All about Tom Daley’s inspiring coach Jane Figueiredo, and how she protected him from the tabloids
Jane Figueiredo has been coaching Tom Daley since 2013. (Getty)
GB diver Tom Daley and his diving partner Noah Williams won a silver medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics today – but what about the coach that made Daley the five-time Olympic champion that he is?
Jane Figueiredo is the influential and inspiring coach who guided Daley to Olympic bronze at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and Olympic gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Figueiredo is a diver turned multi-medal winning coach, originally from Rhodesia – now known as Zimbabwe.
Speaking to British Swimming, Figueiredo said she went from being a swimmer to a diver after she stopped enjoying the former.
“I was a swimmer first. But then that was kind of boring – no disrespect to all the swimmers out there! I don’t remember exactly the day I decided, but I was a swimmer and then I just wasn’t really enjoying that and asked my mum to look into diving.”
She said the diving community in Rhodesia at the time was “incredible” and eventually became a diver for Portugal at the 1984 Olympics.
It was in 1988 that she began her coaching career for the University of Houston. Daley was not Figueiredo’s first British diver. In fact, she recruited British diver Olivia Clark in the 1990s but Clark did not qualify for the 1996 Olympics.
Then Figueiredo was asked to coach the GB Olympic diving team for 1996 instead.
“It was my first Olympic experience as a coach and one I’ll never, ever forget,” she said.
It was in 2013 that Figueiredo first began coaching Daley. Figueiredo called him a “a very special person”.
“I always say he’s a special person first, because the diving was secondary for me. I would say that making the decision to come and coach Tom was first of all because of the way he made me feel when he came to see me, visit me and train with me,” she said.
“Coaches always talk about how you’re only going to get so many athletes in your whole career and you’re going to be very lucky to have those, and they may never come around again. Then comes along Tom Daley. Although he was a bronze medallist in London, and very worthy of that, there was just so much more I could see in him that we could develop, and shoot for a gold medal,” Figueiredo continued.
Under Figueiredo’s guidance, Daley did achieve gold.
Figueiredo and Daley are very close, with Daley even talking to her about his desires to start a family with his partner Dustin Lance Black, according to FINA Aquatics World Magazine. She offered advice and questioned how he was going to manage training as a diver, having a family, and being a celebrity – but clearly he has succeeded in all areas of his life so far.
Speaking about the birth of Daley’s first son Robbie, she said: “Since he’s had the baby he’s been like another person. So my fears disappeared, turned into happiness and joy to see how he’s changed as a person and how much love he shows for this baby, Robbie (Robert Ray Black-Daley). He brings him to the pool, though he always asks, ‘Jane, can I bring Robbie to the pool because Lance is away and I don’t have a place to put him?’”
“We just work around it. He brings the baby and I love the baby,” she continued.
Additionally, Figueiredo was there for Daley when he first started dating Lance Black and the tabloids were planning to out him as gay.
She said: “He came to America to stay with me when all the papers were going to reveal that he was gay. So he was in my house and he came and he said, ‘I want to come stay there with you. I want to get out of Great Britain.'”
However, he beat the tabloids at their own game and came out on his own terms in 2013 in an emotional YouTube video.
Figueiredo added that her divers are her “source of inspiration” so it must be deeply gratifying for her to see Daley win silver at the Paris Olympics today.
