by Daley, Tom
It was decided that in April I would go back to compete in Aachen in Germany, where I’d won silver previously. Mum and Dad and my brothers drove over. Because they had started to do a lot of travelling, my Uncle Kevin’s firm, Airtech, gave us a Volkswagen Transporter to drive with free petrol, which was great. It helped so much.
At the event, it was like the year before: the same big international crowds, high standards and competitive vibes. After doing my first two dives from 10m, which were fine and normal, I climbed the stairs to take my third. About halfway up, I went blank and froze. My head felt fuzzy; I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought I had forgotten the movements and would lose myself in the air. I was petrified. I had to walk back down the steps.
Andy wasn’t there but I went over to the team manager and told him I didn’t want to compete any more. I think he thought I might pull myself out of it so, as a test, told me I had to walk up one of the ladders and tell the recorders. My name had not been called by that point, but it was while I was talking to the recorder, telling him I wanted to pull out, that my name was called. I got really upset and by the time I made it to my family I felt humiliated and so guilty that they had driven all the way there.
‘You don’t want to try, no?’ Dad asked me gently.
I shook my head. I felt totally overwhelmed. It felt so strange that the year before I had been so happy and excited, while this time it was the complete opposite. I could not understand what had happened and why I was feeling so scared. I just wanted my diving to go back to how it was before.
I DIDN’T GO UP ON THE 10M AFTER THAT COMPETITION FOR ABOUT NINE MONTHS. I JUST FELT I COULDN’T DO IT. I HAD LOST MY NERVE AND AS FAR AS I WAS CONCERNED MY DIVING CAREER WAS OVER.
Learning To Face My Fears
THE WEEK WE CAME BACK FROM GERMANY, I ARRIVED HOME FROM A NORMAL DAY AT SCHOOL AND DAD HAD SHAVED HIS BROWN MOP OF HAIR OFF AND WAS COMPLETELY BALD.
‘I’ve got a fiver from everyone in the pub to shave my head for Comic Relief,’ he said, grinning. It didn’t sound strange because it was around the time of Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day and I didn’t think twice.
The next day, he wasn’t at home when my brother and I came in from school, which was unusual. Mum and Grandma Rose were at home and told us that he’d gone to hospital for some check-ups. We all accepted that and piled into the car to the hospital.
At the hospital room, he was lying on the bed with a massive white bandage around his head. Ben had had an operation when he was two and hated hospitals. He was only five and really terrified. He sat outside crying and refused to go in and see him.
‘He’s got a really bad headache, that’s why he’s got a bandage on,’ Mum told us. But it didn’t make sense, and when I went to sit by his hospital bed, he looked really poorly. Dad kept calling the bandage his ‘turban’, insisting he was fine.
‘This turban means I’m changing religions,’ Dad said with a big smile. ‘It’s just some check-ups. All completely normal and routine.’
At home, when William and Ben were in bed, I started asking more questions.
‘He’s just got a poorly head,’ Grandma insisted.
I’d heard of cancer and knew that is was a Bad Thing, so I just came out with it.
‘He hasn’t got cancer, has he?’
‘He’s got a little thing growing in his head.
It’s a tumour.’
‘A tumour,’ I thought. ‘At least it’s not cancer.’
Dad spent about ten days in hospital and then he went to Grandma’s house to recuperate because it was quieter there. When he came back home we were told we needed to be gentle with him and couldn’t bundle him on the sofa, this thing we used to do all the time where we piled on top of each other. Mum would sometimes get involved and perch herself on the top of the pile, too!
But that rough-and-tumble stuff was strictly off limits while he was recovering, we were told.
I knew he started to have radiotherapy but never really understood completely what it meant. At the time I thought it was daily check-ups and we never went with him to the hospital because we were at school. I never saw Mum or Grandma crying, so I never realized the seriousness of it. He was always the same old dad, joking and messing around all the time and taking me everywhere in the car. I never felt scared; I took it for granted that he would get better. Everyone did.
I now know that for three years before he’d been having panic attacks for about thirty seconds to a minute each time. They would be completely random – he would get them at home and sometimes when he was driving. Mum and Dad tried to shield me from his illness but, even then, I could sometimes tell the difference when he was snappy or short-tempered because he was so worried about himself. He had decided to give up his job months earlier after the doctor told him the episodes were down to stress. Often he said he felt like he was hallucinating, like his head was filling up with water. He kept going back to our GP, over and over again, but they just told him to relax and not to worry. They even sent him to a psychiatrist, who told him there was nothing wrong with his mental health and recommended that he should go for a scan.
The tumour was the size of a grapefruit and he was told the day before my competition in Aachen, where I had pulled out. He was advised not to go out to Germany but his reasoning was that he had had the thing in his head for months, so a week would not make any difference. I wonder now whether I sensed he was ill, even if I didn’t realize it, and that’s why things had also gone spectacularly wrong there. The doctors cut out 80 per cent of the tumour but the rest of it was too dangerous to remove because it was connected to nerve endings.
