“The most exciting thing is that my family is coming to watch,” she says. “My dad actually jumped off a 10m board once. He jumped, he didn’t dive. I told him: ‘Please, no diving. You’re going to hurt yourself.’ He did a dive off a lower board and after seeing that thank God he didn’t dive off 10. The diving genes started with me.”
A swimmer and gymnast who was picked up as an eight-year-old by Crystal Palace Diving Club, she carved out her own path but maybe she has inherited some of her dad’s showtime eclat.
“I feel like diving is a performance. We’ve got judges, we’ve got an audience. I see it as a performing art and I kind of like that. My parents call me a showgirl,” she says. “I really like people watching. I want to give everyone a good time. I want to make it exciting for them. So I would see it as a performance.”
‘I’m not built for the mundane life’
She never made it onto the actual stage at the Harris Academy School in Bermondsey. “I didn’t have time, I was diving. I was on the world stage!”
Since leaving after her A-levels, she has been a full-time athlete for a year in the build-up to the Games to give herself the best chance of delivering on her rich potential. That will change after Paris as she has decided to go to university to study journalism.
She will continue to dive but part-time. It is a big world out there and whatever these Games bring she wants to experience it.
“I don’t want to limit myself. I can’t just be an athlete. I’ve done it for one year and I’m already itching to do something else. I’m not built for the mundane life,” she says.
A version of this article was first published in July
