1.6 seconds – the title of a new Discovery+ documentary about a British diving sensation – is the time it takes for a human body to plunge from the 10m board into a swimming pool. The art of the controlled descent – falling with style, in Buzz Lightyear terms – captures the public imagination every four years, when the Olympics roll around, turning these athletes, briefly, into stars. From the tabloid sensation of Greg Louganis to the medal machine Wu Minxia, it is a precision-engineered discipline that requires personality as well as competence. Enter, then, Tom Daley.
1.6 Seconds tells the story of Daley’s two decades in competitive platform diving. From the tiny 10-year-old tumbling into the Plymouth pool to his valedictory bronze at last year’s Paris games, via Olympics in Beijing, London, Rio and Tokyo, it is a story of precocious brilliance and the price paid for that early success. “I’ve never had any kind of media training,” Daley reveals, as he sits serenely, commenting on home video footage playing on a big screen. “Other than the fact I’ve had a camera following me around since I was 9 or 10 years old.” Those videos, which the team here have revelatory access to, were shot largely by Daley’s father, Rob, a huge figure in his development, who passed away shortly after the Beijing Olympics. This forms the film’s first chapter: Daley, a premature grandee at 31, looking back on Daley, a premature virtuoso, at 10.
