The number six seems to be crucial in the life of Alain Kohl. He started his diving career at the age of six in the late 1980s. In 2008, six years after he switched from Olympic diving to cliff diving, he finished three of the most prestigious competitions – Red Bull Cliff Diving at Lake Wolfgang (AUT), Hamburg (GER) and Polignano a Mare (ITA) – in sixth place. The southern Italian town was a location in 2009 and 2010 as well and, of course, the 29-year-old took sixth place each year.
Before the Luxembourgian became a professional cliff diver, he worked as a correctional facility officer for about one and a half years. Prior to that, Alain spent time in uniform. For how long? Well, rumours say that it was about six years…
In 2007, he sustained a broken tailbone during cliff diving. An injury that kept him from sitting down, but not from diving. It took him about a year to fully recover though. After a rather disappointing 2009 season with an overall finish of 11th, Kohl improved his performance during the off-season to come back stronger in 2010. A fourth place in Kragerø (NOR) put him to within touching distance of the podium but he couldn’t quite maintain that same high level throughout the course of the season and, in the end, finished tied with Colombian Eber Pava in 7th.
The new competition mode forced multilingual Kohl to qualify again in January 2011. He succeeded by finishing – make an educated guess – sixth: “I’m happy I’ve made it, but I know I can do better.” The Luxembourgian did do better and with another top-six finish, in his best World Series campaign to date which also included a first podium in La Rochelle, Alain Kohl could look ahead with a place in the 2012 World Series already assured.
