Tears of joy as British heroes are victorious in Tokyo
How the Team GB diving star survived bullying, homophobia and loss to grab the top spot on the Olympic podium at last
MAGIC Monday marked an unforgettable day for Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics with three golds and two silvers racked up in a matter of hours yesterday.
Adam Peaty kicked off a gold rush at the Aquatic Centre as he made history as the first British swimmer to retain an Olympic title in the 100m breaststroke.
The 26-year-old punched the water in jubilation as he clocked the fifth-fastest time ever in an event where he has been unbeaten since 2013.
Then diver Tom Daley broke down in tears after taking gold in the synchronised 10m platform event with Matty Lee, who idolised him as a child.
Tom, 27, said he had been working for this moment for 20 years, while it was a dream come true for Matty, 23, who had his picture taken with his “hero” when he was 10.The pair edged out reigning champions China – 13 years after two-time bronze medallist Tom made his Olympic debut in Beijing as a 14-year-old.
He dedicated his victory to his dad Rob, who died aged 40 when he was just 17.
Rob took Tom to “every training session and competition at home and abroad” when he was growing up. It was a stunning display by the British duo to beat the favourites and they needed a series of sensational dives. Everything hinged on the sixth and final dive of the competition.
It was a forward four-and-a-half somersault with a pike and, after they “nailed it”, the Chinese pair Yuan Cao and Aisen Chen needed a perfect score to take gold.
Tom said: “I knew we had done the best dive we could. But waiting for the score to come up felt like an eternity.”
The British duo watched nervously from the sidelines as
China tried to claw back their lead in the final dive of the event.
Then they saw “2” next to
Iron man... Alex Yee wins silver their rivals on the scoreboard, which meant they had won. Matty, whose family celebrated his victory in Leeds, joked: “When we did, I lost my **** .”
The pals jumped into each other’s arms at their final score of 471.81 to China’s 470.85. And it sparked ecstatic scenes in the stands among their team-mates. Both were crying tears of joy as they stood arm in arm on the medal podium. Tom spoke of his pride in the Olympic LGBT community. There are 160 gay athletes in Tokyo, more than three times the previous record of 49 in Rio. Tom, who was born in Plymouth and now lives in London with
screenwriter husband Dustin Lance Black and three-year-old son Robbie, said: “There are more openly ‘out’ athletes at this Olympics than any previous Games. I came out in 2013. When I was younger I always felt like I was alone and didn’t fit in.
“I hope that any young
LGBT person out there can see that no matter how alone you feel, you are not alone and you can achieve anything.
“I feel incredibly proud to say I am a gay man and also an Olympic champion.”
Back in Devon, his grandad David Daley, who had the GB flag hanging out of his home in support, said: “We are very, very proud. It is a marvellous thing he has achieved. He has tried for so many years to get the gold. The day is of course tinged with sadness because his dad Robert is not here. He would have been so proud too.”
The third Olympic champ of the day was Yorkshireman mountain biker Tom Pidcock.
His triumph made it one of Team GB’s best Games days since Super Saturday at London 2012 – when six golds were won in one day, three in just 44 minutes on the track.
Tom, nicknamed “Tigger” by his family because he is always bouncing around, had shown his talent on two wheels since he was little.
His mum Sonja, 53, watching with husband Giles, 54, at home in Leeds, said: “I am really emotional, delighted after all he has done to get here. From the age of four you could tell he was so skilful on a bike. But this is beyond our wildest dreams.” Tom is the first Briton to win an Olympic medal of any kind in mountain biking and the youngest champion in the event.
Alex Yee got the day’s medal flurry under way by winning a stunning silver in the triathlon. His success follows that of former double champion Alistair Brownlee and his medal-winning sibling Jonny, who was fifth this time.
