Tom Daley
Tom has won a diving gold or finished first in a major competition every single year for 14 successive years! He won a national U18 competition aged just ten, competed in the Olympics at fourteen and won a bronze at London 2012. Tom’s fame transcends his sport - he lost his father to cancer in 2011, publicly came out as gay, got married, had a baby and has became a key spokesperson for LGBTQ+ rights.
You can find more information on the Tom Daley Diving Academy here.
TRANSCRIPT
JAKE: …we don't really, actually, there is nothing to dislike to be honest about our guest today because he's a man who won a national - you have to correct me if any of this is not right - a national under 18 competition aged 10.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: At 13 competed in the Olympics.
TOM: Well I was 14 - 13 when I qualified. So…
JAKE: Right, 14 when he competed in the Olympics. His career has been touched by tragedy. He's grown up under the glare of social media. He's come out. He's gotten married, he's had a baby, and he's still only 25,
TOM: Yes.
JAKE: looking at about 21. And remarkably against that backdrop, and this is, I love this, this is what this podcast is all about, cause he's still won a diving gold or finished first in a major competition every single year for 14 successive years. Welcome to high performance, Tom Daley.
TOM: Thank you very much for having me. Well that sounds really, like, grand hearing those things. I don’t often hear them listed off like that.
JAKE: But Damian, that's what this is about, you know, isn't it? Someone like Tom who has had so much going on around himself yet still manages to deliver high performance year after year.
DAMIAN: Yeah. I think one of the really interesting concepts that hopefully we'll get into, Tom, is this idea of being able to, like, cut through the noise, that obviously surrounds you, to be able to still nail performance, when it really counts. And you know that's, what Jake’s just said is a real example of how you've just successfully done that for so long.
TOM: Yes, I think it's all about compartmentalising, if you like, just being able to - I think diving is quite a quiet sport, so when you talk about cutting through the noise of all the distractions of outside the pool, what's going on in my life, whether it's good or bad, standing on the end of that diving board, once the whistle blows, it is silent. You can hear a pin drop. So being able to hone in everything that you've done in training and everything that you've done in your life, to be able to just focus on the here and now is something that has taken me years to get to a point where I feel like I can stand on the end of the board and not think about anything else and just find a sense of flow, if you like.
JAKE: Can you talk us through that process for you mentally?
TOM: Yeah, I mean there's, there's been a lot of things that I've done over the years. Um, I mean I started off my diving career, um, not really knowing what I was doing and I literally would just go into competitions because I really enjoy diving, I really enjoy competing, and the chance to be able to dive against people twice my age. I didn't have any pressure. I was just like, I've got nothing to lose. I'm just going to go out and have fun because this is what I enjoy doing. And as I got older and started winning more competitions, there was this, you know, then started to add the pressure, the expectation, the, the public eye if you like, to be able to, people would come up to me in the streets and say, Oh, you're going to go and win a gold medal at the Olympics. You're going to go with this. And actually when you start thinking about it, you can really easily overthink it. And mindfulness has played a big part in what I do every day. Uh, I try to do 10 minutes at least. Um, just focusing on my breathing to be able to get to a point where at any given moment, no matter how stressful, how pressurised that moment is, to be able to just focus on my breathing and just be there and then, rather than thinking about what's already been, what's about to happen, just being really present.
JAKE: So this is something that you've learned?
TOM: Many athletes will tell you we spend hours and hours training our bodies and training, our, you know, muscle memory, uh, working as hard as you possibly can in the gym, fueling your body with food. But you can do all of that. But if you don't work out and train your mind and train the way that you think and train you the habits that you think and trying to think of, try and think a bit more rationally. Because sometimes when things have gone badly in the past, you can start thinking about those. And actually when things have already happened, it's already happened. Don't spend any more energy on things that have gone well or badly. So just to always think about what you can do.
JAKE: It's kind of an easy thing to say, but I, from a psychological perspective, a very difficult thing to do actually.
DAMIAN: Very much. And then there's a really interesting bit of, when I was researching about your background, Tom, that from a very young age you've been open. It seems to me that you've been open to that psychological intervention. So I read, was it a concept, last time syndrome, when you’re diving that you spoke about, that was the first time you went to speak to a psychologist around that, and then you, and then had your cuddle monkey.
