Golden Moments: Matthew Mitcham

In the lead up to The Games we're taking you through 10 of our favourite Gold Medal Moment's.. 

Listen to the incredible Matthew Mitcham relive the dive that won him Gold in 2008 in Beijing.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Yeah. Welcome friends to the Christian o'connells Show podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Christian O'Connell's Golden Moments coming down to the Games in Paris.
Matthew Mitcham at the two thousand and eight Beijing Olympics
winning gold on the ten meter platform.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Diving is a sport of absolute precision, because if you
give it too much, then you're going to over rotate it,
or if you don't give it quite enough, then you're
going to have to compensate in other ways, so you
have to replicate it the exact same every single time.
When I was going into my last dive, I was
standing in the stairwell, you know, waiting for the Chinese
diver to go before me. But when he went, I

(00:39):
heard the whole crowd go oh, and I didn't know
if that was a good or a bad ooh if
I blocked my ears and went la la la la, la, la,
la la la as the judges read out the scores,
because I didn't want that to affect my dive at all.
And then when it was my turn to go, I
must have been present enough because I was doing my

(01:00):
hair as I'm walking to the end of the platform,
you know, clearly, like aware that millions of eyes are
watching me. But you know, once I actually got to
the end, it was just one of those in the
zone moments where you know, time kind of slows down
and the rows of the stands on either side just
fade to nothingness, and I just remember thinking to myself,

(01:24):
you know, there's nothing more I can do now, so
just relax, enjoy yourself and have fun. And I don't
remember the dive itself, but I remember coming to like
underneath the water. I remember staying under the water. When
I couldn't stay under the water any longer. I finally
broke the surface and the whole crowd was just going

(01:48):
absolutely bananas. So that's when I knew that I had
absolutely nailed it. And then the scores came up and
it was just ten ten nine and a half, ten
half nine and a half, and I lost it. That's
when the entire diving community just engulfed me. It was

(02:08):
just such a special moment. During the metal ceremony, I
remember when I was standing on the podium having this
most profound sense of relief. You know, I was so broke,
like I was literally living off cereal and baked beans

(02:29):
on toast and noodles. Everything that I'd been through up
until that point had been worth it. It was just joy,
like so much joy and disbelief. And I think the
thing that is like most special to me I became
the first ever openly gay Olympic champion, which is really special.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
The Christian O'Connell Show podcast