Tom Daley Gets Candid On Fame, Fatherhood And His Closeted Past In New Documentary

As a young diver, Tom Daley never imagined he’d one day feel confident enough to share specifics of his personal life with fans. That changed in 2013, when the British Olympic diver came out as gay in a YouTube video.

Twelve years later, Daley gets even more candid in a new documentary, “Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds.” Released this month on Discovery+ and Olympics.com in the U.S. and on HBO Max elsewhere, the film finds the now-retired athlete reflecting on his rise to fame, his path toward living as his true self and his relationships with his husband of eight years, screenwriter and filmmaker Dustin Lance Black, and his late father, Robert Daley.

“It’s weird when somebody comes to you and says, ‘We want to make a documentary about your life.’ I was a little bit hesitant to start with, because … what do I even have to say? What do I want to say?” Daley told HuffPost in an interview. “But the more I got into what was going on beneath the surface when I was growing up … the fact that my kids are going to be able to understand a bit more about what their papa did … it felt like therapy.”

Admirers of Daley’s aquatic prowess won’t be disappointed by “1.6 Seconds,” the title of which alludes to his gold medal win in the men’s synchronized 10-meter platform at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, held in 2021. While working on the film, director Vaughan Sivell pored through hours of archival footage showing Daley training for childhood competitions and, later, his four Olympic Games.

In fact, Daley himself hadn’t watched many of the videos before he sat down to provide his on-camera commentary. He can be seen tearing up after some particularly emotional clips, some of which include his father, who died of cancer in 2011 at age 40.

“If I could be half the dad my dad was to me, I feel like my life would be complete,” Daley said. “My middle name is Robert, named after my dad. My oldest son is also a Robert ― we call him Robbie. The relationship I had with my dad is how I model being a father now.”

Other emotional moments in the film include the lead-up to Daley’s coming out as well as the early days of his relationship with Black, whom he refers to simply as “Lance.” In addition to 6-year-old Robbie, Black and Daley share a 1-year-old son, Phoenix.

“When I came out, I had no idea what was going to happen on the other side of it,” Daley said. “I was told I was going to lose sponsorships and not be able to compete in certain countries. There was a lot of fear around it [and] I didn’t think I’d be able to open myself up to falling in love beyond a surface level. But when I met Lance, it felt like I’d met my forever teammate.”

Black recently completed work on a documentary of his own, “Rock Out,” which examines the LGBTQ+ community’s unheralded influence on heavy metal, punk and rock music.

Daley, meanwhile, has shifted his professional focus. As seen in “1.6 Seconds,” he famously took up knitting and crocheting in 2020, and has since launched the Made With Love brand dedicated to his handiwork. He continues to tout knitting as his “superpower” and a “mental reset,” and will further showcase his skills as the host of “The Game of Wool,” a forthcoming television series.

Sports and knitting both factor into Daley’s newfound role as a mental health advocate. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he was granted a re-dive after getting distracted by a large number of camera flashes from the crowd ― a chilling moment captured in “1.6 Seconds” that impacted his own mental health.

“We spend all of our life training our bodies to be able to do the thing,” he said. “But if you don’t train your brain as well, how do you know if you’re going to be able to hold it together in competition? On a micro or macro level, at some point, everybody deals with a really stressful situation, and how you navigate that and perform under stress and under pressure really will play into how successful that moment might be. So I think for me, I wish I’d started those mindfulness practices slightly earlier in my career.”

These days, his routine also includes “going on walks with my husband. We drop our kids off at school, and then we go for a hike, and we just spend the first hour of our morning just talking to each other. And I know that might not necessarily be 100% mindfulness, but it’s our way of talking to each other about anything and everything.”