TOM: Yeah, exactly. I mean I’ve still got the, it’s still in my room, funnily enough. Um, uh, my, I had a lucky monkey, that lucky monkey story was, I went away when I was younger. I was nine years old and it was the first time I’d stayed away from my parents and it was a training camp and I just remember crying every single night. Then I didn't want to be there, eh, in the evenings. I was just too scared. I was worried, I was homesick. And my dad said, if you stay tonight, I'll get you a monkey. And I was like, I always wanted a pet monkey. So I was like, okay, I'm going to stay. Anyway, I stayed and then the next morning he goes, I've got you a monkey. And I thought, well I’m so excited. It was like, a Velcro-hands, you know, cuddly toy monkey. And from then on I took that everywhere with me. And it was kind of became my lucky charm if you like, which talking later in my career I had to stop using a lucky monkey cause I didn't want any superstitious things, things to bring with me. But yeah, it's been a big developing career in that sense of being able to grow up, especially with the lost move syndrome that you were talking about. It's, I learned a lot of dives very young, very quickly, and it was all before I started growing really. So as soon as I started to grow, my arms were longer than they used to be. My legs were longer than they used to be. So every time I would get into a tuck shape, a pipe shape, I'd take off. My arms and my legs weren't quite in the same place they used to be. So I was disoriented and I remember I hit my feet on the board, I hit my head on the board. I landed flat so many times that it got to a point where I was like, I'm terrified. I can't go up there anymore.
JAKE: Did you sort of think you'd lost it?
TOM: Yeah, that's exactly how it feels. I stood on the end of the board and I thought, I can't remember how to do this. I couldn't physically swing my arms and take off the board because I was like, I have no idea how to do this. I'm too terrified to even jump. Something that I've done for so many years, I am too scared to go. And I didn't actually dive off 10 metre for 11 months.
DAMIAN: So you experienced that and I've heard about some of the accidents you had where you cracked your head on holiday with your family, and things like that and got taken to the hospital. It was the courage to, whether it was, get back on the board or whether it was to go and seek help to do that. I mean, where did that insight come from?
TOM: Um, I remember watching the Athens 2004 Olympic games and seeing Pete Waterfield and Leon Taylor win an Olympic silver medal. Ah, I was down the caravan. We used to go to Newquay and go to the caravan every weekend. And I remember sitting in the caravan while everyone else was at the club house, and you know, having a good time. I remember sitting there watching that event and from that moment it was like a switch. I was like, I want to compete at an Olympic games. And it was actually maybe a couple of months before that I had this little sketchbook that I, uh, my dad actually, it was his idea, um, we had every medal I won, he would draw around it and I would then write on it what the event was, how old I was and what place I'd finished. So I kept like a little book of all my medals that I had drawn around and coloured in. And in the front of it, I drew a picture of myself in a handstand, uh, that said London 2012 with the Olympic rings on it. And that was only when London was a candidate city. So it hadn't even been announced that London was going to be, um, the host. But I just had this vision that I wanted to be at the Olympic games and I wanted to be the best that I could be. And it was almost like nothing could stop me. And I think that's something that's so powerful about visualisation and visualising where he wants to be and visualising how you can get there. And for me, writing things down of where I wanted to be, goal setting and just joining up picture age nine kind of made me, I don't know, I just knew what I wanted and would not stop at anything to make it happen.
JAKE: Very different, but I remember writing my name in a school book. And I had no desire writing a television or to really be famous or do any, anything that I do now. But I remember as a kid at like, I would've been year nine, year eight, year nine. I remember writing my name in a book over and over and over and over again and saying to myself, one day all the kids in this room are going to know that I've gone and done something really special. I didn't even know, like, you knew exactly what it was that you were going to do. I had no idea. But I'm absolutely with you, that I think that gave me this sort of like sense almost a destiny of like, I have to be better than all the other people in this room because there's something greater waiting for me. And I think that is such a helpful mindset.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: And it comes from within. I don’t know where it comes from. Do you?
