“I’m just your regular coastal girl.”

If you asked Rhiannan Iffland, professional cliff diver and seven-time consecutive Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series champion, to describe herself, that’s what she’d say.

Away from competition, off-season looks like wine with friends, surging, mountain biking, and skiing.

“I’m not great at any of them,” she admits. “But I really enjoy giving things a go. Competing is such a high emotional state. When it ends, I need something else to fill my cup.”

Within minutes of chatting to her on our latest episode, it becomes clear that the most defining thing about her isn’t the heights she jumps from, but how she approaches them.

Fear, to Rhiannan, is less about something to conquer and more about something to sit with.

Yes, she dives off platforms more than 20 metres above water. And yes, she won her first championship in 2016, the first-ever rookie to do so in their debut year.

But what stood out most wasn’t her career achievements. It was her honesty about the little voice in her head every single time she climbs the ladder.

Fear is part of the job

“That’s the biggest misconception about us divers,” she says. “That we are not scared. I can honestly tell you that every single time I go up there, there’s always that voice. That overwhelming feeling of emotions. It does get easier to deal with, but it never goes away.”

Instead of eliminating that fear, she manages it.

“I find most of the fear happens in the hours prior to the dive,” she explains. “I sit with it. I accept it. And by the time I step off, I have to focus on doing three flips with two twists.”

Unlike the preconceived notions of adrenaline-seeking chaos, Rhiannan’s sport is about precision, repetition and trust in muscle memory.

Even her most technical dive — the one packed with the most twists and rotations — still makes her question herself.

“The amount of times I’ve done it, I still step out there and think, am I going to know what to do? Is my body going to take over? And it usually does.”

That trust was tested in Romania, inside a salt mine 150 metres underground. “The water was 17% more dense than seawater, so the impact was strong. When you hit the water, you shot back up like a cork out of a champagne bottle… I didn’t know what to expect.”

It was a dive she could have never fully trained for, and her body just took over.

Joining the circus

Rhiannan grew up on the shores of Lake Macquarie, “I was always a water baby, always adventurous. I wasn’t really the academic of the family. I started gymnastics and diving when I was around nine.”

She then went into three-metre springboard and ten-metre platform diving with aspirations to represent Australia at the Olympics.

“I competed internationally as a junior and was on the cusp of making the senior team. Then I started to feel burnt out.”

Moving from Newcastle to Sydney to train full-time, Rhiannan reached a point where she felt she needed something different. After time off travelling, she was offered a job as an aquatic acrobat on a cruise ship.

“I remember running down to Dad in the backyard and saying, ‘Oh my God, they’ve offered me a job on a cruise ship as a diver.’ It was entertainment — diving, performing. That was the first time I was introduced to high diving above ten metres. As soon as I saw it in the show, I thought, I want to do that.”

The show was a one-hour long Cirque du Soleil-style — springboard diving, high diving, dancing (which she admits she was “absolutely terrible at”), aerial work, trampoline. Ten shows a week.

“It was fun. I developed new passions and skills, and it reignited my fire for the sport.”

Then, in 2013, women were introduced into the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.

“As soon as I saw that, I started transitioning my skills towards high diving.”

Never closing the door

If there’s one philosophy that’s shaped her life and her career, it’s simple. The advice came from her grandfather: “Never close the door. Never turn down an opportunity. If you don’t like it, walk back through.”

Her sister told her the same thing before she joined the cruise ship, “If it doesn’t work, you can get on the next plan and come home.”

“It seems simple, but it goes a long way,” she says. “It’s better to have given it a good shot than to get a couple of years down the track and look back and go, hang on a minute, I should have tried that.”

Cruise ship circus, high diving, world series, a salt mine. Each of these started as a door that opened.

Not just a professional cliff diver

Rhiannan is someone who has built her career on courage, perspective, and a willingness to walk through doors before knowing exactly what’s on the other side.

But what makes her compelling isn’t just the height she jumps from — it’s the clarity she’s developed about who she is beyond it.

Every time she steps onto a platform, she thinks about her nephews and niece.

“If it goes well, they’re going to love me. If it doesn’t go well, they’re going to love me.”

That grounding is her secret weapon and reminds her that her identity isn’t tied to a scorecard or a podium.

She’s learned that fear sharpens you. That burnout doesn’t always mean the end. That you can leave a sport, run away with the circus, almost join the police force, and still circle back to the thing you love.

And when she’s not competing, she’s passing it forward by coaching.

“I love sharing the sport,” she says. “High diving isn’t easy to get into. I’ve helped a few divers transition into it, and that’s something I care about — helping others learn the ropes.”

Not just a professional cliff diver, Rhiannan Iffland is a competitor who embraces nerves, a mentor who shares her craft, and a coastal girl who never quite stopped being the energetic kid flipping on the grass.

To hear more of Rhiannan’s story in her own words, watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.