ES Lifestyle newsletter The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive trends and interviews from fashion, lifestyle to travel every week, by email Update newsletter preferences

For Tom Daley, proposing to his partner was a competition. Both had been thinking about it for months; it was just a matter of who asked first. ‘There was a race,’ laughs the 21-year-old Olympic medal-winning diver, with a look that makes it clear that his now-fiancé, American film-maker Dustin Lance Black, never stood a chance of winning. The pair were in Black’s house on Sunset Strip in Hollywood. ‘I took the ring with me from London,’ Daley says, looking down at his own engagement ring — silver, featuring a compact diamond, it was designed by Black. ‘I could never find a place where we were alone. It’s scary to ask, and you’re psyched up. Eventually I decided I had to do it and it ended up being in the house. Lance was surprised, but then he went and got the ring he’d bought for me. He’d been having a similar problem. We’d both told each other’s parents before flying out.’

We meet at the London Aquatics Centre, where Daley trains. He’s wearing Adidas grey shorts (his dark thigh hair is shaved ‘to make my legs look straighter and show muscle definition in competitions’), a blue T-shirt and cheery green ankle socks, and is compact and graceful, with clear, tanned skin, tidy brown hair and impeccable manners — while I’m with him, he holds doors open for me and stops to offer a passing woman directions to a yoga class. He appears younger than 21. He has a set of Olympic rings tattooed on the inside of his gently curving right bicep, an 18th birthday gift from his mother, and a gold ring with the Olympic hoops on it — ‘which I bought after 2008 when I was too young to get a tattoo.’

His fiancé, best known for the HBO series Big Love and the film Milk, is 41, but ‘when people meet Lance, they usually guess he’s 25,’ says Daley. Initially, though, there were ‘generational differences’: ‘He wasn’t on

Instagram; I taught him that.’ In return, Black applies Daley’s fake tan — ‘I wear it when I’m feeling pasty’ — and tolerates his ‘experimental baking’, more of which later. Daley believes he’s marrying for the right reasons: ‘Marriage is a sign of commitment between two people and something I always thought would happen when I was a kid. I didn’t know it would be with a man, but here he is.’

Perhaps his maturity is down to his having been in professional sport since the age of eight. Daley won his first Olympic medal for Team GB at London 2012, aged 18, taking bronze in the 10m platform category, and becoming Britain’s first individual diving medallist for 52 years. It was impossible not to root for the boy from Devon who had grown up in the public eye; who was blamed, aged 14, by his synchronised diving partner Blake Aldridge, then 26, for not winning any medals at the Beijing 2008 Olympics; who at 17 spoke movingly about his father Robert, who died in 2011, aged 40, from a brain tumour. Daley dedicated his Olympic medal to him, his ‘biggest champion’.

Neither of his parents was sporty (his mother works in the finance department at a pre-school, his father was an electrician). Daley discovered his affinity for diving aged seven when he saw people doing it at the local pool, thought he’d give it a go and loved ‘the rush it gave me’. He was spotted by a coach aged eight and went straight into competitive diving. Robert gave up his job to travel with his son. Diagnosed with cancer in 2006, he was still ‘at every training session, every competition’: at the Sheffield World Series in 2011 Daley was pictured in the crowd, hugging his father whose health was then rapidly deteriorating. ‘I have a heart-shaped box with some of his ashes in it on my bedside table. I think of him every day. I work as hard as I possibly can — making him proud is a big motivation. He never met Lance; life throws some tough curve balls.’ Daley supports The Brain Tumour Charity through fundraising, including a sponsored skydive last year that raised nearly £6,000.

He’s also working with the Cartoon Network on its Stop Bullying: Speak Up campaign. When he returned to school in Plymouth after Beijing, he was ‘brought back down to earth with a massive bump’ by bullies who made him doubt whether he wanted to continue as an athlete. ‘Before that there was the odd comment like “Speedo boy” but it increased. Things were thrown at me, or I was rugby-tackled to the floor for no reason. People started finding it funny. It feels as if the whole world is against you, you feel isolated, you don’t want to go to school, and you start doubting who you are and what you believe in.’