TOM: I don't think every person has it. Because you meet lots of people that are very much focused like that and want to achieve everything they can. And then there's some people that are very laid back and still are able to, you know, achieve things. And I think there's lots of different ways that you can become the best at something and different things work for different people. But there was just something inside me that I, it wasn't anything that I've learned. It wasn't anything that I had, you know, been told that I had to do. It was something that I just wanted and there was…
DAMIAN: Do you still do it now, then, Tom?
TOM: Yeah, I still, I mean I even do it even on a smaller scale, like every morning I'll write three things down that I want to, sometimes it's just reminders, sometimes it's something that I, a goal that I want to do for the day. For example, like today I'm going to be doing one of my, my twisting dive on three metre for the first time this season. I want to stay positive when I go into the pool after, cause I know I've got a hard gym session later. So sometimes after a hard gyn session you can feel like you're not gonna have the best pool session. And also just being able to make sure that I pick up some milk on the way home. So like there's three, but there'll always be three things I write down every day that I want to achieve. And again I'll do that at the beginning of every year. But the difference is now that I don't write outcome goals, outcome goals for me are a slippery slope. Thinking like if I was to write down win world championships or win world series, that for me is too much focused on the outcome, and outcomes you often can't control. The only thing you can control is the process. So controlling the controllables and focusing on what you need to do to get to where you know where you want to be and you know how you can achieve the goals that I wouldn't want to write down, but to be able to focus on the process of each individual thing as it comes rather than just thinking I need to get there and not think about how.
DAMIAN: Do when did you do that? Because I mean the example that wrote, that lovely example drawing the picture, is very much an outcome goal of standing on the podium at London. So there's been a transition between going from outcome to process. Now when did that happen?
TOM: I mean, when I was younger, the concept of thinking about the process and thinking about what I, I just couldn't get my head around that. All I wanted to do was go see Olympic games. I still know what I want to achieve, but being able to then disregard that and I think, okay, how do I get that? What other steps? What is the process to get there? Because you know, I don't start thinking about the Olympics and competing there until it's the next competition. Because I have so many competitions before that. I have the national championships, world series, world cup, European championship and then the Olympic games, so not getting ahead of myself is something that I try to do now because you want to be able to take each competition as it comes and then get to the Olympic games and be best prepared. Because you don't want to have all of that constant energy and constant thinking about the Olympic games. Yes, it's always there, but you want to be able to focus on things before that too.
DAMIAN: Your transition period was fascinating for me when I was reading about it at that young age where you were being taken to the Olympic site long before it was ever built, and the Daily Mail put you as one of their seven to watch, didn’t they?
TOM: Yeah.
DAMIAN: Seven years out from the games, and things like that. It fascinated me, the fact that you've almost been put on that pedestal for a long time. And then you'd spoken earlier about this sense of not going into competition with that weight of expectation on you. So when did you learn about process?
TOM: I mean in London 2012 there was a lot of expectation and a lot of pressure and I felt that pressure a lot, especially in the prelim. The worst competition in my year was in that Olympic prelim. And I finished 15th and the top 18 go through.
JAKE: What went wrong?
TOM: Um, I was feeling a pressure. I remember standing there thinking, there are 18,000 people watching here. There are millions of people watching at home. There's billboards on the mall outside the pool with my face on it. And I'm here about to do six dives that I've trained for four years, and I get one shot at this. I and remember thinking, Oh my god, like…
JAKE: So all of your learning about compartmentalising your life and when you get to the pool, everything else doesn't matter, that, on that day, that process failed you?
TOM: Yeah, went out the window. And I remember going through the competition thinking, Oh no, this is, this is everything that I didn't want it to be. And it wasn't until, I mean I made it through the prelim. I got to the semifinal and I was like, you know, why, why am I doing this if I'm not enjoying it? And if I'm not going to, this competing in Olympic games, for most people is a once in a lifetime. To compete in Olympic games in front of a home crowd is like something that so few people get to ever experience. So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to have fun and enjoy this and just let it rip. And I remember the semifinal went consistently, well. And then going into the final, instead of being worried about what might go wrong, I was just like, you know what? No matter what happens, I am just going to go out there and enjoy it, and dive. I've got my family in the audience watching, and I can just go out there and have fun.
