada Cliff Divers annually during the Acapulco Christmas Festival. The 2002 Guinness Book of World Records lists this as "the highest regularly performed headfirst dives" in the world.
High diving is the act of diving into water from relatively great heights. High diving can be performed as an adventure sport, as a performance stunt, or competitively during sporting events.
Gary Hunt, also known as Roger Gary Hunt, is an elite sports diver, specialising in cliff or high diving, and is the 2019 World champion in high diving at World Aquatics Championships event, where he holds the championship record. With a silver in the 2013 edition of the event, Hunt is the most successful male diver in the short history of the FINA recognised event.
The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, established in 2009 and created by Red Bull, is an annual international series of cliff diving events in which a limited number of competitors determine the Cliff Diving World Series winner.
Constantin Popovici is a Romanian platform diver. In 2019, he became the first Romanian to achieve a first-place finish at a stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. He is the 2022 European champion in the 27 metre high dive. He has won multiple medals as part of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and he won the bronze medal in the 27 metre high dive event at the Abu Dhabi Aquatics Festival in 2021. For the 10 metre platform event at the 2008 Summer Olympics, he placed twenty-third overall.
Anna Bader is a German high diver. She competed in the 2013 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Spain the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia.
Alessandro De Rose is an Italian high diver.
Yana Nestsiarava is a Belarusian female high diver. She won the bronze medal at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in the women's high diving. Two years later at the 2017 Championships she achieved the same result, taking bronze in the women's high diving event.
Rhiannan Iffland is an Australian high diver. She is a seven-time consecutive Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series champion. She won her first championship in 2016 as a wildcard entrant in her debut year, the first-ever rookie to do so.
The 2019 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series was the 11th season of the Red Bull-sponsored international cliff diving series. The series began on 13 April in El Nido, Philippines, with the final event taking place on 14 September in Bilbao, Spain.
Jessica Macaulay is a British and Canadian high diver. She placed second in the women's competition at two Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and has won two bronze medals in high diving at the World Aquatics Championships.
Lysanne Richard is a Canadian high diver and acrobat. She represented Canada at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia and she finished in 5th place in the women's high diving event. She was not able to represent Canada at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships as she had to withdraw from the competition after sustaining a neck injury.
The Abu Dhabi Aquatics Festival was a FINA-organized international aquatics competition spanning the disciplines of open water swimming, diving, and high diving, which took place from 15 to 20 December 2021 on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It was held correspondent to the 2021 FINA World Short Course Swimming Championships. The festival was the first time competitions in the three disciplines are being conducted at the same time as and in conjunction with a FINA World Short Course Swimming Championships. In addition to sporting competitions, an interactive village is being provided for festival attendees. Coverage of the aquatics festival on television and via online streaming was provided on six continents with news agencies including ESPN (Americas), SuperSport (Africa), and beIN Sports (Asia) providing international coverage of the high diving competitions.
Aidan Heslop is a British diver and high diver who competes internationally representing Wales and Great Britain. At the 2018 Commonwealth Games he competed representing Wales, finishing 6th in the 10 metre platform and 12th in the 3 metre springboard. In 2021, he won the gold medal in the 27 metre high dive at the Abu Dhabi Aquatics Festival representing Great Britain, performing the highest difficulty dive, a 6.2 degree of difficulty, in history. He placed sixth in the inaugural men's high dive at the 2022 European Aquatics Championships.
Antonina Vyshyvanova is a Ukrainian high diver, silver medalist of the 2022 European Championships.
Cătălin-Petru Preda is a Romanian diver and high diver. He was the first man to win a silver medal in a high diving event at a LEN European Aquatics Championships, winning the silver medal in the 27-metre high dive at the 2022 European Aquatics Championships. He formerly served as a judge on reality television show Splash! Vedete la Apă.
Molly Carlson is a Canadian high diver and social media personality. She is a member of Canada's senior national high diving team and placed second at the 2022 and 2023 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. Carlson uploads videos of herself diving on TikTok and YouTube.
Simon James Latimer OLY is a former New Zealand champion and international representative in springboard and platform diving. Latimer is also a three time Olympic diving judge and referee having officiated in London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. In 2015, Latimer was the recipient of a Prime Minister's Scholarship for service to sport. Latimer was previously a member of FINA's Technical Diving Committee between 2017 and 2022, and specialized in the psychology of judging diving. He is currently a judge on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series since 2020.
The 2023 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is an ongoing season of the Red Bull-sponsored international cliff diving series. It is the 15th edition of this event. The series began on 3 June in Boston, United States, with the final event on 28 January 2024 in Auckland, New Zealand.
Simone Leathead is a Canadian high diver. She placed fourth in high diving at the 2023 World Aquatics Championship.
