Tom Daley’s Husband Dustin Lance Black Rescued Him After His Dad’s Death (Exclusive)

Tom Daley, 31, faced unimaginable loss when his father and biggest supporter, Robert Daley, passed away at age 40 after the Olympic diver had just turned 17 years old. 

In the wake of that grief, diving — once a passion they shared — became a lonely and isolating experience. For years, the five-time Olympian felt he had to put on a “brave face” and look like everything was okay, when internally he felt the opposite. 

However, meeting his soon-to-be husband, Dustin Lance Black, in 2013 changed everything. It taught him that vulnerability doesn’t equate to weakness and that diving shouldn’t be the only thing that defines him. 

“I think it was realizing that once you meet your person, you kind of have to have to be able to be vulnerable and share your thoughts and feelings,” Daley tells PEOPLE exclusively. 

After losing his father in May 2011 to brain cancer, the diver felt alone in his experience. Not knowing who to confide in, Daley unconsciously went into “autopilot.” 

“I don’t know what I was thinking but I went to training the next day, I went to the national championships 10 days later,” he reveals in his new documentary 1.6 Seconds. “I just kept going because I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t have anything or anyone else. I was alone.”

Daley coped by suppressing his emotions, pushing aside his grief to focus entirely on diving. He immersed himself in the sport, using its structure and intensity as a way to avoid the pain he wasn’t ready to confront.

“I think my way of doing it was compartmentalizing everything and kind of like shoving it to one side without actually thinking about it properly,” Daley says. 

“So for me, that was something that I found to be a struggle, but once I got into the swing of it and was able to actually start opening up and talking about things, learning that it’s okay to struggle and that you’re not a burden when you offload those struggles onto other people.”

Shortly after winning his first medal at the London 2012 Olympics, Daley met Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black at a dinner party in 2013. 

That same year, Daley publicly revealed that he was bisexual in a YouTube video. The pair later got married in 2017 at Bovey Castle in Devon, not far from Daley’s hometown of Plymouth.

He says with Black as his “sounding board,” he felt grounded and safe to express himself once more. 

“I was realizing that there was so much of my life that I had shut down just to be able to cope, that it was really special to have somebody that could bring out that side of you,” he tells PEOPLE.

Unfortunately, the 2016 Rio Olympics marked what Daley labeled an “all-time low” in his diving career. Going in expecting a gold medal, he instead came away with bronze in the men’s synchronized 10m platform event.

Overwhelmed by the thought that his hard work might never lead to standing at the top of the podium, Daley was on the brink of tears. Black helped him see beyond the disappointment and reconnect with the bigger picture.

“He said to me: ‘Your story doesn’t end here. This isn’t over for you. Maybe you weren’t meant to win an Olympic gold medal here in Rio because your future kid was meant to see you win an Olympic gold medal,’ ” Daley recalls in the doc.

Since then, Daley and Black have built a family together, welcoming two sons via surrogate — Robbie in 2018 and Phoenix in 2023. Robbie was named in honor of Daley’s late father. 

After another four years of training, Daley and his partner Matty Lee won gold in the men’s synchronized 10m platform diving event at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He also won a bronze in the individual 10m platform.

Daley then took silver in the men’s synchronized 10-meter platform at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with his husband and sons proudly cheering from the stands.

“He fell in love with a sport that had both beauty and athleticism. A sport where he could practice his perfectionism,” Black says in the documentary. “A sport that takes place in 1.6 seconds and in that time, a myriad of things have to happen right.”

Feeling content and proud of his diving career — he competed in a total of five Olympic games and won one gold, one silver and three bronze medals — Daley retired in 2024 to focus on being a husband and father.

“Once you find that person, it really does help shift the way that you can deal with everything,” Daley tells PEOPLE.

1.6 Seconds is now streaming on Max globally and on olympics.com in the U.S.