Although a hip injury forced him out of the 10m single platform, Tom Daley was able to win gold in the 10m synchronised platform with Daniel Goodfellow.
And after the gold, Daley spoke out about the Commonwealth’s anti-LGBTQ laws. On his Instagram he wrote: “37 of the competing nations criminalises being LGBT+.
“I feel so lucky to be able to be openly who I am without worry. I hope one day every athlete from every nation in the commonwealth will be free to compete openly as who they are too!”
He repeated similar remarks in an interview with BBC News and BBC Breakfast. And now in a new interview on The Andrew Marr Show, Daley revealed why he decided to speak out.
Related: Boris Johnson promises Tom Daley he’ll raise LGBTQ rights with Commonwealth
Speaking to Nick Robinson, he said: “You want your child to grow up having an equal opportunity as everyone else that is born, whether they’re gay, straight, male, female, whatever religion you are, whatever ethnicity you are.
“I think that everyone should have the equal opportunity to do the best you can.”
He continued: “It changes your perspective on so many different levels. I was on the way home from Australia and there was turbulence, and normally I’m completely fine but I thought ‘I’ve got a little child to look after, I can’t die!’
“The way you think about the world changes so dramatically.”
Daley also said that being with his husband, Dustin Lance Black, helped spur his activism. He said: “I went for lunch with my husband and I was sitting there with a gold medal at the Commonwealth games and I thought how lucky am I to be sitting with my husband after winning a competition and not being worried about any ramifications or someone being able to throw me in prison.
“To know that 36 of the completing nations criminalise LGBT people so that if I was born in a different country I wouldn’t be able to compete truly as I am, it struck me in such a way i was mortified by it.
“I crafted a little sentence on my Instagram post and that was exactly what I was feeling in that moment.”
He then added: “Coming to the Gold Coast and being able to live as an openly gay man is really important.
“You want to feel comfortable in who you are when you are standing on that diving board, and for 37 Commonwealth countries that are here participating that is not the case.
“I feel with the Commonwealth, we can really help push some of the other nations to relax their laws on anti-gay stuff,” he finished.
Related: Tom Daley ‘doesn’t care’ if people don’t approve of him having a child
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