Richard Gillisprofiles the 14-year-old wunderkind of British diving, Tom Daley, and considers the pros and cons of involvement in elite athletics at such an age.
THE SPORT Industry Awards are a steak-and-champagne gong-fest in the West End of London, which draw a cynical crowd of agents, ad men and sports hacks, who sit and chew while celebrities hand out silverware to, well, agents, ad men and sports hacks.
For the first half an hour of this year's ceremony, the hosts, ex- England rugby player Martin Bayfield (now a media pundit) and TV anchor Gabby Logan, were like two stand-ups playing the Glasgow Empire: their well-rehearsed one-liners were greeted with silence, broken only by the occasional clink of bottle on glass.
Then, appearing on stage dressed in a tux, like a nephew at a wedding, came the child prodigy Tom Daley, and everything changed. Faces previously stuck in a careworn rictus of pessimism suddenly lightened. On the next table, a man in a red bow-tie stood up, clapping his hands above his head and shouting, "Go, Tom!" before sitting back down sheepishly.
"My aim is to get a gold in front of a home crowd in London in 2012," said Daley, a statement that was met with something approaching hysteria.
Daley is the new wunderkind of British sport, a 14-year-old diver from Plymouth, who will travel to Beijing as one of the UK's youngest-ever Olympians courtesy of winning both the individual and synchronised 10-metre platform at the 2008 British Championships.
To this remarkable achievement is added gold at the European Championships in Eindhoven in March, where he stunned judges into awarding perfect 10s in two of his three final dives. His age at this point was 13 years and 10 months.
His appearance at the Sport Industry Awards was just one of a host of media and sponsor appearances that come with life as a sports personality, one that the BBC is recording as a documentary. In the absence of many household names in Team GB, Daley has become the poster boy for the British Olympic Association, presenting Baftas and giving interviews at the team kit launch.
When he won qualification, the BOA, sensing the story, put out a press release naming him as the youngest-ever British male Olympian. This claim was undermined when Kenneth Lester, the cox to a rowing pair at the 1960 Games in Rome, aged 13 years and 144 days, rang the BOA offices in London to point out their mistake (Tom Daley will be aged 14 years and 81 days when the Olympic competition begins in August).
"I can tell him it will be a fantastic experience," said Lester, who admitted to feeling guilty for bursting Tom's bubble. "Forty or more years ago the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed. As a 13-year-old I walked around the streets of Rome on my own. I enjoyed every moment, going to the opening and closing ceremonies, coming home in the same party as Anita Lonsbrough, who had won a gold. It was all wonderful."
The youngest member of the Irish Olympic team in Beijing will be Aisling Cooney, an 18-year-old swimmer from Dublin, a relative veteran. Olympic legend has it that a nine-year-old boy coxed a Dutch rowing crew to gold at the 1900 Games in Paris. Another diver, the American Marjorie Gestring, aged 13 years and 268 days, is on record as the youngest individual gold medallist, winning the three-metre springboard in Berlin - a record that still stands.
But despite the warm feelings toward Tom Daley, his age is a controversial issue to some sports administrators, who believe the IOC guidelines need to be tightened. Currently, Olympic divers must be 14 years of age by the end of the calendar year the Olympics takes place. Fencing is also open to young teenagers, with an age limit of 13.
Equestrian competitors must be 18 unless there are "exceptional circumstances". And even gymnasts must wait until their 16th birthday.
Some within the sport are calling for an even stricter line. The head of the Federation of International Gymnastics (FIG) noted earlier this year that contestants younger than 16 are able to compete in international events outside of the Olympics.
One of the most famous Olympians of the past quarter century, the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, would not be allowed to compete were the same rules applied in 1976 in Montreal, when she won gold after famously being awarded a perfect 10 by judges.
The counterview, as held by the BOA, is that athletes should be supported whenever they reach their prime, be that 14 or 40.
"Athletes in any sport have a certain shelf life and diving is quite a peculiar sport," said a spokesman for the British swimming team. "For example, Tom Daley might grow to six-and-a-half feet over the next six, 12 or 18 months. That and diving might not go hand in hand."
And though Daley has earned his place on the team, he won't be the only British youngster in Beijing.
The BOA knows that in the eyes of the British public, judgements as to the relative success of the London 2012 Olympics will be based on the medal table. There is considerable political pressure to produce the goods and performance director Clive Woodward, the former England and British and Irish Lions rugby coach, has targeted fourth place in the 2012 rankings. To this end, an ambitious youth-development programme has been put in place whereby 175 teenage British athletes travel to the Beijing Olympics, even though they will not be competing.
Each of them will spend seven days at Team GB's Macau training camp and at the Games themselves. The programme recognises 40 sporting disciplines and each sport will be allowed to send up to three athletes plus a coach, who will act as team leader during the visit.
The justification for the scheme is a statistic that shows the value of familiarising teenagers with the sheer scale of the Olympics. Over the past five summer Olympics, 70 per cent of Britain's gold-medal winners had competed in an Olympics before. Of the 16 British gold medallists at Athens in 2004, three-quarters had already been to an Olympics and 72.5 per cent of those who won a medal of any colour had previous Games experience.
First-time competitors can become so distracted they lose their focus, said a BOA spokesperson, and the point of competing in the Games is diluted. The plan, borrowed from the successful Australian Olympic team, tries to help young athletes deal with this culture shock more quickly, so helping them perform at their peak. It is hoped that by being around elite competitors, the kids will see the sacrifices required to make it to the top.
One aspiring Olympian is Ali Masters, a 15-year-old windsurfer, who has hopes of competing at London 2012.
"It's been fantastic for him, even if it stops tomorrow," his father, Chris, tells The Irish Times. "The places he's been, the things he's done, the people he's met. I have to remind him it's not about the results, it's about the experience. That's what he'll remember when it's over, whether he comes first, second or 10th is irrelevant."
There are pros and cons to the sporting life, he says, a series of compromises every parent wrestles with daily.
"Ali has missed some of what kids of his age do; his life is very structured; he never gets to just bum around with his mates. The upside is that he has incredible self-confidence and self-belief. He genuinely believes that if he wants something he can go and get it."
Ali's tunnel vision is part of the elite athlete's tool-kit, essential if he is to make it. And it is here the roles of parents and of the rest of Ali's support network diverge. It's important, says Chris, to be strong enough to stand up and make difficult decisions.
A rational analysis suggests the odds of his son achieving his goal are quite slim - there is just one place for windsurfing in Team GB. It's a very sensitive area. Chris's fears for his son are very real; most young sports people don't make it to the very top. What happens then? How do they respond? Every parent will recognise the situation; you live with the anxiety of failure so your children don't have to.
"The last thing I want to do is take away his dream," says Chris. "But what do I say, 'don't worry about school for the next four years'? I've spent the last six months quietly raising the issue of Plan Bs, which doesn't make me popular."
Yet, he says, he wouldn't change a thing: "The positives vastly outweigh the negatives, but it does require very careful management to achieve the best possible balance for the whole family."