2024 Olympics: When Tom Daley met Noah Williams
Team GB divers Tom Daley and Noah Williams are both crowd favourites at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where competitors are enjoying performing in front of big audiences for the first time since 2016.
The last occasion the two talented divers appeared at the Olympic Games was at Tokyo 2020, when restrictions posed by the Covid-19 pandemic meant events took place in near-empty stadiums.
Now the cream of the world’s sports people is enjoying the buzz that only a packed venue can create at the Paris Olympics 2024, which kicked off with football on 25th July.
Diving at the Olympics began at the 1904 Games in St Louis, USA, when it was called “fancy diving” due to the acrobatic performances of the competitors. It has been a popular Olympic sport ever since, celebrating its 120th anniversary this year.
Tom Daley career achievements
Plymouth-born Daley, aged 30, is no stranger to the challenges of Olympic competitions. He started diving at the age of just seven and became Britain’s youngest Olympian in history when he competed at the Beijing summer games in 2008.
The official poster boy of the Olympic 2012 London games, where he won a bronze medal in the 10-metre platform discipline; he is the first diver in Team GB to win four Olympic medals, having won a bronze in the synchronised event, partnering Daniel Goodfellow, at Rio 2016. Then, at Tokyo 2020, he won a gold medal with Matty Lee in the 10-metre synchronised diving and a third bronze in the individual 10-metre platform contest.
During his career to date, Olympic diver Tom Daley has swept the board, winning 11 World, European and Commonwealth Championship gold medals.
At the Paris Olympics, he is partnering relative newcomer Noah Williams, aged 24, in the synchronised diving.
Noah Williams diving success
Hackney-born Williams is competing at his second Olympic Games, after making his debut at Tokyo 2020. To date, he has won 28 medals across international and national diving competitions. These include gold in the FINA Diving World Series event in Montreal in the 10-metre platform discipline and silver in the 10-metre mixed synchronised event at the 2020 European Aquatics Championships with partner Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix.
He then won gold with partner Matty Lee at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the men’s synchronised diving and gold in the mixed synchro with Spendolini-Sirieix.
New diving partnership
As important meetings go, when Tom Daley met Noah Williams, it was relatively low-key and almost slipped under the radar.
Both divers had been members of Team GB in the past and had competed at many of the same events, although Williams had been partnered regularly with Matthew Dixon in the synchronised diving.
The new partnership of Daley and Williams was a shrewd move, as the duo took silver in the men’s synchro 10-metre event in China at the Diving World Cup in April 2024.
Tom Daley 2024 Olympics
Daley is not competing in the Olympics’ individual events this time around. He is focusing on the 10-metre synchronised competition, following on from the success of his silver medal with Williams in April. The duo went into the Paris games among the favourites for the diving and are also fans’ favourites on the Team GB Olympics contingent.
Daley is going into the Paris Games with a new outlook on competing, as he already has a gold medal under his belt from the previous Olympics. He felt inspired to come back for another stab at the Games because he knew a lot of people wanted to go and watch him, including family and friends. He felt that diving in front of them would be “Extremely special”, adding, “This is why I came back this year.”
Daley admitted when he was going to sleep at night, he had “moments of dreams” when he imagined standing up for his final dive of the contest, looking to the side at his friends and family and thinking, “This is it!”
Personal life
Daley revealed he was gay in 2013 and said it had been a tough decision to speak of his private life. However, having fallen in love with a man with whom he wanted to share the rest of his life with, the time seemed right.
Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black, an American film screenwriter and director, were married on 6th May 2017. They have two sons, born in 2018 and 2023 respectively.
When it comes to famous meetings, their “love at first sight” romance has almost overshadowed Daley’s swimming career, as they have become one of the public’s most adored couples.
Married life and fatherhood have given the Olympic champion a new outlook on life. Daley says he’s “so excited” to see his kids’ faces as they watch him on the Olympic diving board, admitting he “does it for them” now.
His career has achieved new heights of success despite suffering a serious knee injury in 2021, when he underwent surgery for a torn meniscus.
We hope readers of this blog will join us in wishing diver Tom Daley and his synchronised diving partner Noah Williams every success on their Olympic journey.
