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Where are you going today?
What?
Where are you going today, Tom?
Oh.
Today is the day
that I'm leaving for the Olympics.
I've just got up.
I'm just having my breakfast.
So, it's about quarter past eight.
So I'm going to be leaving here at quarter to nine.
So I'm going to have my breakfast, go upstairs,
get into my Olympic tracksuit ready to travel in
and just pack my last few things in my bag.
Looking forward to it?
Yes.
Where are you going today?
What?
Where are you going today, Tom?
Oh.
Today is the day that I'm leaving for the Olympics.
I've just got up.
I'm just having my breakfast.
So it's about quarter past eight.
So I'm going to be leaving here at quarter to nine.
So I'm going to have my breakfast, go upstairs,
get into my Olympic track suit, ready to travel in
and just pack my last few things in my bag.
I don't think I've ever seen this before.
It's funny because, I mean, I look at myself at the beginning,
I get asked that question,
I see a camera's rolling and, all of a sudden,
I'm like a different person.
I've never had any kind of media training,
other than the fact that I've had a camera following me around
since I was maybe nine or 10-years-old.
My dad carried a camcorder everywhere.
Oh, you want to get it on flipping camera.
As you can tell, I used to find it really annoying that he was,
like, filming everything.
But now, like, what a memory to have captured,
like, leaving for my first Olympic Games.
I look at that kid now and I think,
"You have no idea what's about to come in your life."
He's cocky, supremely confident and very, very cool.
Meet Tom Daley, Olympic wunderkind.
He's a 13-year-old prodigy
who's mastered the complex physical and mental demands
of the high board.
Tom Daley was born to dive and a large part of his life
is now spent looking down from the intimidating height
of the 10-metre board.
Tom, as a baby, he was very lovable, loved his cuddles.
He's got a great sense of humour, which you could see as a baby.
He giggles at anything.
Water.
He loved the water, enjoyed learning to swim.
# If you're happy
# And you know it clap your hands
# If you're happy
# And you know it clap your hands
# If you're happy and you know it
# And you really want to show it
# If you're happy and you know it clap your hands. #
When Tom was about seven, we went to a local swimming bath
and they had a diving lesson going on.
Tom was fascinated and he was like,
"Mum, Mum. I really want to try that."
Booked him in for his first lesson
and he absolutely loved it.
And the rest is history, I suppose.
I got a phone call from one of the coaches
who was working with him and said,
"You've got to come over and watch this kid.
"He's a bit special."
I went over and I watched for 15 minutes.
And I turned around to everyone there and said, "You know what?
"I'm pretty sure this guy's never going to make a diver."
Now, in fairness, he actually didn't get in the pool.
He stood at the back of the one metre board,
was in floods of tears most of the time
and stubbornly refusing to get on the board -
let alone dive off the end of it.
When I saw him in the pool actually diving,
it was obvious that there was a skill there
that could be developed.
A happy Tom is a great Tom.
An unhappy Tom was not a great Tom.
If things weren't going right, he'd be crying, he'd be upset,
he'd be frustrated.
And he couldn't pull himself out of that.
He got to go away to some competitions when he was eight
and he was winning and everyone was like,
"Wow, that's really amazing."
And then they decided, when he was nine,
to send him away to a competition,
to a senior event.
So you needed him to understand
that you couldn't win at everything.
It backfired a little bit because he actually won
at that competition as well.
And I always remember the performance director
saying to me
he's the best natural talent he's seen in 20 years.
The 2005 boy's champion,
representing Plymouth diving, Thomas Daley.
It was actually in 2005
that I sat down with the management team
at British Diving and said,
"I think this kid is potentially able
"to make the Olympic Games in 2008."
I kind of felt invincible in this period of time
and I do think that's down to my dad.
He's been diving for about five, six years now.
He used to swim, swimming from the age of about four.
Now, during a public session,
he saw the divers on the diving boards,
decided to give it a go.
It looked a bit more exciting for him.
Rob was the one that would take him there, pick him up,
watch him in the pool when he was training.
He loved it. He loved to watch him.
He'd follow him around to his competitions.
Rob was the guy that was there beside him all the time.
I used to be terrified of leaving home.
I used to be so scared and worried about everything.
I used to cry myself to sleep, most nights,
when I used to go away to training camps and competitions.
I remember one time, in Australia, I was away for a competition.
And I was, I mean, 10-years-old on the other side of the planet,
jet lag, not able to sleep,
sharing a room with some other athletes.
And I just used to cry.
It was almost a Jekyll and Hyde scenario.
During the day, often, he'd be fine,
he'd be getting on with his diving,
he was in happy mode.
You get to the night time, it was time for bed and zoom -
Dan would spiral and he'd be in floods of tears.
He would ring me two o'clock in the afternoon, my time,
crying, saying, "Mum, come and get me, I can't sleep."
I nearly didn't get selected for teams
and I wasn't going to be able to be taken away.
There were competitions where I didn't go
because my coaches and the team around me
didn't want to have that burden.
And he said, "I would rather be dead
"than be on this training camp.
"And if you leave me alone in this room
"then I'm going to jump out of the window."
It was, like, such a traumatic period of my existence
at that time that I block it out.
Because I look back
and I remember all the amazing times that I had in competition,
all of the friends that I made, all the places that I go.
I used to go to the chaperones' room,
knock on the team manager's door in the middle of the night.
I was the nightmare kid.
If we have to take five chaperones away -
just to look after him - then that's what we'll do,
because it's going to be worth it for him
to develop these experiences as he also develops maturity.
I still, to this day, don't know why that was.
But I guess I just felt so safe when I was at home
that there was nothing that was ever going to make me feel
that safe anywhere else.
One of the things that really struck me
about the way that Tom dealt with things
was what I call his compartmentalisation of his life.
His family life, his school life, his friends life,
his diving life, his media life were all kept separate.
If they got mixed up, then he didn't like it very much.
The media didn't need to knock on the door
when it wasn't media time.
He was very successful, I think, within each area of those.
He really gave it his all.
He was beginning to be quite well-known within diving.
He'd been in the paper a couple of times,
he'd been on the news a couple of times
and people were starting to understand who this person was.
I started diving when I was eight
and I started realising that it could be serious
and I could go to the Olympic Games
when I won the under-18 title, when I was ten.
Cocky little shit!
