The cover interview
GOLD MEDALLIST, LGBTQ+ CAMPAIGNE R,TOP-TIER KNITTER. WE COSIED UP W ITH THE NATION ’S SWEETHEAR TTO FIND OUT WHAT LIFE IS LIKE WHEN YOU STEP OF FTHE OLYMPIC PODIUM
Most of the nation first met a 14-year-old Tom Daley at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. With spiky hair and big brown eyes, he was defying all expectations, competing at a level with divers a decade his senior. His speciality? The 10m platform. Roughly the height of a three-storey building or half a tennis court.
Years earlier, a seven-year-old Daley was just starting out. And how, exactly, does a child that age psych themselves up to launch off a board several times their size? ‘You start on smaller boards and work your way up. But yeah, I spent a lot of my time crying at the end of the board because I was so terrified of it. And I hit my head twice when I was a kid.’
But, as I’m about to discover during our conversation, Daley is not someone who gives up easily. On anything. ‘It took a lot of persuading from my mental state to actually do it. And then it was one of those things. Once I did come back to it, and decided I was going to do it, it was like full power [*claps*] I was ready to keep going. And it was all go from there.’
It’s lunchtime at a sunlit studio in London’s suburbs. Daley has spent the morning modelling knitwear in the middle of a heatwave and hasn’t complained once. Bounding into the studio at 9.30am, flashing that well-known smile that could melt an iceberg, he had already completed a Barry’s Bootcamp HIIT class and cycled here from home while I was still ingesting my first coffee of the day. It’s easy to see how this man had the commitment to win four Olympic medals.
To say his life has been ‘all go’ since he committed to diving at the age of seven is probably just a minor – ahem – understatement.
Growing up in Plymouth with his mum, dad and two younger brothers, it was boredom with swimming that first got Daley into the sport. ‘I saw people diving and I was like, I want to try that!’ A couple of years later, he started competing, doing his first senior nationals at the age of 10, convinced he would be terrible. ‘I remember my dad saying, “Even if you come last, how many people were in the competition?” And I was like, “There’s 18 people.” And he said, “Well, even if you come last, you’re going to be 18th best in the whole country.” It really gave me a sense of perspective.’ When I ask if he was still able to have some semblance of a normal childhood, Daley doesn’t hesitate. ‘Absolutely not. There was no normality to my childhood at all. But I woul
