Though diver Tom Daley won his first Olympic gold medal in synchronized diving last week, his time at the Olympics won’t be done until August 7, when he competes in the individual 10-meter platform dive. Since his win, he’s been watching other events from the stands and on Sunday he broke out a knitting project to help pass the time during the women’s 3-meter springboard event.
It was greeted with a bit of confusion by the BBC’s sports commentators. “What do you reckon he’s crafting there? I wonder who he’s making that purple concoction for?” one commentator said.
On Instagram, Daley later said that he was making a sweater for Izzy, a French bulldog with a large social media following. Later in the day, he showed off the finished project from a Tokyo balcony. This isn’t the first fiber art project he’s whipped up while at the Games: After winning his gold medal last week, he knitted a case for it, emblazoned with the Union Jack on one side and the Japanese flag on the other.
“The one thing that has kept me sane throughout this whole process is my love for knitting and crochet and all things stitching,” Daley said on Instagram.
Daley said that he took up knitting while he was locked down in London with his husband, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, his now three-year-old son, Robbie, and his mother, Debbie Daley. Unable to practice his dives for Tokyo due to pandemic closures, he began knitting as a hobby, sharing his creations on a dedicated Instagram account called Made With Love by Tom Daley. “I love knitting,” he told ITV last March. “I love it, I could literally do it all day.”
Daley made his first appearance at the Olympic Games in 2008 in Beijing, where he placed seventh in the 10-meter platform dive. He won an individual bronze medal at the London Games in 2012, and another bronze in synchronized 10-meter platform diving in Rio in 2016, but a gold medal had eluded him until last week. Partly because he was featured in advertisements for the London Games that were posted around the country, he became one of Britain’s best-known athletes. He parlayed his popularity into social media, and now runs a YouTube channel with more than 1 million followers. In 2013, he used his YouTube channel to announce his sexuality, and in 2017, he married Black.
Since arriving in Tokyo, he has been posting vlogs filmed in the Olympic Village. Due to coronavirus restrictions, Daley’s family was not able to join him in Tokyo, but after the win, the BBC shared a video that showed Debbie and Black cheering.
After the win, he said he hoped his victory would inspire other LGBTQ+ people that “you can achieve anything,” adding that he couldn’t wait to see his family. “It’s been the most amazing, life-changing journey for me,” he said. “I can’t wait to go and see them, my husband and my son, to give them a big hug and be able to celebrate on this incredible journey that it has been.”
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