I overcame poverty & dad’s murder to become Olympic star…I don’t regret royal gag that shocked world says Daley Thompson
OLYMPIC legend Daley Thompson once refused to take off new trainers during a steamy encounter with an ex girlfriend – because they meant more to him than sex.
The two-time decathlon gold medallist – who grew up using food and clothes banks on a council estate in London’s Notting Hill – was given his first pair of SL72 Adidas trainers in 1975, five years before his first Olympic win.
Daley says: “It was such an affirmation for me because obviously I couldn’t afford all the shoes and equipment that you need to do the decathlon.
“I had a new girlfriend and we were kind of getting down to it and she said: ‘Are you going to take your shoes off?’
“I said, ‘Lady, are you crazy? There is no way I am taking my shoes off! I don’t care if we don’t but no way!”
Speaking ahead of a new BBC2 feature-length documentary, Daley: Olympic Superstar, he laughs: “I suspect I didn’t take them off for a week or two.
“Getting those was as important a day as winning an Olympic gold medal.”
Turbulent love life
The dad-of-five, now 65, was notorious for his womanising at the height of his sporting fame and once joked that “any woman only has to sit on a bed I’ve slept in to get pregnant”.
He counts Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies among his exes, after they dated in the late Seventies, but says he doesn’t see her as the “one that got away”.
He says: “I never really see it like that because we are still close friends. That’s the real test – the fact we’re still calling each other and I chat to her kids.”
He went on to marry childhood sweetheart Patricia Quinlan, in 1987, and had three children – Rachel, 35, Austin, 33 and Elliot, 30.
But his steely determination to be a world-class athlete often meant they were overshadowed, which is one of his biggest regrets.
The couple split in the late 1990s and he later moved in with Lisa Clayton, with whom he shares sons Alex, 22, and Aaron, 17, but their on-off relationship ended in 2016.
Recently, the Olympic legend has found love again.
He says: “My boys set me up – I think so they don’t have to look after me!
“She’s a professional carer for a living and she’s looking after me. So I’ve chosen somebody well – just in case I become old and infirm!
“I don’t intend to marry again. I don’t see the point.”
Dad’s brutal murder
As a kid, Daley was forced to grow up quickly.
His Scottish mum Lydia held down three jobs including milkwoman. His British Nigerian dad, Frank, ran a minicab firm and also did a stretch in prison.
Aged seven, he was packed off to Sussex boarding school – which he has described as “a place for troubled children.”
Four years later, aged 11, he was summoned to the headmaster’s office and told his father had been brutally murdered on the streets of Streatham, South West London by a jealous husband.
He says: “My mum told me that he and another man were out with two ladies and one of the ladies’ husbands turned up and shot him.
“While he was my father he wasn’t really my dad. He didn’t act how I’d consider a dad to, so it didn’t have the effect on me that it would have had he been a good father.
“All the experiences you have obviously make you the person you are.
“How great those percentages are for different occasions and different bits of trauma, who knows?
“It must have had something to do with my make-up but I never gave it much thought. I just kept moving forward.”
Trauma to glory
Being sent away from home at a young age, Daley says, made him emotionally independent and turned his life around, sparking a love of sport that would lead to his stellar career.
“I’d kind of been looking after myself since I was seven years old,” he says. “I wasn’t reliant on people for my emotional welfare, I just wanted to be the best at something – and I started doing athletics.”
In 1975, Daley joined the Newham and Essex Beagles Athletics club, training as a sprinter.
His coach Bob Mortimer introduced him to the decathlon – ten track and field events over two days – and he soon decided he wanted to go pro.
After falling out with his mum, who disapproved of his career choice, he moved in with a close family friend – who he affectionately calls Auntie Doreen.
Ex Sharron tells the documentary: “When I met Daley he was sleeping on a sofa in his aunt’s council flat and he was borrowing training shoes.
“So I knew it was tough but he would never tell me it was tough. It was just me reading between the lines.
“Things weren’t good at home, his mum never ever came to watch him. All these things endeared me to him even more because he had all of this stacked against him and yet he still had this incredible focus.”
While he was my father he wasn’t really my dad. He didn’t act how I’d consider a dad to, so it didn’t have the effect on me that it would have had he been a good father
Daley Thompson
Looking back, Daley – a four-times world record holder – says: “I was a nobody. I was a young black kid with no parents.”
But the decathlete – praised in the documentary by pal Lord Sebastian Coe as “the greatest Olympian in British history” – never doubted he could succeed.
At the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics he accosted American decathlon star Bruce Jenner – now Caitlyn Jenner – en route to winning a gold medal.