How are you coping with the fame of being Tom Daley?
Well, it's been really... Well, I've enjoyed it so far.
The phone hasn't stopped ringing
and everything's been going really well.
At this period of time,
I had no idea what this would do to my life.
He was absolutely dying for someone to ask for his autograph.
So, please welcome to the stage...Tom Daley.
When you're that young and then, all of a sudden,
you're kind of thrust into the spotlight in that way,
I felt like there was nothing that could go wrong.
Leading up to the Olympics,
he went to the European Championships
when he was 13.
He actually won that one, which was pretty amazing.
And then everyone sort of said,
"Oh, we think he's a little bit too young to go to Beijing.
"He's only going to be 14."
So we had to have lots of meetings.
They made the decision,
"Yes, you can go to the Beijing Olympics."
I felt like I could achieve anything.
Anything that I set my mind to I was achieving -
whether that was winning national titles, winning European titles,
qualifying for the Olympic Games, learning new dives.
I look back on that period and it was probably the only time
that I truly felt happy with everything
that was going on in my life.
After qualifications for the Olympics,
everyone's just kind of swarmed.
It's been a good experience but it's been quite hectic.
When I walk around town,
you get lots of the girls pointing.
They speak extra loud, like,
"Oh, god. That's Tom Daley." Like this.
It makes me laugh.
I went into Starbucks the other day
and I got a free Starbucks because she recognised me.
So it does have its benefits, being recognised, so it's good.
Are you beginning to feel the pressure
and the importance of your role in the Beijing Olympics now,
of all this attention suddenly falling on you?
Well, the attention's been great.
I've loved all the media stuff and everything like that
and I love going up for the day trips in London.
I'm enjoying every second of it.
Going to the BAFTAs with my dad
and being able to go on these little trips -
where we would stay overnight
and we would have the most amazing time.
And I now look back on this period -
not only at the beginning
of what was going to be the rest of my life
but, also, looking back on these experiences
that I had with my dad -
it makes me look back on it and think,
"Well, damn. He was proud. He was really proud of me."
And that is really special.
The friends you've grown up with,
what do they think of your success?
Well, they're very supportive of me.
And they always say well done and good luck before I go and after.
And they always ask me questions.
And they've been very supportive so far.
And they try and treat me as a normal person,
when I get back to school.
I think 'so far' is the key word there.
Put all your things in its bags and then...
Yes, OK.
At the time, I was living with my mum,
my dad and my two younger brothers, William and Ben.
71. 16 kilos.
So that's fine.
It's funny to see, as well,
the fact that I'm off doing the Olympics,
competing against grown adults
and then my mum's packing my bag for me.
You know, that sums up me going to the Olympics at 14-years-old.
Hurry up now.
Right. Lunch is in your rucksack, OK?
I remember walking out and just thinking,
"Whoa," like, "what have I gotten myself into?
"This is one hell of a school summer holiday."
We built some goals for him -
one was to be happy and proud of his performance.
The second was to learn as much as possible.
And the third one was to have fun.
Blakey boy.
I did not sleep for toffee last night.
I'm so tired.
In Beijing, I shared with Blake - who was twice my age.
So we didn't really have all that much in common.
Like, we were definitely not the same people.
We didn't have any of the same interests.
It was very much a...we're going to get to the diving pool
and figure this out.
And we're going to just do the best that we can.
We had some successful competitions
and we also had some not so successful competitions,
let's say.
Come on then, Tom. Where are we?
We're in the Shaanxi,
where we're having our training camp.
It's our second training session here.
So we're going to just go in and warm up with a bit of dry land
and then get into the pool until four o'clock.
Good work.
Leon Taylor had been mentoring me since I was about, like,
ten-years-old.
He was a big inspiration of mine,
watching him win an Olympic silver medal in 2004.
We would have conversations on the phone,
we would see each other at competitions,
all of these kinds of things.
He was able to come into the Olympic Village
to help take some of that pressure off and have someone to speak to.
He knew what it meant to go to an Olympic Games,
how much pressure you would feel,
what it'd be like diving in front of an audience.
Beijing would have been my fourth Olympic Games.
I was still competing at the time
but I was suffering a lot with injuries.
I retired before Beijing
because the medical team told me that I was done.
I was able to step into the commentary role
but, also, I was always available to him in Beijing.
Be gentle. Don't try and whack it.
Listen to your partner. Be gentle with it.
So he tries to whack it.
I talk to him about him being homesick
or maybe getting nervous.
How are you finding the weight?
Because there's been a big gap, hasn't it?
Yeah, there's been a big...big gap.
But then it's been good because I've been able to wind down
and then build into a competition like I normally would.
So it's been good.
And so we're going to see you smiling on the diving boards?
Yeah, definitely. Winner.
See you on there, Tom. Well done.
It's just so funny looking back on this stuff and just thinking,
I just was a kid -
just out and about, doing his thing,
not taking anything too seriously.
I mean, I look back...like, you know,
having the time of my life.
Like, it's...
Yeah, time of my life.
In China, diving's quite a big sport.
So, like, walking around the streets,
sometimes you do get people recognising you
and in the village as well, some of the Chinese staff.
Going from the national championships -
where maybe we would have like 15 of the parents
in the audience -
to diving in front of 18,000 people was a big shift.
And I don't think I was prepared for that
or how that was going to feel until I was in it.
And when I was in it, I was not ready for this.
I had a nervous twitch as well that I just could not stop...
..and I was so self-conscious of that.
You have seven judges...
..that all mark out 10.
You take the two highest and the two lowest away
and then what's remaining gets added up in times
by the degree of difficulty.
Sounds complicated but it kind of is.
Tom Daley dives himself back to seventh position.
There was an opportunity that I could have gotten on the podium
on that competition.
But, you know, at least I can now look back
and say to the little Tom,
"I've got a few more Olympics in you yet, don't worry."
I do think he probably dived
a little bit safely
but I don't think that's out of order at all,
because he was 14 in an Olympic final.
I went into those Olympic Games
knowing that this was going to be my first.
Like, I probably shouldn't have been in Beijing
because, you know, the stars aligned
and everything worked out.
I learned all the dives I needed to,
I performed when I needed to perform
and I got to the Olympic Games.
For me, that was like a learning experience.
I was like, "Right, I can use this,
"soak everything in,
"not really worry too much about the outcome
"because I know I can use all that experience in London 2012."