Alex was still in contention for gold until Norwegian
Kristian Blummenfelt pulled away in the
10km run. The 23-yearold from Lewisham, South-east London, was delighted with his
Olympic debut in the
Silver lining...Lauren multi-event, which also includes a 1.5km swim and 40km of cycling. He said: “I am just a normal guy from south-east London. My mum always says it takes a village to build a person and I think it has taken the whole of GB today.” Lauren Williams took silver in the women’s 67kg taekwondo event after coming agonisingly close to gold. She lost an epic final in the dying seconds to Croatia’s world No 1 Matea Jelic.
The 22-year-old, of Blackwood in Wales, held a three-point advantage with 10 seconds left but lost 25-22.
She said: “It’s been absolutely crazy, insane, my first Olympic Games. A very good experience.”
IT WAS AT the moment when the strains of the national anthem rang out and the Union flag rose highest that Tom Daley could no longer hold back the tears. And let’s be honest, there were plenty of us shedding a tear with him. The journey to Olympic gold has taken Tom half a lifetime and it’s a life the country has cared deeply about since that grinning 14-year-old dived into our consciousness before the Beijing Olympics. It was not just the angelic smile that won the nation’s hearts back in 2008, but the fact this small boy was so gracefully and athletically plunging from a 10-metre high diving platform that would give lemmings second thoughts and the rest of us the heebie-jeebies.
The infectious smile for his fans has never wavered, in spite of severe hardships in his life that have all played out in the public glare, and the boy had become an inspirational man even before winning the gold medal to which he had always aspired.
By the age of 14, Tom had already been diving, and achieving remarkable successes, for seven years. He had won a judo cup when he was nine but was, he said, hopeless at football, so when he saw older boys leaping from the high boards at the swimming pool, he decided that was the sport for him.
Even so, that first climb to the 10m platform was as scary as we all might imagine.
“It was terrifying going up there because it was so high. I had butterflies crawling to the edge,” he told me back in 2008 before he became Britain’s youngest Olympian in nearly 50 years. But he added: “Once you have done it once you want to do it again and again.” And he did, but not without difficulty.
His then coach Andy Banks revealed: “He has natural talent but he is a perfectionist. That is what makes him potentially one of the greats.”
He went on: “As a youngster he was quite emotional. He got upset a lot and we have had to deal with that.”
His solution was the “Peter Pan” treatment: Get Tom to think “happy thoughts” and then he would be flying again. But there were still those who wanted to pull him down.
WHILE Tom’s eighth place in the men’s synchronised 10m platform competition with partner Blake Aldridge in Beijing, and creditable seventh in the individual 10m, won the hearts of the nation, his stardom and earlier BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award had already earned him the attention of bullies at college in Plymouth, as he had bravely revealed when he became a celebrity supporter of Childline, aged 13.
The bullying only increased with his fame, but he always had the support of his loving family, his two younger brothers William and Ben, mum Debbie, and his proud dad Rob, an ever-present in the crowds, waving an oversized Union flag, at any event around the world where Tom was competing.
Rob’s pride memorably overflowed when 15-year-old Tom won the World Championship for the first time in 2009 and, blubbing, he interrupted a press conference to announce himself as the father of the new World Champion and to ask his son: “Tom, can you give me a cuddle?”
When Rob felt Tom’s school had not satisfactorily addressed the bullying, he moved his son to independent Plymouth College where he thrived academically. Tom would go on to win his third BBC Young
Sports Personality of the Year award in 2010 and the same year launch a hugely popular YouTube channel with vlogs on exercise and diet. But a devastating blow struck Tom and his family when dad Rob was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died in 2011, aged 40, just a few days after Tom’s 17th birthday. Suddenly Tom, the poster boy for the London Olympics in 2012, had to train and compete, and finish his A-levels, without his dad beside him every step of the way.
He not only earned an A* for his photography A-level and A for maths and Spanish but went on, in spite of the weight of the nation’s hopes bearing down on him, and abusive social media messages, to win a bronze medal in the men’s individual 10m event.
Tom recalled last year: “All I wanted to do was get back on the diving board – not stop. I didn’t take any time away from the pool.”
He admitted that he did not allow himself any time to grieve.
