My son Robbie said, 'Papa, I want to see you dive in the Olympics'
| Published date | 02 April 2024 |
| Publication title | Evening Chronicle |
Tom, winner of one Olympic gold and three bronze (he entered his first Olympics at the age of 14 in Beijing and won gold at his fourth Games in Japan), is looking forward to the next challenge.
Today, Tom enthuses as much about his family as he does his sport. He's been married to Oscar-winning American filmmaker Dustin Lance Black for nearly seven years and they are dads to Robbie, five, and
Phoenix, who is nearly one.
Tom's decision to come out of retirement was sparked during a visit to the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs before Phoenix was born, he recalls.
"As we walked through I felt all warm and fuzzy and I thought, 'What is coming over me? This is really weird'. At the end, there is an inspirational video of what it means to be an Olympian. I remember watching it and at the end I was a mess. Lance looked at me and there was this sudden realisation when we looked at each other of, 'Oh s***, he wants to go back, he's not done.' .
' "Then Robbie looked at me and said, 'Papa, why are you crying?' I told him, 'These are happy tears, I just really miss diving and I wish I could go back and compete in the Olympics'. Robbie said, 'Papa, I want to see you dive in the Olympics.'" ."
"Now, Robbie is like my pushy parent," he continues, chuckling.
They moved to Los Angeles last year, closer to Dustin's work in Hollywood. When he's away training, Tom says he gets terribly homesick, calls his family "an excessive amount" and takes a photo of them to put on his bedside table.
"It's tough. I'm incredibly grateful for FaceTime to make sure that I'm in contact with the kids all the time. It just really makes you appreciate the time that you have with them."
They'll be at the Olympics, he says: "I'm so glad that they're going to be able to be close by, so I should be able to still see them every day, although they won't be able to come into the village."
In between diving and family life, Tom has found time to write his debut children's book, Jack Splash, in which the eponymous 10-year-old hero who doesn't quite fit in joins a diving team, encountering both triumph and disaster, facing bullies along the way.
Tom admits there have been similarities in his own life.
"As a kid growing...
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