Whereas for Blake it was, "This is my last chance saloon.
"This is it.
"This is my one shot at winning an Olympic medal."
So, we were in two very different places,
going into that competition.
They've got to get this absolutely perfect,
if they have any hope, at all,
getting close to that top three.
It's probably not going to be a medal today
for the British team.
Tom just needs that little bit more fine-tuning,
a little bit more experience in the big competitions.
They really have ignited the imagination
of children in Britain.
Everyone knows about Tom, everyone knows about diving
and I think they do really have a chance in 2012.
They go from strength to strength.
I remember the day after,
there was something that happened in the press conference
or in the mix zone,
where Blake said something and he blamed it on me.
And there was this whole situation
that he said that I wasn't diving very well.
I've got a lot more experience than Tom.
I've been around the block a few times.
So I was alright.
I didn't dive to the best of my ability
but I can go home happy with the way I performed.
Unfortunately, Tom didn't dive to the best of his ability.
And it was hard work for me trying to gear him up.
All I remember, from my side,
was that he was on the phone to his mum -
apologising for her coming.
I told him, "Get off your phone. It's not over yet."
I think that got taken the wrong way
because I think a 13-year-old telling a 26-year-old
they shouldn't be doing something didn't go down very well.
I didn't really realise that it was such a big issue
until I read it the next day in the newspapers.
The media got hold of this thing
and pushed it out there as a headline.
Today we put 100% effort into every dive.
Now, after the third dive, it didn't go so well.
I think what I did...I must have tried too hard
and just went for everything as hard as I possibly could.
And it obviously...it just wasn't my day today anyway.
Oh, it's great to be back
but I really do miss being in Beijing, actually.
But it'll be good to go back home, work as hard as I possibly can
to try and get the best results in London.
Being an athlete, being in the public eye
and then being at school mentally must be really difficult.
On the return from the Olympics in Beijing
was when everything kind of took a turn,
when I went back to school.
After coming back from the Olympics,
I got the odd name call
and then it kind of got more and more and more and more.
I thought it would reach a peak and then just go away.
And then when it reached the peak, it kind of just stayed there.
And after eight months of people calling you names...
I remember this being horrible at school.
Me and my friends were given a key
to be able to lock ourselves in a classroom,
to kind of get away from people at lunchtime.
You do something that you love doing
and then you get taken the mick out of when you go to school.
So I don't really quite understand what's happening there
but you know...
It affected my home life, it affected school life,
it affected my diving life.
I felt like my whole world was coming to an end
after a summer that I was so excited about -
a dream that I had finally accomplished
of going to an Olympic Games -
and then coming back to school
and feeling like I was some kind of alien.
You get a lot of verbal comments walking through the playground,
people would kind of throw things.
I don't think people realise how much it impacted me
because I didn't really talk about it.
I was almost embarrassed about the fact
that people were mean to me at school.
So I didn't really tell my parents until it got really bad,
until they heard me crying in my room
and heard me kind of not really interacting
or wanting to do anything.
I mean, I don't really understand why they did it.
They should have been proud that he was achieving that
and that they were going to school with him.
I was rugby tackled in the field at lunch one time.
I said to my parents, "I can't do this anymore.
"I can't go to school.
"I don't want to ever go to school ever again.
"And I want to be homeschooled."
The school weren't really very supportive at all.
The kids were never told off, the teachers didn't intervene.
What ended up happening, in the end,
was my dad got an email or a letter through from somebody
that knew someone at Plymouth College.
And they were able to offer me a scholarship.
My first day at Plymouth College has been really good, actually.
It's been nice to meet new people
and everyone's been really supportive
and it's a completely different atmosphere.
I feel so sorry for that kid that had to explain what was going on.
I got so hard to deal with bullying...
..and then to have to kind of explain that on the news
and explain it to people.
And everybody to know that you were going through it
is so rough.
They have loads and loads of different elite athletes
and it's great to go into a school with other athletes,
that understand what you're going through
and understand how much training that you've got to do
and keep up with schoolwork.
And it's great to have someone there
that's going through the same thing.
Probably at the time I had maybe management
that didn't have the best judgement.
It's kind of unsurprising that things like this were lined up
for when I would leave school.
There would be cameras waiting for me outside of the school.
I was in a really bad place with my diving
and, a few months after joining this school,
I had a completely different frame of mind
and that was when I got to go to my first world championships.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome the finalists.
It was the first chance that I was going to be able to get out
and dive on the world stage since the Olympic Games.
Darts Ed representing Great Britain.
Tom Daley.
It was in Rome.
I remember my dad flying out to the competition
to come and watch me.
And I always knew exactly where he was
because he would have this massive Union flag
he would be waving,
to the point where it would infuriate
all of the spectators around him.
Because it would be like smashing into their faces
but he did not care.
He wanted me to know exactly where he was and that he was there.
And he didn't care how well I did.
He didn't care if I came last.
He didn't care if I bombed out.
There was no concern about the outcome.
He just wanted to be there.
He just loved it.
He just loved seeing me dive.
I remember going from fourth place
and then the diver after me messed up a bit.
And so then I was like "OK, I'm guaranteed bronze,
"like, my first world championship individual medal."
Then the next diver, Matthew Mitchum -
who was the Olympic champion from the year previous -
messed up.
And then I bumped up again so I'm like,
"OK, I'm guaranteed at least a silver."
There's no way that Chubot is going to mess up.
There was this moment that just felt like an absolute eternity.
I just remember hearing everybody go wild.
I'm like, "What's going on?" Like, "What's happened?"
See the scores come up.
And I've gone into first place
and I've become world champion at 15-years-old.
My goodness, Tom Daley is the world champion.
Tom Daley, congratulations.
Magnificent.
That gave me that hope and that fire
that I could do that again.
My dad got to see me do that.
My dad got to see me stand on top of the world championship podium.
I do sometimes think back
on my younger life
and did I go see Olympics in Beijing 2008?
Did I win a European title at 13, win a world championship at 15?
Because my dad
wasn't gonna see me win the rest
and be the rest of the person I am today.
My dad took me to every single training session.
He took me to every single competition.
He was there for me through the good days, the bad days.
He was there for me through everything...
..and he was the one person that I could go to
to speak about anything and everything
and feel like I had someone on my side, always.
