Gary Hunt is a high-diving legend. On 27 meters, he has done it all: two-time world champion, five-time world medalist, perfect dives, Red Bull titles. But he had never been an Olympian until Monday.
PARIS – On Monday, British-born Gary Hunt made his debut – and finale – as an Olympian. In Paris, Hunt and Lois Szymczak, 31, placed eighth in the men’s 10m platform event for France, the host nation.
On paper, it was last place. But in Hunt’s heart, it was the pinnacle.
“Yeah, it’s a special moment,” Hunt said afterwards. “It was nothing but pleasure up there today. All the hard work that we put in paid off to be here today in the form of my life.”
In Paris, Hunt was the first diver since 1912 to make his Olympic debut at age 40. (The last was Erik Tjader of Sweden at the Stockholm Games, 112 years ago.) But Hunt was not the oldest diver to compete at the Games. Japan’s six-time Olympian Ken Terauchi was also 40 when he competed at the last Olympics, in Tokyo, on the 3-meter springboard.
Hunt’s legacy, however, will be much more than a trivia point for future quizmasters.
For decades, Hunt has been – and continues to be – a legend in high diving. So it was a bit of surprise when he showed up at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships at the indoor diving pool to compete in the non-Olympic mixed synchro event. It required him to land head-first from a 10-meter platform instead of landing feet-first off from 27 meters. And when he returned to Olympic-style competition, he hadn’t done a head-first dive in 10 years. As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, in 2017, he encountered “the twisties” – the same problem that cause US gymnast Simone Biles to withdraw from the all-around final at the Tokyo Olympics.
“Oh, it’s still an issue,” Hunt said on Monday, referring to the twisties. “I still have lots of dives that I can’t do because of the twisting problem. I just found the areas which are fragile and I avoid them.”
Hunt’s twisties, in fact, influenced the pair’s Olympic dive list.
“We originally planned to have a different series of dives with twists,” Hunt said, but “it didn’t work so we had to adapt right from the start, when we started planning our dives. The idea was to do a twisting dive, but it kept going wrong for me, so we had to change it.”
The lack of twisting also prevented the French duo from having an ultra-competitive level of difficulty on their dive list. Their hardest dive, a back 3½ only carried a 3.3 DD, while the other teams were throwing 3.6 and 3.7 DDs.
Either way, Hunt was happily participating in as much as he could in Paris – from riding with the French team in a boat on the Seine during Friday night’s Opening Ceremony, to staying in the Olympic Village, to befriending other athletes.
“I’m a big table tennis fan so I’ve got photos with the Brazilian [two-time Olympian] Hugo Calderano, the Lebrun brothers [of France, Felix and Alexis],” Hunt said. “You meet some cool people at the Olympics!”
Hunt plans to stay in Paris until the cauldron is extinguished on August 12. And when he leaves, it will be the end of his indoor diving career – as well as his partner’s.
“I’m not going to stay either,” Szymczak said. “It’s the end of – not of diving – but of competition.”
All told, “It feels like a bit of a gift,” Hunt said of his Olympic experience. “The stars aligned to have the Olympics come to Paris, but at the same time, I saw a lot of my teammates stop diving. And I kept going. The work has paid off. My passion for diving has gotten me here.”