When Tom Daley went to the Tokyo Olympics his motivation was clear: after two bronze medals, in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, he was going for gold. In front of an empty stadium, he finally did it, winning the synchronised 10m platform with Matty Lee.
Standing at the side of the pool of the London Aquatics Centre, a few days before setting off for Paris, the diver explains that this time around things are a little different.
“I have won an Olympic gold medal,” he says. “For me, the Olympic gold medal this time is having my kids there to watch. That’s really the thing I’m looking forward to most going into this competition.”
In the stands in Paris will be Daley’s screenwriter husband, Dustin Lance Black, whom he married in 2017, and their two sons, six-year-old Robbie and Phoenix Rose, who turned one in April.
They will be there to witness Daley become the first British diver to compete at a fifth Olympics – in the synchro with the 24‑year‑old Noah Williams – after starting as a 14‑year‑old in Beijing in 2008.
Now the senior citizen of the 11‑strong Team GB diving team, he still looks at least a decade younger than his 30 years, but admits his body tells a different story. These days he wakes up sore and needs “a lot more machinery to help”, including a special pair of heated trousers he wears to the pool.
“In 2008, I could be like ‘here we go’ and off I went. Now it takes a lot more for me to warm up, a lot more specific conditioning, prehab exercises,” he says. “But in terms of the dives themselves, when I’m diving, the dives look good.”
Although his body may hurt he is in a better mental space. “In Beijing, London and Rio, I tortured myself through the whole experience because I wanted to do well so badly. This time, I have got the gold medal. I have done everything I wanted to do in the sport … so this feels to me like a bonus year where I can enjoy.”