For Tom Daley, the description of his first three Olympic Games is brutally candid. “I tortured myself through the whole experience because I wanted to do well so badly,” he says.
He then won an emotional gold in Tokyo to add to his three previous bronze medals and, following training ahead of his comeback at a record-breaking fifth Olympics, he explained why an even bigger prize was already secure. Daley even opened the door to a potential sixth consecutive Olympic Games four years from now.
“For me, the Olympic gold medal this time is having my kids there to watch,” says Daley, who was just 14 when he competed at the 2008 Beijing Games and would be 34 in Los Angeles in 2028. “I know lots of people will be, ‘If it’s going to be anything less than gold, will it be a disappointment?’ Well actually, ‘no’. This time around I’m really proud that I was able to take two years off, set my mind to something, work really hard for it and get there.
“Of course I want to win another medal — that would be lovely — [but] if you had told me a year and a bit ago that I was going to be able to get back in time for my fifth Olympic Games, I would have been, ‘That’s not possible’. I wanted to set an example, even to my kids, that if you have a dream, and you set your mind to it, you can get there.”
Daley had already been almost two years into ‘retirement’ early in 2023 when, having moved to LA, he made what proved to be a life-changing visit to the Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs with his husband Dustin Lance Black and their now six-year-old son Robbie.
“I took the pen to sign in at the museum and they saw the Olympic rings on my right hand and it was, ‘Oh — you’re an Olympian’,” says Daley. “I was mortified because they had this thing when you walk into the museum, where they have this area where there are loads of balconies. And they got all the staff to come in and clap. Robbie asked, ‘What’s going on?’ I said ‘long story’.
“Then there was this video of what it means to be an Olympian. By the end of it, I was crying, and Robbie turned to me and asked, ‘What’s the matter, Pop?’ I just said, ‘I miss diving and I miss the Olympics’. Lance looked at me and it was just like, ‘Oh no — I know what this means.’ And then Robbie said, ‘Pop, I want to see you dive in the Olympics’. And that was that.”
Daley’s gold medal-winning partner from Tokyo, Matty Lee, had since teamed up with Noah Williams but any awkward decisions were rather eased when Lee himself was ruled out of Paris with a back injury.
Despite living in different continents and coming together largely only immediately before big competitions, Daley and Williams have since forged an outstanding partnership, winning World Championship silver in January and the Olympic test event in April. Daley’s love both for diving and the Olympics itself clearly also still endures and, as he looked out over the London Aquatics Centre following training last week, it felt significant that the suggestion of 2028 was not instantly dismissed.
“I don’t know about six [Olympics] — but I also said that the last time — and here I am back and they might be adding another event into the ’28 Games in the mixed team, so who knows,” he says.
That was in reference to rumours that the International Olympic Committee will debut a new event that might well be ideally suited to a veteran who, as well as being Britain’s first diving five-time Olympian, will also be the oldest diver from any nation.
Daley’s coach, Jane Figueiredo, who rates him among the three greatest divers in history, is also not ruling out the possibility of continuing beyond Paris. “Of course he could,” she says. “My hope is that they will add a team event, whether that involves Tom or not … he’d be 34. I’ll leave that for the time when it comes. I believe in him.”
The immediate focus, however, is on Paris. Soon after the interview, Daley would log out of social media, switch phones to a device for which only Black, Figueiredo and his mum Debbie have the number, and tune into trying to defend the 10m synchronized platform Olympic title. Just as in Tokyo, that narrowing of focus would include knitting between dives as a means of relaxation.
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“I am going to be making something similar to what I made in Tokyo — something commemorative of Paris — which I am excited about,” he says. “I have got it with me in my bag, it is part of my routine every single day. It is my mindfulness, my one time a day where I can switch off from everything else.”
As ever in diving, the Chinese represent the big obstacle to gold but Daley is adamant that success will now be judged more widely and vast personal support is already guaranteed. “They’re all coming: My husband, the kids, my mum, my grandma, all of my friends, aunties, uncles,” says Daley. “I told all of my friends and family to log on at the exact time when I knew the tickets were going to be dropping and I was just, ‘Get whatever you can and we’ll figure it out’. It’s going to be as close to a home Olympics as I’m ever going to have in my lifetime again.
“I have done everything I wanted to do ever in the sport, exceeded all my expectations, so this feels to me like a bonus: Soak in the atmosphere, be there, stand on the podium, and actually look around and be, ‘This is what I have worked all of my life for’.”
A version of this article was published on July 17.
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