"Staying in bed, lying in, going to town," says Tom Daley, as he sits in the balcony, surveying Plymouth's Central Park Pool, packed as it is with frolicking holiday-makers. For Daley, however, his Easter break consists of the following:
"Morning and afternoon in here. Sixty per cent dry land work, in an old squash court round the back. Lots of trampolining, fitness, weights, strength and conditioning.
"Then into the pool, lots of stuff off the lower boards, practising the individual parts of a dive. Plus maybe 12 full dives off the top board per session."
And this Saturday there is the small matter of appearing as Britain's leading representative in the World Series diving competition, to be held in Sheffield.
"Still," he adds, unleashing the megawatt smile that you suspect will, over the next few years, earn him a quid or two, "the thing is when they're all back at school, I'm off to Mexico and America for three weeks. That's the compensation. That's what I tell myself when I'm working."
As is clear from his hectic holiday routine, Tom Daley is far from an ordinary young boy of 14. Last Christmas, for instance, he switched on the decorative lights hereabouts and more than a thousand girls turned up and screamed continuously ("insane," is his father Bob's memory of the occasion; "quite funny" Tom's own take on it).
Which is something that has not happened to any 14-year-old since Donny Osmond was doing the illuminatory honours in the early Seventies.
Indeed at an age when most 14-year-olds are not much more than a maelstrom of competing hormones, Daley is already the best diver in the country, and, after finishing third in a recent international tournament, is now rapidly climbing up the world rankings.
Many – including the lad himself – reckon he has a chance of being at the very top before he is 18. Which, by a happy coincidence, would be in time for London 2012.
"My personal best last year was 498," he says. "At the British championships this season I got 505 in the semis, 517 in the final. In the latest world series I got 532 in the semis, 540 in the final. So I'm getting closer [to the top]."
If he does reach the summit in London it will be a nice contrast with Beijing last summer. Daley arrived in China to find himself the media focus of the British team, his remarkable youth a magnet for attention. And remarkable it is. His is not a sport like, say, gymnastics, which is dominated by the pubescent. Most champions are in their twenties.
It was even more unusual for a British boy to be so prominent. For a start pools in this country (including Daley's own, subsequent to his prominence) ban youngsters from going anywhere near the 10-metre board until they reach 14.
Besides, as a sporting nation we tend to view prodigies with a degree of suspicion, reckoning them the products of an unhappy alliance of overzealous coaches and pushy parents (often one and the same).
But Daley is none of that. There was nothing planned in his rise. His history is one of coincidence. He happened to live in a part of the country with access to a diving pool, gave it a go and discovered that he had a natural inclination.
"There's no doubt about it, if this facility wasn't here I wouldn't be a diver," he comments. "Don't know what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this. Lying in bed probably."
By the time he was 10, he was British under-18 champion; at 14 he was an Olympian. Yet he seems entirely unaffected by his brilliance in the pool. And alongside him, Bob Daley is the antithesis of pushy, always there at the poolside, but never imposing himself.
"Why would I?" Bob says. "I haven't the first clue how to dive." The sudden intensity of media interest at Beijing, however, seemed to affect what happened to Daley.
It was not so much his own performance that wilted in the attention as that of his dive partner, Blake Aldridge, 26. After the pair finished last in the final of the synchronised pairs event, Aldridge unravelled in front of the press, blaming the celebrity that had attached itself to the youngster for their Olympic failure.
"The Olympic village is like being in the Big Brother house; you have no idea what's going on in the real world," Daley recalls. "So I didn't find out about the whole Blake thing till I got home. I was very annoyed. The main reason I was annoyed was because it detracted from Rebecca Adlington [who won gold the same day].
"That's all anyone should have been interested in but instead there was loads [in the papers] about me and Blake. That annoyed me because hers was a real achievement and ours was just the sort of dispute that happens."
Yet Daley came out of the rancour well. Keeping his cool and his counsel, he was reckoned to be the mature one of the pair, Aldridge the one behaving like a kid.