JAKE: You know, um, I was obviously hosting the games that night and I was, I think I was doing BBC Two.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: I think Gary Lineker was hosting on BBC One, and someone else was hosting on BBC Three. Three channels, three different sports. All of us got the word, the producer came on and said, right, listen up, every channel is switching to the diving. Tom's about to win a medal, we think.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: And suddenly at that moment, BBC One, Two, and Three, all just go away from everything they were covering and then lie in the pool for a moment. I’ll never forget that.
TOM: And I remember going into the last dive. Like, I knew I was in medal contention, and I remember walking to the end of the diving board, the cheers were just like deafening. Thousands and thousands of people. The whistle blew and it went completely silent. There was nothing. Because it was so loud before, all you could hear was the water going down the, the filter and the drains. And I remember walking to the end, I looked down and you see the Olympic rings on the bottom of the pool - London 2012. And I remember standing on the, like, walking to the end thinking, this is the moment that I have dreamt of my whole life. And I just was like, you know what? I get one shot at this. I just remember having this switch in my head where I was like, I'm going to give this everything I've got. I've got nothing to lose, everything to gain. And uh, I remember hitting the water knowing that I'd done a good dive and it almost felt like I could have like been a dolphin and like swam out the water and gone back up for 10 metre. That I felt the adrenaline that was pumping through my body at that point, it was like something that is, it's so hard to ever recreate. It’s almost like, now looking back on it, I can't really remember what happened. I don't know what my brain’s done, but it's kind of like blanked out so much of what had happened and I couldn't recall to you how each of my dives went, other than that last dive.
JAKE: Did you go back to the drawing in the book in your brain at that moment before the dive?
TOM: You know what, it didn't come into my head, but it was actually when I got home and my mum got out this book and was like, you said you were going to do that. And you did.
JAKE: Did you think about the journey to that point? Did you think about your Dad?
TOM: Yeah, I mean all of it. Like the whole process of getting to that point. I remember it wasn't until I was actually about to get the medal, and we were in the call room. I just sat there and I just thought, this doesn't seem real. This has been, you know, years and years and years of work. This has been, you know, my dad took me to every single training session, every single competition, every single, uh, whether it is in this country or not. He was there…
JAKE: But you didn’t go on the board before the dive? You didn’t let yourself go there mentally?
TOM: No. Going there, I think, when you start thinking about what has been, uh, when you're on the end of the board, it can be quite overwhelming. And I think you just, I, there was just something that I found a sense of flow and I just knew I was doing and I didn't have to overthink it. I could just stand on the end of the board and just do it. Yeah.
DAMIAN: So when you now need to replicate that as you had to do in Rio, and like you'll do over the next six months, how do you tap into that sense of flow now that you've gone through such an experience?
TOM: Yeah, I mean, again, Rio didn't go exactly to plan. In the synchro, it was everything that I had hoped for, but in the individual, again, the prelim was, I had my flow and things were going extremely well and the Olympic record I won the prelim and it was the complete contrast to what had happened in London. Uh, but then going into that semifinal, I was top of the leaderboard and you know, it was mine to lose. And I'd never been in that position before. And my, there was my mind and body did not connect and I was not. There was something about that day. I have no idea why. I could have done a hundred of my dives and maybe one of them would have been as bad as I did every single dive in that semifinal and I could just feel it falling away, like it was, there was no matter what I did, no matter what I tried to do, sticking to my exact same routines just wasn't meant to be.
DAMIAN: What would you do different now if you were in that situation where you could feel it slipping away from you?
TOM: Um, I mean it happens in lots of competitions when you just don't have the day that you want to have. And I think there's, if going back there is lots of different things that I think could have gone slightly different. I know that my coach changed some of her routine randomly. My music on my phone stopped working. Uh, which was something part of my routine in between each dive. And it was something that I had never won a prelim as well. So it was a really strange position for me to be in. And funnily enough, uh, I found myself in exactly the same position in 2017. I had won the semifinal or I was, uh, following the two Chinese cause I'd beat them in the, in the semifinal. So going into the final, I had exactly the same position that I was in going into the semifinal at the Olympics. So that was a chance for me to get redemption, if you like.
