THUNDER BAY – By the time Molly Carlson was 10, she had her eyes set on the 2016 Olympic Games.
When it didn’t happen, Carlson was crushed, the self-identity she’d built in her mind washed away, and at 18, she began struggling with mental health issues, wondering how should could start all over again and still stay focused on diving at Florida State University.
She ultimately turned to cliff diving, a breathtaking sport that sees her step onto a platform just large enough to place her feet upon and twist and turn through the air before plunging feet first into rivers like the famed Seine, in Paris.
As a member of Team Canada, the 24-year-old, who was born in Fort Frances and grew up in Thunder Bay diving at the Canada Games Complex, finished second this season on the Red Bull Cliff Diving Series, including a win at the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.
“I always thought the Olympics was my only path, if I don’t make it, I’m a failure,” said Carlson on Sunday, just before doing a diving demonstration at her old Thunder Bay stomping grounds, along with her boyfriend and fellow high diver Aidan Heslop.
“That was my state. I was like, how do I prove myself, to get out of Thunder Bay and show that I’m part of this bigger community of diving. When I started facing these mental-health struggles, trying to get on that one path, I thought there’s got to be another path I can fall in love with that still includes diving. So, when I met high diving, it was this natural click, that was just meant to be. Mental health finally found exactly where I wanted to be.”
She clearly made the right choice.
Today Carlson, a graduate of the Thunder Bay Diving Club, is a budding star on the cliff diving stage, with 3.5 million followers on Tik Tok and also founded #BraveGang, a platform that allows people to talk about their mental health struggles and find support from people around the world.
“I really fell in love with using (Tik Tok) and I started realizing you could use it for good. When I started sharing my high diving journey … I also started sharing the struggles that come with it and being able to be authentic, being terrified up there and bringing my phone and saying, ‘Hey guys, I am absolutely terrified to do this new dive, but I’m going to do it with you all.’ It’s almost like this community that encourages me every single day.”
As natural as she looks hurling herself into the air from 20 metres above the water, Carlson said when she arrived at her first event and saw the set-up, she immediately wanted to head back to the airport and head home.
She still gets butterflies every time she competes.
“This sport never gets less scary. I think that’s something people need to know about high diving. There’s an element of fear that you need to be safe, because you can’t do this sport if you’re not 100 per cent mentally strong,” Carlson said. “That first year was absolutely terrifying. You go from a perfect facility, flat water, flat platform your whole life, to outside on a little rock into three-metre waves and you don’t know what height you’re jumping from.
“It was such a learning curve that terrified me, but you learn throughout the times you do it and the second season was not effortless, but more comfortable.”
Carlson, who moved to southern Ontario in her first year of high school, still has Olympic dreams, and is hopeful enough countries form high diving federations to be considered for inclusion at the Games in the not-too-distant future.
“The more people that join it, the more chance we can be at the 2028 L.A. Olympics,” Carlson said.
