Tom Daley knows exactly where he was when he decided to come back to diving.

On a visit to the USA Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado last year, the 29-year-old started sobbing when a video of what it means to be an Olympian tugged on the heartstrings. 

His son, Robbie, asked him why he was crying and his dad - who competed at the last four Games - explained: “These are happy tears, I just really miss diving.””

Robbie replied: “Papa, I want to see you dive in the Olympics.”

The deal was done.

Having taken a two-year break from competing, Daley got back into full-time training and divides his time between the University of California and the London Aquatics Centre while still putting family first. He is still coached by Jane Figueiredo, who he has worked with since 2013.

He duly struck up a new synchro partnership with Noah Williams, with the pair qualifying for the Games thanks to a silver medal at the World Championships in February.

Activist, A-lister, diver and just plain Dad: there is no-one quite like Daley.

As a nation, we have watched Daley grow from a boy into a man and that unique emotional combination makes him one of the most popular people in the UK.

It’s fair to say there aren’t many other Olympians who can pull Hilary Clinton, Greta Thunberg and Shania Twain onto their podcast.

The 30-year-old has transformed pretty much everything he has touched in the last two decades. He has a few successful business ventures and now lives in Los Angeles with his screenwriter husband Dustin Lance Black and two sons, Robbie, six, and one-year-old Pheonix. In Tokyo, he got the Olympic gold he always dreamed of.

It all began at the Life Centre in Plymouth where an eight-year-old Daley was spotted by a coach, Andy Banks.

Banks remembers: “He was zippy, he was fast, he was aware of where he was and he had an ability to get through the water really quite well. The other thing that impressed me is when you said to him, ‘You’re doing this but what I want is that.’ His ability to make changes was significant.”

There was only one problem: Daley couldn’t bear being away from mum Debbie and dad Rob. Training camps were an ordeal and coaches had to ask him to practise sleepovers.

One observer recalls: “I walk into Tom’s room and you see these windows - the kind of hotel windows that only open so far - and he’s standing, balling his eyes out, trying to push the window going, ‘If you don’t call my parents now, I’m going to jump, I want to get out of here, I’m not doing this.’

“I was there a long time, listening, reassuring him, reminding him we were there to help him achieve his big-dream goals, and we finally got him downstairs to dinner and he sat right in the corner and all he ate was Jaffa Cakes.”

The diving pool was the only place where everything felt okay and that is one of the reasons why we see him back on Team GB for a fourth Olympics.

The images of a 14-year-old Daley, the youngest British Olympian in generations, at Beijing 2008 are still so vivid.

Diving is Daley and Daley is diving. He has transcended the sport many times over but it all comes back to that feeling of flying through the air and losing just enough control.

He has weathered his fair share of storms: he was seriously bullied at school, taunted as ‘Speedo Boy’ and threatened with broken legs. The devastating loss of dad Rob, who followed his son to competitions around the world, to a brain tumour in 2011 undoubtedly shaped the years that followed.

Daley has always met such moments with openness, a willingness to be vulnerable and a sharp awareness of how he can use his platform to advance causes he cares about.

After coming out on his YouTube channel in 2013, he has been a tireless campaigner and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. He has used the levers of the Commonwealth Games as a means to challenge anti-gay laws and made it his “mission” to use sport to shame such countries, carrying an rainbow flag into the opening ceremony at Birmingham 2022.

Whether Daley adds to his tally of one gold and three bronze medals barely seems to matter. It has always been about so much more than that.

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