Read the transcript of the Get Set interview with Tom Daley a year after his experiences at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
To go to my first Olympic Games is what I’ve always dreamed of doing. Since I was a little kid, I’ve always wanted to do well in the sport, but when the opportunity came for me to be able to go to the Olympic Games, I kind of, grabbed it with both hands and tried working as hard as I possibly could.
The opening ceremony for me was the best. Because, going in there – your first Olympic Games – you haven’t experienced the Olympic Games yet and you’re going in there and walking round the Track with the whole of Team GB and seeing everyone with their British flags waving – it was amazing.
It was a missive Village. When you walked in there – you would expect it to be quite big and you’ve got lots of houses and flats and stuff like that. But when you go in there, you just see hundreds of six-story-plus buildings in there with apartment after apartment and it was absolutely massive. And the food hall was the size of four football pitches – unlimited free food whenever you wanted it! And you got to share a room with all the divers and it was a really good atmosphere.
When we went in there, we knew lots of the divers from different countries anyway, so we went in there and we just wanted to meet everyone, and just talk to everyone because everyone in the Village was so friendly. There was always a starting point for a conversation. And it was really inspiring walking around the Village and seeing people with all their medals around their neck and it kind of really makes you hungry to go and get one at the next Games.
I met Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington, Victoria Pendleton – who I’d met before – there was loads of them out there, and they’re all really friendly and down-to-earth people.
It’s quite scary to think that London’s this close now, and when we were in the closing ceremony and seeing the actual flag being handed to Boris… it was quite scary to think ‘it’s only four years now‘… although it’s a long time, in sport it’s not that long.
I’ve always believed in doing diving, and I’ve always had a passion for it, and going there to the Olympics and not winning a medal has kind of made me really hungry to go back and train as hard as I can to go and win a gold medal at the next ones.
I feel extremely lucky to be able to travel all over the world and everything. Although everyone says “you’re so lucky, you’ve got such a good life“… yes, it’s a good life, but you do have to work really hard. You go out there and you train, and you don’t get to see much of the places. You just go out there and you have to be in the diving pool twice a day – you don’t really get much time to do anything else.
Yeah, I’m still at school, I just have to make sure that I’m really organised with it and I stay on top of it. The teachers are really good with it – they give me work to go away with and they do help me catch up when I get back.
2012 has always been my main goal, so I’m really looking forward to it an can’t wait to get out there and just have as much fun as possible and hopefully win that gold medal. There’s lots of competitions between now and then. We’ve got World Championships, Commonwealth Games and World Cup – lots of different things coming up. So we’ve got to take one competition at a time, but London 2012 is the main goal.
