Longtime diving coach Jane Figueiredo was honored Monday with the International Olympic Committee Coaches Lifetime Achievement Award.
Figueiredo was born in Zimbabwe, dove for Portugal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and spent three decades at the University of Houston, competing and then coaching.
She is best known as British diver Tom Daley’s coach for the last decade of his career before he retired after the Paris Olympics.
Figueiredo reflected on her career in an interview (lightly edited for length and clarity):
NBCSports.com: What does this award mean to you?
Figueiredo: It’s the culmination of many, many years of grinding hard work. Challenges, but also, obviously, the recognition coming from the International Olympic Committee is something all of us dream about. So I’m very, very proud to have received this award, and certainly there’s some incredible coaches out there. So very, very honored.
NBCSports.com: How does somebody who grew up in Zimbabwe end up diving for Portugal at the 1984 Olympics?
Figueiredo: My dad is Portuguese, and my mom is Scottish. Their parents ended up in Malawi, and then my dad was in the Portuguese army in Mozambique. Then my parents met in southern Africa, and the rest is history. The reason I got to compete for Portugal was when my parents decided to move to South Africa, Zimbabwe were not too keen for me to represent them, because my family were no longer living in Zimbabwe. So my dad reached out to the Portuguese Olympic federation and said, my daughter’s diving in the U.S. I would love for her to represent Portugal. Would you consider her?
NBCSports.com: You were diving at the University of Houston at the time. How did you get recruited to go there?
Figueiredo: We had some other divers from Zimbabwe, such a small little country. Divers older than myself were looking to go dive in the States and further their careers, and the U.S. came knocking. So we all actually went to the same place, University of Houston. A coach there, Terry Faulkenberry (of the Woodlands Diving Team), started this pipeline.
NBCSports.com: You went from competing for Houston to becoming the program’s head coach in 1990. Why did you make the move in 2014 to leave to coach Great Britain?
Figueiredo: (While at Houston) I recruited Russian divers and started an incredible dream, really, of coaching them to Olympic medals (in the 1990s and 2000s). The British Diving national performance director at the time, Russian Alexei Evangulov, recruited me out of Houston and said Tom Daley’s looking for a coach. Would you come to London? I was like, no, I’m not moving to London. But Tom was so persuasive and so charismatic and so wonderful. After coaching the Russian girls, these opportunities come around very rarely. Tom Daley coming around and asking me to coach him was going to be a rare occasion. And I thought, you know what, I’m going to go for it.
NBCSports.com: You said Tom was persuasive. Can you share anything that he might have said or even offered to get you to come over?
Figueiredo: He came over on his first visit, just sort of nonchalantly (asked) can I come train with you, and by the way, can I come stay with you? We didn’t really know each other very well. I just said, sure, I don’t have any problem with that. I have a big house, come and stay. And he said, well, actually, Jane, I’m here to try to persuade you to come to London. He said, I want to win a gold medal, and you’ve coached the Russian girls to a gold medal (Vera Ilyina and Yulia Pakhalina at the 2000 Sydney Games), and my head coach in London, Evangulov, he thinks you’d be great for me. So we sat at the kitchen table. He said, tell me what you think I’ve got to do to get a gold medal.
I had been watching Tom’s diving over the course of a few years. I said, well, you’re scruffy. Your legs are bent. Your toes are not pointed. You’re not very flexible. His eyes were huge, and he’s like, really? I’m like, really, you aren’t going to win a gold medal unless you fix all of those things.
Of course, he was the superstar (world champion at age 15 in 2009; Olympic bronze medalist in 2012). He was this guy coming up through the ranks, and there were things about him that I always sort of thought, well, he’s got some qualities that need to be cleaned up. So I was very open in telling him that, not thinking that I was going to have fix those problems (laughs). The rest is history.
NBCSports.com: Athletes and coaches don’t often spend a decade together like you and Tom did. What made it work so well for you two?
Figueiredo: We really had the same vision, the same dream. But I was going to have to move and sacrifice some things to make that happen. But at the time, when you see somebody as talented as him, and he trained with me the first few days, and there was this incredible work ethic and this incredible desire and passion, and it was fun. I hadn’t laughed like that in so long. Coaching Russian people, you don’t get to laugh too much. So it was quite different. I could see that it was going to be something that could be a lot more fun.
