Diving prodigy Daley earns spot in Olympics after back forces mentor to call it a day
Tom Daley will be gifted an Olympic synchro diving spot today when his long-time mentor Leon Taylor announces his retirement. Taylor, 30, the Olympic 10-metre platform synchro diving silver medallist in 2004 with partner Peter Waterfield, has finally accepted medical opinion that his back problem is untreatable. He will go to Beijing instead as team mentor and BBC commentator.
Taylor and Waterfield were to have had a dive-off with Daley, who was 14 last week, and his partner Blake Aldridge in Leeds on June 21 for the single place Britain has earned in the eight-pair final in Beijing. Daley and Aldridge will now perform an exhibition there as part of the official Olympic trials.
Great Britain's Tom Daley with the Gold Medal he won in the Synchro platform event during the FINA Diving World Series at Ponds Forge, Sheffield
"I'm the last man in the world to want to put pressure on young Tom but, of course, he has a chance of a medal in Beijing," said Taylor. "This is a subjective sport where the margins are fine and even the strongest favourities can make mistakes."
Taylor has been the most successful British diver of his generation, winning medals at Commonwealth, European, world and Olympic level in an international career spanning 16 years. But he said yesterday: "Diving's a young man's game.
"When you are hitting the water each time at 40mph the wear on the body is immense. The mind's willing, the desire's still there but I have an old body that's worn out in certain areas."
Waterfield, 27, will still go to Beijing in the individual 10m platform event for which he and Daley, one of Sportsmail's Magnificent Seven prospects for London 2012, both qualified by finishing in the first eight at the World Cup in Beijing in February.
Coincidentially, China's 2004 10m champion Hu Jia, the favourite again this year, withdrew from the Games yesterday because of long-term injury problems.
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