DAMIAN: That reminds me of a story about Bob Bowman. So Michael Phelps’ coach, and he spoke about from a really young age when he had Phelps that he would deliberately sabotage training sessions for him. So he would sort of, switch the lights out or he’d turn the water off so that he couldn’t go and go and get a drink in between it. And the famous example he did when he was quite a young athlete was he trod on his goggles to break them, literally seconds before we went out to the pool. And it was all to get him ready for those moments when, when your music doesn't work, when things go wrong.
TOM: It's one of those things that we do sit down and try and think of the “what if?” scenarios so that we can kind of prepare for anything that might be thrown at us. Uh, but sometimes there's just things that you can't prepare for, and you're either ready for it or you're not. And on that day I wasn't. On that day, it didn't happen. Um, which again was one of the most heartbreaking moments, well for me it was the most heartbreaking moment of my whole entire diving career. Cause I know how that day could have ended, what it could have been. So, and four years is a long time to wait to give it another go. And I think, you know, now that I'm a parent, it has changed the way I think completely about my sport. If anything, that's going to be a big help. A massive change of perspective.
JAKE: Before you were a parent?
TOM: Yes?
JAKE: How long would you have dwelled on that failure?
TOM: Oh gosh. I mean I wasn't a parent in 2016 and I remember just feeling, I've felt down in the dumps for so long. It was funny because it was almost that instant that I got a fire to come back and do better. Um, I know for my coach Jane, it was completely heartbreaking for her, and she really struggled. Um, and don't get me wrong, I struggled too, but you know, I wanted to have a break. So I took a break. I took about three months off. I came back into the sport gradually and I knew that I had to work harder to be better and I worked as hard as I possibly could for that whole year and there was nothing that was going to stop me almost going into that world championships the year after.
JAKE: And to then motivate you to going forwards, do you completely take that failure out of your head and go right, I’ve failed. It was a mistake. It wasn't good for me, it wasn't good for my coach. We move on. Or are you the kind of athlete that goes right, remember how that felt, remember that moment, remember how dark that was. Don't let yourself go there again. What's your approach to that, to holding onto that failure, or letting it go?
TOM: Yeah, I mean I try to, I tried to analyse, what like, I do like a debrief of what could have been different to avoid those situations. But actually sometimes there is no, uh, there isn't anything in particular. Sometimes it's just one of those days. Um, and for me, I don't like to think of something. I don't like to be on the board in any way and think, don't let this happen. Don't do this. Because often if you think don't do this, you're going to do it. So being always trying to talk to myself in positive self talk and be like, focus on the process, make sure you jump, swing your arms, make sure you come out quickly. Those kinds of things rather than thinking, Oh I need to do this dive but don't do it wrong because else you’re going to be out, if that makes sense.
JAKE: Yeah, it does. But failure can be a really good tool for improvement and motivation, can’t it?
TOM: Of course. For the training it’s a massive motivation like, you know, on the days where I would feel like, Oh gosh, I really, this is tough today. I think, you know what, the tough days is what is going to set me above the rest. These little one percents, these, um, making sure that I recover in this way, making sure I do this, make sure I sleep these many hours. Being able to do that, those little one percents can make the biggest difference. So having gone through failure and having something to claw after and achieve is something that's very motivating.
DAMIAN: I want to be sensitive about the way I ask this because I appreciate your dad’s not here…
TOM: Yeah.
DAMIAN: but um, there was a lot of sort of drive from your dad that obviously pushed you, so there was times when, as a, especially as a young boy, you were in situations where you were homesick and you went away to camps, and you were going into a level of competition that obviously made you feel uncomfortable.
TOM: Yeah.
DAMIAN: And your dad was there as very much a driving force.
TOM: Yeah, I think I would never have actually gone on the camps if my mum or dad weren't going to be in the hotel next door. My dad was unlike a lot of the parents um, of sporting people. He didn't pretend or even try to know anything technical about diving. He didn't pretend or try to say things that I needed to improve on or work on. He didn't pretend to try and adjust what I ate or adjust how much I slept. He let me figure it out and he was just there for me. Even just things like the way that my dad used to make me feel about competition. I remember that first competition where I was diving for the first time in a senior competition at 10 years old - the senior national championships. I remember we got the list of how many people were going to be in it, and there was 18 divers and I said to my dad, I'm so nervous. Like, what if I do badly? What if I don't dive as well as I do in training? You know, it's the first time I'm going to dive at a senior event and he just said to me, Tom, there's 18 divers in this competition. If you come last you are going to be 18th best in the whole country. But how cool’s that? And when he said that to me, I was like, you're right, eighteenth best in the country. That's pretty darn good. The way that he used to say things to me just took all the pressure off. Like I knew whether I did well or I did badly that he would have just treated it exactly the same. And my mum as well, she was just very much like, Oh that was nice. Even if it was absolutely diabolical and she knew it, she would just say, you know, you did a great job today.
