Photo Update
Tom Daley's advisers need to take a leaf out of Tiger's book
"In the vast expanse of sporting occasions such as the Olympic Games one is invariably tempted to grab on to small mercies, even when they are of dubious provenance. Into this category must fall the news of reconciliation between Tom Daley and Blake Aldridge, the British diving pair who fell out when the latter accused the former of buckling under pressure only to be revealed as the kind of colleague who phones his mum in the heat of competition.
Those who feared for the future of Britain's unsynchronised synchronised diving team are to worry no longer, according to Daley and Aldridge's team-mates, Sonia Couch and Stacie Powell, who revealed: "The team are all one big happy family."
Cynicism in this space has been suspended for the duration of this Olympics but so has credulity. Unlike Aldridge, I would never phone my mum when I'm supposed to be working but when I do get the chance to ask for her opinion on this alleged dιtente my guess is that she will say what she always says when confronted with the PR piffle dressed up as candour; and the band played Believe It If You Will.
This is not to besmirch Couch and Powell, who have Daley's interests foremost in their minds, but simply to draw attention to yet another worrying contribution to an Olympic fairytale that grows less enchanting with every passing day." [
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Daley and Aldridge can get relationship back in sync, says diving chief
"The diving partnership between 14-year-old Tom Daley and Blake Aldridge, his partner for the 10m platform syncronised event, is salvageable despite the pair "cracking under pressure" in meltdown fashion this week, according to their sport's performance director, Steve Foley.
Daley and Aldridge finished last of eight in Monday's event, after which Aldridge blamed Daley's nerves for their poor performance. Daley had also been furious with Aldridge for having a mobile telephone conversation with his mother during the final.
By late Monday night here, the prospect of the pair ever taking to the platform together again seemed remote. But Foley insisted yesterday that he expects them to represent Britain together in the future, and that they will compete together in next year's world championships in Rome.
"I'm sure Blake regrets lashing out that way," Foley told BBC Radio 5 Live. "It's an intense competition."
Aldridge said Daley had been "worrying about everyone and everything... you both have to be on the top of your game. I wasn't on top of my game but Tom was nowhere near the top of his." [
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Daley's medal hopes take dive under wave of pressure
"Seldom can the pressure of Olympic competition have impacted more heavily on a British athlete than Tom Daley. Yesterday six months of hype, expectation and over-exposure weighed like concrete boots on the teenager's dreams and dragged them to the bottom of Beijing's Water Cube.
Sunk with him was Blake Aldridge, whose sour reaction to disappointment was to lay the blame on his junior partner. Regardless of who dived worse on the day, and the judges gave Aldridge higher marks on four of the six dives, it was clear that the unique demands of the Olympic arena were too much for a duo with no previous experience of the confidence-sapping nature of such a stage.
Expectations that they might claim a medal were always misguided. Debutants seldom flourish at Olympic Games - China's gold-medal pair proved a gloriously accomplished exception - and five of the eight teams had both more experience and better results than the British pair." [
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Photo Shoot
I've added another photo shoot to the gallery. Not sure who they were taken by, they're really nice photos, though. Thanks so much to
Sheeda for donating them!
Unknown Photo Shoot 001 (x006) 'Superstar' Tom Daley looking to learn from and enjoy Olympic experience
"Little wonder then that Time Magazine lists Tom Daley as one of the ‘100 to Watch’ from the sofa at the Olympic Games in Beijing (only two other Britons, Billy Joe Saunders, the grandson of a bare knuckle gypsy fighter and metronomic marathon runner and mother Paula Radcliffe, are deemed worthy of a mention) unmistakably the sign that the Daley diving adventure is something of a phenomenon. Indeed it is, in what has become a family affair.
No fewer than a dozen Daleys will be cheering the teenager at the diving venue in Beijing, when the men’s 10m synchro pairs event takes place on Monday, Aug 3. Mum, Dad, siblings, uncle who sponsors him aunt and cousins, the Daley clan will occupy a small space in what has become a huge story.
Podium finish or not, rags to riches in waiting, Daley will have not only the family, but the eyes of the world watching him in Beijing. Given his age 14 is the youngest age permissible at the Games - it is no wonder that Daley refers to Blake Aldridge, his men’s synchronised pairs diving partner as “my sort of ‘diving Dad’, because he guides and advises me”, and to his coach Andy Banks as his diving ‘teacher and another guiding figure’.
