Tom Daley. (Photo by Jim Thurston, from Wikimedia Commons)
British Olympic champion diver Tom Daley acknowledged in a recent interview with British newspaper The Times that he had been secretly rushed to the hospital seven months prior to the summer Tokyo Olympic games after contracting the coronavirus.
Daley told the paper “[my] lungs felt pressurised, as if they had sacks of rice around them,” adding “Every time I stood up, I felt the room spinning and a blinding white light, as if I was going to faint, and as if I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my body.”
He went on to describe his ordeal in graphic detail, telling Times journalist Jane Mulkerrins that he gave specific instructions to his husband, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, one night as he headed off to sleep what to do in the event he quit breathing.
He also told Mulkerrins he was frightened for their son Robbie if he and his husband both contracted COVID-19, especially after he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance unable to breath correctly.
When his head began to feel like it had “a vice tightening around it” and his “oxygen levels were dropping,” it was at that point Daley said he decided to call 111, the U.K.’s emergency phone number.
He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance and put on oxygen. An x-ray revealed “blotches” on his lungs, and he was kept at the hospital for 10 hours to increase his oxygen levels, The Times reported.
“I understood how quickly things could potentially go downhill,” said Daley. “I had flashes of fear about whether I would be put on a ventilator, and my time being up. I was really terrified.”
He also described his reasons for keeping his ordeal secret so that his rivals in his sport wouldn’t know.
The episode kept the Olympian diver out of training for nearly seven months although Daley along with his British teammate diving partner Matty Lee won the gold with a score of 471.81 in the men’s synchronized diving on at the Tokyo 2021 games.
After tough competition in the Men’s 10m platform diving from China’s Cao Yuan who picked up the Gold Medal and his teammate Yang Jian cinching the number two spot with a Silver Medal, the 27-year-old Daley secured a Bronze Medal win with a score of 548.25.
It was the second Olympic Bronze Medal for the Plymouth, England native, in individual diving completion since he won bronze at the London Games in 2012. Daley and his teammate Daniel Goodfellow won a Bronze Medal in the 10m synchronized at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio De Janeiro.
The Times interview comes as the paper’s magazine is serializing Daley’s new book, “Coming Up for Air: What I Learned from Sport, Fame and Fatherhood,” which is due to be published by Harper Collins on Oct. 14.
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