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Introduction
The high of winning a medal was incredible, but it was also surprisingly short-lived. After the exhileration of my London 2012 experience came the rush of the Olympic blues: the lowest of lows that seemed to stick for far longer than the transitory triumph of my medal achievement.
Perseverance
my inability to speak to anyone about what I was experiencing meant that I felt so, so alone.
I knew it was going to go wrong; it was just a case of how spectacularly wrong it could go.
All coaches were also divers in a previous life,
This was put down to Lost Movement Syndrome, a term applied in sports like gymnastics, diving or trampolining, where athletes are unable to perform a movement that they could previously manage. The mental pathways my brain had relied on to navigate the dive had become flooded with fear and panic.
perseverance is not just about ‘sticking with it’; sometimes it is about solving a problem by thinking more laterally.
You can go into any competition hoping to do well, but if you don’t believe you can win, then it’s never going to happen.
Then I do ten very deep breaths in and out to try to bring my heart rate down. Then, feeling calm, and in the moment, I walk up to the ten-metre board and complete my dive. I wish I had started learning about the importance of breathing earlier; we are never too young to learn more about how we can use simple breathing techniques and different mediation practices to help our minds.
Courage
We both knew that after the highest of career highs could come the lowest of lows.
I would head to training in the evenings, after bad days at school, and feel the anxiety fall away with each dive.
Internally, my struggles at school and to fit in gave me an even stronger motivation to focus on my diving and excel at my sport. I thought that if I worked a bit harder and proved to everyone I could be a success because I was different from them, then that would prove the bullies wrong.
Playing that video back to myself I felt physically sick and thought, ‘I just can’t do this, I can’t put that online. There’s just no way …’ I massively freaked out, and even having the video on my phone made me feel really anxious like it was burning a hole in my pocket. I watched it back and was surprised by the number of times that I paused and stuttered. I could tell I was incredibly nervous of getting it wrong or saying something that would offend people.
Over time my determination to be courageous had changed my mindset, and it felt important that I use my platform in a positive way. I hoped that any young Russian kids struggling with their sexuality who might’ve seen that would feel stronger and less oppressed.
We are often told to just be ourselves but what does that really mean? ‘Just be yourself’, ‘just do what you want’, ‘just listen to your gut feelings’. There is no ‘just’ in any of these statements, because it is hard.
Acceptance
No one had ever openly confronted me about my inability to allow people in before; it was like my emotions surrounding my dad’s death had been swept under a rug, never to be upturned in the fear we would all just fall apart. I think no one else wanted to talk to me about him because they didn’t want to upset me. On the occasions where I felt able to talk about him, I never wanted to talk to those closest to me because I did not want to upset them or make them feel awkward either.
I knew if I opened my heart up, it was susceptible to breaking.
‘Why have you stopped doing that?’ Lance asked, one evening after I had mentioned how I missed it. ‘It just reminds me of Dad too much.’ ‘Let’s keep those traditions going and celebrate them and keep that memory going because that’s what you did with him.’
Grief does not fit neatly into five stages and nor should I feel the pressure to ‘move on’ and ever leave him behind. Dad will always be part of me; it’s not like the emotions I feel will ever magically disappear–I just have to sit with them and not try to avoid or fix them.
I now realise that emotional health is not only feeling positive emotions but feeling a full spectrum of emotions, and that talking about my innermost feelings, however sad, bad or ugly, is not a sign of weakness–it’s a sign of strength.
Purpose
The attributes that make up a successful sportsperson are like an intricate jigsaw, but commitment, ambition and focus all rank really highly.
Endurance
Everyone wants to leave any sport on a high. It’s a bit like a TV programme–you have to know when the last season should be, and not drag it on until people have stopped watching altogether and hate all the characters.
Gareth had suggested that I tried gyrotonics; a mixture of Pilates, yoga, dance, t’ai chi, swimming and gymnastics. It uses frames, rotational discs, and pulleys, and is a mixture of complex movements that are three-dimensional, slow and segmented, and completed with different levels of tension. I think this is the exercise that saved me and fixed my body, because of its ability to engage all the small muscles and increase joint mobility and range of movement. Unlike some other forms of exercise, it can be highly personalised, and looks at your individual body as a whole, rather than tackling each problem in isolation.
I recognised what I needed to do as a mature athlete, and it allowed me to work with my body rather than hammer it to death.
At the time, I thought I only had a year and a half left of professional diving until the 2020 Olympics, and I felt content. The sense of pressure had dissipated, and once again I decided that I was there for the ride because I enjoyed it.
Sometimes the psychological impact of injury and being ill is worse than the physical aspect. I have learned over time to never neglect my mental health during the recovery process. Injury can make you feel helpless, and knowing there is only so much you can do to speed up the healing process is very important. I know now to never skip the rehab process because it is boring, and I try not to push myself before I am ready.
Resilience
I participated in loads of amazing shoots and my media work was, and still is, a big part of my life. I had always enjoyed it and said yes to many interviews, sitting with journalists and answering their questions openly and honestly.
‘How do you feel?’ The agenda seemed to switch from support to getting something out of me: tears, an outburst, something new.
Then as my profile became bigger, it was like I was public property and everyone needed to know everything about my private life, where nothing was off limits.
