Tom Daley had a “very lonely experience” as a closeted athlete.
Tom Daley had a ‘very lonely experience’ as a closeted gay athlete
The 31-year-old diver has now been married to Hollywood director Dustin Lance Black, 50, since 2017 but endured some personal struggles before disclosing his sexuality to the world in his late teens, and wants to help those in a similar position to him avoid ending up in a “dangerous” place.
He told Variety: “They don’t know what to do, how to navigate and obviously coming out in certain places is a very different experience than coming out in the U.K. or the U.S., so it can be quite dangerous.
“I always say to them that I can be there as a sounding board just because it is a very lonely experience.”
Tom – whose father Robert died from a brain tumour in 2011 at the age of 40 – has sons Robbie, six, as well as two-year-old Phoenix with his husband and admitted that losing his dad was one of the “most difficult” things he has ever had to go through but still takes inspiration from his dad when it comes to his parenting style.
He said: “I model lots of my parenting and lots of the things that I do every day around what I learned from my dad. He my biggest cheerleader. He was there for every training session, every competition, and he was a huge part of my life, day in, day out.
“Losing him was one of the most difficult things that I ever had to deal with.”
Yet I was dealing with that in a very public way in the U.K. Looking back on all of that footage was quite challenging to watch because I felt really sorry for the younger Tom that I kind of was just carrying on and putting on a brave face, and I didn’t ever want to bother anyone with how I was feeling because I didn’t want to ever make anyone else feel uncomfortable.”
The Olympian has discussed his life and career at length in the new documentary, ‘Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds’, but admitted that he initially had reservations about speaking about such personal things on camera.
He said: “I wasn’t sure about doing it initially. You know what? This is something that I would love to be able to then show my kids in the future and be able to be like, ‘Look, this is what Papa did. This is the thing that Papa was doing day in, day out’ And the things that I did, and be able to get to know the relationship I had with my dad and all of that stuff.”