When I don't get the dives,
I just feel really frustrated and I get really angry with myself.
I deal with it by, like, sitting in the van,
speaking to my dad and he'll make me feel better.
He supports me all the way
and if I didn't have his support system,
I wouldn't be here now, 'cause...
..I wouldn't want to carry on without his support.
I was in a competition in Germany in 2006.
I was having a really tough time with my diving.
I was growing. I was having mental blocks.
I was terrified of doing my dives on 10 metre,
to the point where I had a bit of a breakdown
throughout the middle of a competition.
And I had to come down,
I had to pull myself out of the competition
and go up to the referee and just say,
"I'm so sorry, I can't continue the competition.
"I have to...I have to pull out."
And I was so upset and so distraught.
And I went and sat with my dad.
And I didn't know until we got home
that he had pushed his surgery back two weeks,
to be able to come to that competition -
to watch me dive -
because he knew how much it would mean to me for him to be there.
One day, he wasn't there when I got back from school.
My mum said, "Everything's OK
"but we are going to go to the hospital."
And I'm like, "Well, what's he doing at the hospital?
"Like, what's going on?"
And I remember walking into the hospital
and then seeing him in the hospital bed,
with bandages wrapped around his head.
That was when I found out that he had just had a brain tumour
the size of a grapefruit removed.
Within two weeks,
I was in the hospital and it was removed -
80% removed.
They had to leave 20% in there
because it was intertwined with blood vessels and nerves.
And it was too risky to remove any more.
At the time, I wasn't told that it was terminal.
So just...I always assumed and had the hopeful optimism
that he was going to recover.
Because you think of your parents as invincible.
You think of your parents as the people
that are going to be there for you through everything -
or at least until you become an adult.
My tumour has started to grow back,
albeit only small at the moment.
But I've just got to prepare myself for the next scan.
They couldn't remove them this time.
The way they explained it was
it would be like having a blown up balloon
and trying to cut a hole out of it,
without it popping.
In 2011, I was away at a training camp in Mexico.
I got called into a room.
where they had my mum on the phone.
And I was like, "What's happening?"
And my mum was like, "Hey, Tom.
"Just wanted to speak to you and let you know
"that you're going to be coming home this afternoon.
"Your dad's not very well.
"He's currently in the living room
"and he's been put on end-of-life care."
When I left, he wasn't doing great but he was fine.
My dad was going to get better.
He had to get better.
How could I keep going?
How could I go to the next Olympics?
How could I do what I do every day without him?
Soon as Rob saw Tom, it gave him a spark again
and he just came to life.
Whenever I wasn't training or whenever I wasn't at school,
I was sat right next to him, working on my driving theory test.
That was the one thing that we could still do together.
When I had my 17th birthday on May 21st,
he wanted to come to the window but he couldn't really walk.
But he tried to get to the window anyway.
I did my first driving lesson, came back,
and it was on May 27th
that he passed away that year.
I kept squeezing his hand and he would squeeze back.
And then I remember the last time that he squeezed my hand...
..and he didn't squeeze back anymore.
It's still a shock when it actually happens,
even though you know it's coming.
I mean, I didn't just lose my dad
because he was so much more than that.
He was my biggest cheerleader...
..my best friend...mentor.
I mean, our whole life came to a standstill.
There's periods of time
where I just have no recollection of what happened.
And I felt like I just went into some kind of autopilot -
of just doing what I thought was right at the time
and what other people wanted for me...
..or what other people expected me to be...
..or what other people expected me to act like.
I don't...I don't really know how I feel.
I kind of...it's weird.
Some people just like sit in the corner
and just like are crying.
And then I'm kind of...feel bad for carrying on
but I think that's what dad would have wanted.
Even when he was downstairs for that whole month in bed,
he always says to me, "Why aren't you at training?"
I kind of shut down.
I don't know what I was thinking
but I went to training the next day.
I went to the national championships 10 days later.
I just kept going because I didn't know anything else.
I didn't have anything or have anyone else.
I was alone.
I felt like I had to put on a brave face -
like I always have to -
because I always had to keep this front
that everything was gonna be OK.
And it wasn't.
But I didn't know how to deal with that.
He decided that coming training and acting more as normal
was gonna be a way in which he could focus on something else.
So I guess the compartmentalisation
comes through again,
where he's 100% into something else -
therefore he's not in a position
to be thinking about other things.
People are like on ladders trying to get photos of me,
seeing my dad being carried out in a coffin.
Yeah, they've been asked not to come.
I mean, I look back on it now
and it just feels, like, really abusive.
It's a very lonely experience...
..for sure.
Knowing everything I know now,
I would have 100% steer clear of doing any of that press.
You need time to grieve
and you need time to be able to process what happened.
I felt like I had to put on a brave face for anyone else
that might have been going through that situation,
when actually the right thing to do was like,
"You know what, I am struggling."
I didn't really feel like I could talk to my mum about my struggles.
I didn't feel like I could talk to my brothers about my struggles
because I didn't want to upset them.
So I always kept it to myself.
And I didn't have that outlet
to be able to offload all of those things that I was thinking.
The only people that I have to talk to about this
are you watching at home.
At the end of 2011,
I was told that I would have to lose weight
by our performance director at British Diving
and that I was overweight
and that I needed to look slimmer, leaner
and more like I did in 2008.
It was the first time where I felt
that I was being looked at and judged -
not for how I did in the diving pool
but for how I looked.
I took then some quite drastic measures
to make sure that the food did not stay in my stomach,
let's put it that way.
A rational person would know that I wasn't fat
but that was all that I could think about
in the build-up to the Olympic Games.
I had a diary that I would write in
and, at the top of it, I'd write the date and my weight.
I was kind of left to my own devices
and kind of left with that struggle by myself.
Because even when I was having these meetings
with my sports psychologist,
I didn't know how to bring that up -
because, every time I said it out loud,
I knew it felt silly.
But in my head, it was the biggest thing
that I would always think about every day.
Every time I made a decision about what I was going to eat,
if I was going to eat it
and then get myself so hungry that I would end up
eating so much and bingeing -
to the point where I was then so guilty
that I then had to do something about that.
It was more than just an eating disorder.
That was really a reflection on how much stress and anxiety
he was going through at the time, getting to London in 2012.
I still feel, like, ashamed talking about it now
because, like, once you're on the other side of it,
it seems so easy just to stop and ask for help.
