Døds Diving returns to Charlotteville in May

All eyes will be on To­ba­go on May 23 as free div­ing re­turns to the is­land for the open­ing of the Døds Div­ing League World Tour.

The Di­vi­sion of Tourism an­nounced the event yes­ter­day, mark­ing the of­fi­cial start of the in­ter­na­tion­al freestyle div­ing sea­son.

The event will be broad­cast live on ES­PN in the Unit­ed States and dis­trib­uted to over 60 coun­tries.

To­ba­go got its first taste of the nov­el­ty sport on Au­gust 9 as the Døds Div­ing World Cham­pi­onship made its de­but on the is­land.

That event at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est as hun­dreds flocked to see the ath­letes dive off an el­e­vat­ed plat­form on the Char­lot­teville jet­ty.

Death div­ing, which orig­i­nat­ed in Nor­way in the ear­ly 2000s, is one of the fastest grow­ing sports in the world.

Some of the star ath­letes such as Nor­we­gian Ken Stornes show­case the Viking spir­it, fly­ing through their air with an axe to ac­cen­tu­ate their dives.

The di­vi­sion said To­ba­go has so­lid­i­fied it­self as a pre­mier des­ti­na­tion for the sport and Char­lot­teville, over­look­ing the icon­ic Pi­rate’s Bay, pro­vides a nat­ur­al land­scape and dra­mat­ic back­drop for the dare­dev­il com­pe­ti­tion.

The World Tour will bring 30 to 40 com­peti­tors vy­ing for glo­ry and points across mul­ti­ple rounds in a knock­out for­mat.

Divers will be judged on pow­er, tech­ni­cal ex­e­cu­tion, style, land­ing, and over­all im­pres­sion.

At the end of the world tour, points will be tal­lied ahead of qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the pres­ti­gious Døds Div­ing World Cham­pi­onships.

Males and fe­males will com­pete in a sin­gle open cat­e­go­ry.

A Dods Div­ing Acad­e­my will pre­cede the event, al­low­ing lo­cals to train with elite ath­letes. A lo­cal qual­i­fi­ca­tion com­pe­ti­tion will then be held, of­fer­ing a path­way for their com­pet­i­tive de­but.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett is ex­cit­ed and said To­ba­go is an ide­al des­ti­na­tion for sport tourism.

She said, “This event not on­ly show­cas­es our breath­tak­ing nat­ur­al as­sets but al­so cre­ates mean­ing­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ath­letes and com­mu­ni­ties to en­gage on a glob­al stage.”