Southampton's world champion cliff diver Gary Hunt is writing a regular blog for the Southern Daily Echo regarding the 2013 Red Bull series, where he is looking to win the title for the fourth year running.

After two second places in the first two events of this year, Hunt won last weekend's third round in The Azores.

Here is his blog ...

We've just finished the third stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Portugal and I was delighted to come away with my first win of the 2013 series.

After the competition in Copenhagen I stayed with some friends for a couple of days before heading out to the Azores. The setting was the beautiful circular shaped islet just off the coast of the largest of the Azores islands. We had to battle with the waves this time and the first day of training was cancelled for this reason.

It was an event a little different from usual. Due to the waves we had to have the competition very early in the morning. We were up at 5am and set off for the island at 6. It's the first time we've had a competition so early and the challenge was getting the body awake and mind alert enough to jump from 27m.

The first dive of the competition was performed directly from the cliff. To avoid hitting the rocks we were forced to change our takeoff position and jump outwards - pretty hairy stuff. I started off the competition well and got into the lead. However, my second dive was a little too splashy and allowed Jonathan Paredes and Orlando Duque to overtake me.

The first two dives both took place on the first day as we didn't know if the waves would be too big to dive on day 2.

The day of the competition started out a little shaky, during the training the American diver Kent de Monde unfortunately hit the crest of the wave as he entered the water and so didn't have enough time to fit his dive in. He hit the water with his chest stuck out and was left unconscious. The scuba divers reacted quickly and got him onto a stretcher and into the boat where he regained consciousness.

When somebody has an accident during a competition or in training it really confronts us with the risks that we are taking and it is hard to get up onto the platform after seeing something like that. You really have to try hard to put it out of your mind and just focus on what you need to do.

I was partnered with Kent for the 2nd round, and as I was in first place after the first round that meant I was the first diver. I started with my most difficult dive - the back triple with 4 twists. I got decent scores of 7.5's but I wasn't very happy as I knew that it would leave the door open a little and meant that I would need a very good last dive to take the win.

After the penultimate round I was in first place but only by a small margin. Artem, who's dived so well this year, was right behind me and Orlando was close as well. I couldn't hear the scores the other divers got but when Orlando hit the water the announcer went wild and so did the crowd so I knew his dive was a good one. This spurred me on and I knew that if I wanted to win this one, I had to land a perfect dive.

Not quite perfect, but with scores of 9 and 9.5 I had done enough to secure my first win of the series and as Artem was in 4th position, that meant that I am now leading in the overall table. This result is exactly what I needed and I couldn't be more motivated to continue on in the same fashion.

The next round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is in Malcesine, a place that we've dived before. I ended up on the top of the podium the last time and I'm going to do everything that I can to be up there again. Follow the action on redbullcliffdiving.com and wish me luck!