THE iconic Dursey Cable Car was the site of a recent world first, as Colombian and Red Bull high-diver Orlando Duque completed a spectacular 24-metre dive from the cable car, ‘a daring feat of courage and precision’ at one of Ireland’s most dramatic, and dare we say iconic, coastal settings.

The car has carried many things from the mainland to Dursey since opening in 1969, people and livestock, and Duque was no less impressed saying that the opportunity to dive from the unique cable car was ‘something special’.

‘I’ve jumped off a lot of things during my career, but a cable car is definitely a first for me . Dursey Island, and the whole area around, is very, very unique. It is such a beautiful area, but with the wind here, the currents, the changing tide…there were so many challenges’.

The cable car is, of course, the only one in Europe which crosses open sea water, travelling 150 metres over open water across the Dursey Sound with its very strong tidal race, and a reef of rocks in the centre of the channel which are submerged at high tide

It would take a skilled individual to take on this challenge, and Duque rose to the occasion. A winner of nine Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series events, Duque’s challenge lay in the movement of the cable car itself. With no fixed platform and a constant swing amid strong and shifting winds, maintaining balance and generating the right take-off became part of the test.

 ‘I’ve dived before in Ireland and there are some amazing cliffs in this country, but this was something else. As soon as you push, you don’t have that solid feeling where you can control the dive. So, as soon as you leave the cable car you need to start solving problems, like building up speed. That was the main challenge’.

 In preparation, Duque trained at the state-of-the-art Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Centre in Florida, fine-tuning his form to adapt to the unusual dynamics of this jump. The 24-metre dive demanded absolute precision, with minimal margin for error as Duque leapt from the swaying frame into the cold Atlantic water.

Tim O’Herlihy, Senior Engineer with Cork County Council, who supported Red Bull on the dive, noted that ‘The sea here can change very, very quickly. One day, it’s nice and calm - and the next, there’s two meter swells. It’s a very, very tough environment’.

The council were instrumental in helping Duque to ‘find his wings’, and scheduled maintenance for the same day as the dive so as not to unduly affect users of the Cable Car.

‘The council recognised the significant marketing benefit for Dursey and Beara offered by the 907,000 subscribers on the Red Bull Cliff Diving YouTube channel and other social media feeds and agreed to the request,’ a council spokesperson said, which meant that the cable car was closed for the day, but maintenance work was scheduled to minimise disruption’.