Barely a year after returning to diving, Tom Daley completed the full set of Olympic medals by claiming silver in partnership with Noah Williams in the men’s synchronised 10m platform in Paris.
And as Daley and Williams produced exceptional dive after exceptional dive, each in seemingly perfect harmony, it made you wonder how they had achieved such synchronicity in such a short space of time.
Surely, to excel in a discipline where every slight variation with your partner’s dive can be the difference between a medal and nothing, divers would have to live in each other’s pockets and spend hours training together?
And yet, that could not be further from the truth. Daley is now based out in Los Angeles with his husband, the screenwriter and director Dustin Lance Black, and their two sons Robbie and Phoenix – all three of whom were in the crowd in Paris.
Williams, by contrast, is still in the UK, and the pair only started training synchro together in November. But despite being split by the Atlantic Ocean, they found the recipe to bring home silver behind untouchable Chinese duo Hao Yang and Junjie Lian.
Daley explained why time apart actually proved their super power.
He said: “I think it might be our strength that we don’t need to do as much synchro together. Our tactic this time was to focus more on the individual dives.
“I think that is the beauty of synchronised diving. At the end of the day, it comes down to saying ‘1, 2, 3… Go’ and then doing your individual dive. Once you have left the platform, you are in gravity’s hands and you can’t really change anything.
“Noah and I, November was the first time we had done any synchro together and we have maybe done a total of two months’ training together in total because I live in LA, he lives in London. We only ever trained at the competitions.
“We would turn up and wing it together and compete. It’s been something that wouldn’t be the way we would normally do it, but I wasn’t planning on coming back (to the UK).”
While Daley might have relinquished the gold he won in Tokyo, that does nothing to take away from this achievement.
It was only after being urged to return by Robbie that he decided to have a go at a fifth Olympics. And after bronze in London, another in Rio, a third in Tokyo, as well as that elusive gold, Daley now has five Olympic medals including one of each colour.
Yet, had Williams and Matty Lee, who won gold with Daley three years ago, reached the podium at the World Championships in Fukuoka last summer, this comeback attempt likely would have ended before it started.
They finished fourth, opening the door for a fifth Olympic appearance for Daley, 16 years after making his debut and capturing the hearts of a nation in Beijing.
He explained: “Before the competition even started, I felt like we had won. Being able to be there in front of my family and my kids, it was so special. All the way through this, I know that at any moment, you can get injured and not be able to compete.
“I didn’t want to believe that I was going to be in my fifth Olympic Games until we had completed all our training dives and I had got to the start line in one piece. To be able to do that with Noah has been really special.
“I was deciding whether or not to come back around this time last year, around June. I was told don’t come back if Matty and Noah win a medal at the World Championships and they didn’t. So I thought, I’m going to try and come back.
“Then we were creating this little synchro triangle with myself, Noah and Matty to try synchro with everyone to figure out who was going to be the best team.”
A back injury for Lee made the decision for the trio, and despite an ocean between them, Daley and Williams came together to write the latest page in a remarkable script.
Will there be an encore? That remains to be seen, with Daley open to the suggestion of one more run in his new home of LA in 2028.
Sportsbeat 2024