Tom Daley has opened up about his struggle with an eating disorder and the “shame” he felt after being told to hide being gay. 

The recently retired Olympian, who came out in 2013 and married husband Dustin Lance-Black in 2017, is opening up about his hardships in new feature documentary Tom Daley: 1.6 seconds. 

Tom Daley: 1.6 seconds – a collaboration between Warner Bros. Discovery and the Olympic Channel – will premiere on discovery+ in Great Britain and Ireland, and on Mac across mainland Europe, on Sunday (1 June). 

The 90-minute tells the five-time Olympic medallists’s life story and sees Daley open up about challenges he’s encouraged throughout his career, including coming out in the media. 

‘I was suddenly filled with shame’

He says in the documentary: “I remember organising a party and telling my management he [Dustin Lance Black] was coming. They [his management team] said to ‘be careful being photographed with Lance, he is a big LGBT activist. You don’t want people thinking you are gay’. 

Daley continued: “I was suddenly filled with shame. We had all sorts of crisis meetings. You’re gonna lose all your sponsorship. You’re gonna lose all your fans.

“Like, how are you ever gonna be able to compete in the Middle East, in Russia, in all of these countries? Filling me with fear about what I should and shouldn’t do.” 

Elsewhere in the documentary Daley bravely opens up about his eating disorder. 

‘I still feel ashamed talking about it now’

He said: “At the end of 2011 I was told that I would have to lose weight by our performance director at British diving. And that I was overweight and that I needed to look slimmer, leaner and more like I did in 2008.” 

In 2008, Daley was only 14 – the second youngest male Olympian in British history. 

He said of being critiqued over his weight: “It was the first time where I felt that I was being looked at and judged not for how I did in the diving pool, but for how I looked. I took some quite drastic measures to make sure the food didn’t stay in my stomach. It was all that I could think about in the lead-up to the Olympic Games.

“I still feel ashamed talking about it now. Once you’re on the other side, it feels so easy to stop and ask for help. But when you’re in it, you feel like you can’t be helped.

“In my head, guys didn’t have eating orders, guys didn’t have any problems with mental health. Guys were meant to be macho.” Daley shares that he felt very alone during this time. 

In speaking about his documentary to The Times, Daley also shared that he “struggles” with his body image.

The Olympic Channel will premiere the documentary via Olympics.com in the territories outside of Europe, including in the United States, on 1 June.

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