But, when you're in it, you feel like you can't be helped.
He was London 2012.
He was the face of it.
Seeing his face on these massive billboards
and just being like, "This is insane."
In my head, guys didn't have eating disorders,
guys didn't have any problems with their mental health.
Guys are meant to be these macho things
that get on with anything and you just keep going.
I was not that.
I didn't know who I could talk to.
The running theme here is that I felt very alone
in all of the things that I was dealing with.
I've almost tortured myself through this whole experience
because I wanted to do well so badly -
being a world champion, European champion,
Commonwealth champion,
with a lot of expectations to come away with an Olympic medal.
But we got here.
We made it.
I think back to this moment and it was so surreal.
I mean, you couldn't even see the top of the stands
with the amount of people that were there and the British flags.
No, it's not so good.
It's not so good.
He's getting massive home support.
His take-off, you can see, getting frustrated.
Yeah, I don't know what he's saying there.
Maybe the flashes put him off but he lost it all on the take-off,
actually, running out of room there.
That's a very poor start from Daley,
more like his preliminary start.
So, basically, what happens when you're diving
is that you have to be extremely visual.
You have to see exactly where you are in the air,
when you're spinning around and when you're twisting.
When I took off this time round,
there were loads of flash photography, essentially,
because home Olympics, people take photos,
they didn't necessarily know not to do that.
It was the first time I've ever put my hand up
to ask for a re-dive.
He said, "Mum, I couldn't see a thing.
"I was blinded.
"How I made it into the water the right way up, I don't know."
I could have killed him, really,
if he'd landed in not a good position.
When something like that happens, it's called the twisties.
I'd been struggling with my twister anyway
and for that to happen in the competition freaked me out.
So I leapt up and clapped my hands and yelled and shouted
and they stopped the competition.
The athlete has to ask for the re-dive
so I went over to the referee, explained what had happened.
They went and reviewed the footage
or I think they might have already reviewed the footage
because they knew what was coming.
When they told me to go up and do it again, it was terrifying.
And I was like, "Oh, my god.
"I don't think there has ever been a re-dive in an Olympics."
Normally what you would do is you would break everything down
to square one and start again and build it back up
really, really slowly
and figure out how to get yourself feeling confident,
going up onto the diving board.
But I went back up onto the diving board -
having to do it again -
and then do it in front of 18,000 people
and the millions of people at home.
But I was so scared to do this again.
I remember standing on the end of the diving board thinking, like,
"How do I get myself back in the zone to do this again?"
Because if you re-dive and you do the dive worse
than the one you did before, then this is the one that counts.
He does a better job.
It's better than the one he got the re-dive on
so then we're into it.
This is what you have worked for
for a whole decade.
This is what you imagined it would be like
when you said you would represent Great Britain at the Olympics.
Good luck, Tom Daley.
The country is behind you.
Oh, yes. It's a good one.
He can't do any more than that.
It needed to be perfect
and, apart from just a minute bit of splash,
it was perfect.
Those four years were so incredibly tough for our family,
for everything I had to deal with between 2008 through to 2012.
The amount that I had to grow up and change from that little kid...
..I felt like I had grown up an immense amount...
..even though I'm just turned 18 there.
It felt like the first time I felt any kind of happiness
and closeness and joy since my dad died.
It was like the moment where I was, like,
we both wanted an Olympic medal more than anything...
..but then it happened and then it was gone.
London 2012 was over. Like, what was next?
Am I going to do that again?
Am I going to go through another four years
to maybe go to another Olympic Games?
He really wasn't in a good place,
didn't know what to do with himself,
didn't know where he wanted to be.
I was on that high from winning an Olympic medal
and then I was, like, on my own.
There were no other Olympic medallists on the diving team.
So, if I was talking to them about how I was feeling,
they would be, you know, very, like,
"Well, you won an Olympic medal, like,
"what have you got to be sad about?"
But as Tom Daley, the brand,
I was in way more demand than ever.
After my dad died,
I was the breadwinner for my family -
for my mum, for my brothers
and wanted to try and provide for them,
in the best way that I could.
But for every sponsorship that I got
and for every deal that I had,
for every pound that I went over a threshold,
I got a pound taken away from me
from British swimming and British diving.
I was getting constant criticism,
saying that I wasn't training enough
and I was taking too much time away from the sport -
when I didn't miss a single training session.
I was so committed to what I wanted to do
and achieve my dream.
And, yes, I was doing so many things outside of the sport
but, also, that was my way of dealing with all of the crap
that I was going through was to not think -
to keep myself so incredibly busy
that I did not have time to feel sorry for myself.
I just wanted to keep going, keep going, keep doing.
British Diving weren't happy.
They were saying it was interfering
with what he was doing.
How do I win?
I have to look after my family,
yet you don't want to support me either
because that was just the structure and the setup,
of the way that funding works in British sport.
I just saw red a little bit and responded to the press article,
for not concentrating on his training as he should be.
So my mum ended up writing an open letter
to the CEO of British Swimming to just be like,
"Back off, just let my son do his thing.
"You know, at the end of the day,
"he's trying to do the best that he can in the pool
"and he's also doing what he can
"to support his family, at 18-years-old."
After my 2013 season,
we were in Barcelona after the world championships.
And I sat down with my coach and I said,
"I really need to speak to you
"because there's something that I want to tell you."
He thought that I was going to tell him
that I was quitting diving and I couldn't do it anymore,
because he knew how much of a struggle that year was for me.
What I ended up saying to him
was that I really want to move to London.
I needed something different,
I needed something new
and I needed a different outlook on what it meant to be an athlete.
I said, "I would love for you to come with me
"because you've been my coach since day one."
I don't think that what was on offer with me and Plymouth,
at that time,
was a match for what was on offer with London
and everything that went with that.
He decided to stay in Plymouth and keep running Plymouth diving
and I moved to London.
But the problem with London was there was no club there.
It actually was still being converted from the Olympics
to have, like, the extra seating taken away
and being converted into a proper leisure centre.
And I got a phone call from Alexei,
our performance director,
and he said, "I have someone who would like to speak to you."
He passes the phone over to a voice I hear down the phone
and that was Jane.
We all knew about Tom
'cause he was the next rising star.
I already had stars.
So Tom Daley didn't really mean that much to me at that time.