JAKE: I find this a really interesting topic. I actually could get quite moved by it. Like when you told your story about your dad saying you can come 18th I was sitting in welling up a bit because as a parent all you want is just your kids to be happy and to do their best, right? And he would have loved you to come first. Course he would have done.
TOM: Yeah, yeah.
JAKE: But he was smart enough to know that to go, listen Tom, you can do it. You can be the best diver in this competition.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: That is just adding weight to your shoulders. And I, to be totally honest, Tom, I assumed that's what he was like. I assumed that…
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: … because maybe sometimes, like you can get the very best out of your kids, just by giving them absolute comfort. And it says to me like what your dad gave you was - he didn't push you or …
TOM: No.
JAKE: … challenge you necessarily. He just made you feel totally safe in your environment, whether that's on the board or xxx
TOM: Absolutely, like there was nothing that, obviously if I had done something bad I would get told off. But things like when it came to diving, there was no, there, and my schoolwork that… so there was something, I think there was just something inside me that wanted to do the best I could do at every single thing. There's so many things that my dad taught me, even with my schoolwork, just he always just to say to me, you know, do, do what you can at school because you never know what's going to happen with your diving. You don't know if you're gonna break your leg and not have anything to fall back on. But it was something that I, it was just something in my nature. And I think that's something that sport taught me was to, all of the goal setting and the mindset and the discipline transferred over into my schoolwork. So I, I transferred those same mindsets of being disciplined and focused and time management I think it was key for me going to school at the same time as going to the Olympics. You know, I was studying my, for my ‘A’ levels. I’d just taken my ‘A’ levels when I went to London. I had not even taken my GCCS when I was in the Beijing Olympics. So, you know, each Olympics has put me into a very different scenario. 2016 I didn't have anything. And actually I was starting to do more outside of diving because I wanted to have something that would fill in those gaps because I didn't have anything outside of diving. And when it's just diving, diving, diving, diving, it can be really stressful. I mean, now, I mean I'm married, I've got a kid, so that takes a lot of that away. Like I can actually for the first time ever leave my diving at the pool. Like I've never been able to do that before. But when you have a kid you don't have a choice. You don't, you can't be thinking about what you're going to be doing tomorrow in the pool, you know. You have to be thinking about what's going to be going on with Robbie today. Like what is he doing? Is he?
JAKE: It’s good for you, isn't it?
TOM: Yeah, it is.
JAKE: For me it feels like there's a disconnect here though, because you've got a dad who’s massively supportive and you've got a son who is an elite athlete.
TOM: Mm.
JAKE: So where is the person saying this is what elite behaviour is, this is what elite thinking is, this is the mindset of a competitor? Because you say, well I just sort of had it. But I don't know whether I believe people can be born with that mindset. Damian can talk to you about the sort of golden seed theory, that someone has to put that into you. You grow it, but they have to put it there.
