Tom Daley faces taunts back at school

The rollercoaster is probably the most appropriate ride the Americans could have asked Tom Daley to open this summer on a rare promotional outing, the result of his fame as an iconic figure among Britain's Olympians in Beijing. Even before he reaches his 15th birthday next month, Daley has experienced the highs, as the youngest member of the Great Britain squad last summer, and then the low of his very public spat with Blake Aldridge, his synchronised diving partner at the Games.
It has been much the same rollercoaster at home: adulation tainted by taunting, verging dangerously on bullying, from teenage contemporaries jealous of his achievements. Daley forgave Aldridge, even though he believes his former partner destroyed their team ethic, but it remains to be seen whether he can walk away from the playground name-calling that is clearly getting under his skin.
On the surface, it probably does not seem much, the odd gibe as he walks into Eggbuckland Community College in Plymouth, where he is an A* student. But when asked how he copes with the adoration of his fans, he comes back with the surprising retort: “In school, it's the opposite - they all hate me. I just want to tell them to go away.
“Some people are happy for me, but there are plenty who take the mick. It's a great shame. You get used to it and try to ignore it. It's mainly names and chucking paper at me. They call me ‘Speedo Boy' and ‘Diver Boy'. OK, I get it, I want to tell them, but it just becomes annoying.
“I don't care because I am doing something I love, but then I can't walk through school without the names and I just want to say ‘shut up'. Lots of people I spoke to at the Olympics said it happened to them. Tonia Couch [another Olympic diver from Plymouth] said she got it, so it seems to go with being an athlete.”
There is another dark side to fame that puzzles him. Fraudsters have set up profiles on networking websites pretending to be him. He does not understand what is going on and it is difficult to fathom why anyone would want to impersonate a 14-year-old, in spite of his obvious fame and public recognition.
“Lots of people have made up sites pretending to be me, which is quite scary,” he said. “These people put in their profile as Thomas Daley and pretend to be me. It's a little bit strange. I don't know what to make of it. It's a bit spooky.”
Daley is little more than a child and his brow furrows as he tries to figure out what is happening in a world that seemed so simple last August when he revelled in the attention lavished on him as Team GB's “baby”, just 14 years and 82 days old when he climbed on to the ten-metre platform for his first Olympic dive.
His wide smile and charming manners turned him into a celebrity around the world - explaining the invitation to open the new SeaWorld ride in Orlando, Florida, this year - and became one of the faces of Beijing.
In fact, Daley, far from being a shy youngster, has turned into something of a heart-throb. One networking website - welovetomdaley - is awash with female interest, with more than 1,000 youngsters declaring they are “sharing their luv”.
He undoubtedly has personal magnetism. Onlookers tell of a visit to a girls' school a few weeks ago where the students clustered around windows to get a glimpse of the young Olympian. Daley is small but perfectly formed, neatly muscled with cropped dark hair and bright eyes that laugh at the corners when he opens up to smile. The girls were banging on the windows until someone suggested he waved; it triggered a tidal wave of squealing adoration.
When it came to speaking to the girls, though, Daley was the ultimate professional, talking them through diet and nutrition as one of the most effective ambassadors for healthy living the Government could recruit.
It would be ridiculous to say Daley is passionate about the subject, but he is wise enough to know that claims by ministers that London 2012 will spark a health revolution are probably a large pie in the sky, which will more often than not be washed down with a pint of lager and a plate of chips.
“It does annoy me when people get fatter,” he said. “They could do something about it, but they don't. It's as though they get fat and then live up to the label. Even when fat people lose weight, they think of themselves as fat people in thin bodies. Gyms cost loads of money to go to and people are not going to splash out on that. You have to want to be in shape. You just have to have the right mindset. My grandad smoked from the age of 8 and gave up at 60. He just stopped and that was it. You can do it.”
It seems that Daley is genetically blessed with willpower, if his break-up with Aldridge is anything to go by. It was never a match made in heaven, in spite of their success leading up to the Olympics. Aldridge was 26 and Daley 14 in Beijing, where the argument during their ten-metre synchronised platform final, in which they came last, was captured by the world's cameras. Aldridge later blamed Daley for being “overnervous”, but the youngster said: “I got higher individual scores than him and he found it easier to blame someone else. I always thought that if you go in as a team, you come out as a team - no matter what happens. If you dive well and your partner doesn't, then you say we both did well because you are a team.”
With a Fina World Series event starting in Sheffield tomorrow week and Aldridge ditched, Daley has no worries about his new team-mate. His partner, Max Brick, 16, has already become a friend. “We [Aldridge and Daley] were synchro partners,” Daley, who is the European ten-metre individual champion, said. “Other teams are really good friends, but we never were like that. If you are good friends, it makes it easier to train and have fun. I never felt that with Blake. He was always like a dad or a big brother and it was never fun. Not the way it will be with Matt. Definitely not.”
So one new mate gained, perhaps a friendship that could cancel out the gibes of schoolmates who have not yet learnt to grow up and appreciate Tom Daley for creating his own small piece of Olympic history.