Daley has a kind of magic about him, and for those who have never seen diving live, it is the kind of event which you can often find yourself gasping and gawping at the miracle of a body twisting and somersaulting for a second in time before plunging through the water’s surface at 35mph. Daley wears wrist supports due to the stress on his young arms as they impact on the water. He is still growing, of course." [
Source]
Tom Daley growing in stature in Beijing
"At 14, Tom Daley may be the baby of the Great Britain team here, but his image as the tot on the tower is evaporating before our very eyes. Just 5ft 2in in March, when he became the youngest European diving champion in history, the schoolboy had grown an inch by June. As he sauntered on to the boards for practice yesterday, it was obvious that he had shot up again.
Daley's official British Olympic Association biography lists him as standing 1.56 metres (5ft 1in) tall, while his synchronised ten-metre diving partner, Blake Aldridge, who was 22 on Monday, stands 1.67 metres (5ft 6in).
The difference in height between the team-mates is closing fast. A member of the Britain team said: “Yes, he's about 1.63 metres [5ft 4in] now - and growing. It's what teenagers do.” They also attract a small army of fans and media. Daley was inundated with requests for autographs from a cluster of Chinese schoolchildren and volunteers at the pool yesterday. He duly delivered, smiling and chatting to a gaggle of giggling girls.
The Plymouth schoolboy's changing stature, in size and potential, requires constant adjustment to his training programme, which is steered by Andy Banks, his personal coach, and Chen Wen, the Britain head coach. Tiny divers, such as Fu Mingxia, of China, who was 14 when she became Olympic champion in 1992, can execute twists, turns and pikes at a speed that cannot be achieved by larger athletes." [
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Brits to watch: Tom Daley
"At 14 years of age, British diver Tom Daley's medal hopes are second to his incredible achievement in reaching the Olympics.
Daley is one of the youngest Summer Olympians ever to have competed for Britain, but a medal in Beijing is probably beyond the Devon schoolboy.
Backed to a fanatical degree by his father, Rob, Daley has beaten British and world divers twice his age to secure his Olympic place.
His intention will be to use Beijing as an experience, and a platform to success in front of a home crowd at London 2012." [
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Tom Daley: The boy in the bubbles
"Tom Daley is not the youngest person ever to contest an Olympic Games for Britain. When one newspaper suggested that he was, a chap called Ken Lester got in touch to point out, somewhat apologetically, that he had been 13 years and 144 days when he coxed for a rowing pair at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. When Daley competes in Beijing he will be 14 years and 81 days. But there is a more beguiling record very much up for grabs: Brian Phelps, like Daley a diver, was 16 when he won a bronze medal. That was in Rome, too. Britain has never had a younger medallist.
Neither Daley nor his coach Andy Banks, however, expect him to come home to Plymouth with a medal. "I'd say it's unlikely but not impossible," Banks says. "If everyone dives to the best of their ability, Tom won't get a look in. But if Tom dives as well as he can and the others don't, then yes, he could make it. Of course, Tom could mess up in the preliminary rounds and not even reach the semi. But I'm a big believer that if my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle. There's no point in thinking 'if this happens' or 'if that happens'. We just have to plan as scrupulously as we can."
Those plans have received a level of global media coverage that is all out of kilter with these determinedly low-key expectations. On the day that I interview Daley, the spectator seats at Central Park Pools in Plymouth are full of journalists, while no fewer than eight camera crews mill around at the bottom of the diving platforms. There is a writer from Stern magazine in Germany and a crew from NBC Television in the United States. It is by no means only in Britain that Daley has captured the popular imagination. The fact that the youngest competitor at this year's Games also has a genuine shot at glory has ignited interest around the world." [
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Tom Daley's hopes of an olympic medal take a dive
"Diving sensation Tom Daley faces an uphill struggle to win a medal in Beijing - because of a dive his own mentor invented.
Leon Taylor - who picked up silver in Athens four years ago and is charged with guiding the 14-year-old through the Games - first performed the "hardest dive in the world" 10 years ago.
The manoeuvre involves a backward two-and a-half somersaults with two-and-a-half twists piked - and now has to be in the repertoire of anyone hoping for a podium finish.
And Taylor admits it is a dive too far for the teenager who has taken the sport by storm.
He said: "Tom is 14, he's excellent, but he's still not at that super-elite level where you need to be doing the hardest dives in the world almost to perfection. Tom could probably complete the dive but only for very low marks, so it would be pointless to use.
"But what he has achieved already it normally takes a whole lifetime to achieve. Even if he was four years older, what he has done would still be phenomenal."
Taylor, part of the BBC's commentary team in Beijing, has acted as mentor to Daley ever since he first met him as a hopeful 11-year-old.
He said: "He can go there forewarned and forearmed. That's my role. I can tell him all that information from my experience which nobody else can tell him because they haven't been through it." [
Source]
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