Why Paris 2024 is turning into the teary Dadlympics'

When Tom Daley spoke after securing his fifth Olympic medal on Monday, the seasoned diver was clearly emotional. In Paris, the waterworks were in full operation. He may have won gold in Tokyo but he reckoned the silver he and his dive partner Noah Williams achieved in the 10m synchronised competition was the most significant of his stellar career. For the simple reason, he had achieved it in front of his two sons, Robbie and Phoenix.

- JIM WHITE

“It felt like we had won just being there with my family and my kids,” said Daley. “Just before the competition started, I saw them in the audience and thought, don’t cry now. That was the achievement and, at that moment, I was, ‘No matter what happens, I’ve done it’. I was on the sofa 15 months ago doing nothing. It is the happiest I’ve ever been diving. It was so special.”

Indeed, Daley credited Robbie, his six-year-old, for getting him back into competition in the first place. After he had won in Tokyo, he had not dived into water in more than 18 months. He preferred, he said, to concentrate on his knitting, supporting his husband, film screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, at their home in Los Angeles.

Robbie, though, had apparently spotted his old man deep in his Bavarian twisted stitches and thought: wasn’t this fellow once an athlete? So he persuaded his dad to have one last go at a medal in Paris. “Do it for me,” the lad had apparently said. Having lost his own father, who had supported him throughout his meteoric rise, Daley was particularly prone to junior pressure. Hence his emotional response: frankly, he would not have been in Paris at all were it not for his lad’s persuasive abilities.

And Daley has not been the only one marking the special bond between father and participant at these Games. Fred Sirieix, best known as the maitre d’ appearing on Channel 4’s First Dates, was spotted blubbing in the stands as his daughter Team GB’s Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and her partner took bronze in the women’s synchronised 10m platform.