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The woman who coached Tom Daley to Olympic gold says she is daring to dream about the retired diver making a comeback at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
Jane Figueiredo was on Monday crowned the female recipient of the International Olympic Committee Coaches Lifetime Achievement Award for an incredible career spanning several continents and seven medallists.
Daley, 30, announced his retirement after collecting 10m synchro silver alongside Noah Williams at the Paris 2024 Olympics, but Figueiredo – who can claim some credit for inspiring the athlete’s famous knitting hobby – is willing to leave the door ajar.
“He had a retirement party, and I know he’s announced it, but, look, dreams I hang onto,” she told the PA news agency.
“He’s the most wonderful thing out there for our sport, so we can at least dream about it.
“When I found out he was retiring, I said, ‘Tom, although you’re telling everybody you’re retired, people come out of retirement every day’.
“He’s already 30 and going into Paris, we were already dealing with some injuries, so I don’t know.
“We’re hoping they might add the team event to the programme, and there isn’t anybody better that could lead Team GB than Tom Daley.
“Tom Daley is the world of diving, to be clear, and his absence is very, very much felt in the world.”
When Zimbabwe-born Figueiredo competed for Portugal at the Los Angeles Games in 1984, just 23 per cent of the athletes were women.
Paris 2024 marked the first time an Olympics achieved athlete gender parity, the payoff of concrete steps taken by the IOC, including equal distribution of quota places to female athletes and the addition of multiple new mixed-gender events.
A mixed diving team event – in which the British quartet of Daley, Scarlett Mew Jensen, Dan Goodfellow and Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix are the reigning world champions – may well therefore appeal to the IOC’s LA agenda-setters.
Figueiredo, 60, was born in Zimbabwe to a motorsport family – her father was a race car driver, and both her brothers competed against Ayrton Senna at the karting world championships.
She was recruited to train at the University of Houston, later returning to her alma mater to coach, and led the Russian women to four Olympic medals – including a gold – from 2000-2012.
Figueiredo was initially reluctant to uproot her life when Great Britain came calling in 2013, dangling a carrot in the form of Daley who, though only 19, had already claimed a world title and London 2012 Olympic bronze.
He came to Houston for a short training camp and Figueiredo said: “He blew me away. I just saw something in him that he wanted this gold medal.
“Tom Daley coming along really projected me into a whole other world of diving, because what came with that was not just him as a diver, but personality, fame, red carpet.”
Figueiredo’s house in Houston was the place Daley sought refuge during the “gut-wrenching and emotional time” when he decided to come out via a YouTube video in 2013.
She recalled: “The love that came from the majority of people who admired and loved Tom Daley for who he was, I thought that was pretty incredible.”
Though the Covid-19 forced the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics by a year, Figueiredo insists the pandemic was also the catalyst for Daley’s success at those Games.
She said: “He needed to spend more time resting, recovering and being a professional athlete, and he didn’t really become that until so much later, when he understood winning a gold medal is not just talking about it and dreaming about it. You have to live it.”
Figueiredo also demanded Daley find a hobby to keep his whirring mind occupied – and he returned with the yarn and needles which would soon become his signature, as well as a business venture.
Daley and his coach finally achieved their long-held dream at Tokyo 2020, when he claimed 10m synchro gold with Matty Lee and individual 10m platform bronze.
Figueiredo added: “Even to this day I wish we could go back and put it in a tight compartment and just cherish it.
“Because it was Covid, we didn’t really get to experience the joy of, ‘oh my god, what did we just do?’. I never felt like we celebrated that moment.
“I see a coach’s life like a hamster wheel. You almost go back and say, OK, what’s next? Oh, we’ve got to win more medals.
“And I’m like, Holy Mackerel, do you have any idea how hard that was?”
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