Anyone who says, ‘today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ cannot have had their personal life under scrutiny, because after stuff is written, it’s like you are forever tainted with it, however true or untrue it may be.
Kindness
Dad always had a way of making me feel better. ‘Tom, there are eighteen divers in this competition. If you come last, you will be the eighteenth best in the whole country. How cool is that?’
I knew that regardless of whether I did well or badly, both my parents would treat me exactly the same.
From the start, I had the dogged determination and drive to win. A series of silver and gold trophies would sit glistening on the poolside and I wanted to add more and more of them to my special shelf at home. It was addictive and like a drug to me; the more I won, the more I wanted to win.
Aiming high always comes with the very real risk of failure.
You can obsess over what has gone badly in the past or what might go wrong in the future but we only ever can control what is happening in that exact moment.
They had bought a load of eighteenth birthday balloons and hung them around the house because I had finished eighteenth in the individual event. It was like an eighteenth-place party. It was exactly what I needed and I laughed out loud. They showed me that they loved me whatever place I finished in. Some people might have been offended but it made me giggle. They have always shown me such kindness and in a funny way, wanted to celebrate what had gone right–the fact that I had come eighteenth in the world!
There were no post-Olympics blues this time. I think that only comes from doing really well. This time, I just needed some time to myself and to be kind to myself, before I returned, stronger than before.
I have got to a point where I don’t want to turn any mistake into a bigger thing than it is. You can’t waste energy thinking about what has been and gone in the past.
Perspective
Before we tied the knot, it just felt like a waste of time not being married.
You would think that I would be able to handle the attention but I am not great at being the centre of attention in that way. I couldn’t quite believe it was my wedding day.
I felt different after I was married. It changed my outlook and gave me an extra sense of security, and I knew how my life would then be. I felt safe, secure and supported.
We have always joked that we would only be happy if we had a football team of kids; we had both lost people very close to us, and wanted to build and grow our families again.
Whilst it is legal and standard practice for a surrogate to be paid for the time she invests and the sacrifices she makes, this is never the main motivation, and due diligence is taken to ensure that any surrogate’s driving incentive is to always want to help give someone a child who wouldn’t be able to have one otherwise, over any financial gain.
There is such a misconception in the wider world that surrogates are strangers to intended parents; this is just not true at all. The relationship was always going to be an incredibly close and intimate one for us, so finding someone who had the same interests, beliefs and outlook on life was important to us.
Many people fall pregnant by accident but with same-sex parents, it is never an accident. It involves a different level of commitment and is always a motivated decision because those kids are always very, very wanted.
Ultimately, it is the people who devote their love, time and care to bringing up a child who are the best parents. This could be a single mum or a single dad, it could be that the grandparents are involved. Families come in all shapes and sizes.
At 8.30 p.m. on 27 June 2018, Robbie Ray Black-Daley was born. It was the most amazing and dreamlike experience; it’s like I have the perfect words to describe the experience on the tip of my tongue and then I lose them again because they are not right.
I knew that he would always be by far the best thing that had ever happened to me, more so than any career achievement or any other life moment. He was it.
My mum was with us, which was helpful when we went to look at him, stressing, ‘He’s asleep but is he breathing?’ She would reassure us, ‘Yes, he’s fine!’
I loved having a schedule and making everyone stick to it;
some of our happiest family times have been when we are with our friends and family all together.
When we started weaning, I happily did all the cooking and blending, decanting my creations into small portions to put in pots to freeze. It felt like a proper adventure.
In recent years, employers have been obliged to recognise that working mothers are able to raise children and do their jobs, and society as a whole has got better at accepting that dads–in heterosexual couples too–play a greater role in raising children than they used to.
I now see everyone as someone’s child, so even when I’m watching a film or the news, I see things from a different point of view and feel everything more deeply.
Motivation
the hardest part was dealing with the unknown of what would happen, and when it would happen, if at all. Athletes like to control and to plan–it’s in the job description.
One of the main things I did during this period of having no competitions was visualising my dives, but not just that: I visualised competitions going well, and diving exactly how I would want to in any international event. I saw the judges, heard the noise, smelled the chlorine, touched my shammy. You have to feel everything and always mentally rehearse the perfect outcome. When there are 10s across the board, when I find my flow, when Jane is whooping and cheering from the sidelines. If you imagine things so carefully, I really do believe that you can make them happen–I like to think of my sub-conscious brain as a self-guided rocket that moves towards a programmed target.
Optimism
Being away from him was hard, but knowing that any trips in the future would result in that kind of reunion was a comfort.
Over the years, I have learned that, for me, the results of a competition never correlate with how many months beforehand I have been training. They are always about what goes on in my head.
My friends had sent me a gift to open when I’d arrived. It was a scrapbook filled with photos, messages, games, and even dares and a playlist they had made. They stuck in a label that had been taken from a vodka bottle they had waiting for me at home, knowing I hadn’t had a drink for a long time. It was so special having personal gifts to remind me of home.
I gave Matty a gold Olympic ring that I had brought with me from the UK. I was always going to give it to him, regardless of how we did on the day. My dad bought me mine after my first Olympics in 2008 because I was too young to get a tattoo and I wear it all the time, apart from when I am diving.