Tom Daley is only 30 but it feels like he’s been part of our sporting lives for ever. Britain’s most successful diver has gone from prodigy to legend over five consecutive Olympics. Here’s a look at how the Guardian has followed Daley’s journey over the years.
Beijing 2008: debut and row with teammate
Daley made his highly anticipated Olympic debut in Beijing in 2008. It wasn’t straightforward.
Richard Williams reported how Daley and Blake Aldridge, his partner in the 10m synchronised diving final, fell out as they finished last. “A crack appeared in the shiny, happy surface of a collaboration that had always looked dangerously lopsided,” Williams wrote.
Aldridge told reporters: “I wasn’t on the top of my game, but I outdived Thomas today and that’s not something that normally happens … he had a pop at me before the last dive, when we were sitting down. I saw my mum in the audience and I asked her to give me a call and Tom went to me: ‘Why are you on the phone? We’re still in the competition and we’ve got another dive to do.’ That’s just Thomas: he’s overnervous and that’s how it was today. Thomas should not be worrying about what I’m doing, but today he was worrying about everyone and everything and that to me is really the sole reason why he didn’t perform today.”
A few days later, things were a little rosier for Daley. With the prime minister Gordon Brown and triple gold medallist Chris Hoy watching on, Daley finished seventh in the men’s 10m platform, the highest placed Briton in the diving pool. “It was always going to take a great leap forward for Tom Daley to win a diving medal in Beijing but the young man can still fly home happy,” wrote our reporter Robert Kitson. “To finish seventh in the world in a highly competitive men’s 10 metre platform competition at the age of 14 is a major achievement and he has some amazing stories to tell his schoolmates. These Games are a springboard towards London 2012 and fame already beckons.”
London 2012: bronze on home soil
Daley went into the 2012 London Olympics as the poster boy for Team GB. In front of a roaring home crowd of 17,000 people, the 18-year-old delivered a nerveless performance to claim the first Olympic medal of his young career in the 10m dive, while also becoming the first Briton to finish on the podium in the discipline since 1960.
Daley picked up bronze after a score of 556.95 allowed him to finish just behind the winner, David Boudia, and the runner-up Qiu Bo.
It represented a career high for Daley, after finishing seventh in Beijing and losing his father, Robert, to brain cancer the previous year. “I am so happy,” he said. “I really, really wish my dad was here to see that.”
Rio 2016: redemption with Goodfellow
Daley, now an international icon, put the ghosts of his past to bed after finally snatching a medal in the 10m platform synchro diving event with his partner Dan Goodfellow after disappointment in Beijing and London.
After five rounds of nip-and-tuck jousting for third, the pair executed a difficult back three-and-a-half somersault pike to claim bronze with a score of 89.64, well clear of the 83.62 they needed.
The Germans with whom the pair were tussling for third place, Patrick Hausding and Sascha Klein, had pipped them to gold in May’s European championships, in the London Aquatics Centre, where Goodfellow overrotated on the final dive.
“We didn’t want to let that happen again. I said to Dan afterwards: ‘Don’t worry we’ll get them at the Olympics.’ And we did,” said Daley.
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The podium finish meant the 22-year-old became the first British diver to win multiple Olympic medals.
Tokyo 2020: Gold dream in delayed Games
Perhaps the biggest moment of Daley’s career came when he finally picked up a gold medal in the men’s synchronised 10m platform dive with his partner Matty Lee.
The British pair outperformed the reigning world champions, China’s Cao Yuan and Chen Aisen, to win the competition by 1.23 points. The victory was the crowning moment of the 26-year-old’s stellar career as he finally had gold to go with his bronzes.
“He remains a paradox, a child prodigy turned fully grown celebrity pressure magnet, out there competing in one of the more knife-edge disciplines, whose superpower is, of all things, being a calm and well‑adjusted human being,” wrote the Guardian’s Barney Ronay. “How do you manage that exactly? And can everyone have some?”
There were damp eyes above Daley’s mask as he stood with Lee on the podium to listen to the national anthem, both men looking drained but euphoric.
Daley also went on to win bronze in the men’s individual 10m platform diving. “There was a moment just before my first dive I looked around and I was like: ‘You know what, I’m at the Olympic Games and this is bloody cool.’”
Paris 2024: signing off with silver
In what proved to be his final Olympics, Daley won his first silver in the 10m synchro diving event to add the final touches to his glittering career. He completed the Olympic set with a medal in Paris alongside his diving partner Noah Williams. Ronay wrote: “There may have been another sportsman who has spoken at length about the extraordinary support of his husband (or indeed his wife) in putting their own career on hold, juggling childcare, making the domestic life work, as Daley did here. But none spring to mind.”