Alex, he called me.
He said, "Well, Tom's in the United States,
and he's going to come train with you."
I said, "OK. Well, just let me know when he's coming",
thinking it would be a few weeks.
And he said, "Well, he's coming tomorrow."
He said, "Jane, I want to win an Olympic gold medal.
"Would you be interested in moving to London?"
And I was like, "No."
We got on really well.
And we were like,
"OK, maybe this can be the start of something new."
And I didn't know where we were really going to go with it
until he said, "Well, I want to come back."
The second visit was really a lot more about him as a person
and what was actually going on in his life at that time.
I met Lance in the March after the Olympic Games.
I was out in L.A. shooting some stuff.
So he takes my phone, he puts his number in.
And when he hands it back and I look at it,
he's put a winky face at the end of his phone number.
No heterosexual man has ever put a winky face
at the end of their number when they give it to another dude.
The first things we started sharing
were about the fact that he had not so long ago lost his dad.
I had not so long ago just lost my big brother,
who was like my dad, because I never had that.
I had recently won an Academy Award.
He had won his first Olympic medal.
We were able to share with each other
the post-accomplishment blues and devastation -
the way that when you win something
you only ever dreamed about,
there's something inside you that disassembles
and has to be put back together.
And that there's almost no one on the planet
you can share that with because people think,
"Well, gosh. You should be so grateful."
I got to a really low point with my diving,
where I thought I wasn't going to be able to keep going.
Like, I didn't see the point in carrying on.
Meeting Lance, he kind of inspired me to want to carry on.
He inspired me to want to be great at what I do.
He inspired me to want to be the best person that I could be.
It was really special
because I think it was the first time that I realised
that being attracted to men wasn't just a sexual thing -
I actually could fall in love with a man.
I flew to London,
I'd made some excuse that I was working on some film.
And I think that was in some ways true
but it wasn't a necessary trip.
The thing I wanted to do was to see Tom.
I remember organising a party
and telling my management who was coming.
They said to me,
"Oh, be careful of being photographed with Lance
"because you know he is like a really big LGBT activist.
"You don't want people thinking that you're gay."
And I was like, "Oh. Would that be so bad?
"Like, OK."
And then I was like suddenly filled with shame.
You're mismanaging one of the most important parts
of who this person is...
..their heart, their love,
their future relationships and families.
That's mismanagement.
That's a dereliction of duty and he should have been dropped.
We had all kinds of crisis meetings
about how we were going to deal with this.
"You're going to lose all your sponsorship.
"You're going to lose all your fans.
"Like, how are you ever going to be able to compete
"in the Middle East, in Russia, in all of these countries?
Kind of filling me with, like,
fear about what I should and shouldn't do.
It was not my place to put any pressure on him, at all,
to come out.
I remember the interview where I was asked,
"You have loads of gay fans, why do you think that is?"
And then, "What do you think of the people
"that think that you're gay?"
And I was like, "Well, so what if I am?
"It doesn't matter anyway."
And then this headline comes up.
It was the first time
where I felt misunderstood and misrepresented in the media.
A really scary thing to have to feel like
you are a slave to the culture and the media
that we have in the UK, which can be really quite scary.
Knowing that I was gay from the age of three-years-old -
and constantly having to live my life as somebody else
and putting on this person that I wasn't -
was exhausting.
And that was when I decided to come out publicly.
Hi, guys.
So most of you are probably wondering
why I'm doing this video.
I just sat in my room,
trying to figure out
what I wanted to say and how much I wanted to say.
One thing I've never really felt that comfortable talking about
are my relationships.
Come spring this year...
..my life changed massively
when I met someone
and that someone...is a guy.
Although it's not that long ago,
it was a long time ago in terms of where we are with LGBTQ+ rights
and where we are with the acceptance
of queer people participating in sport
and just general queer people in the public eye.
It was terrifying to post the video
but the response was kind of overwhelmingly positive.
When he looks them in the eye and he says,
"This is who I am,
"this is who I've always been and I'm happy,"
they could see that in him.
They could feel that in him.
They could feel something opening up in him.
I'm still Tom.
I still want to win an Olympic gold medal in Rio 2016
for Great Britain.
It felt liberating and it felt like I no longer had that mask up
and I was able to just...just live.
And it's all that anyone ever wants to be able to do
is just to be able to live as themselves.
We had Lance come and stay
and then all of it seemed to make sense.
And he just told me, at that point,
"If I'm going to win a gold medal,
"I want you to come and help me win a gold medal."
And then the rest is history.
I packed up and moved within three weeks.
We had to get over the difficulty
that I was having with my back twister.
I think, if I don't come up with something,
Tom probably won't be able to continue
'cause he just didn't even want to come to training.
He was so frightened.
She shows me a video of someone from Cirque du Soleil
doing a Russian swing
forward three and a half somersaults with one twist.
And she was like, "Have you seen this?"
And I was like, "Yes. But, like, where are you going with this?"
She was like,
"I think we can turn this circus trick into an Olympic dive."
And I was like, "OK."
Every positive bone in his body was saying,
"It's either this or I don't dive anymore."
It then became what Lance nicknamed it -
the firework -
because I'm a small ball falling through the air.
And then all of a sudden, just before I hit the water,
I come out and do a twist.
And so it looks a bit like a firework.
And then it kind of got the nickname, the firework.
Not only was the expectation that he could win gold,
it was that he's probably going to.
Going into Rio,
I felt like I was the most prepared
that I've ever felt going into any of the Olympics I had done.
We were quite lucky to qualify for the synchro
because we were put together as a pair
really quite late in the day.
But we knew that we could come away with a medal
because we had won a medal in every event,
that we had done that year.
Miraculously, we won a bronze medal.
I was diving my best physically.
I felt the best mentally.
I felt like I was in the best physical condition.
I felt like I was in the zone.
He was the best diver there.
He was the best 10-metre platform diver in Rio.
I went into this individual competition
thinking that it was going to be a gold medal.
The prelim, I got an Olympic record and won
and now I'm...semi-final.
I haven't even watched any of these guys back...
..but it doesn't really go much better from here, I fear.
I smelled trouble in Rio when Tom got an ear infection.
He'll never say it because he says athletes can't make excuses.
You have to be 100% if you're going to dive safely,
because hitting the water at 35 miles an hour is no joke.
