Tom Daley units sights on Paris Olympics after confirming diving comeback | Tom Daley

The Olympic diving champion Tom Daley has mentioned he’ll return to the pool to focus on a spot at Paris 2024.

Daley, now 29, received Olympic gold alongside Matty Lee within the males’s 10-metre synchronised competitors on the Tokyo Video games in 2020, his fourth Olympics. The three-time world champion has taken two years out since then, saying he had “in concept retired”, however in a brand new YouTube video he mentioned a latest journey to Colorado Springs within the US had reignited his aggressive spirit with a yr to go till Paris.

Daley and his husband, Dustin Lance Black, travelled to Colorado for the start of their second son, Phoenix, in March, and Daley mentioned he had not realised its standing as an Olympic metropolis – it’s house to the US Olympic and Paralympic coaching centre – till they arrived. He took his eldest son, Robbie, to the museum there and mentioned he felt impressed to aim a return.

“Robbie mentioned to me: ‘Papa, I need to see you dive within the Olympics’,” Daley mentioned in a video publish. “It has lit a brand new flame in me to see the place this goes. I don’t know the place that is going to go, I don’t know if that is going to be a totally foolish thought of me getting again within the pool or a possibility for me to do that recreationally and have a little bit of enjoyable with none stress, or if my physique goes to have the ability to get again on a diving board and dive half-decently.

“I don’t know what that’s going to seem like. Paris 2024 is unquestionably a objective. I don’t know if it’s going to be attainable however you by no means say by no means.”

He determined to not compete on the Commonwealth Video games final yr in an effort to spend extra time along with his husband and first son, who was born in 2018 by way of a surrogate.

Daley began diving on the age of seven and made his Olympic debut for Nice Britain when he was 14. He got here out as homosexual in a YouTube video in 2013 and has since turn into an outspoken advocate of LGBTQ+ rights.

His movie Tom Daley: Unlawful to Be Me, which was proven on the BBC final August, highlighted homophobia in sport and the discrimination and hazard confronted by LGBT+ athletes in some Commonwealth international locations. “LGBT+ athletes should be protected and really feel comfy being their genuine selves with out worry of persecution or dying,” he mentioned on the time.

He took up knitting and crochet in the course of the pandemic, and has now attracted 1.2 million followers to his Instagram account @madewithlovebytomdaley, the place he posts photographs of his creations. In a Guardian interview, he mentioned: “Like most issues in my life I’ve turn into very dedicated to it.”

PA Media contributed to this report