TOM: I can't think of a particular time where somebody had ever said to me that I needed to do something. For me the only thing I could think of is what was, when I was watching that competition in Athens, when I saw Leon and Pete win an Olympic silver medal, that for me was like, I want to do that. And I remember going to watch what at that national championships that I went to, Leon and Pete were there. And I remember going up to them asking for their autograph and getting them to sign my calendar. I mean I dived with Pete in the London Olympics and Synchro Cup, you know, eight years later. But it was, I think, you know, speaking to Leon to, I used to speak to him quite often because it then kind of became like a mentor role and he used to call me once a week and we’d just talk about my training and what I was doing and he would give me little words of advice and tips. So he definitely helped me with what an athlete needed to do and what an athlete needed to be. Um, but for me, what an athlete is has changed so dramatically over the years. It wasn't just a, I haven't been the same athlete my whole career. My first coach was very much a laid back coach and would just, you know, he wouldn't really care so much about what I was doing outside of the pool. It was more performance based, very technical. He taught me all of my dives, which I absolutely loved, but it got to a point where you get so comfortable with someone, if there’s some, and he’s like, oh he’s doing more... Oh no, I think I'm done. Like you need someone that is going to come in and change things up, push you, and when I moved to Jane that really changed the way I thought about what it meant to be an athlete. There was so many different new ideas and things that have been developed talking about, I'd never really thought all that much about my nutrition and my recovery and all the little extra 1%, the ice baths. Even psychologically, we do a thing called mental Mondays. Every other Monday we have a workshop on a different part of the psychology of what it means to be a competitor. So I do a lot more thinking about that side of things now. There's something that's always been competitive in our family though, like playing a game of monopoly at Christmas. Oh my God. Boards get flipped. Cash gets thrown. Like…
JAKE: Look, we got there in the end.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: There had to be something and there it is. It’s a competitive family.
DAMIAN: There’s a theory that I'm sure you're familiar with, with this idea of, of like trauma leads to triumph.
TOM: Yeah.
DAMIAN: Again, looking through your biography, Tom, there's a couple of incidents that stood out for me that I'd be interested in just understanding more. So there was your experience of feeling isolated at school, as success took you away from your peer group and you experienced the bullying, and then there was almost the trauma that would have followed your dad's passing, that would have, I imagine, would have led to a sense of isolation again.
TOM: Yeah.
DAMIAN: You know, I'm interested in, in how you handled those moments where you've had to go off on your own and forge your own path.
TOM: My whole life, I feel like lots of the time I felt like people don't understand. People don't get it at school. People just didn't get it. That I wanted to be at the pool for five hours after school. People didn't get the fact that I wanted to do everything that I could. I didn't, couldn't go to the cinema in the evenings and come back at 10:30 if I had to be up at six. I couldn't go to the parties on the weekend or drink when everyone else was. You know, those little things, people just didn't understand that. And then I felt the same when my dad passed away. You know, I went and competed at the national championships the week after, which looking back on now is like kind of crazy. But I must've just, you know, that's what my dad would have wanted me to compete, like he would've wanted me to carry on. I didn't miss any training sessions, and I don't know there was just something that was very tunnel vision on that and it was almost like I was shutting everything out. But yeah. That again, like I didn't think that any of the diving people understood how I was feeling. I was always trying to just, you know, get things done and not think about it, and just be like, I know, I know I need to do and I just need to do it. And then a similar thing my whole life is obviously I knew that I was different as long as I can remember. And I think when I came out in 2013, I almost felt alone then. I was like, I don't know if people understand how difficult it has been for me growing up and feeling different, feeling on the outside, of feeling like I was an outsider, but people didn't know that I was an outsider. I knew that I was an outsider and I wasn't the same as everyone else. And, in a certain way, I think, uh, growing up, um, as a, as a gay little boy and then growing up with knowing that and not knowing how to say it or if I could ever say it, especially in the public eye, there was something I think about that I wanted to prove that I could be good, I could do well at school, I could be good at sport and that wasn't going to define me. So I think my whole life I felt a little bit on the outside and a little bit like people didn't understand me as an athlete and my dad passing away being gay. But everyone, if you think about it, everyone is a little bit different in some way. And it's about embracing those differences because those differences can often be the things that set us apart from the rest when it comes to life experience and what you can handle.
DAMIAN: But then we all need a tribe, somebody that we feel a place we can go to where we can be ourselves and be safe and be secure in that environment. So do you feel you’ve found that now?
TOM: Oh, absolutely. My, I mean, my diving team for one, my, obviously my family. Um, there was something that was so special about being able to go to diving, being able to be myself, not necessarily that they knew exactly, um, everything, but the fact that I was able to be myself, it kind of did make me feel safe. I had a safe environment at home. I had a safe environment at the pool as well, which I think and then take a lot of stress and pressure and anxiety away to allow us to fly.