I had a girl that hit her head, fell unconscious.
We had to go in 17 feet and go pull her out.
There have been a couple of people who've died.
Every time I get onto that diving board,
I'm scared for my life.
He would have to pat certain parts of his body,
his hips or his face, a certain number of times.
I see how he tries to disguise it
so he doesn't look like he's got these tics,
that he has absolutely adopted
because he thinks, if he doesn't do it,
it's not gonna turn out well.
I wasn't allowed to step on certain drains
walking through London 'cause that would be bad luck.
And then it would be my fault if he came in fourth.
You know as soon as you hit the water that you've messed up.
You can't dive like that at the Olympic Games.
Jane normally stays on poolside
but she ended up coming into the dry land where I was sitting
and pacing and looking at the scoreboard.
Jane's told me, since, that she wanted to slap me.
In my head, I was in complete denial
that there was any possibility
that I wouldn't have been able to make it into the final.
I watched him have the worst day of his diving career
on the biggest stage there is.
I remember hitting the water on this dive and thinking,
"It's over."
Like, "It's done."
And I didn't quite know how to even process that.
All time low in my diving career.
I probably would have retired
if I had won an Olympic gold medal there.
That was how I envisaged it.
It is true what they say -
your greatest accomplishments come from your greatest failures.
And although it seems harsh to use that word failures -
because we still won a bronze medal in the synchronised event -
but in Tom and my eyes,
the goal was the Olympic gold medal.
What you saw was a world record in the prelim.
But, in order to maintain that,
it was going to require two more world records
and we ran out of gas.
We ran out of emotional, mental,
physical sustainability.
I then saw Lance outside and I just broke down.
And he said to me, like, "Your story doesn't end here.
"This isn't over for you.
"Maybe you weren't meant to win an Olympic gold medal here in Rio
"because your future kid was meant to see you win
"an Olympic gold medal."
"We're going to do this for four more years
"because I know you're the world's best.
"And the reason we're going to give this
"is that, had you won that gold, you would be done.
"And, if you were done,
"your children that we are going to have,
"that we have named on our first date,
"would never get to see their father dive.
"They'd never get to see their dad do the thing that fuels him.
"So this has been good news
"'cause we need to get busy, get married, have kids.
"And you need to get ready for an Olympics in Tokyo,
"where you're going to slay for your children.
"And they're going to see what an inspiring human being
"their daddy is."
I finally found perspective
and I didn't put all of my self-worth and self-esteem
based on how well I did in diving.
I started to realise that I was more than just a diver -
a husband, a father, a friend, a son.
I knew that there was more to life
than how well I did in the diving pool.
And that really helped change the way
that I thought about my diving going into the Tokyo Olympics.
In the best stories ever -
the most inspiring Hollywood tales -
what happens before the sun rises?
It gets incredibly dark.
Your heart is broken.
There's no way out.
You're over, you're done with.
That is what happens before the third act,
where the hero rises and slays and wins gold.
And I think he knew he could do it
and it became our mission.
We just didn't know it would take five years.
Lockdown was a wild experience.
I learnt to knit,
it was where I was doing home workouts,
it was where I was doing somersaults onto sofa cushions
to be able to still keep up
with the practice of some kind of diving skills.
It was such a surreal time
but gave me a sense of perspective,
of anything can change at any moment.
You have to let go of thinking that you can control everything
and just try to be present and in the moment
and being able to just live for the here and now.
Because as soon as you start to try to control everything,
it becomes so overwhelming and it's so much energy wasted.
You don't have time to walk around
all the drains in London anymore.
You don't have time to be tapping on your head and on your shorts
for good luck or doing all these other good luck things -
that he would make me do, that we do.
You don't have time for that.
Pool, home.
Pool, competition, home.
Things become very, very focused.
You become very aware of your time
and how you're using it
because what you want to be doing with it is being with your son.
That's brand new for Tom.
I think it is one of the factors that came into play
that started the gold, silver, bronze rush.
I knew he was a different person than the person I'd met.
Matt, he spent a lot of time in Tom's environment and circle.
We were just in an incredible rock solid relationship.
Ready? And one, two, three. Go.
They're like your family.
We're doing it for each other.
I'm coaching my very best for them
and they're diving their very best for each other and me.
One, two, three. Go.
The Chinese - who are unbeatable...
..they're having a fine day, even a great day.
One, two, three. Go.
I'm thinking, "Yes, we got silver."
I'm not thinking about a gold medal.
It was only Tom who came out after the dive.
And I'm just sitting there like, "Oh. Well done, guys."
Great. We've done so good.
"Jane", he's whispering to me,
"Jane, we're going to win this."
And I'm like, "What? "What are you talking about?"
And he's like, "Look up there and look at the score."
We knew that we had done everything humanly possible
to have made it as difficult as possible for China to beat us.
But it was still possible for them to go ahead of us.
So he's like, "They need a hundred and whatever points."
And I was like, "A hundred and whatever points for what?
"They're ahead of us."
I had not been following.
He goes, "They need a hundred and something to beat us."
And I was like, "You mean to literally beat us?"
And he's like, "Yep."
Now it was a matter of standing on the sidelines and waiting,
which felt like the longest wait that you could possibly imagine.
But we knew that we had done at least enough for silver.
Realistically, in the diving world,
a silver medal is the gold medal
because China is just assumed to win everything.
We knew that we had put on all the pressure possible to China
and that's all you can do.
I remember watching this dive thinking,
"Damn, that was perfect. They're going to do it."
The only thing that has a slight discrepancy on there
is the distance away from the platform.
And I'm standing there like this, just looking at Tom going...
I'm waiting for Tom to tell me what's happening.
And then he just stopped screaming
and that's when I knew he wasn't cold anymore.
It just doesn't happen.
I'm a writer, I can make up happy endings.
But when I write them, they feel corny
because life isn't that convenient.
Oh, my god.
He had just written the most glorious third act...
..and he deserved it.
It's the ultimate of all ultimates.
There is nothing more than the Olympic gold medal.
It validated my move to London,
it validated our failure in Rio
and it validated that dreams can come true.
This is the moment I had dreamt of.
I just imagined standing on top of the podium
and being able to sing the national anthem.
That feeling of standing on top of the Olympic podium...
..there is no other feeling like that
and I don't think I will ever feel anything like that ever again.
Thomas Daley!
