A fifth Olympic Games, a fifth medal and, most importantly for Tom Daley, comeback complete in front of his two children.
After a gold and three previous bronze medals across Daley’s now 16-year Olympic diving career, this was the first piece of silver and it sounded for all the world like the most precious addition of all.
“It felt like we had won just being there with my family and my kids,” said Daley. “Just before the competition started, I saw them in the audience and thought, ‘Don’t cry now’. That was the achievement and, at that moment, I was, ‘No matter what happens, I’ve done it’. I was on the sofa 15 months ago doing nothing. It is the happiest I’ve ever been diving. It was so special.”
Daley was all smiles once the medal had been secured and it was instead his husband, the screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who was reduced to tears by the enormity of a unique achievement. “For these guys [children six-year-old Robbie and one-year-old Phoenix] them getting to see him dive was so special … what a day… very moving for the family because we see the hard work and dedication that goes into making it look effortless,” said Black.
Robbie, who was the inspiration for the retirement about-turn, was most excited to hear that there was a piece of the Eiffel Tower in his dad’s silver medal while Phoenix, who was taking a swig of blackcurrant squash during the celebrations, did what toddlers do. “They were standing right above the [media] mixed zone when we were doing our interviews – Phoenix did throw his juice at me,” said Daley. “He was, ‘Papa!’. It nearly took out one of the BBC reporters.”
Daley also highlighted how Black, with whom he lives in Los Angeles, had made it possible by putting his own Hollywood career to one side so that he could return to regular competition this year in preparation for the Olympics. “The people who are closest to an Olympic athlete do not get enough credit for how much they have to sacrifice,” said Daley. “He has a successful career of his own that he is constantly putting to one side so that I can achieve my goals.”
Given where Daley was last year – new life in LA and having not dived seriously since Olympic gold in Tokyo two years earlier – this was up there with being Beijing’s youngest Olympian way back in 2008 in the personal realm of unlikely triumphs.
Noah Williams, after all, is now the fifth different diver with whom Daley has won a major championship medal and the first with whom he has had to form a virtually remote partnership.
Daley later also revealed how the comeback might easily have ended before it got started at the World Championship exactly a year ago when Williams and Matty Lee – Daley’s partner in Tokyo – finished fourth. “I was told, ‘Don’t come back if Matty and Noah win a medal at the World Championships’,” he said. “I would have been back in LA in the sun. There would have been none of it. But they didn’t [win a medal]. I was, ‘OK, I’ll try.’”
Injury to Lee then made the decision for everybody and so a partnership was formed with Williams that, by Daley’s admission, involved ‘winging it’ and only two months of actual training together. Even an attempt by Williams to spend time in LA, where he stayed with the Daley family, was foiled after Williams suffered a shoulder injury. “Tom was great as a host,” Williams said. “Staying with his family, getting to know Robbie and Phoenix was great, but, in terms of training, we didn’t do much. I was pretty injured. I got there and basically had a holiday.”
And yet here they were, diving with consistency and synergy to put together a series that tracked almost identically in judges’ scores to what Daley and Lee had managed in taking gold three years ago.
“Our tactic was to focus on good individual dives,” said Daley. “That’s the beauty of synchro – it comes down to saying, ‘one, two, three, go’ and doing your dive. Once you leave the platform, you are in gravity and can’t change anything. I don’t think we said more than two words to each other.”
It worked; the only problem was that the Chinese pair Lian Junjie and Yang Hao were utterly flawless, both in their synchronisation and the execution of six dives that barely raised a splash.
In Tokyo, the Chinese had made a decisive mistake in the fourth round – losing more than 20 points with one misjudgment – to ultimately finish second by just 1.21 points. There would be no such mistakes here, with Daley and Williams finishing on a score of 463.44 – the best on their comeback and just behind the 471.81 that Daley and Lee achieved in Tokyo – to secure the second British diving medal of these Games.
Daley, who is not competing in the individual events, will be 34 by the time of the next Olympics but has already hinted at continuing for a sixth Games in LA when a mixed team event could be added to the programme. “I went from being the youngest in 2008 to now the oldest,” he said. “It could be the chance to do a second home Olympic games but I want to enjoy this moment now and make decisions later on.”
