Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix is owed a nice Olympic Games since she almost gave up diving after her debilitating first experience at the Games.
At 16, she was the youngest member of the British diving team in Tokyo and reached the final of the 10m platform, finishing seventh.
On the outside, everything looked rosy: there was a smiling new star emerging with a confident “hello world” glow, but on the inside, she was a lost child. The mask she wore after the competition in those Covid days hid thoughts of despair.
“I was going through a really tough time mentally. I wasn’t doing well,” she says. “When I went to Tokyo, I felt really lonely, really isolated and I missed my family. I had just finished my GCSEs and it was really, really stressful. I felt really overwhelmed.
“When I was there, I wasn’t enjoying anything, not even diving, not even socialising, so it was even harder. After Tokyo, I didn’t take much time off, so when I went back to training, I didn’t feel like I had rested mentally.
“I made the decision to change coaches because either I changed my surroundings or I quit completely. I thought about quitting. I talked a lot about my hatred of the sport, but I couldn’t quit. So I started to rebuild my relationship with diving.”
He relied on the twin pillars of his new coach Alex Rochas and his Christian faith to overcome the fear that was holding him back from his reckless profession. The demons retreated. Three years later, he is in a much healthier state.
“Tokyo seems like a long time ago. I was looking at photos the other day and thought, ‘I’ve changed a lot. ’ I could see the change in my face and how I present myself,” she says.
“I used to see a smile as a way to make people not worry, whereas now I actually refer to the smile that I have.”
In February, she won the individual bronze medal at the World Swimming Championships in Doha and gold in the team event. She made good on her promise of a podium finish in Paris, where she won bronze in the synchronised 10-metre platform with diving partner Lois Toulson. On Tuesday afternoon, she will compete in the individual 10-metre platform final. The Bible study she will undertake before diving will be part of her antidote to the pressure of expectations.
“Mentally I have changed a lot because I have a focus that is more than just having to prove myself to people,” he says.
“Sometimes I feel like as athletes our identity is dependent on whether our competition has been good, whereas for me my identity in Christ is so total and so unshakable that it doesn’t matter how my competition goes. Whatever happens, happens. I just give it to God.”
“It would mean a lot to win an Olympic medal, of course, but it wouldn’t change who I am. It wouldn’t change what my core beliefs are.”
What an Olympic medal might do is finally change the “daughter of” label that haunts her. Her French father Fred Sirieix, the television personality, is part of the BBC team Covering the Olympics, but she no longer resents being chosen as an extra celebrity. She is glad that he and her Italian mother, Alex, are there after the loneliness of Tokyo.
“The most exciting thing is that my family is coming to see the show,” he says. “My father once jumped off a 10-metre board. He jumped, he didn’t dive. I told him: ‘Please don’t jump, you’ll hurt yourself.’ He jumped off a lower board and, after seeing that, thank God he didn’t jump 10 metres. I have the jumping genes.”
A swimmer and gymnast who was recruited at the age of eight by the Crystal Palace Diving Club, she forged her own path but may have inherited some of her father’s showmanship.
“I feel like diving is a performance. We have judges and an audience. I see it as a performance art and I like that. My parents call me a chorister,” she says. “I really like watching people. I want everyone to have fun. I want it to be exciting for them. So I see it as a performance.”
“I’m not made for worldly life”
He never made it to the stage at Harris Academy School in Bermondsey. “I didn’t have time, I was jumping around. I was on the world stage!”
Since leaving the sport after finishing high school, she has been a full-time athlete for a year in preparation for the Games to give herself the best chance of realising her great potential. That will change after Paris, as she has decided to go to university to study journalism.
He will continue to dive, but part-time. The world is a big place and, whatever these Games bring, he wants to experience it.
“I don’t want to limit myself. I can’t just be an athlete. I’ve been doing it for a year and I already want to do something else. I’m not made for the mundane life,” she says.
A version of this article was first published in July.
