It was an agonising wait of only a couple of minutes but enough for the dreams of a lifetime to flash through Tom Daley’s mind.
After 20 years of trying — starting out in Plymouth Leisure Centre — Daley and his partner Matty Lee were top of the leaderboard in Tokyo after their final dive featuring four-and-a-half near-perfect forward somersaults with tuck.
The only problem was that the Chinese were yet to perform what may well have proved the latest in a long line of synchronised miracles from the 10-metre platform.
Tom Daley and Matty Lee faced a nervous wait before beating Chinese opponents to win gold
Diving partner Lee was 10 years old when Daley made his Olympics debut in Beijing in 2018
Handpicked from a Beijing-sponsored production line, drilled to within an inch of their sanity and nerveless when falling vertically, they may well have struck fear into Daley and his pal waiting at the hushed poolside to learn their fate.
Cao Yuan and Chen Aisen jumped. Barely a splash to talk of. Lee turned to Daley and said: ‘Oh, s***.’ They feared victory had been ripped from them. But the final scores lit up the screen and by 471.81 points to 470.58 the Brits had hung on.
And little Tom Daley, who grew up in the eyes of the world, and at times bewitched us with his precocious talent and skylarking nature, was an Olympic champion.
Aged 27, he was not meant to do it at these Games. His time was supposed to have been at Rio five years ago, when his bones, muscles and tendons had not been too knocked about by this bruising business.
Yes, he was helped by the Chinese fluffing their fourth dive, but Daley and Lee were exceptional.
My thoughts turned back to Plymouth and the unremarkable three-bedroom house he was raised in, and especially to his late father Rob. He called himself ‘Taxi Dad’ for driving Tom to training and competitions, some 100,000 miles and more. A happy, laughing man, an electrician by trade, his devotion to his eldest son was immense.
In his last interview, while suffering from a second brain tumour that had stolen from him the use of his left side, Rob told me that he would travel to Sheffield despite his advanced illness to support Tom the following weekend.
Daley paid tribute to his late father Rob after winning his first gold medal in four Olympics
Rob Daley called himself 'Taxi Dad' for driving Tom some 100,000 miles to competitions
Pushed through the doors of the venue in a wheelchair, he took with him a video camera