We weren't allowed to be close to each other
so we had to give each other our Olympic gold medal -
which is actually a really special thing
and I think they should continue doing that.
I always knew I could...
..but, as I was getting older,
I had to come to terms with the fact that I might never do it...
..but we did.
In the darkness of COVID,
there was still a place for joy in the world.
It's about damn time
that someone that dedicated to this sport
earns the gold they deserve.
I don't think you realise, until you see it all back,
how much you actually put into an Olympic gold medal
in the end...
..and all the times that it didn't quite happen...
..and all the times that it never was quite enough -
the heartbreak of competition where you don't make a final...
..and it all comes together on the day.
It was such an incredibly special moment.
But it was such a crazy Olympic Games
to be away from everyone.
I achieved everything that I ever wanted to in the sport
and I felt so content and happy with my diving career.
I thought I was done.
There were so many things that I was able to then enjoy
and being back and spending time with my family
and being able to enjoy just the little things in life.
In 2023, we were in Colorado Springs,
which is where Phoenix was born.
We were there ahead of time,
when we went to the Olympic and Paralympic Museum.
Pretty quickly, people start to recognise Tom.
And, before you know it,
staff are all kind of congregating on the balconies
around the central area where we're stood
and just start to applaud him.
There's this video of what it means to be an Olympian
and what it takes to be an Olympian -
the hard work, the blood, sweat, tears, the dedication.
It's just silence to my right, where Tom sat.
And I look over and, probably for the second time,
maybe third, in our relationship, he's crying.
Robbie turns to me and is like, what's the matter, Papa?
And I was like, "I just really miss diving.
"And I wish I could go back and compete in the Olympics again
"because it was the most fun I ever had."
And he was like,
"But, Papa, I want to see you dive in the Olympics."
That was enough to get me to begin to consider the possibility
of going back to the pool one last time.
I don't know if this is just going to be a completely silly idea
of me getting back in the pool
or it's going to be an opportunity for me to be able
to have a bit of fun, do it recreationally,
without any of the pressure.
Paris 2024 is definitely a goal.
Around a year to go.
Maybe I'll be on those diving boards,
maybe I won't.
It's one thing to say, "I've got a different purpose,
"I've got my family, my kids.
"But then that competitive animal in you
"is really what the driver is."
We had decided to move to LA, by that point.
I made a few phone calls
to try and then start training with Tom Stevens at UCLA.
And, I don't know, I felt like I was home again.
So the plan is, this morning,
warm up, a bit of conditioning, a few flips,
just get the body going because I'm an old man now.
I think I've got another one in me.
I think I can do this.
I think I could get back to a stage
where I could compete and be able to compete
in front of my two children,
for the very first time at an Olympic Games.
He still has the ability to lift us
and make us appreciate what our sport is
and certainly what our sport is, with him in it.
My training felt completely different.
I trained for one year instead of training for four years.
I changed my diving routine to only training once per day
instead of twice per day.
I was only doing the synchronised event
so I didn't have to worry about doing the individual dives -
which took away the twister, took away my handstand.
So I was able to just focus on the four dives that I was best at.
I then also was able to train in UCLA,
which meant that I was not at home in that pressure cooker
of an environment -
with everyone trying to be the best that they could possibly be
and it can be quite intense.
Whereas I was able to go and train and be free from all of that
and actually really enjoy it.
I didn't take any second for granted
because I was like, "You know what?
"I know that this is really now going to be my last one
"because I can't be going back again in '28."
Standing on the diving board there, for my first dive,
felt like I'd already won.
Being able to see my kids and my husband in the audience,
I was just like...this was it, this was the moment that I wanted.
One, two, three. Go.
I'm getting excited. I think we know why.
It's Noah Williams and Tom Daley now in round six -
what we suspect may be Tom's final dive.
Oh!
Well, it won't be gold today
but it will be a place on the podium.
Tom Daley fulfilling his Olympic dream of competing -
the five Olympics from Beijing to London to Rio to Tokyo
and now, finally, in Paris.
Thomas Daley!
And that completes the set for Tom Daley...
..having won more medals now from the 10-metre platform
than any other diver.
You might get 10 good years
before your body says, "Forget it."
Tom has done 20.
It didn't just feel like
I was getting to see them after one singular Olympic event.
It felt like it was my whole career.
It was putting to bed all of the hours upon hours,
days, weeks, months, years
that I have put into the sport of diving.
He fell in love with a sport
that had both beauty and athleticism...
..a sport where he could practice his perfectionism...
..a sport that takes place in 1.6 seconds
and, in that time,
a myriad of things have to happen right.
He said, "I just want you to know that I love you so much
"and I know I never articulate how much I love you
"and how much I care about you."
Oh.
It was about giving up so much
for Tom Daley to live the dream, his dream, my dream.
The validation that I was more than just a coach to him -
that obviously meant more than anything in the world to me.
My whole life has been about diving.
My whole life
has been about perfecting those 1.6 seconds.
I spend four years training for something
that goes by in less than 10 seconds in total
and I wouldn't change a thing.
It's been the best 23 years that I can imagine
and I've had the best time meeting the most amazing people,
travelling to incredible places.
Although, yes, sometimes it has been incredibly tough
and it has been challenging.
And there's been times where I felt like I couldn't carry on,
I persevered.
I think if there's one thing that I'm excited about
it's being able to share this with Robbie and Phoenix
and be able to have that memory,
that I can show them for the rest of my life
and be able to have shared that with them.
I feel very lucky to have people around me now,
that I feel really comfortable
that I can speak to about anything and everything.
But I think that also comes from me laying my guard down
'cause, for the longest time, my guard was up.
We've heard that you are retiring,
this is your last Olympics.
Just talk to us about that -
why the decision now and how do you feel?
Yeah, hard to talk about.
It does feel weird.
It does feel like that one thing that has always been constant
in my life is no longer there.
Only time will tell what my next journey will be
but I'm sure it'll be filled with just as many highs,
just as many lows.
But I know, for right now,
spending time with Lance, Robbie and Phoenix is my priority.
After my dad died, I was trying to fill that void.
Looking back on it all,
I realised that not doing it just for myself -
being able to do it for my friends, my family,
my teammates, my country -
gave me the determination
that I needed to be able to get through my career.
I'm excited to see what the future holds,
what me, my boys and Lance achieve in the future.
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