JAKE: I wonder whether, when I hear all of this, whether you actually feel quite bulletproof. Because I think that when people xxx been clinical studies into this, that when people have these big traumas early in their lives and things keep on happening, it can send you one way or the other. It can break a lot of people, or it can lead to the kind of person who just has extreme resilience. So you’re bullied at school, so your dad dies. So you become publicly known and you have a couple of exposes in the press. So there's question marks about your sexuality and you haven't yet come out. So you go into a TV show, and British swimming doesn't back you despite the fact that you're making diving more popular than ever before. So there's huge pressure on you to deliver when you're on the diving board. And of course you've got your friends and you've got your coaches and people you can talk to. But you know what, it all comes down to Tom Daley dealing with that in his head.
TOM: Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I've had to deal with so many things from such a young age that I don't know any different.
JAKE: So do you feel bulletproof?
TOM: I guess you could say that. I feel like the way that I think about life in general is that there's so much more to what other people think about me and what other people's opinions are of me, and what happens in life, the things that are most important are my family and my happiness, and loving what I do. And people can think what they want to think. People can say what they want to say, and at the of the day you can let as much as that in or not as you want to. And it's something that I had to learn how to do because, don't get me wrong, you, the, the world of social media now, people can be really, really nasty. So being able to rationalise things I think is something that's really key. It’s something I’ve had to learn, to rationalise the fact that that's someone sat behind a computer and would they really say that to your face?
JAKE: Are you bothered anymore? I imagine there was a time where you felt like shouting from the rooftops, hey, I'm a human being.
TOM: Yeah.
JAKE: I'm a nice guy. I'm just trying to be an elite performer. Why are you all trying to f*** with my head like this?
TOM: Yes, no, exactly. Of course, initially when those things happen, you want to say that, but it's also, now I've learned, I don't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that I've even read it. Because people can be horrible and that's for them to be horrible. But you know, I like to kill people with kindness.
JAKE: Listen to finish with, and it has been a really fascinating chat. So thank you for being so open xxx …
TOM: No thank you for having me.
JAKE: about the journey to this point. We've just got a few quickfire questions that we like to run through at the very end of the pod. The first one from me is the three non-negotiable behaviours that both you and the people that compete around you and your coaches have to buy into.
TOM: Um, commitment. That'll have to be the first one. Ambition, and drive. Cause I think those things, if you're committed to doing whatever it takes, if you have the drive to want to achieve and you have that ambition there, I feel like that's the recipe for getting the best out of what you need to do.
JAKE: I like that.
DAMIAN: What advice would you give a teenage Tom if you were just starting out again?
TOM: Um, to be honest, I would want teenage Tom to give me the advice because I remember when I was just starting out, there were no cares, there were no worries, there was no ex , that worries about expectations. So to go into a competition remembering how I felt then, um just doing it because it's the thing that I love to do more than anything, and just always remembering that I love to dive.
JAKE: And that actually leads nicely to my quickfire question. Are you taking time to savour it, and enjoy it?
TOM: Yeah, I think enjoyment is something that I think is really important and I think that comes with balance. Yes. We as an athlete, we want to train every single day and it's all about that. But also sometimes you need, just need a day off with your family.
DAMIAN: So how important is legacy to you?
TOM: If somebody had told me, when I first started diving, that one that there would have been a live Saturday night TV show about diving, if diving was going to be shown on primetime television, if diving was ever going to be a sport that was actually even mentioned, um, in the roundup on like Olympic Grandstand kind of thing, that that, that would for me would have been like, Oh my goodness, that is absolutely insane. And I started the Tom Daley diving Academy in London that now has 800 people diving at the aquatic centre. I wanted to try and make diving accessible is something that I would love that in 10 years time people can go to their local pool, even if they've just got a poolside or even if they just got a one metre board, they don't need to have the full facility, but they have the opportunity to learn to dive. Just giving people the opportunity to be able to try it was something that I would like to think would be my legacy.
JAKE: Very nice. And the final question. To people listening to this, your one golden rule for living a high performance life?
TOM: A high performance life. Only touch things once. And when I say that, I mean don't procrastinate. Just if you need to do something, get it done. Because if you think about it for too long, it can become this big thing that you don't need it to be.
JAKE: Get it done.
TOM: Get it done. Yeah, exactly.
JAKE: Listen, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're busy training at the moment, competing as you always are. You've got millions of things going on, new dad and everything else. So from Damian and I…
TOM: Thank you for having me.