Daley – who turned 18 during the Canadian games – quizzed Bruce relentlessly for training tips.
Caitlyn tells the documentary: “He kept asking me about my training and I kept saying, ‘Hey, kid, I’m kind of busy right now.
“Daley wouldn’t stop talking – this punk little kid. I’m in the middle of trying to win the games, you know.”
By the 1980 Moscow Games, when he bagged his first Olympic gold, Daley was a titan of the decathlon.
He was two years into an unbeaten run from 1978 until 1987 and, in 1984, his sporting immortality was sealed with a victory over his great rival, towering Jurgen Hingsen of West Germany.
He enjoyed playfully taunting Jurgen – now a close friend – between games.
Daley laughs: “When I’ve said I wanted to kill my opponents it was, of course, figuratively. It was all just a game, there were never any real fights.”
Royal shocker
But the British superstar has courted controversy throughout his career.
In one infamous incident, after winning his second gold he told reporters he was going to “give Princess Anne a baby.”
He denies causing any offence to the Royal family, saying: “I didn’t think it was awkward at all. I’ve met her several times since and it’s certainly not been.
“I also met the late Queen Elizabeth a few times in the Nineties and 2000s.
“I went to lunch and dinner at Buckingham Palace. There’d be three or four people just sat around a table and I’d sit and listen as people talked about whatever was going on in the world at the time.”
Things weren’t good at home, his mum never ever came to watch him. All these things endeared me to him even more because he had all of this stacked against him and yet he still had this incredible focus
Sharron Davies
At his winner’s press conference in 1984 he also unzipped his tracksuit top to reveal a t-shirt with the words: ‘Is the world’s second greatest athlete gay?’.
It was widely believed to be aimed at American Carl Lewis – who won four golds that year.
Daley says: “If he had told me he was really offended I would have happily apologised.I didn’t mean to cause him any sleepless nights or anything but nothing happened.”
He jokes: “I’d have probably been cancelled these days.”
For the upcoming Olympics, which kicks off on July 26, Daley is heading to do some commentating for talkSPORT – on the 40th anniversary of his own gold medal victory.
This time sons Aaron and Alex will join him.
He has high hopes for England’s Team GB. “For once it’s looking like our girls are doing well,” he says. “We’ve got a couple in the 800m, another in the 1500m.”
Paris Olympics with 300k condoms
Nearly 15,000 residents – around 10,500 of which are athletes – will be cramming into the Olympic village between July 26 and August 11.
To ensure the athletes feel at home, a number of provisions have been made by organisers.
One of these is the stocking of some 300,000 condoms, in theory enough for around two every day during the run of the Games.
A number of Olympic athletes have opened the door on their steamy lives behind-the-scenes when in camp, including huge sex orgies and parties.
London 2012 had claimed the title of “the raunchiest Games ever”, but the 150,000 condoms ordered paled in comparison to the 450,000 ordered for the Rio Games four years later.
Condoms have been laid on by organisers at every game since Seoul 1988, when it they were used to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS.
Even with an intimacy ban at Tokyo 2020 due to Covid-19, some 150,000 johnnies were handed out.
Read the full story here.
Yet, for him, the decathlon has lost some of its sparkle.
Daley – who has also won three Commonwealth golds and two European Championship golds – says: “For me the sport is more about the personalities.
“Back in the day you used to do loads of interviews.
“Now you don’t get to know them (athletes) so it’s not as emotive.
“Now it seems to be more clinical – like they’re just showing their professional face.”
He retired from professional athletics in 1992 after several injuries and was awarded a CBE in 2000.
Together with Lioness legend Jill Scott, he now sits on the Government’s National Physical Activity Taskforce aimed at getting millions more of us active by 2030.
Daley, who lives in Brighton, says: “I try to do two times ten minutes of fairly intense exercise a day, but it’s nothing like I used to do.
“I’ll do ten minutes of functional exercises first thing in the morning – just squats and getting up and down from the ground, that sort of thing.
“I’ll use something like a rower or bike too.
“As you get old, just getting in and out of chairs and in and out of the car – it all just gets quite hard.
“I’m in reasonable shape and sometimes I find them difficult, so I don’t know how other people cope!
“Me and the bloke in the moustache are forty years apart. I think I’m a completely different person.
“I have five children and, in truth, I live vicariously through them now. They’re all grafters and I’m told they’re good people. That’s good enough for me.”
Is he making up for lost time? “Maybe,” he says.
“I’ve learnt that, in no particular order, the most important things in life are family, friends and health.”
Daley: Olympic Superstar airs on BBC Two, on Tuesday, 9pm.