Tom Daley won his first gold of these Games today. Tomorrow he will try to add another. Daley and his dive partner Max Brick won the 10-metre synchro with ease, leading from the second dive right through to the sixth and last. Tomorrow afternoon they both go again, competing against one another in the singles. This time winning gold will be harder.
There were only four teams in the synchro, too small a field for the organisers to bother with awarding a bronze. Daley and Brick beat Australia's Matt Mitcham and Ethan Warren by more than 15 points. In the individual version Mitcham is both the Olympic and World Cup champion. He will be Daley's main opposition.
Mitcham won the Olympic title on his last dive and the moment Daley and Brick spent watching him and Warren prepare for their final effort today was as tense as the synchro got. "We were both shaking because we just didn't know what was going to happen," said Daley.
Minutes later, once the Australians had gone, the English pair were hugging each other. "We know that once we have got the back and the reverse out of the way, we have the twist at the end and that is our banker," Daley said.
He hardly seemed to stop to enjoy the moment before his thoughts turned to 2012. He wants Mitcham's Olympic title, and tomorrow's individual final will be another marker of just how close he is to getting it. "This feels amazing," he said. "Now I've just got one more title to get before the end of my career and that is the Olympic gold. So that's the aim."
Daley beat Mitcham to win the World Championships in 2009 but this has been, he admits, "a rough year", the toughest he has known. A back injury forced him out of the British Championships in June and he withdrew midway through the European Championships in Budapest in August after tearing his triceps muscle. He is wearing strapping on his arm and is still receiving treatment every day "just to get rid of the scar tissue". The adrenaline of competition, he said, meant he did not feel any pain today.
He suffered the injury while practising a new dive – the back three-and-a-half pike. The British diving coach Alexei Evangulov said Daley needs to learn four new dives if he is to have a chance of winning gold in 2012.
"In the World Championships last year he had the weakest degree of difficulty in the world but he still won," said Evangulov. "It was an absolute surprise for all the diving experts. But I know that next year he will need the same difficulty as his rivals."
When he has mastered all four Daley will have "the hardest list in the world". He will be using two of the new ones tomorrow and that will only add to the pressure. "The first couple of times I use them in competition they might not score well," he said, "but, as I use them more, hopefully I will gain some more consistency and become comfortable using them in competition." His injuries prevent him from trying the other two in these Games, they are just too risky while he is recuperating.
"To be comfortable with a dive in competition it takes a couple of years," said Daley. "That is why it has been important to learn them three years out, so by the time 2012 comes around I can do them without worrying.
"Diving well here will give me confidence going into the off-season," he continued, "because this year has been quite up-and-down performance wise."
While Daley has been learning new dives, Evangulov has been trying to figure out who is the 16-year-old's best partner in the synchro. He was due to dive with the 29-year-old Pete Waterfield in Delhi, with Brick standing by as the first reserve. But Waterfield pulled out of the Games because he had concerns over the security. "I like rivalry within in the synchro pair," said Evangulov. He has certainly got that now.
"We have not had much training, myself and Max," said Daley, "but we have come here and come away with a Commonwealth gold medal. By the time the Olympics comes around we will have done a lot more training and we will be even better."