DAD WAS CONSTANTLY UPBEAT. HE KEPT SAYING THAT HE NEVER FELT ANY PAIN AND WAS MORE SCARED OF GOING TO THE DENTIST THAN THE HOSPITAL. HE ALWAYS SAW THE POSITIVE IN EVERYTHING AND NEVER SHOWED BEN, WILLIAM AND ME THAT HE WAS WORRIED.
The fact that it might have been cancer was always in the back of my mind and as time went on I started to think more and more that it could be. I cannot remember exactly how I found out properly; I think I probably overheard a conversation in the kitchen. But I didn’t really think twice. I thought it was cool that Dad had beaten it and was so strong.
After he got his first set of results saying the tumour had shrunk, he hosted a ‘Rob’s still here’ party at a room in a pub down the road, where we raised money for a local hospice. About 250 of our family and friends came along. It was five people deep at the bar and he got so drunk that he threw up and had to come home early. In later years, each December, he had a ‘Rob’s still here’ party. It was always one of the highlights of the year for everyone and I know Dad loved having everyone together in one place having fun.
I WAS STILL GOING THROUGH A HORRIBLE TIME WITH MY DIVING AND WAS CONSTANTLY SCARED AND NERVOUS. I TOLD ANDY: ‘MY DIVING CAREER’S FINISHED. I CAN NEVER GO BACK ON THE HIGH BOARDS BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM, AND THAT’S IT.’
Andy showed me quickly that that wasn’t the case. He organized a Chinese coach to talk me through the problem and then spoke to the sports psychologist at British Diving, Michele Miller, who had helped me through my homesickness before.
He then encouraged me to speak to the likes of the gymnast Beth Tweddle, who I was friends with on Facebook. She told me that it wasn’t uncommon and I could get over it. She had overcome it herself and in sports like gymnastics, trampolining and diving, which are all quite similar, a lot of people suffered from the problem of feeling they were losing themselves in the air, but with time and patience they beat it. Sam Grevett and Kim White also got involved – everyone was willing me and helping me to overcome my problem. I had a massive support system.
I discovered the experience is called Lost Movement Syndrome. The complexity and difficulty of the routine must be matched by the quality of mental preparation because this creates the pathways or instructions for the body to subsequently follow. The clearer the mental preparation, the better the outcome. And if you’re tired or unfocused, your brain becomes co
nfused because you are moving at such a high speed and the mental pathways may not be etched clearly or distinctly enough. Your instinct, always on the alert to keep you from damage, pain and harm, reads this confusion as trouble, and sends out warning messages. Panic then floods your system. The mental pathways between mind and body, which should be clear, become lost in the flood. This is what had happened to me in Aachen and the trust between me and my instinct was broken and my confidence shattered.
Slowly, I calmed down and started to think maybe everything had been moving too quickly. We needed to strip it all back down to basics again, so we started to rebuild the dives and the ‘schemas’ in my brain. Andy told me: ‘I call it a Grand Canyon in the head. As you learn a movement pattern, your brain will remember it. If it’s the wrong one, you have to dig up one canyon and dig another channel.’
To rebuild the dive, we had to reinforce the schemas and get the canyon going the right way again. We started from the basics on the dry-land and in the pool, in the rig and out of the rig. At the lower boards, he added one twist – one schema – then went higher up the boards and, over a number of months, we gradually built in more height, more twists and somersaults, putting together a skill chain, a connection of schemas so that they all hung together. Everything was in place for me to rebuild my confidence and my dives.
IT WAS A REAL LOW POINT FOR ME HAVING PROGRESSED VERY QUICKLY UNTIL THEN. I FOUND THE PROCESS SLOW AND FRUSTRATING. I FELT BROKEN AND MY CONFIDENCE WAS AT AN ALL-TIME LOW.
I was sensitive around Tonia and Brooke, the other divers in the top team at Central Park Pool, who would tell me to get on with it and I would be fine. They had never experienced anything like it at that point and didn’t understand how I felt. I would often find myself bursting into tears when I got into the car after a training session. It felt so mentally draining and I was constantly tired. Dad always seemed to know when I was particularly knackered and would tell me to go to bed early, which I did, but I still found myself exhausted from school and training. I continued to work hard at rebuilding my diving and my confidence and continued to go on training camps. In October, I went to China for the first time with World Class Start. We stayed at a school and trained every day. I was homesick again and didn’t want to stay there and struggled to get to sleep because of jetlag. My team manager came up with this technique whereby he told me to try and stay awake and when I tried to keep my eyes open I would always end up dropping off. China was really different to how I imagined. It was quite a strange experience, especially when it came to the food. I thought it would be Chinese takeaways every night, but it was canteen food. One night they offered us dog for dinner, the next night cat soup and then another night lamb brains was on the menu. I didn’t even realize then that you could eat that kind of stuff. On the last day we saw they had put out chips and we were so excited and piled our plates really high. Sitting down, eager to tuck in and finally have some proper food, I had one bite and realized they were cold with sugar on. It was horrible. I just ate rice, cabbage and sweetcorn and came back so skinny.
