It was all over, Tom Daley absolutely insists. Until, quite out of the blue, it wasn’t. “I mean, I’d moved to America,” says the one-time diving prodigy who finally elevated to Olympic champion in Tokyo three years ago. “I was like: ‘That’s it, I’m not doing it.’”
A rigid regime in the cause of making a splash at his base in London had been replaced by what seems an idyll of eternal sunshine in Los Angeles, transplanted there with his screenwriter husband Dustin Lance Black and their first-born Robbie ahead of the welcome arrival of a second son, Phoenix, last March.
His four Olympic appearances represented nostalgia, the black and white to the bright colours of the present. Unexpectedly, a trip down memory lane triggered a vivid emotional reaction that caught the family unawares.
They were visiting the United States’ Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado which adjoins Team USA’s main training centre. Daley was a tourist with more stamps in his passport than your average Joe. The tour neared its end. A schmaltz-laden video on what it means to be an Olympian tugged shamelessly at his heartstrings.
“I was sitting down there,” Daley recounts, “and being like: ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’m ready for this.’ I was crying. I looked at over at Lance. And Lance looked at me and went: ‘Oh, no, here we go.’”
They returned to the car, with the mapping of a new journey about to begin. “You want to go back, don’t you?” said his husband. Daley, re-awakened, agreed. “And Robbie said to me at the time: ‘Papa, I want to see you dive at the Olympics.’ It was just that whole thing.
“I remember driving back home after going to the museum. And I’m someone on the motorway who will always go to the speed limit and make sure that I’m OK. I was just going so slow. I was just so inside my own head and my own thoughts that Lance was asking if I was OK. There was just a lot that overwhelmed me at that point. But I just said: ‘You know what? I want to give it another shot.’”
From standstill to 100 miles per hour in the blink of an eye, the 29-year-old is firmly unretired now, intent on adding to his quartet of Olympic medals at this summer’s Games in Paris. Next week he can potentially add to his tally of six world championship podium spots in Doha in the first global test of Daley 2.0 following the low-key and victorious return at December’s British Diving Cup in Edinburgh.
The former boy wonder is a child of two worlds now. He has reunited with his long-time coach, Jane Figueiredo, but only part-time. “My family is No 1 to me,” he says. This means that his prime training base is at UCLA’s open pool with sporadic red-eye flights across the Atlantic so that his mentor can assess his progress up close and personal amid the elite group she oversees at the London Aquatics Centre.
A stickler for details, Figueiredo required some reassurance that this unconventionally lax approach could roll back the clock. “She was very excited,” Daley says. “But then she was: ‘Oh, this also complicates so many things … you’re over there, and I’m here. What are we going to do?’” The easy Daley charm surely came into its own? “I was like: ‘Jane, we’ll figure it out. It’s fine. We’ll make it work.’ We always have and always will.”
Ditto for Black in bringing up baby while the Englishman abroad packed his bags to return to the aquatic circus. “He’s a superhero,” says Daley. There is also a sidekick for this mission. “My mum has been a godsend. Whenever I come over here, my mum tends to go over to LA to help out as well. So there’s a lot of back and forth and travelling. But it’s been great. My kids are my biggest motivation for me. They’re the ones that get me up in the morning and make me want to do the best that I can.”
He has other drivers too. The activism that has seen Daley utilise his status as a highly visible member of the LGBTQ+ community has not been dulled. Additional platforms will be available on the road to Paris. Knitting, to allay any fears from a broad church of admirers, remains a valued outlet for his creativity, whether at home or abroad.
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Still, 10 metres above the pool water, a competitive ball of fire stands enflamed. “Of course I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to win another medal.” Just one, he reveals. At the Tokyo Olympics, he repeated his individual 10-metre platform bronze of London 2012 before earning the gold that had eluded him, in the synchro, in the company of Matty Lee.
Assuming that Doha is the springboard towards qualification for Paris, he is slated to be part of a double act with Noah Williams – with Lee hampered of late due to injury. “That is the plan. The thing is, I know that I probably could do the individual. But I’m too old. I have to be realistic. I’ve gone from being the youngest on Team GB in 2008 to now being the oldest diver.”
He will turn 30 two months prior to the Games but suitably grand celebrations have already been postponed until the autumn with a getaway for family and friends alike. They might serve as another retirement party. Daley, for now, is hedging those bets. “Maybe I’ll do another year, who knows?” he grins.
The heart, he knows, will want what it wants. And the head? Gold, and nothing less, until it is over once more. “Although I am enjoying it, I am going to still give it everything,” he says. “I mean, it’s in my nature. I’m going to give it everything that I’ve got.”