The campaign encourages teachers, students and parents to ‘be a buddy’, to watch out for those who might be being bullied and offer support. Daley has made a short video for the campaign, talking about his experience and the importance of being a buddy. ‘I wish I’d known it was going to be fine when I felt like I was in a black hole I would never get out of,’ he says now. ‘The minute you speak to someone it’s better, but I worried about telling my parents. You don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable.’

Aged 14, he was awarded a scholarship to Plymouth College, which specialises in sport, and left his bullies behind. But he still received online abuse from trolls (when he came out, a semi-professional footballer was arrested by Welsh police after homophobic messages about Daley were posted, but wasn’t charged). ‘I’ve learned to ignore it, but harsh messages stick in your head, no matter how many positive messages you get.’ He has other-wise used the internet to his advantage. He came out as bisexual in a YouTube video in December 2013, nine months after meeting Black. ‘I was terrified before it went out,’ he says. ‘I’d built it up, thinking it would be the end of the world, but once I told people, the weight came off my shoulders. I chose YouTube because I didn’t want anyone to twist my words — I did a few takes because I was so nervous, I kept stumbling over my words.’ Did being in love influence his decision to go public? ‘Yeah. It took me by surprise, I was like “this is it” — it hits you hard. Being happy in general makes life so much easier.’ He’s positive about the future for LGBTQ people. ‘Sexuality didn’t come into it when I was bullied, but for so many years being LGBTQ was one of the biggest things you would be bullied for at school. Hopefully, as time goes on, it will be a completely accepted thing that people won’t have to think about.’

Daley met Black at a dinner in Los Angeles when he was visiting for the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards (he won favourite UK sports star). It’s his first relationship with a man. ‘We started talking and that was it,’ he says, smiling. ‘I was nervous at the beginning — you really review texts: can you do an emoji, how many kisses or none? When I put my number in his phone I put “Call me” with a wink face and then I was like, “Oh my God, should I have done that?” ’ When he flew back to London, they texted for six weeks before Black came over for Daley’s 19th birthday. Now they live together in London and LA, FaceTiming when they’re apart. They are leaving wedding plans until after the Olympics next year — ‘We haven’t thought about anything, not even the cake’ — and are making sacrifices for Team GB in the meantime. ‘My boyfriend isn’t drinking until after Rio, with me,’ says Daley. ‘It makes it a lot easier when someone’s doing it with you. Having a glass of something will be the first thing I do after the Olympic platform final.’

They would like children and Daley says he will be the ‘bad cop’ parent — ‘If the kid were to smile at Lance, he’d break’ — and he’d also like them to do sport: ‘It teaches good discipline. I benefited from that — learning about structure, how to set goals and manage my time. It helps with everyday life.’

He certainly has a precise schedule, waking at 6.15am and eating the same thing for breakfast every day: a third of a cup of porridge oats with skimmed milk, no salt, and four eggs. He takes the Tube to Stratford where he trains until lunch (a recovery protein shake and a chicken salad), then it’s more training and home by 4.30pm. He and Black have ‘boring’ dinners of chicken or fish with vegetables, and try not to cave in to their ‘terrible sweet tooths’ (‘There are so many sacrifices you have to make, whether it’s hanging out with friends or being able to have a cheeseburger’), though he does treat himself sometimes. ‘I love to bake but I’m not a pretty baker. I make experimental cheesecakes, trying to make them healthy with protein. I’d love to do The Great British Bake Off.’ Given the chance to have a ‘treat day’, he’d have ice cream... ‘or cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding, treacle sponge...’ Twice a week he does spin classes for cardio, and there’s also a weekly ballet session. ‘I’m not great at dancing but I enjoy the challenge.’

For now, all roads lead to Rio and beyond. Divers usually keep going until around 30, so Daley still has a long career ahead. Giving it all up for a languid life of domestic bliss and eating cheesecake doesn’t appeal: ‘Every time I dive I feel an adrenaline rush like I did that first time. Until my body fails on me, I will keep going.’

Portraits by Cemeron McNee, styled by Anish Patel. Tom Daley is ambassador for Cartoon Network’s anti-bullying campaign CN Buddy Network, which launches on 16 November (cartoonnetwork.co.uk/beabuddy)