Back at home I was starting to make good progress and everything slowly started to click back into place. Each time I did a good dive, I felt slightly better, until I finally made it back up on the 10m around December and it was like I had never been off it. It didn’t feel like a huge deal being back up there and because we had gone back to basics I found that my technique was better. I was stronger, calmer and more confident.
I learned that I had been given special dispensation to compete at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in Sydney, despite being two years below the minimum age. I was really proud and pleased about the decision. It was a proper Olympic event with an opening ceremony and an athletes’ parade and the national anthems were played when people won events.
One day in training, I grabbed my hands too hard when I hit the water and I painfully bent my thumb backwards. It was really sore and in the end we made a cast to keep it in a secure place, which helped. I had a scan on it and if I had broken it I would have had to wear a cast for weeks and would have been unable to dive. I started to realize for the first time how easy it is to be set back and I was very upset because I didn’t think I would make it to Australia – Mum and Dad had already paid out for them and William and Ben to come and watch me and Grandma had also booked her ticket. I dived feet first for three weeks and hoped for the best.
My diving was back on track, but I still felt apprehensive. Andy kept me thinking positive and told me to enjoy myself, which I did. In a Christmas card he had written me, he praised me for the way I had got over the setback and then wrote: ‘Keep smiling and enjoy your job – just another day in the office! You have one extra-strong thumb – remember the positive thinking.’ His cards always made me smile and feel really motivated. It had been a particularly tough year but he made me feel good about what I had achieved.
I did make it out to Australia in January 2007. My thumb was still painful but I soldiered on. I could not spend that much time with my family, because I was always expected to be with the team and even though I was the youngest, it would have been unfair on the others if I had been allowed time out with them. My family had an amazing holiday outside of watching the events I was competing in and they did all the normal touristy things, like going to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and to the zoo.
While it was my first competition back on the 10m and I felt shaky, I also felt more confident and finished fourth after being beaten by three Chinese divers. My list was quite simple after the setbacks. Afterwards, Andy told me we would start relearning my inward three and a half somersaults and other higher degree of difficulty dives, like my back armstand triple somersaults with tuck. I was nervous and resistant at first.
‘IT’S SIMPLE TOM. IF YOU WANT TO KEEP COMING FOURTH THEN YOU CAN STICK WITH THE CURRENT LIST,’ HE TOLD ME. ‘BUT IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE AND GET BACK INTO THE MEDALS THEN YOU NEED TO UP YOUR GAME.’
Fourth is a particularly frustrating place to be, especially when there are only a few points in it. That comment was enough to make me want to start learning those dives again!
In the synchro, I had started partnering Callum Johnstone, who trained in Leeds. For synchro competitions there are normally eleven judges: two groups of three judges score one of the divers each in the execution of the dive, making a total of six scores for the pair, while five judges score the synchronization of the dive. The high and the low score for each diver in execution is dropped, leaving two scores, and the highest and lowest of the five synchronization scores are dropped leaving three scores to be added together. These are then added to the execution scores and multiplied by the degree of difficulty and then 0.6 to give the total award on the dive. It’s quite confusing. But you always have a good idea of where you are during the event from the scores.
I liked not being up on the boards alone. It felt good to share the moment with someone and it’s all about teamwork. The training does not differ because it’s exactly the same routines and again we had not done much together beforehand. Partners are put together when they are naturally matched and fall and rotate at the same speeds and Callum was more than a foot taller than me but we dived well together and came second in the final. It was our first international together, so we were really happy.
When I came home we went on a big family skiing holiday to Ellmau in Austria with Mum, Dad, William and Ben, Grandma Rose and Granddad Dink, Uncle Jamie and Aunty Debbie, my cousins Dylan and Todd, Aunty Marie and Uncle Jason, and my cousin Malia, who was a baby then. All the kids went off to ski school every morning and we absolutely loved it. One of my best memories from that holiday was after one of the youngsters complained that I won all the trophies and they never won anything, Granddad Dink bought William, Ben, my cousins Dylan and Todd, and me silver trophies with each of our names engraved on them. He then pretended that he had been told to give them out for winning races at ski school. I went along with it. All my family never treat me differently and we are
all made to feel special for our separate achievements.
ONE OF THE DOWNSIDES TO MY TRAINING IS THAT I’M NOT ALLOWED TO SKI – REALLY GUTTING AS I USED TO LOVE IT!
My first big sponsorship came in the form of Visa, whose team were out in Sydney. When I got home they asked me to be part of Team Visa, where athletes are mentored by multi-medal-winners Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson and Sir Steve Redgrave. It was a real honour to be asked. I just had to agree to make five public appearances, including opening shopping centres and autograph sessions, which I was more than happy to take part in. We were invited to a few days in London, where we were told about our role within the team and were introduced to the media. I had not been to London before then.
Both Tanni and Steve were lovely and really helpful. They both gave us their phone numbers and email addresses in case we had any questions for them.
Steve told us: ‘We are open all hours. We have been joking about being called at two in the morning, but if that does happen, I won’t be annoyed. I’ll know it’s about an issue you need to talk about.’