My Story

by Daley, Tom

  As part of my work with the Daily Mail I had a tour of the Olympic site the week before Christmas to help mark the fifth anniversary of the group. Like a proper sightseer, I took my camera to take some snaps. The Aquatics Centre, designed by British-Iraqi Zaha Hadid, was a maze of scaffolding and diggers underneath the shark-style roof, but was unrecognizable since the last time, and was all on schedule. I was ushered up the wooden ladders and through some yellow doors to pose for Andy Hooper on the 5m board in my hard hat. The platforms are incredible and unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. They are made from high-tech self-compacting concrete poured into glass-fibre-reinforced moulds with a core of steel bars. They look like a wave coming out of the floor. We also inspected the blue and white tiling at the bottom of the swimming pool, where it will be possible to alter the floor depth. The visit really spurred me on to train harder. I can’t wait for 2012.

  It was then Christmas and I had a fantastic time celebrating with my family. Dad dressed up as Santa as usual and we messed around in the snow. On Christmas Day we went out for a meal, which was good, but it just wasn’t the same as eating a Christmas dinner at home. My best present was a soup-maker. It sounds funny but I make soup quite a lot, as it’s a quick and healthy snack I can make when I get back from training in the evenings.

  My first day back to training was the 29th after four days of lying around, eating and relaxing at home. I did miss it though and I always feel re-energised after a break. I hadn’t trained with Pete or Max for a while, so we got together in Leeds to get some time in.

  ON NEW YEAR’S DAY, IT WAS ANOTHER FAMILY GET-TOGETHER AFTER I HAD A BIT OF A LIE-IN. IT FELT REALLY WEIRD THINKING THAT THE OLYMPICS WERE ‘NEXT YEAR’. IT SEEMED TO BE COMING ROUND REALLY QUICKLY.

  In January, I started diving with Pete as Alexei searched for the most competitive team for 2012. In training together, we focused mainly on our timing – it’s not just about getting it right yourself but making sure you are totally in time with your partner. I’m slightly taller than Pete and have longer legs so I have to do a longer run-up on the front four and a half, for example. He would count us in on all the other dives but because he was in front on that one, we had to swap so I was counting. In Plymouth and Southampton, where we train, the seating area is too low to video takeoffs, so Leeds was the best place because it allows us to film our dives, watch them on playback and break everything down. By the end of our sessions both Andy, and Pete’s coach, Lindsey Fraser, were pleased with our progress and our form in the air.

  Our first synchro event together was at the British Gas National Cup in Southend. Pete has always been someone who I have looked up to and there is always a bit of healthy competition between us, so we are constantly on each other’s tails during individual performances.

  Judges always like it when there is a World Champion and an Olympic silver medallist diving together because they are expecting to give higher scores. We had a higher degree of difficulty than any other partnership – and included the front four and a half for the first time, which we executed well. We won gold with 438.54, which was only five points off what Max and I had got at the Commonwealths, so it was a good result. Dad was in the crowd, videoing us as usual.

  I practise springboard once a week and did the competition for a bit of fun and variety. I went out there and got a silver medal and a score that qualified me for the senior circuit on springboard, which was a bit of a surprise.

  Pete edged me into second place in the platform event the next day. We both dived quite badly – I finished on 472 points, to Pete’s 494. Max was in third with 399. I find it hard to motivate myself at national competitions because there’s not the same adrenalin rush as there is on the international stage. I was also using all my new dives on the list for the first time ever. Pete’s list was slightly easier and he landed on his head more, while I was still getting my new dives consistent. I was finding that my front four and a half was getting easier. When I first learnt it I thought it really wasn’t going to be my dive, but the more I practised it in competition, the better it was getting.

  PETE HAS ALWAYS BEEN SOMEONE WHO I HAVE LOOKED UP TO AND THERE IS ALWAYS A BIT OF HEALTHY COMPETITION BETWEEN US, SO WE ARE CONSTANTLY ON EACH OTHER’S TAILS DURING INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCES

  The day before the event, Dad had gone into hospital for a routine check-up with his doctor before I left and was told he had another tumour at the back of his head. He didn’t tell me until I got home. I had asked him and Mum at the event how they had got on and they kept saying ‘we’ll talk about it later’. Apparently there was a journalist nearby and obviously they wanted to tell me in private but at the time I couldn’t understand as I thought it would be the normal routine check and the existing tumour would be shrinking. It was a real shock.

