Paris Olympics 2024: As Tom Daley takes silver with Noah Williams, who is his coach Jane Figueiredo?

Whilst Noah Williams has won his first Olympic medal, Tom Daley now has a gold medal, one silver and three bronze medals (from previous Olympics), he won gold in the event at the Tokyo Olympics. His Zimbabwe-born coach Jane Figueiredo told The Telegraph before he won the silver medal that “Daley now stands with the American Greg Louganis and the Italian Klaus Dibiasi among the three GOATS in men’s diving history,” and also said: “Almost like you have Federer, Nadal and Djokovic in tennis, you have Dibiasi, Louganis and Daley. He is among the greats – 100 per cent.”

Jane Figueired moved to London in January of 2014 to coach Tom Daley and told the British Swimming Organisation that “Coaches always talk about how you’re only going to get so many athletes in your whole career and you’re going to be very lucky to have those, and they may never come around again. Then comes along Tom Daley. Although he was a bronze medallist in London, and very worthy of that, there was just so much more I could see in him that we could develop, and shoot for a gold medal.”

Before coaching Tom Daley, Jane Figueired was the head coach of the diving programme at the University of Houston. In 2021, she joined British aquatics’ leading coaches to start a new UK Sport programme to help boost the representation of women in top-level sport. 

In May 2024, it was confirmed that Tom Daley would compete at a fifth Olympics in Paris 2024. He took time away from diving after winning gold alongside Matty Lee in the men’s synchronised 10m platform event but decided to return to compete again. His partner for the Paris Olympics Noah Williams said at the time that “No one else in the world would take two years out and be as good as he.”

Tom Daley and Noah Williams competed at the British National Diving Cup in December last year and won gold at a World Cup event in Berlin in March 2024. Tom Daley competed in his first Olympics in 2008 when he was only 14 years old, Noah Williams was only eight at the time.