Daley’s crowning achievement was a gold in the 10m synchronised event alongside Matty Lee in Tokyo 2021. After fulfilling his lifetime goal, Daley took two years out of diving before being persuaded to return to the pool when his son Robbie, now aged six, said he wanted to see his father dive at an Olympic Games. Daley’s film director husband Dustin Lance Black, Robbie and their youngest son Phoenix were in attendance as he claimed silver in Paris alongside partner Noah Williams.
“I like to think they’re very proud of me,” he said, before joking about his emotions: “I didn’t realise I wouldn’t be able to actually speak. It’s not very like me. I am happy…it’s just hard to talk when you have loved something so much.”
Daley, 30, ends his career as one of the most instantly recognisable Team GB athletes in modern times. The nation has watched him grow up as he made his bow at Beijing 2008, winning bronzes in London and Rio, a gold and bronze in Tokyo and then a silver in Paris.
“The support that I’ve had from Great Britain has been so incredible,” he said looking back on a tumultuous career in which he was left grieving the death of his father in 2011. He also sparked global attention in 2013 when he came out in a video posted on YouTube. “Thank you to everyone that’s just been there for me throughout the whole of this. I guess it’s an era, but you know, I can look back on my 23 years and be very proud.”
It had long been anticipated that the last fortnight would be his last Games but in making the news official on Monday, Daley said in a separate interview that “it feels very, very surreal”.
Daley had first confirmed his retirement in a British Vogue interview in which he also encouraged more gay athletes to come forward to break sport’s “heteronormative” dominance. He welcomed that “with every Olympics, there are more and more out athletes” but suggested some may not have come out due to the pressure of being seen as an “activist”.
Opening up on his decision to announce he was gay in in 2013, Daley said he felt it was necessary after a tabloid headline read: “Tom Daley, ‘I’m Not Gay’”. “It infuriated me that somebody would say that,” he told Vogue. “I never wanted to be seen as lying or hiding from who I was.”