Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a congratulatory statement on Tuesday, hailing Daley as an "inspiration..........to young people right across the country". Role models play a very important role in inspiring people to excel and Tom Daley may already have laid the foundations for a future world champion from the UK without even being aware of it!
However, there will always be people who are jealous of success and who seek to wreck other people's achievements and dreams. World champions are not immune to this, as Daley found on his return from the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when some of his schoolmates were not happy to have a star in their midst. "Everyone started being stupid and calling me names, throwing bits of paper, tipping my pencil case out in front of the whole class. They were calling me 'diver boy' and saying' how much are your legs worth? I'll break them'.
Although it was not 'high level' bullying it was annoying for Daley and he says "When I was annoyed at school I started to get annoyed at diving. Daley subsequently enrolled at a public school, Plymouth College, which appreciates the importance of combining education with sport, and as he says "I'm much happier now I can concentrate on diving".
What has enabled Tom Daley to press on and excel, despite the bullies, are characteristics common to all elite athletes such as his undoubted passion for what he is doing and an uncompromising commitment to being the best that he can be. These, combined with the fact that action was taken to deal with something outside of his sport that was beginning to adversely impact on his diving performance, were major contributors to the result that was there for all to see at the weekend in Rome.
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