My Olympic gold medal this time is having my kids there to watch

Fifth Olympic Games is just the ticket

How do you feel about the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and that friends and family are back in the stands following their necessary absence at Tokyo 2020, in 2021?

I’m so excited. One of the main reasons for coming back to diving was to be able to have my kids watch and they’re all coming. My husband, the kids, my mum, my grandma, all my friends, aunties, uncles… We managed to get a lot of tickets this time around as I was a bit more prepared on the ticket front.

I was telling all of my friends and family to log on at the exact time that I knew that tickets were going to be dropping. I was like, ‘Just get whatever you can and we’ll figure it out. Let’s just get all the tickets we can because this is going to be as close to a home Olympics as I’m ever going to have in my lifetime again’.

When you’re competing, do you look out for them?

My dad would have a giant Union Jack (flag) so I knew exactly where he was. We don’t really have that now, someone flying the flag, so what I get my family and friends to do is send a photo of the pool from where they’re sitting, so I know exactly where they are so I can see them… I prefer to know exactly where they are and wave and then it’s tunnel vision until the end.

You decided to return to the sport after visiting an Olympic Museum with your family. Can you tell us that story?

We were in Colorado Springs at the time because that’s where Phoenix was born. I didn’t know it was the Olympic City until we got there and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s the [United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum]’. So we went over to the museum and… I was using the pen to sign in and they saw my Olympic rings (tattoo), and they were like, ‘You’re an Olympian!’

They have this big atrium area where there’s loads of balconies and they get all the staff to come in, and I was just stood in the middle. I was mortified and Robbie was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And I was like, ‘Long story’.

But at the end, there was this video of what it means to be an Olympian, and of course, by the end of it, I was crying, and Robbie turned to me and said, ‘What’s the matter, Papa, what’s the matter?’ I said I missed diving and I missed the Olympics, and Lance looked at me and said, ‘Oh no, I know what this means’. And Robbie was like, ‘I want to see you dive at the Olympics’. And that was that.

I was like, ‘I don’t even know how that’s even going to be possible’. I’ve taken two years off. If I come back to the sport, there’s no guarantee that I’ll get back in the team, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to do my dives again, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to stay injury free. There’s no guarantee I’ll even qualify for the Olympics, if I get back into the team. So there’s all of these hurdles to overcome.