Kyle Kothari, a British Diver from North London, made his Olympic debut in the Men’s 10m platform event in Paris 2024. Considering I have been following diving from the World Championships to the Commonwealth Games ever since a young Tom Daley sparked my own interest in the sport in 2012, my heart skips a beat in disbelief when Kothari pops up on my Zoom screen, donning his white ‘Team GB’ T-shirt. He explains that he just flew back from Paris the night before – I’m all the more lucky to speak to him so soon after his return to the UK.

Candidly reflecting on how he is feeling after competing at his first Olympic Games, he says “it felt like just another competition to me, but maybe I’ll feel different in a few weeks.” Here he provides a looking-glass into the mind of a top athlete, explaining that treating the Olympics like every other competition was the best way to control the nerves, “although usually you don’t have every single person you’ve ever met watching on the outside!”

“[Paris 2024] just felt like just another competition to me”

Despite a successful career – having become European Champion in both the 10m synchro and 10m mixed synchro in 2022 – Kothari has faced serious obstacles. Injuries to his neck and Achilles tendon thwarted his plans to compete at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, but he was determined to make Paris.

I question what motivated him to return to diving after a hiatus in which he landed himself an internship at JP Morgan, off the back of his undergraduate degree in geography and economics at LSE. He cites never having been to an Olympics as his second biggest motivator, “[…] closely behind that I had a lot of self confidence. It was hard to watch the Olympics happen and think ‘I could be in that final’. I knew that if I kept myself injury-free I would get there eventually.”

Kothari did indeed make the 10m platform individual final in Paris 2024, finishing in eleventh place, as compatriot Noah Williams clinched the bronze in a nail-biting final round. His reaction is mixed: “I’d said from the start if I made the final I’d be happy. But now looking back on it, how the final unfolded, the score that won bronze was a score I’d gotten at the World Championships earlier this year. It’s hard for it not to feel like an opportunity missed.” His outlook is more positive when speaking about the success of Great Britain, telling me that the team achieved their most diving medals ever won at an Olympics. He attributes this success to the depth in British diving, leading to “really strong synchro teams.”

What shines through about the sport from our conversation is the respect and camaraderie between divers, both within the same nation and across the world, “we’ve got a really great family vibe across diving […] I’m probably going on holiday to visit some of my competitors, that’s how close we are as mates,” Kothari comments. Amongst many European holidays booked as part of his post-Olympics celebrations, he mentions that “some of us diving boys are going to Ibiza. That’s probably the most exciting” – nice to know Olympic athletes holiday like us regular folks!

“We’ve got a really great family vibe across diving […] I’m probably going on holiday to visit some of my competitors, that’s how close we are as mates”

Kothari is also the first UK Jain athlete to compete at the Olympics. He credits his success to his parents being sporty themselves, and hence allowing him and his brothers to try lots of different sports as children – “that is very rare for our community, especially within aquatics sports.” Sport England research suggests 93% of Asian adults in the UK do not swim. Kothari informs me that the greatest uptake of diving comes from children going to aquatics centres and seeing divers training – if children from a South Asian background aren’t going to swimming pools in the first place, then they will never try diving.

The choice between higher level study and elite sports is another hurdle within a culture that places heavy emphasis on education. When the decision is between a great university or being near a training facility, Kothari states “in the UK sportspeople are paid absolutely nothing, so it then becomes a financial decision. If you’re not privileged, you won’t make the decision to sacrifice something for sport.”

Kothari acknowledges he was lucky enough to have his training facilities in Stratford, so he was able to attend LSE and have the best of both worlds. While he accredits the National Lottery funding as the reason he is able to be a full-time athlete, he also explains that the level of pay hasn’t changed since he joined in 2014, so as inflation and the cost-of-living have increased, funding issues have become more prevalent.

With the recent announcement of Tom Daley’s retirement, I tentatively inquire about Kothari’s plans for LA 2028, hoping that the GB diving team won’t be suffering other major losses. “The plan is to make it onto a synchro team!” (I breathe a sigh of relief.) “I’m not sure whether I’m done with individual diving, I’ll have to make a call on whether I’m good enough to medal. But I definitely would stick around for LA, I think it would be really cool.”

As our conversation comes to a close, I thank Kothari and allow him to return to his celebrations, whilst I work out how feasible it is for me to book tickets for LA 2028.