  Then a couple of days later Dad was driving the van and we hit a row of parked stationary cars, writing off our van in the process. He blamed being dazzled by the sun as he came round the corner, and while it was pretty scary, no one was hurt so I thought nothing more of it.

  A week later he woke up with terrible pain in his head. He and Mum thought it was just a headache and didn’t think it was anything to do with the new tumour. They called the hospital and they told him to go straight in. Mum woke me up to tell me because it was so early, but when I got up an hour later, they had still not left because he was finding it so hard to move.

  He deteriorated really quickly and within three days he lost all the movement on the left side of his body. He would get into the bath and not be able to get out and then when he stood up he would collapse to the floor. It was terrifying because it was the first time we had seen the symptoms of his cancer. He could not stand up, move his fingers or feel anything on the left side. He kept falling over. I didn’t really talk to anyone about it apart from my mum. If I spoke to my grandparents, they got quite emotional, so I just asked Mum lots of questions. I had told her I wanted to know exactly what was happening. I thought I could handle it and help my brothers, too. Of course I was upset and scared but I thought it was a case of getting over it with some help and the right drugs.

  The new tumour was putting pressure on the part of the brain that controls movement and the doctors pumped him full of steroids to reduce the swelling. It looked like he had had a stroke but as the swelling went down he slowly started to regain, with help from the physios, some of the movement he had lost. After about a week he still couldn’t move his left hand – he was so frustrated and despite doing everything he could, it still remained by his side.

  One day, when my little cousin Brooke went to see him and said, ‘Hello, Uncle Robert,’ he started waving. It was a reflex – but a monumental step. Both he and the doctors were amazed and delighted at the progress. From then on he waved at everyone on the ward. He was determined to get through it.

  For a while he was in a wheelchair and I pushed him around hospital with William and Ben. There were more Little Britain Andy and Lou jokes; we kept saying he would pull a moony if we looked away.

  They told him he would not walk again, which was devastating for everyone, but he was determined. Towards the end of the stay, the physios were trying to get him to walk with a Zimmer frame – and he said that was absolutely terrifying but if I could do what I did every day, he would do it. He didn’t change and was still joking with the nurses, who were so helpful and lovely.

  It was really anxious but I didn’t allow myself to start worrying that he would not get better. Mum and Dad insisted that everything remained exactly the same, so we all went to school as normal and then training, while Ben and William continued with their rugby. On Valentine’s Day after training, Tonia and Brooke came over for a meal. Tonia’s boyfriend was away because he is in the Army and Brooke was single, so Mum cooked us fajitas and the three of us and Mum had dinner by candlelight!

  Everyone always wants to know if I have a girlfriend, but I’m single at the moment. I was seeing a synchronized swimmer at the start of 2011 but she l
ived in Bristol and I wasn’t driving, so it didn’t really happen. I also have a bit of a soft spot for an American diver, Kassidy. I always look forward to seeing her and spending time with her when we’re away together but it would never work out properly because she lives in Texas. I don’t think I’ll have a proper girlfriend for a while because I go away so much. It’s always really complicated.

  Dad was staying positive and always saying there are people worse off, like troops in Afghanistan. Thankfully the tumour stopped growing and he went on a new chemotherapy drug for five days every four weeks. The new medicine, temozolomide, didn’t make him as sick as the last chemo drug he took.

  I had to go away to Russia for three weeks just before he came home from hospital. It was difficult and I didn’t want to leave but I knew he was being discharged, which made it easier. I spoke to him as much as I could while I was away and he always put the best side forward. We would do FaceTime on our iPhones and he would always show me how he was walking and do stupid dancing to make me laugh. He would annoy Mum by getting on the bus in to town by himself and joke about it when he got home. The doctors could not believe the progress he made.

