Tom Daley says he will not compete at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, having decided to end his diving career after winning a silver medal in Paris.
The 30-year-old has revealed in a new interview that he knew going into the 10m synchro competition that his fifth appearance at the Games would be his last. Daley and diving partner Noah Williams were runners-up.
That completed the set of medal colors in synchro, to go with bronze at Rio 2016 and gold at Tokyo 2020. Daley also has two individual 10m platform bronze medals, from London 2012 and Tokyo.
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In Paris, the sixth dive by Daley and Williams was one of their strongest — it scored 93.24, comfortably ensuring second place behind the runaway winners, Yang Hao and Lian Junjie from China.
“It was emotional at the end, up there on the platform, knowing it was going to be my last competitive dive,” Daley told British Vogue.
“But I have to make the decision at some point, and it feels like the right time. It’s the right time to call it a day.”
Daley chatted with the BBC Monday after getting off of the Eurostar train on his return home.
“It’s always hard when you say goodbye to your sport,” he told the BBC in a tear-filled three-minute chat. “Lots of things to process.”
Daley’s silver-medal success in Paris was made all the more special due to the presence of his husband Dustin Lance Black and two sons Robbie and Phoenix in the Aquatics Centre. He says seeing them in the stands when he walked out made him feel “happy” no matter the result.
Falling in love with Black in 2013 changed Daley’s life. That year, a newspaper had quoted him as saying he wasn’t gay, so he posted a YouTube coming-out video in December to explain how he didn’t feel ready to label himself. To date, it has had over 13 million views.
Soon, he and Black had gone public about their relationship and by April 2014, Daley was confidently identifying as gay. His representation at the Rio, Tokyo and Paris Olympics combined with his increasingly strong advocacy for global LGBTQ human rights have been relatively rare among male athletes in particular.
“With every Olympics, there are more and more out athletes. It’s powerful,” Daley told Vogue. Outsports’ coverage of at least 195 members of Team LGBTQ in recent weeks reflects this — the class of Paris 2024 is the most successful at a Games ever, winning the most medals including the most golds. Nearly a third of all Team LGBTQ athletes are taking home gold, silver or bronze.
The courage of all 195 participants to be visible in the face of extra scrutiny, stigma and often social media abuse is commendable, he adds.
“There is a lot of pressure for when people do come out to be an activist and to be outspoken. And sometimes that’s just not in some people’s nature,” he says.
“I think this might be part of the reason why possibly more people haven’t felt as comfortable with coming out.
“I also think that [the world of sport] is such a heteronormative space… lots of queer kids, when they’re younger, have this automatic feeling that they shouldn’t fit into sports, so they don’t pursue them. I hope we’ll see more in the future.”
As for Daley himself, alongside his duties as a dad, he says he has media ambitions and he’s enrolled in a sewing class at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles, which he now calls home.
He has been drawn back to diving on previous occasions when he had thought he might have retired, most recently after a visit to the Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs. The enthusiasm of Robbie to see his “Papa” dive in person at a Games encouraged him to pull on the trunks seriously once more.
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But this time, he seems certain that he’s all splashed out.
“It’s going to be hard. And it’s going to be a major adjustment to figure out how my days are structured,” he adds.
More than anything, Daley – who is the most successful diver Great Britain has every produced, and 11th= on the Team GB all-time most medals won list of athletes – says he feels “incredibly proud… and satisfied”
“I would love for people to remember me for being a person that persevered, who persisted and didn’t give up on his dream until he was able to achieve it.”
