Tom Daley hails ‘amazing’ Commonwealth Pool

The Olympic bronze medallist won the Fina/Midea World Diving Series at the capital venue in his first international outing since London 2012, and said the facilities were ideal.

“The atmosphere in here was great, and if we can get anything like this for the Commonwealth Games it will be incredible,” the 18-year-old from Plymouth said. “There were fireworks going off and lights going off – the crowd were amazing. It was almost like a little taste of London again.

“When it’s kitted out for the Commonwealth Games it will look good. The pool looks great as it is now, so it’s exciting. It’s great to be here practising in the Commonwealth Pool before the Games are actually here, just to get that experience.

“The diving pool is good and the dry-land training area is really good too. Everything is really nice.”

Daley has a lot of outside interests besides diving, most notably Splash!, the ITV show in which a number of celebrity novices compete to do the best dive. The show will return next year, and he believes it is having an extremely positive effect on the sport – but at the same time, he insisted that he would not let that or anything else interfere with his training.

“Diving is my main priority. Always has been and always will be till I retire. But these TV projects that come up alongside are something that I enjoy doing – I want to be a TV presenter when I finish diving. It doesn’t take any time out of my training.

“There’s a second series of Splash! coming up next year, which is really exciting. It should be bigger and better this time.

“Splash! is definitely raising the profile of diving all around the world. I think it’s now in 87 countries or something ridiculous.

It’s just getting more people involved in diving and seeing it as entertainment – people are trying it and hopefully we’ll see the rewards of that in ten years’ time when we have new divers on the scene.

“When I’m busy, that’s when I perform at my best. When I have time off and I’m just diving, I struggle, so it’s good to have other things on my mind.

“I’ve got my A levels next May at the same time as the World Series, so there’s lots of things I’m doing. But I enjoy it all.

“Splash! in January was something that I loved. It gives me extra motivation in training when I’m doing other stuff.”

Daley did not have things all his own way in Edinburgh, and had to pull out the best dives of the weekend to come first, having dropped to third after his first two dives. “I like the pressure – other people can’t handle it. My first two dives weren’t as good as they could have been, so going into my third dive I was going for straight tens. [He got three in all].

“I would give myself eight out of ten for this – there is still a lot to improve on, But from where I am at the moment I’m pretty happy.”