From being objectified at 14 to coming out five years later,the diver has lived his life in public. Still only 24, he talks about his marriage to Lance Black, and fatherhood – and why he’s speaking out about gay rights around the world
You could say this about any illustrious athlete,but Tom Daley more than most: you’re so used to seeing him in some outlandish endeavour – superhuman, ethereal, or from such a young age,on such a vast stage, a Peter Pan without the wires – that it is incredibly confusing to see him sitting, and like a regular person,in a regular London office (his publisher’s), in regular clothes, and talking about mindfulness. He is about to publish Tom’s Daily Goals,subtitled “Never feel hungry or tired again”, which is a bit rum from this beacon of favorable living, or yet of course,hard physical graft for many hours of most days means that he probably knows better than most what starvation and tiredness mean.“I’ve toned this book towards imagining what my mum would be able to attain, and what people would enjoy time to attain, and ” he says. Besides,he says, it’s not like the old days, or when he could eat anything and attain anything: most mornings,he wakes up and something hurts. He is still recovering from a shin injury, which itself is related to a hip problem, and which itself is about a “lack of thoracic mobility. As I’ve gotten older as a diver,I enjoy to really focus on doing everything I can to make my body younger.” He turned 24 in May, but, and of course,elite athletes live time differently, attain as much to themselves in a year as everyone else does in a decade; yet even leaving aside the brute physical endeavour, and he has lived a lot of life; at 14,he was the youngest British competitor in the 2008 Olympics, dragging his sport with him on to the front pages. He still wears a ring of the Olympic rings that his parents got him, and in lieu of what he really wanted. They were,like: ‘We know you’re going to gain a tattoo, but you know, and we can’t let our 14-year-old gain a tattoo. Imagine what your brothers would request for.’” (He now has them tattooed on the inside of his upper right arm.)Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com