Tom Daley delivers as 2014 venue is given wet run

Tom Daley with his Gold medal on the podium at the Royal Commonwealth Pool. Picture: Getty

SUNSHINE outside, T-shirt temperature inside, Union Jacks being waved by a capacity crowd and everyone in the happiest of moods. It was like being back at London 2012 yesterday – or perhaps, replacing Union Jacks with Saltires, it was a foretaste of next year’s Commonwealth Games.

Because this was the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh, where the Glasgow 2014 diving competition will take place, and the venue for the weekend’s Fina/Midea Diving World Series, an invitation event for the best competitors on the planet. According to the stereotype, the country’s two biggest cities can never get on, but when it comes to the Games, their co-operation makes perfect sense: for the time being at least, Scotland does not require two world-class diving facilities. The one in the capital was renovated just last year, so it will host the diving, while Tollcross in Glasgow, itself newly redeveloped, will be home for the swimming programme.

I say for the time being, because with diving’s growing popularity you can never tell what may be required in future. And that popularity is primarily due to the star of this three-day show, the man who ensured the event sold out in next to no time, Tom Daley.

Or rather, Tom Daley and a certain television show. Splash!, an ITV production, was panned by most critics, but inspired thousands of children to take up the sport. It didn’t matter to them that Omid Djalili, Jo Brand and the rest were hopeless: it showed that anyone could give diving a go.

That was the attitude Daley had when he began the sport while barely out of infancy, and now, at the age of 18, he is among the world’s elite. At this meeting, his first international appearance of the season, he was soon showing the form which won him a bronze medal at London 2012 and held a decent lead after the morning’s preliminary session.

Two indifferent dives at the start of the six-round final saw him drop to third, but a magnificent third dive earned two scores of ten – the first of the night – from the panel of seven judges. That took him back up to second, an equally superb fourth dive lifted him back into first place, and with the increasingly vocal crowd behind him he held on in commanding fashion.

“It was quite a close competition from the word go,” he reflected after the medal ceremony. “I missed my first two dives, then I told myself ‘I’ll just have to get tens now’. There was nothing else I could do.

“I’m very happy with the way it went. I decided to give it my best shot and that’s what I did. My total, 540 points, is where I’m at, at the moment. I’d give myself eight out of ten for that performance, and I can’t really expect any more at present.”

The one slight downside of the weekend was the fact that, with the swimming pool in use immediately before and after the event, the capacity was restricted to around 640 spectators, whose tickets cost £12 for adults and £10 concessions. Nothing has yet been settled for the Commonwealth Games, but with a bit of will and imagination it should be easy to put in some temporary stands to increase the capacity considerably. Daley plans to be back next summer, and with a second series of Splash planned for the New Year there could be thousands more kids who would like to get a glimpse of him in action.

In last night’s other competition, Daley’s British team-mate Tonia Couch was fourth in the women’s 10m. Other than Daley, the most impressive British performance of the weekend came in the women’s 3m synchro, where Alicia Blagg and Rebecca Gallantree won silver – emulating their achievement from a previous round of the series. “We got a medal last month in Beijing, so we knew it was possible so we just got on with things and tried not to look at anyone else in the field,” Gallantree said.

“We just focused on our own performance and how well we can do our dives and it worked again. It was a consistent performance but we know we can do more. We can both dive better than we did.”

In the men’s 3m synchro, also on Saturday, there was a bronze medal for Chris Mears and Nick Robinson-Baker, who were fifth at last year’s Olympics. Chinese pairs won both the men’s and women’s synchro titles, and divers from the People’s Republic were equally prominent in yesterday’s individual competitions – the title sponsors, Midea, are a Chinese firm, reflecting the popularity of the sport in the Far East. It is still a minority interest here, but that will change if the enthusiasm shown by the families who were here last night spreads.