Paris 2024 Olympics: Tom Daley: "My Olympic gold medal this time is having my kids there to watch"
The flight over to London from his home in Los Angeles for the pre-Olympic Games Paris 2024 training camp couldn't have been more different from his previous four Olympic Games for diver and British sporting icon Tom Daley.
The British public has grown up with Daley, seeing him emerge on the 10m platform as a 14-year-old at the Olympic Games Beijing 2008. He claimed an individual bronze medal in front of a home crowd at the Olympic Games London 2012, just a year after his dad died from brain cancer.
At the Olympic Games Rio 2016, he won a synchro bronze with Dan Goodfellow, and finally, emotionally, a longed-for gold medal at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, alongside Matty Lee, in the synchro. Add a largely forgotten but still impressive bronze in the individual event in Japan, and that's four Olympic medals for the now 30-year-old.
Travel to the Olympic Games this time around though, Olympic icon or not, Daley is very much like any other parent flying with their kids.
"I was worried how it was going to go," said Daley with a smile to the multiple journalists he was speaking to on 17 July, just 12 days before competing at his fifth Olympic Games. "Luckily, it was a night flight, so Robbie, who travels all the time, was fine because he's six now, so he's a bit more like an adult. Phoenix, however, is very much the second child – wriggly, wants to climb everything, jump on everything. He was quiet but I had to like wrangle him the whole time."
Daley, whose Olympics will be done and dusted on 29 July when he takes to his sole event - the men's synchronised 10m platform - this time alongside Noah Williams with Lee absent due to injury, is in good spirits.
Results this year with Williams include silver at the 2024 World Championships in Doha, and gold, silver and bronze at a trio of World Cup series events.
Social media posts show Daley training at an outdoor pool in Los Angeles near where he lives with husband Dustin Lance Black and their two children, but with much travel home to his beloved London and the Aquatics Centre from the 2012 Olympic Games where Team GB train.
With so much written about the man in question, we wanted Daley to speak for himself, with a Q&A of the aforementioned interview, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Fifth Olympic Games is just the ticket
How do you feel about the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and that friends and family are back in the stands following their necessary absence at Tokyo 2020, in 2021?
I'm so excited. One of the main reasons for coming back to diving was to be able to have my kids watch and they're all coming. My husband, the kids, my mum, my grandma, all my friends, aunties, uncles... We managed to get a lot of tickets this time around as I was a bit more prepared on the ticket front.
I was telling all of my friends and family to log on at the exact time that I knew that tickets were going to be dropping. I was like, 'Just get whatever you can and we'll figure it out. Let's just get all the tickets we can because this is going to be as close to a home Olympics as I'm ever going to have in my lifetime again'.
When you're competing, do you look out for them?
My dad would have a giant Union Jack (flag) so I knew exactly where he was. We don't really have that now, someone flying the flag, so what I get my family and friends to do is send a photo of the pool from where they're sitting, so I know exactly where they are so I can see them... I prefer to know exactly where they are and wave and then it's tunnel vision until the end.
You decided to return to the sport after visiting an Olympic Museum with your family. Can you tell us that story?
We were in Colorado Springs at the time because that's where Phoenix was born. I didn't know it was the Olympic City until we got there and I was like, 'Oh, there's the [United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum]'. So we went over to the museum and... I was using the pen to sign in and they saw my Olympic rings (tattoo), and they were like, 'You're an Olympian!'
They have this big atrium area where there's loads of balconies and they get all the staff to come in, and I was just stood in the middle. I was mortified and Robbie was like, 'What's going on?' And I was like, 'Long story'.
But at the end, there was this video of what it means to be an Olympian, and of course, by the end of it, I was crying, and Robbie turned to me and said, 'What's the matter, Papa, what's the matter?' I said I missed diving and I missed the Olympics, and Lance looked at me and said, 'Oh no, I know what this means'. And Robbie was like, 'I want to see you dive at the Olympics'. And that was that.
I was like, 'I don't even know how that's even going to be possible'. I've taken two years off. If I come back to the sport, there's no guarantee that I'll get back in the team, there's no guarantee that I'll be able to do my dives again, there's no guarantee that I'll be able to stay injury free. There's no guarantee I'll even qualify for the Olympics, if I get back into the team. So there's all of these hurdles to overcome.
Turning off the pressure cooker
And you feel a bit less pressure this time because obviously in Tokyo you were still striving for that gold medal?
For me, my Olympic gold medal at this time is having my kids there to watch - and that's really the thing that I'm looking forward to most going into this competition. I know lots of people have been all, 'If it's anything less than gold will it be a disappointment?' But actually, no. This time round, I'm really proud of myself that I was able to take two years off and set my mind to something and work really hard for it and then get there. And I think that's the big thing that I wanted to do, set an example, even to my kids that if you have a dream and you want to set your mind to it, you can get there.
Of course, I want to win another medal. That would be lovely. I think anyone that would say that they don't want to win a medal would be lying to you because that's what you go to an Olympic Games for, but we just have to take it one step at a time and do what we can to the best of our ability.
Tokyo was a bizarre experience for everyone, so is part of it for you to enjoy the Olympic experience as a family as well?
Yeah. Beijing, London, and Rio, I tortured myself through the whole experience because I wanted to do well so badly. Tokyo, I finally got to a point where I was standing on the board and I had perspective that no matter how I did, good or bad, I'm going to go home to a family that loves and supports me regardless.
And now, this time round, I've got the gold medal. I've done everything that I wanted to do ever in the sport and exceeded all of my expectations in that. So this to me feels like a bonus year where I can actually enjoy it, soak in the atmosphere, be able to look around and be like, 'Wow, this is what I worked all of my life for'.
You're doing some media work too. Are you looking forward to it and how are you going to juggle that with your competition?
Once I do my competition, I get to actually enjoy the Olympics from a slightly different side. That's what I'd love to do long term, to be involved in.
I love the Olympics... I think there's something really special about that moment where so many athletes work towards a common goal and the stories and the history and the fact that everybody's doing it out of passion and wanting to win that Olympic gold medal.
I just think there's something really special about it in the way that there's over 200 countries participating and 10,000 athletes all coming together saying, let's put differences aside, and I think that's something that's really quite special.
Playing the joker with Team GB
How do you personally manage your social media during Games-time?
My rule on social media is that if I see posts that don't inspire me, make me laugh, motivate me, or inform me about my family and if I find myself feeling slightly negative about anything, I unfollow because I try to curate my social media in a way that is a happy place to me, and to be able to communicate with the people that want to follow what I'm doing.
And then when I go into Games-time, I have a phone that I have a number that I only give to my husband, my mum and my coach, so that those are the only people that will ever need to contact me in that time.
Obviously you're the most experienced member of the GB diving team, so do you offer words of wisdom to your younger teammates?
It's funny because you may think that, but I feel like I'm the most childlike out of everyone on the team. I'm the one that finds the stupid stuff funny. I'm a bit more of a practical joker. In terms of diving, I very much have a lot of experience and understand the different things that can go right and go wrong and how to deal with those things. But in terms of everyday life, I don't feel any older than I was when I was 14, honestly.
The diving competition at Paris 2024 takes place from 27 July to 10 August.