  IT WAS FREEZING IN PENZA – EVERY TIME YOU WENT OUTSIDE YOUR BOGIES FROZE! I COMPETED IN THE SPRINGBOARD AND WON SEVENTH IN MY FIRST EVER SENIOR INTERNATIONAL. IT’S A VERY DIFFERENT DISCIPLINE AND MUCH MORE ABOUT STRENGTH.

  In the 10m, I put all my new dives together. My front four and a half was good, which was a bonus, but my other dives, like my armstand, were inconsistent and not quite there. I came fourth with a score of 465. I felt my performance was in a bit of a valley but tried not to worry.

  During the women’s synchro competition, one of the British divers, Monique Gladding, who was diving with Megan Sylvester, struck her head during her inward three and a half tuck dive. She hit it with a thwack, was knocked unconscious, and fell through the air like a ragdoll. It was savage. Nick Robinson-Baker, Monique’s husband Steve and the Russian coach dived to the bottom of the pool to rescue her but she had been under for about twenty seconds. Megan was looking around stunned – it was horrible. Blood was all over the poolside.

  She was resuscitated while we were all sat there and was whisked off in an ambulance. Only two people have been killed by diving during the whole history of the sport. The only dive you can do it on is the reverse three and a half and you hit the back of your neck, breaking it instantly.

  Thankfully, we found out soon after that she was OK, bar whiplash and a nasty gash on the top of her head, but the whole episode was horrifying.

  Two weeks later, 350 miles north-west of Penza, we were competing at the first leg of the FINA Series in Moscow, in the pool that they dived in for the Olympics in 1980. We didn’t compete in the synchro because Pete was struck down by a cold. However, I did get a place in the final of the 10m after performing a great front four and a half in the semis. I scored well on my first three dives and was in third place but missed my entry on my front four and a half, so finished in fifth with 459.20. Again, it wasn’t a great score but I wasn’t too concerned and knew I needed to keep improving my new dives.

  Back home my Comic Relief sketch was on the TV, the one where I sat next to Richard Madeley and Sebastian Coe. Sadly not everyone was there when I filmed my bit but it was great fun. James Corden was hilarious again; I had to try so hard to stop myself laughing. It raised an amazing £74m too, which is incredible.

  When I was home I also had a meeting with Madame Tussaud’s about doing a waxwork. They came down to Plymouth and brought some photos of me in different poses to see which one I thought we should do and what face I would normally make when I was diving. I just held the position they wanted and they stood me on a turntable and took sixteen photos from all different angles. After drawing lots of dots all over me, they measured from point to point. They took a mould of my teeth and my hands and matched up my skin and hair colour and had all these eyeballs so they could match up the right eye colour. The fake eyeballs were gross!

  The second leg of the FINA Series was in Beijing. The Bird’s Nest was just how I remembered it from the Olympics. Pete and I performed in our first international together and got a 10 for our reverse three and a half somersaults with tuck, which showed we were starting to gel more. We won the bronze and scored a personal best of 459.87, just pipped to silver by the Germans, who scored a tiny 0.03 more than us.

  Frustratingly, in the individual event, I failed to reach the final because my new dives were not sharp enough. It was good to be back in Beijing and we visited the Great Wall of China with all the team. It was really steep, about 300 steps, but worth it when we got to the top. I took some photos and admired the views.

  HOWEVER, AT THE BACK OF MY MIND I WAS ALWAYS THINKING ABOUT DAD. I KNEW HE WAS FIGHTING THE BIGGEST BATTLE OF HIS LIFE.

  Losing Dad

  Things with Dad weren’t good and after impressing the doctors by walking, he started to go backwards again. He came to see me in the third leg of the FINA Series at Sheffield’s Pond’s Forge in April. He didn’t think he would make it because it was such a long journey. He was also trying his hardest not to be in a wheelchair and insisted on trying to walk. Mum, Dad and my brothers left early on the Friday and made the 300-mile, six-hour trip to Sheffield and when I went to see him in the gallery, he was in floods of tears. It was really emotional – I’d never normally be allowed out to see my family before a competition, especially when tension was running high, but everyone knew I needed to be there. He was wearing his ‘Give Me Oil in My Lamp’ T-shirt. I don’t think he ever knew that it would be his last competition and how ill he was. No one told him what the cancer might do because they never wanted him to give up. In the end he did go in the wheelchair. All it would have taken would be for one person to knock him slightly and he would have fallen over.

