Cliff jumping

“So I hear you’re a cliff jumper?” I ask Galway man Robert O’Shaughnessy.

“I was a cliff jumper,” he says. “Until I broke my back doing it.”

The 28-year-old Salthill native and surf fanatic kind of fell into the sport of cliff jumping which involves, as the name suggests, jumping off cliffs. “There is a group of us who were always big into surfing,” he explains. “When there were no waves we would go looking for places for cliff jumping. We would size them up and if it was jumpable we would, basically, jump off.”

The group of thrill-seekers soon became aware of a world-wide network of people leaping from cliffs into various bodies of water in their spare time.

Robert O’Shaughnessy pictured with a grinning member of the Order of Malta

“We jumped feet first but it forms part of cliff diving, which goes right up to the Red Bull Championships – people doing acrobatic jumps similar to the high-dives you get in the Olympics.” Except off cliffs. Into the sea.

However, the risks inherent in throwing yourself from a cliff were soon brought home to Robert and his mates. “One of the lads did a jump called the ‘Wormhole’ – off Dun Aengus in the Aran Islands,” Robert recalls. “He broke his coccyx. Another mate nearly bit half his tongue off when he hit the water.”

However, the injuries suffered by Robert’s friends were trivial in comparison to what he suffered on a jump six months ago. The group found a clip on YouTube of cliff jumpers leaping into the sea from the 60 foot-plus Old Head in Mayo. They decided that as it was evidently jumpable, they would give it a crack. Little did the group know at the time, but one of the girls who did the jump in that YouTube clip had broken her back in two places.

Reservations

Robert recalls enjoying the normal excitement as he made his way to the precipice: “Normally you’re psyched and buzzing as you walk up to the top. When you get to there and you look down it’s the most unusual experience in the world. It’s half the reason why you do it – that strange feeling in the pit of your stomach.”

Robert however, was struck by some last minute nerves. “I had reservations,” he remembers. “But one of the guys told me that if I stopped and thought about it, then I wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘Just jump.’ So I looked at him, looked at the water and just jumped.

“I didn’t hit rock or anything like that,” says Robert. “I hit the water fairly straight but if you’re not perfectly upright it kind of goes wrong.” In fact, it went very wrong.

“I got hit on the ass by the water, the force went through my back and I broke my elbow and vertebrae and fractured my neck. And then I just floated up to the surface.”

Robert was fortunate not to end up paralysed although his cliff jumping days are very much over. “I’ve a plate in my back which is keeping me straight. I’m doing a lot of physio so hopefully I will be able to get back into surfing again, but I’m finished as far as cliff jumping goes.”

Robert and his crew are far from the only Irish lads flinging themselves from cliffs to stave off the boredom and a recent article in the Irish Times revealed a sharp increase in the number of people presenting at casualty with injuries sustained in cliff jumping accidents.

Robert plunging towards months of rehabilitation

Robert’s accident meanwhile, has given him a new perspective on the sport and he has some advice for those thinking about getting involved. “I wouldn’t advise getting into it because there is an awful lot that can go wrong,” he says. “Those who do get involved should start off with little jumps and work their way up.”

Luckily, the group had taken the precaution of positioning two people in the water in case a jumper needed help getting to shore. The pair swam to Robert and although he was conscious, they realised immediately that things had not went according to plan.

“I told them that I thought I had pulled a muscle or something like that, but then I realised I could hardly move,” says Robert.  Although he had been saved from drowning, his ordeal was far from over. He recalls, “I was ruined. The two lads had to crawl up about 20 metres of cliff with me.”

The group finally made it to the top before laying the stricken Robert on the grass while they waited for an ambulance. The agonising ordeal finally came to an end when the Order of Malta arrived, strapped Robert to a spine board and took him to hospital.

He continues, “Also, you have to know beforehand how you’re going to get out of the water once you’ve jumped, especially if something goes wrong. In my case we had to climb up the side of a cliff to get back out and if I had of been totally paralysed I could have been stuck there with no way out. It has to be taken very seriously.”

By Robert Carry