"Yeah, maybe," he explains. "But we need to get people thinking well of the Olympics. That kind of attention wasn't very nice. What happened was not that dramatic.
"Just before the last dive he phoned his mum in the audience. I was a bit taken aback. I said to him: 'do you think you should be doing that?' He doesn't like being told what to do, so he got annoyed.
"Then it got out of hand. It was before the last dive. I think he thought, 'well it's all over, we've blown it'. He'd already given up. I wanted to go out with a bang. I wanted to give it my best shot."
That, he says, is what he always does.
"I'm quite a perfectionist. I'm like that in school, I do everything I can to make sure I get as high marks as possible. Because in my sporting life I'm used to listening to coaches, I listen to what teachers have to say. Diving's a sport that's all about marks. You have to be perfect to win. And I like to strive for perfection."
It would, he adds, be a much easier life if he wasn't that way inclined.
"I don't like the attention," he says. "In school, when I'm named at assembly, I hate it. It's like so embarrassing. You get other kids taking the mick, throwing stuff at you, it's not that great.
"After the Olympics I thought it would get to a peak and then go down, but it hasn't really. It's like annoying. It gets on your nerves, kids saying 'how much are your legs worth? I'll break them for you'."
So why doesn't he just duck out of it all, spend his time like he is this holiday, being a full-time athlete? Through endorsements and funding he is already making a reasonable living.
According to the signage on its side, the family minivan outside the pool, the one in which Bob drives him to meets, has been provided by sponsors. Things will only get better financially. Why not just leave school now and get a bit of home tutoring between training sessions?
"Definitely not," he says. "What happens if I get injured between now and 2012? No, you can never tell in sport. I need something to fall back on."
Besides, he adds, his sport has given him a real resilience.
"Dive off there," he says, pointing at the 10-metre board brooding over the pool, so high it looks as though it can only be accessed by helicopter, "and you don't find much scary.
"Course, you still have all the struggles everyone else has. But if you can go into a diving pool half naked in front of loads of people, you feel more confident in yourself."
At the weekend, Daley will need all that competitive confidence. He will be diving in the Sheffield with a new partner in the pairs. With Aldridge absent following an injury he received in a nightclub altercation, he will dive in the pairs with 16-year-old Max Brick from Southampton. Presumably they have spent an age practising their routine together.
"Nope," he says. "We've never dived together before."
Not even in practice?
"Not even in practice. We'll meet up on Thursday and do some stuff."
But doesn't the word synchronised in the event's title imply the pair have to work, well, like a pair?
"Oh, we've known each other years," he says. "We get on really well. Synchro is a matter of doing your individual dives well and then you should have the technique for everything to come together. We'll be fine. It's a matter of one, two, three go."
Besides, he adds, the individual event will be his main focus.
"I was two points off the Chinese in Beijing [where he finished seventh]. I'm determined to get past them. They're not unbeatable. No way. But there's a psychological barrier. I need to beat them somewhere, anywhere. Then once I have, I'm away."
But the thing about the Chinese is that they appear to be robots, unsmiling automatons single-minded in their task. Whereas Daley, with his chirpy grin, his worries about his GCSE exams, his fondness for the Kings of Leon, the kindness evident in his refusal when a small boy approaches to ask for his phone number so he can text him, suggest he is not remotely robotic.
Would he trade all that humanity for Olympic gold in 2012?
"Definitely. Course I would. I'd do anything for that gold. To be the best on the planet, come on. It's what I've always wanted. It's something you can't buy, something you have to strive so hard to achieve. To do it, that would be amazing."
That is the difference between Tom Daley and an ordinary 14-year-old: the ordinary can only dream, the extraordinary can actually make it happen.
It sounds like people are not giving him any space at the moment, not just the kids at his school but the press also. But it soulds like training is going well he knows what he has to do in order to stay fit before 2012 begins...i'd say lets give him some space and let him get on with it:P
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment