A Swedish Daredevil Took Us Death Diving, And It Hurt

Most people try to avoid belly flops. For ‘death divers’, it’s the prized endgame. 

In Olympic diving, athletes strive to flip and twirl gracefully through the air, ideally entering the water with a tiny splash in their wake.

However, just as that sport is an art form, so is death diving. Known as Døds in Scandinavia, adrenaline junkies with nerves of steel put their mettle to the test with extreme belly flops.

Check out our attempt at death diving below:

As part of UNILAD Adventure’s Bucket List, we answered every mum’s age-old question: ‘Would you jump off a cliff if your friends asked you to?’ Yes mum, we would, if we were going death diving.

Jez and Tom took a trip to Sweden and visited an abandoned quarry just outside of Stockholm. There, they met a Swedish ‘living death diving legend’ who goes by the name of John John – so cool they named him twice.

In order to carry out the dives like proper professionals, Jez was given some ‘regulation jumping uniform’… a classic pair of budgie smugglers. After getting past his slight fear of heights, Jez was shown the three heights they’d be flopping from: 10m, 15m and 20m.

It’s quite a long way down, but John John had the secret: ‘I don’t think you need to be crazy, just to be the guy who doesn’t think. Just do it.’

There’s a specific technique to death diving: you stretch out as much as you can for as long as you can, then tuck yourself into a ‘shrimp’ just before you hit the water.

Make sure you check out the video above to see how we got on (or more excitingly, how John John conquered the quarry).

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