Tom Daley and diving partner Noah Williams celebrate after clinching silver in the Men's Synchro Final in Paris. | Clive Rose/Getty Images

When Tom Daley visited the US Olympic Museum in 2023 and began contemplating a comeback, his son Robbie famously told him, “Papa, I want to see you dive in the Olympics.”

Today, Robbie got to see his Papa earn an Olympic silver medal.

The perfect movie script would’ve had Daley repeating his gold medal-winning performance from the Tokyo Games and retiring to a lifetime of contemplating deep philosophical questions like “Are you the GOAT?”

In real life, he got to experience all of the emotions of competing at the world’s highest level and winning an Olympic medal in front of his husband, mother, and two sons less than two years after he thought he’d never dive again.

Sometimes even when reality doesn’t follow the screenplay, it’s still good enough to make you say “No notes, universe.”

With eventual gold medal winners Yang Hao and Lian Junjie immediately following Daley and Noah Williams in the competition, the Men’s Synchro Final gradually turned into a diving version of “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

Daley and Williams would execute dive after dive brilliantly, letting their competitors know where the bar was being set. And then Hao and Junjie would break the laws of physics.

It was exhilarating, even if the result wasn’t as ideal as it was in Tokyo.

Instead, what made Paris so emotionally satisfying was that Daley got to experience excelling at the Olympics with a full house cheering him on.

And within that crowd’s roar were the voices of Lance, Robbie, Phoenix, and Nana Debs.

Instead of having to wait to see a social media video of his husband and mom losing their minds, Daley simply had to look into the stands to find the ones who loved him most.

While Daley wasn’t at the top of the medal podium this time, it was the people watching him ascend it that made these Olympics especially meaningful.

As Robbie told him in a video that Black assembled before the competition, “Even if you don’t get a medal, I’ll still be proud. Nothing will make me not love you because you are my family so I will never give up on you.”

For the rest of his life, he’ll know what it’s like to win a silver medal in front of them. 

On top of all that, it was also another day to reflect on what Daley has meant to the LGBTQ community since coming out publicly in 2013.

Following the competition, Gay Times CEO Tag Warner summed up his feelings watching Daley blossom as a gay athlete while observing the Olympics themselves becoming a haven for LGBTQ competitors.

“This is actually the gayest Games that we’ve had in terms of representation,” Warner told Sky News, “And Tom obviously is an amazing representative of the LGBT+ community.

“That’s really important to us. As a gay guy myself, it’s been super inspiring for me to watch him as a kid grow up in this sport. And now to complete [his collection] with all the medals, it’s amazing inspiration to all of us in the community.”

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Knowing that Daley had considered himself retired as recently as 15 months ago, it was an emotional experience seeing him and Williams nail their sixth and final dive and wondering, “Is that the last one?”

Afterward, he left the door open for a return to a second “Home Olympics” at Los Angeles 2028.

“Right now, I want to enjoy today and then we’ll see what the future holds,” Daley told the media, “But most importantly, I just want to go and squish my little ones.”

You got the sense that even after all the incredible rush of Olympic competition and the immense personal satisfaction of knowing his comeback was successful, the best part of Daley’s day was just ahead of him.