Congratulations Tom Daley - World Diving Champion at 15

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What a difference a year makes. Well, when you're 15 I guess it is still a fair slice of your life! Tom Daley yesterday became the first Briton to win a World Diving Championship, a year after reaching the Olympic final as Team GB's youngest competitor.

Tom Daley - World Diving Champion at 15 (BBC)At the Games he fell out with his synchro partner, then returned home to be bullied at school (he has now moved), but his results have just kept getting better and better. What stands out in yesterday's performance was that because of his position - and because he still isn't physically able to do some of the higher tariff dives - he needed a near perfect dive in the last round to do it. He got four 10s.

Of course, Tom didn't expect to win gold yesterday, and we know that expectations can create a great deal of pressure. Now that he's world champion the expectation will be there for him to repeat his result in London 2012, and so the pressure will be much greater. Having listened to his interview yesterday, however, Daley certainly wasn't shying away from it, declaring his intention to go for gold in London.

Congratulations Tom!

Now, let's see if any of our swimmers can follow suit next week.

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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com
Rob Robson on Twitter
Tags: diving, london 2012, olympics, tom daley, world champion
Posted July 22, 2009 at 1:11 AM by robrobson | Permalink | Comments(2)



Comments

A really great achievement by Tom Daley. He seems to be extremely mature for his age and seems to be well grounded but was just wondering what his team could do in the next few years to ensure he has every possible chance of getting a medal in 2012? Will he need to work on a higher tariff dive or will it just be about ensuring he can master his current dives under extreme pressure?
Posted by mustafasarkar | July 22, 2009 at 4:45 AM
From what I understand it is his physical development (or lack of) that limits the difficulty of his dives. He's grown 10cm in the last year, so looks to be coping well with changes to his physique, and hopefully he can translate gains in strength to harder dives.

--
Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com
Rob Robson on Twitter
Posted by robrobson | July 22, 2009 at 6:09 AM

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