It was very, very hard, because I had left my family and friends, moved to London. It was hard for him, too, because there was a lot of expectation on both of us. When you have that much expectation on the dream boy of Great Britain, I didn’t really feel that pressure until I actually moved, and then I understood this was maybe going to be a lot more difficult than I thought.
NBCSports.com: Can you tell me something about Tom that maybe only a few people know?
Figueiredo: He’s completely genuine. What do I mean by genuine? First of all, he has millions of fans all over the world, but he never says no. He never says no to an autograph. He never says no to pictures. That’s really tough when you’re very famous like Tom — he’s famous everywhere in the world, not just in Great Britain. I just love that about him. Famous people, you don’t really know their true colors, the way it really is. But look at Tom’s Instagram. Look at his coming out video. Look at all his interviews.
Or our relationship on the deck and how we’ve been together. It shows the genuine pair there. It takes him a while to be able to articulate how he really feels, and that’s taken us a long time, but better late than never.
NBCSports.com: Do you have a favorite moment that you can pick out from your coaching career? Was it the gold that Tom and Matty Lee won at the Tokyo Olympics?
Figueiredo: Significant moments, there’s two. One is a very beautiful story, the one of winning the gold medal finally (in Tokyo with Daley and Lee). Then there’s one of heartache and defining moments (on the road) to that gold medal, which is our inability to win the gold medal in Rio (Daley did not reach the individual platform final at the 2016 Olympics). You know that cliché, that saying about your greatest failures become your greatest successes? You wouldn’t actually believe that phrase unless you’d actually lived it. So for Tom and I, the defining moments, that one in Rio, that was probably the hardest time I’ve ever had as a coach because we didn’t fulfill our expectations and our dreams. But the trajectory from that moment just makes it all worthwhile.
NBCSports.com: Tom has retired. What is next for you?
Figueiredo: Well, I’m tired (laughs), but we have a lot of incredible talent in Great Britain. Tom was — and is, I believe — the world of diving. He adds things to our sport, that’s why people love to watch diving. But he’s done now — for the moment — whether that will actually be a reality, I don’t know, but I would like to think that he’s fulfilled every dream he had as a young boy.
So for me, I miss Tom every single day. He’s one of those athletes I never thought about, oh my god, I’ve got to get up, go to work, go to coaching. I just bounced out of bed and ran to the pool. It was so wonderful an experience to coach somebody like Tom.
I’m not sure that I feel that way today because I’m exhausted from the Olympic journeys, but as a coach, there’s a moment where you bounce back and you carry on that journey. You have to find the special things in divers that are coming up. There will be those kids that will inspire me and motivate me. It’s just going to take a little bit of time.
NBCSports.com: What are your duties with British diving right now?
Figueiredo: I’m the head coach at the high performance center in London. Aquatics GB have been incredibly supportive, and they’ve been on this journey with Tom and I for the last 11 years, and Matty Lee. Now we have (Paris Olympic medalists including) Noah Williams, Scarlett Mew Jensen, Andrea Spendolini Sirieix. So we were very, very successful in Paris, and will continue to try to thrive and continue to be successful.
NBCSports.com: Is there anything else about your story we haven’t covered?
Figueiredo: I’ve been prodded — Jane, when are you going to write a book? That seems like such an overwhelming project, but it could be something quite interesting. I’ve just got to think about what would it be, and how could it be significant and not just a coaching book necessarily. Although there are no diving books out in the world. So who knows. Maybe that’ll be a project I can embark on.
NBCSports.com: Well, you know, what would make a great last chapter is the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Maybe you go back to LA where you competed in 1984. Maybe Tom competes there, since he lives there. Everything would come together, right?
Figueiredo: I think about that. I want you to know that is not something that I haven’t thought about, to go back to Los Angeles and my very, very first Olympics would be pretty darn special.
I don’t know if I can convince Tom of the same thing, but I mention to him all the time: just because you say you’re retired doesn’t mean you’re actually retired. Hey, Lindsey Vonn (is coming back), I just saw that a minute ago.
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