  Being in front of a home crowd always feels amazing and Pete and I won gold with 449.43 points. We missed the first couple of dives but were in fourth place and continued to perform consistently well on our higher-tariff dives, and scored 8s and 9s on our front four and a half to move ahead of the Chinese duo, Yuan Cao and Yanquang Zhang. We never thought we would do it, so we were over the moon. Scoring 92.88 on our final dive, the back two and a half somersaults, two and a half twists, piked, we held the lead and the Chinese felt under pressure and failed to score highly. It was a brilliant feeling to know that our partnership was improving every time we competed although we still felt like we had lots of work to do. Dad was waving his flag and happy. It was a brilliant day.

  On the second day, I scored my season’s personal best in the 10m platform event with a score of 507.35, but I was just outside the medals after making an error on my armstand back triple somersaults piked for 5s and 5.5s, which dropped me down the leaderboard. I clawed some positions back with my final dives with the support of the home crowd, but I was unable to regain a medal position and finished fourth.

  I went straight off to Guanajuato in Mexico after Sheffield without returning home. After finishing the synchro in fifth place, I qualified for the individual final in second place and was determined to do well. I was rewarded with a perfect ten for my front four and a half and a score of 105, which gave me the biggest score of the final. I also got 9.5s for my back three and a half, which was the best I had done internationally, and I was really pleased that I had performed my new list of dives really well and finished on a score of 562.80, a new British record. Qiu still took gold with 582.80 but I was delighted with my silver medal. The Chinese feel so far ahead of everyone that they can only chuck away gold when it comes to 2012. I know my list of dives is now the joint hardest but there is a fear that they could wheel out yet another Chinese diver doing some insane list. It feels like keeping up with the competition is really tough. Everyone is seriously whacking out massive degrees of difficulty.

  And the difference is also in our training – while I maybe average around thirty-five dives from 10m per week, maybe ramping up to fifty dives before
a big competition, Qiu will be doing 150 dives. It doesn’t matter if he gets injured because there are ten other very good divers waiting to go in his place.

  From Guanajuato we went to a three-day training camp at an outdoor pool at Guadalajara, before we were due to travel to Fort Lauderdale. It was in Guadalajara that Mum called.

  When I left Mexico the others made a paper cut-out of me and took it with them everywhere.

  ‘You need to come home, Tom,’ she said.

  ‘But why? I don’t understand. We’re in the middle of the competition, Mum. I can’t just can’t leave.’

  I never realized that we could lose him but I knew it must be serious because I know how much he would have hated for me to be called home from a diving event. She told me they had booked a flight and I needed to be at the airport in an hour.

  ‘You need to, Tom. Your Dad, he’s not got long left.’ she told me.

  I swallowed hard. ‘How long has he got?’

  ‘They don’t know if he’ll last days, hours, maybe a week.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ I told her. I felt completely numb and unable to comprehend what she had told me. I couldn’t believe it was happening. Part of me still felt he would pick himself up again. He’d made light of it for so many years and fought so hard and defied the doctors so many times.

  The journey seemed to drag on forever. I’d look at my watch constantly, feeling that hours must have passed only to realize it was only ten minutes since I had last looked. I wished I’d never gone away. I was terrified I might be too late.

  Within twenty-four hours I was home; Dad was in a bed in the front room and I saw just how ill he was. All my family – grandparents, aunts and uncles – were round the bed. He couldn’t do anything and was struggling to keep his eyes open. He had a driver in each arm feeding drugs into his system and he seemed unaware of what was going on. I was really shocked and felt very emotional. When he saw me he punched a fist in the air, as if to say he was determined not to be defeated.