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Tom Daley has been a household name in British sports ever since he became Great Britain’s second-youngest male Olympian ever at the 2008 Olympics.
The Devon-born diver competed at the age of just 14 in Beijing, having become the youngest person to win gold at the European Championships earlier that year.
His first Olympics ended without any medals but it was a promising start for the boy who would soon become the face of British diving.
By the end of the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games, Daley was a four-time medal winner, with a gold in the men’s 10m synchro alongside Matty Lee to go with three bronze medals in individual and pair events in 2012 and 2016.
And despite being “ in theory retired” after Tokyo and not competing for two years afterwards, Daley announced in 2023 that he would be targeting a spot at Paris 2024. Having now earned one, he enters his fifth Olympics targeting another piece of British sporting history, as well as combining performance with punditry in Paris.
Born in Plymouth in 1994, Daley took up diving aged seven and was competing in the Olympics just seven years later. Having won several junior events from 2003, he won gold at the European Championships in 2008 and entered the 10m platform and 10m synchro events at Beijing 2008.
By 2012, Daley was a poster boy for Team GB at the London Olympics, and he delivered on his medal hopes in the 10m platform event, winning bronze.
The intervening years before 2016 saw medals in the British and European Championship, as well as the Commonwealth Games, and Daley approached the Rio Olympics once again at the forefront of Britain’s diving hopes. He delivered once more, winning bronze in the 10m synchro alongside Dan Goodfellow.
But it was with Lee that Daley would finally win that elusive gold medal, winning the same event in Tokyo in 2021. Daley finally had the gold that many felt his career deserved and, by 2023, when he and husband Dustin Lance Black welcomed their second son and he hadn’t competed for two years, his diving career seemed over.
Daley even went as far as accepting punditry roles ahead of Paris 2024, but he returned to British Swimming’s World Class Programme in November of last year, after his son urged him to make a U-turn and target Olympic qualification.
Now, having teamed up with Noah Williams ahead of the Games, Daley enters his fifth Olympics, having qualified in February after the pair won silver in the 10m synchro at the World Aquatics Championships.
“Before I got back to diving, that was my plan – to be involved in the Olympics in some form of journalistic way,” said Daley, speaking at the London Aquatics Centre in July.
“Then I was like: ‘Actually, there’s this thing that I want to do and I want to compete.’ They were like: ‘Why not do both? Compete, and then come and do this?’
“I thought: ‘That’s what I’m going to do – I can do my competition and then actually enjoy the Olympics.”
And with Daley recently feeling more intense effects of preparing for the Olympics at the age of 30, this may be the last time fans get to see a true Team GB stalwart.
Daley will carry British diving medal hopes once more – along with Williams – and, off the back of their silver medal at the World Championships, don’t be surprised if he adds another medal to his already impressive collection.
