Tom Daley poses with the gold medal after his 10m platform triumph at the world championships in Rome. Photograph: Clive Rose/Getty Images
Tom Daley last night became Britain's first individual world diving champion after taking gold in the 10m platform event. The 15-year-old was fourth with two rounds to go but a flurry of perfect scores brought him a dramatic victory.
It still needed mistakes from the three other leading contenders to give Daley an unexpected win which illustrated how mature a competitor he has become. Even a phone ringing as he stood on the board for his fifth and crucial dive did not disturb his focus.
"Getting into the final I just thought, 'Go out there and do your best and see what happens'. I thought I was going to come fourth and I would have been really happy with that. But then to come away with a medal was going to be great, then a gold medal was just insane," said Daley, who became the first British diver to win a world or Olympic title. "Today was never the day when I thought I would become world champion. I woke up and thought just go out and enjoy it. To come away with a gold medal was unthinkable. It still hasn't sunk in. Now I want to do it again in 2012."
Since he came to the public's attention, Daley has become the national under-18 champion at 10 years old, and the European senior champion last year, as a 14-year-old. But last year at the Beijing Olympics there was a serious blip on the upward curve when a well-publicised spat with his partner, Blake Aldridge, in the synchro competition was followed by a down-beat performance in the individual 10m, where he finished seventh.
This summer, though, Daley has looked the real deal again, hitting a remarkable personal best of 554.90 when he won the Fort Lauderdale grand prix in May. Even so, what happened here was still, as the schoolboy put it, "insane".
With four dives to go, the youngest and just about the smallest competitor in the field was more than 18 points behind the leader Bo Qui, from China, who had beaten Daley to the world junior title last year and the second youngest diver, at 16, in the line-up.
The Olympic champion, Australia's Matthew Mitcham, who had halted the Chinese clean sweep in Beijing, was in a close second and Zhou Luxin, the Olympic silver medallist was lying third.
Daley, with only Mitcham and Bo diving after him, had to produce something special just to have a chance of bronze, and with the lowest degree of difficulty of the four leading divers, nothing less than perfect scores were required, and nothing less than perfect scores were delivered, Daley hitting eight 10s in his final two dives. Zhou failed on his fifth dive, Mitcham had two ordinary (by his high standards) final dives and Bo's poor entry on the last dive of the competition settled it.
"I really thought they were going to get it," said Daley. "For them not to do so is really crazy. I can't believe it. I really can't believe it. It's been a lot of hard work; lots of ups and lots of downs. Everything I've put into it has now become worth it."
