There are many ways to come out. Some of us edge out sideways through coded Instagram stories. Some of us kick down the closet door in sequins. And then there’s Tom Daley, who came out by falling beautifully and repeatedly from 10 metres in the air while wearing the tightest swimsuits known to man.
If that’s not camp, what is?
Let’s start at the beginning—or, more accurately, the tea towels. “I used to be obsessed with wearing tea towels,” Tom recalls. “I’d make sure the fabric was completely lined-up and tucked in neatly. If it was in the slightest bit ruffled or messy, I would get upset and rip it off and try it all over again. This was the beginning of my perfectionism – and possibly the first signs that I might not be 100% straight.”
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Reader, we knew. Somewhere, a future RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant clutched their pearls in spiritual solidarity.
Tom Daley—Olympic gold medallist, father of two, queer role model, and now the star of Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds, streaming on Discovery+—is more than a glittering sports legend. He’s a queer icon forged not only by his world-class dives but by his unmistakable journey: one that resonates with the ache and triumph of queer identity.
Born in Plymouth in 1994, he was a prodigy before he was a teenager. “I was seven when I started diving… The first time I tried the 10-metre platform I was eight years old. I remember crawling to the edge because I was too scared to walk… But once I was in the air, there was no going back.” That image—Tom hurling his tiny self off a terrifying ledge, euphoric in freefall—feels metaphorically perfect. Because let’s be real: coming out often feels like that. You inch forward. You’re terrified. You fall. And if you’re lucky, it’s the best thing you ever do.
And like many of us in the LGBTQ+ community, Tom’s story is also one of grief. Of silence. Of family. Of chosen love.
When he lost his father, Rob, in 2011, he didn’t stop. “I went to training the next morning. I carried on competing without a proper break.” This is the queer gift and curse of resilience—we move forward. Sometimes too fast. Sometimes without healing. It took his husband, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, to gently ask why Tom didn’t talk about his dad for him to realise he hadn’t yet let himself grieve.
Enter the love story. “Lance and I met at a dinner in 2013… It was the first time I could complain about success to somebody who knew I wasn’t really complaining about success.” It’s funny, but isn’t that what love often is? Finding someone who sees through your shining exterior to the person still mourning, still navigating, still needing a soft place to land.
When he came out nine months later, it was not the carefully managed PR rollout some athletes endure. It was raw, vulnerable, and real. “It was absolutely terrifying, posting the video on YouTube, because my management at the time had not been encouraging, and told me that I was going to lose my sponsorship.” That moment—a young man risking his career to live authentically—landed like a dive that hit no splash at all. Clean. Dignified. Revolutionary.
And he kept diving. Through criticism. Through Olympic cycles. Through fatherhood. Through knitting at the Tokyo Olympics, which was, let’s be honest, a level of queer multitasking the rest of us can only aspire to.
“I competed at the Paris Olympics, this time with my sons in tow… I always found it incredibly difficult to leave them for competitions, and I carried a sense of guilt with me.” Now, in retirement, it’s his turn to reimagine life. “Even if I’m out for dinner on a Saturday night, and someone asks if I’d like a glass of wine, it takes me a second to realise I am actually allowed to.” That sentence alone could be the tagline for post-athletic, post-closet, post-perfection queer adulthood. Learning that you’re allowed. To feel. To grieve. To exhale. To just be.
Looking at a photo of his younger self, he says: “The boy in the photo has no sense of what society thinks is right or wrong… I am so glad my parents were the kind of people who celebrated whoever I was; an Olympian diver or a boy who liked to wear tea towels around his waist.”
And that’s the legacy. Not just medals or world records. But the message to every queer kid in a small town, lining up tea towels or nervously crawling toward their first metaphorical 10-metre platform:
You are allowed.
You are loved.
And honey, when you leap?
You will fly.
Source: TheGuardian