Daley: I won gold medals on diet of Coke and chips
ONE of Britain’s greatest athletes has revealed he achieved his Olympic success on a diet of fizzy pop and chips.
Daley Thompson, 62, won the gold medal for the decathlon at the Games in 1980 and 1984, and broke the world record for the event four times.
But now it’s emerged he achieved all his feats while never drinking a drop of water and sticking to Sprite and Coke.
Speaking on Colin Murray’s Midnight Meets podcast, Daley admitted that he didn’t like the taste of water – and would avoid vegetables too.
He said: “I always figured that if I was going to have anything to drink it should be something that I enjoyed the taste of, and as we all know water don’t taste too good on its own.
“Mostly it was Sprite, Coca-Cola, and Gatorade and the likes, to be honest. In my defence, imagine how good I could have been.”
When asked about what he eats, Daley said he refused to eat vegetables but defended his diet.
He said: “I don’t know about awful, but it’s not your regular diet. I do eat vegetables, but only in the presence of my children when they were young.” He added that he had eaten chips “three or four times” in the past week.
When asked about his heroes, Daley chose Bruce Jenner – the Olympic champion decathlete in the 1970s who later transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner.
Daley said: “I met him in ’76 and he was really nice – and he was always happy to talk to this young kid who was following him around and asking him lots of questions.
“Afterwards he said if you’re ever in California come and see me and we’ll spend some time together and I did a couple of times. He was brilliant, he was so giving and a great example for me and I’ve tried to be the same. I love to give back to other sports people.
“It must be the most difficult thing in the world for the first 60 years of your life to pretend to be someone you’re not.
“How brave then to take a stand and become the person maybe you always should have been. It must have been such a complicated life and so depressing.
“He was always my hero, and she went up in my estimation.”