Everyone knows how to dive bomb, or at least everyone who spent their summers splashing around in their local pool trying to impress girls. But what happens when you add several pairs of balls, a gang of German adrenalin junkies, a dose of acrobatic skills and at least a ten-metre high diving platform to it?
Splash diving is a freestyle discipline where your task isn't to slice elegantly through the water surface without a splash Tom Daley-style, but the opposite: In splash diving, it's the biggest splash that counts. It sounds easy but it's not: Just like any other sport, splashing has its own set rules. To find out more about that, I got in touch with splash diving champion and holder of several Guinness World Records, Christian Guth. VICE: One could say you are one of the founders of the sport – how would you define splash diving?
Christian Guth: I have been practicing splash diving for a decade now and it's still hard to define it. The closest traditional sport to splash diving is probably the Olympic diving, only we do it freestyle and splash on purpose. It really doesn't hurt? Well, splash diving is like boxing. When you get in the ring for the first time and get hit with two well-aimed left hooks from the local champion, you will probably be crying about it for the rest of the week. But by your 20th match, you will probably know how to avoid the blow or to block it and if you get hit you are better equipped to take it. It is the same with splash diving – with a bit of training you can get your body ready almost for anything.
Can you make a living out of splash diving? For the first five or six years I didn't really, but it's been a couple of years now that I am trying to pay the bills with splash diving. I took a class in event management in order to combine sport that I love with work and I can now say that in the summer months, I live like a king. In the winter, it is a bit trickier. From time to time I have to take a part-time job or freelance to be able to pay the rent.
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