Tom Daley’s deep dive into fatherhood
Juggling family with an Olympic comeback
Juggling family with Olympic commitments is proving “incredibly difficult and high stress”, says world class diver Tom Daley, in the run-up to his fifth Olympic Games, but husband Lance has been “an absolute rock star”.
“I travel for 10 days at a time going to competition and he’s been absolutely amazing,” says the 29-yearold, “especially because I’d been retired for two years and we thought that was over and done with. Then I felt, ‘I’m ready to go back again for a little bit’.”
Daley, winner of one Olympic gold and three bronze (he entered his first Olympics at the age of 14 in Beijing and won gold at his fourth Games in Japan), is looking forward to the next challenge.
Today, Daley enthuses as much about his family as he does his sport. He’s been married to Oscar-winning American filmmaker Dustin Lance Black for nearly seven years and they are dads to Robbie, five and Phoenix, who is nearly one.
Daley’s decision to come out of retirement was sparked during a nostalgic visit to the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs before Phoenix was born, he recalls.
“As we walked through I felt all warm and fuzzy and I thought, ‘What is coming over me? This is really weird’.
“Then Robbie looked at me as said, ‘Papa, why are you crying?’ I told him, ‘These are happy tears, I just really miss diving and I wish I could go back and compete in the Olympics’. Robbie said, ‘Papa I want to see you dive in the Olympics’.”
When he’s away training, Daley says he gets terribly homesick, calls his family “an excessive amount” and takes a photo of them to put on his bedside table.
“It’s tough. I’m incredibly grateful for FaceTime to make sure that I’m in contact with the kids all the time. It just really makes you appreciate the time that you have with them.”
In-between diving and family life, Daley has found time to write his debut children’s book, Jack Splash, in which the eponymous 10-year-old hero who doesn’t quite fit in joins a diving team, encountering both triumph and disaster, facing bullies along the way. Daley admits there have been similarities in his own life.
“As a kid growing up when I was part of a diving team, and when I was at school, I didn’t have the best time. Throughout the book I was trying to emphasise the importance of kindness, friendship, teamwork, working together, positivity, perseverance, to reiterate that it’s not always about winning, it’s about the relationships you build along the way, the friendships you make and the journey of getting there.”
■ Jack Splash by Tom Daley with Simon James Green is out now, price £7.99.