British diver Tom Daley, who just won his first gold medal at the Olympics, is also a popular YouTuber and influencer
- Tom Daley is a British diver who won his first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo.
- He's married to screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and the two have a son together.
- In addition to being a professional athlete, he's also an influencer and YouTuber.
British diver Tom Daley has been in the Olympic spotlight since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which he competed at while he was just 14 years old. Now, 13 years later, he just won his first gold medal at the Tokyo Games in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform event alongside teammate Matty Lee.
But in addition to his storied sports career, Daley is also a popular social-media influencer on multiple platforms.
Daley, 27, has 2.1 million followers on Instagram and 900,000 subscribers on YouTube. His content does feature his professional diving career, but he also posts vlogs, fitness videos, and clips with his husband Dustin Lance Black.
Tom Daley made his Olympic debut in 2008
Daley began diving at 7 years old, and by the time he was 10 had become the United Kingdom's under-18 champion, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2008.
At 13, he won the European 10-meter platform title at the European World Championships in 2008, the BBC reported. That same year, he competed at the Olympics in Beijing for the first time in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform event and the solo 10-meter platform event, not earning a medal in either.
He won his first Olympic medal, a bronze in the 10-meter platform event, at the 2012 London Games. At the 2016 Rio Games he picked up another bronze medal in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform event alongside teammate Daniel Goodfellow, The Guardian reported.
Finally, in Tokyo this year, the diver won his first gold medal in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform event alongside Matty Lee, a victory so emotional that both Daley and a broadcast journalist were crying.
He came out in 2013 and married his husband in 2017
In a 2013 YouTube video, Daley said that he was in a relationship with a man, eventually revealed to be Black, a screenwriter who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for "Milk" at the 81st Academy Awards in 2009.
The pair announced their engagement in 2015 and were married in May 2017. They have one son, Robert Ray Black-Daley, who was born in June 2018, The Guardian reported.
In the past, Daley declined to put a label on his sexuality. Daley told The Times in 2018 that he wasn't 100% "straight" or "gay," saying that he's liked both girls and boys in the past and that his generation "shouldn't feel the need to be labelled." In 2021, he's described himself as a gay man.
"I feel incredibly proud to say that I'm a gay man and also an Olympic champion," Daley said after winning his gold medal, according to the Olympic News Service. "I feel very empowered by that."
The diver is a YouTuber with over 900,000 subscribers
Daley launched his YouTube channel in 2010 and began to post videos of himself doing tricks ad video diary excerpts. While he appears to have previously uploaded clips to a now-defunct personal website, he began to more regularly post on YouTube in 2014, announcing that he would post weekly.
Now, Daley's YouTube channel is largely populated by workout tutorials, "Daley Diaries" vlogs, and Q&A videos with friends and family.
On his main account, @tomdaley, he frequently posts about diving and his family in addition to advertisements for brands like Adidas or Vodafone UK. Daley also has a presence on TikTok, where he has approximately 427,000 followers and began posting memes and diving clips in 2019.
In addition to his main Instagram page, Daley also runs a knitting-focused account with 83,400 followers called @madewithlovebytomdaley. The Guardian called the man of many talents - who even had a brief stint as a mentor on a celebrity reality-TV diving series - "the world's biggest crochet influencer."
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