Tom Daley has criticised countries that are hostile to the LGBTQ+ community but choose to host major sporting events.
The 27-year-old won gold in the 10 metre synchronised platform diving competition at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo – a first for the professional diver.
Daley previously won two bronze medals at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, as well as a third at Tokyo 2020.
In an interview with GQ, he spoke about homophobic comments made against him on Russian TV during this year’s Games.
“There are ten countries where [being LGBTQ+] is punishable by death that are still competing at the Olympic Games,” Daley explained. “So, yeah. I only found out recently [about the comments]. I didn’t know that at the time: I was very much in an Olympic bubble.”
The diver went on to state that countries “criminalising” the community should think twice about “hosting major sporting events.”
He added: “But I just think that any country that has, you know, laws criminalising LGBT shouldn’t be hosting major sporting events. A country like Russia should not be hosting major sporting events [or] the World Cup in Qatar. No wonder there’s no out footballers. When you see how racism in sport is still so prevalent, homophobia is definitely going to be there [too].”
Daley also said that he hasn’t heard of Boris Johnson intervening in some of the competing nations in the Commonwealth Games criminalising LGBTQ+ people as he said he would.
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