Exclusive Interview: Tom Daley on diving, demons, dramas and distractions
This interview appears in the current edition of Sport magazine. , and
Tom Daley is talking to <em>Sport</em> two days after his flight from Shanghai to London made an emergency landing in Russia. From the ground, he posted an image on social media of the plane’s mid-air fuel dump.
“It was a bit of a scare,” he admits as we ask how he’s feeling. “But it’s all good now. We’re fine. I’m quite happy to be back in the UK, back in training and looking forward to leaving for the Commonwealth Games.”
It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear Daley sounding so unfazed, perfectly ready to set foot on another flight. He’s been dealing with turbulence his entire life. After qualifying for the 2008 Olympics, he became a household name aged just 14. He lost his father in 2011 after a lengthy illness. He had the pressure of being a ‘face’ of London 2012.
In 2013, he had to handle questions on British Swimming chief executive David Sparkes’ vocal concerns that outside activities were distracting Daley from his diving training. Later that year, in a move partly motivated by media speculation about his sexuality, he openly and eloquently explained in a YouTube video that he had a boyfriend.
All this, and more besides, took place before he’d even blown out the candles on his 20th birthday cake. No wonder an unscheduled stop in Siberia seems like a drop in the ocean. Or, indeed, pool. Rather than his eventful flight home, Daley is more irked by his finishing place in the FINA Diving World Cup - the reason he was in Shanghai in the first place.
Frustration of fourth
“Fourth is always the most frustrating position to finish in for any athlete,” he says of his men’s 10m platform result. “But there are also a lot of positives I can take: in the prelims, beating Qiu Bo, which is the first time I’ve beaten Qiu Bo in a long time. And in the semi-final, I finished third. If I had scored what I’d scored in the prelim
or semi-final in the final, I’d have easily got a medal. But if your auntie had balls, she’d be your uncle.”
Chinese diver Qui Bo is the 21-year-old reigning World Champion and widely regarded as the man to beat in Daley’s event. It is divers such as this who Daley has in his sights on besting after a tumultuous 2013.
It was a year marked by injuries, setbacks, a split with his long-term coach Andy Banks and a move from Plymouth to live and train in London. There was, he admits, also a mental come-down after London 2012.
“Oh, massively,” he says. “If you ask any athlete, you always start to struggle after the Olympics, because you have another four years to wait for one. You have that emotional high - especially with it being in my home country - so it takes a bit of adjusting to afterwards. But last year was frustrating with injury as well, whereas it’s been good this year. There have been niggles, but nothing that has kept me out of the water for too long.
“Like with anything, you go through stages of loving it, but you go through ups and downs. But that’s sport and that’s life - sometimes you might find it quite frustrating, because you haven’t achieved what you wanted to, but you have to get through that. I feel I’ve come out the other side and emerged a stronger diver.”
New direction
This year has seen an upturn in Daley’s results under a new coach, Jane Figueiredo, who moved from a little further away than Plymouth to train Daley at the Aquatics Centre in London. The Houston native left the US to train Daley, who admits their partnership “clicked pretty much straight away.”
He also likens leaving Banks - with whom he parted on good terms - and Devon for a new set-up to the natural process of making a change as you move forward in life.
“I think everyone at a certain age gets to the stage where, like, once you finish secondary school, some people take a gap year, some people go travelling, some go to university - something changes,” he says. “You take a fresh look on everything.
“You try something new, and that’s what happened with me - and I’ve got to say it’s been the best decision I’ve made with my diving, ever. It’s got me to a place where, at the beginning of June, I got a personal best. It shows that my diving is going in the right direction.”
That personal best of a 577.20 at a Diving World Series event in Mexico would have been enough to claim the gold medal at London 2012, where Daley won bronze. Yet he remains aware that consistency in his sport is important above all else. One mistake can cost you dearly.
“You can shuffle a pack of cards and the result is different every time,” he says of the fine margins involved in diving. “Nobody would have guessed that the Mexican Ivan Garcia would come third [last month in Shanghai] - it can seem completely random. But I was diving really well there.
“My twister was one of my best dives out of the six. I just missed my front four-and-a-half [dive]. In the semi-final, I scored 100 points on it and, in the final, I scored around 50 points on it. That’s the way diving goes. It’s frustrating. But it’s given me a lot of motivation going into the Commonwealth Games to go and show what I can do.”
The ‘twister’ the 20-year-old refers to is a ‘backwards 2.5 somersault with 2.5 twists routine in the piked position’ dive. Or, if you prefer the pithier title Daley gives it, his ‘demon dive’. He struggled with this one dive in his routine of six so much in the wake of London 2012 that he admitted last summer he felt “panic” before taking it.
His plan was to enlist the help of sports psychologists and go “right back to basics” with the dive. Does he feel that he’s winning his battle with the demon?
“Oh yeah,” he says brightly. “In the World Cup we just got back from, my back two-and-a-half twister actually outscored the [winning] Chinese back-twister, so it’s definitely going in the right direction.
“There was a lot of intensive work on it, but all of a sudden sometimes it does just click - and I think that’s what happened. It just takes time and it can be slow progress. But, by the time Rio comes around, it will hopefully be one of my most solid dives.”
Given that many professional sports people go to great lengths to hide their fears or weaknesses from the outside world, Daley was remarkably upfront about his mental struggles with the dive.
“Well, diving is a scary sport,” he says openly on whether he had any qualms about expressing his fears. “Anyone who’s ever stood on top of a 10m board would understand. I get scared on every dive when I go up there - it’s completely normal. You’d be stupid if you weren’t scared, because having that fear and having that adrenaline is what stops you making mistakes.”
Confronting fear
A mistake-free competition in Glasgow, and Daley can repeat his trick from Delhi in 2010 and win a third Commonwealth gold medal - and possibly a fourth, when he goes in the synchronised 10m platform today (Friday). He admits he’s looking forward to competing in Britain again, but does have half an eye on Rio.
“The Commonwealth Games is one I look forward to. It’s good competition practice for the Olympics, because it’s a multi-sport event. You get behind your team, the atmosphere is always amazing; I know everyone that’s part of Team England is really looking forward to it.”
Rumours that Daley might retire after Glasgow flared, and were then quashed, this month. Yet it’s pretty clear on listening to him that Rio 2016 is his long-term goal. “You kind of get used to the attention,” he says of the media spotlight. “Diving is always the number one priority and always will be, because it’s what I do. I’m a diver. Everything else really does come second to training as hard as I possibly can.”
‘I’m a diver’ is a mantra Daley repeats more than once. David Sparkes’ comments questioning Daley’s focus were widely reported and well intentioned, but there is another school of thought. Monastic dedication works well for some athletes. Others crave variety and might even suffer without a release from the relentlessness
of training and competition. Daley falls into the latter camp. He has his TV shows (<em>Splash!, Tom Daley Goes Global</em>) his social media activity (he tweets! He Instagrams! He YouTubes!), his diving academy (which opened in London this year) and more. And he has no plans to give any of it up.
“I find it most beneficial to keep myself busy,” he explains. “Bearing in mind that I used to go to school full-time and train full-time going into the Olympics, I’m used to it. It keeps your mind fresh. It keeps you able to work harder at training, because you’re not constantly thinking about always diving. It helps me a lot.”
It seems Daley is set to continue making waves away from the pool. But if he enters the water in Glasgow with minimal splash, perhaps we should all trust him to manage his time - and his life - his own way.