“I left my dad’s wake early, to compete at the national championships,” he said, and it took him a long time to recognise his delayed grieving for what it was.
He said: “I was so focused on the London Games in 2012. Then it happened and I had a bronze medal around my neck and I looked into the audience – Mum was there, my brothers, no Dad. I couldn’t see the big
flag he always brought.This was the moment we’d been working towards – and it hit me right then.”
Tom admitted that he fell into depression after the London Olympics and wanted to quit diving altogether, but could not bring himself to tell people how he felt for fear of seeming ungrateful for his success and all the support he had received. He said: “It was 2012! 2012! 2012! And then it was over, and everything after it looked unknown to me.”
Being invited to be an expert adviser on the ITV celebrity diving show Splash! continued to raise his profile though not his spirits, but on a visit to America in 2013 he was invited to join a friend at a party in a Los Angeles restaurant and first saw Dustin Lance Black, a California screenwriter and gay rights activist, 20 years his senior, who had won an Oscar for Milk, his 2008 biopic about campaigner Harvey Milk.
Tom recalled: “I walked in and clocked him. Locked eyes. It was weird.”
He announced later that year in a YouTube video that he was in a relationship with a man and said: “I’ve never been happier.” He admitted it had been a difficult decision to speak out about his private life but said: “I’d never felt the feeling of love, it happened so quickly, I was completely overwhelmed by it, to the point I can’t get him out of my head all the time.”
ACCORDING to Tom, the pair flirted heavily, exchanged numbers and, after he returned to London, spoke, FaceTimed or texted every day. Within a week of Lance later coming to London for Tom’s birthday, they had discussed wedding plans and even come up with the name – Robbie – for their future child if he was a boy, he explained last year.
Tom said: “I remember telling my best friend and she said, ‘Tom.You’ve spent seven days with him. He could be a serial killer.’ But I just knew.We both did.”
As Tom’s media career continued with a second series of Splash! and a six-part travel series for ITV2, Tom Daley Goes Global, in 2014, and he announced his engagement to Lance in 2015, it was easy to forget he was still competing and winning international diving events.
But there was more disappointment for Tom at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro when, in spite of winning another bronze medal in the men’s synchronised 10m platform, this time with partner Dan Goodfellow, and setting a world record score for a single dive in the early stages of the individual competition, he underperformed in the semi-finals and failed to qualify for the final.
He was comforted by Lance who moved to London in 2016. The couple were married at Bovey Castle, Devon, in May 2017 before announcing in February 2018 that they were expecting their first child by a surrogate mother in America. Robert “Robbie” Ray Black-Daley was born on June 27, 2018, completing Tom’s transformation from child star to doting father with increasing confidence to stand up for the things that matter to him. He said last year he had often
been criticised for continuing to compete in countries where gay people are still persecuted, but he said he saw sport as a perfect platform to promote gay rights, and there was a special significance at his triumphant press conference when he was able to sit between divers from China and Russia, where there are very few rights for homosexuals, and say: “I feel incredibly proud to say I am a gay man and also an Olympic champion.”
He added: “I came out in 2013 and when I was younger I always felt like the one that was alone and different and didn’t fit. There was something about me that was never going to be as good as what society wanted me to be.
“I hope that any young LGBT person out there can see that no matter how alone you feel right now, you are not alone. You can achieve anything.”
As the national anthem confirmed his triumph yesterday, the only sadness for Tom would have been that not only could he not see his father in the crowd but nor could he see his mother, or his husband and child. There was no dad to embarrass him this time at a victorious press conference.
But he told journalists: “When he passed away in 2011 it was extremely difficult for me because he never saw me win an Olympic medal, get married, have a child. He never got to teach me to drive, have a pint down the pub.
“None of that was ever a thing, so to finally become an Olympic champion, especially after Rio 2016 where I was extremely disappointed with my individual performance… After that, my husband said to me that my story doesn’t end here and that our child was meant to watch me become an Olympic champion.”