Tom Daley has been branded a ‘national treasure’ following the broadcast of his BBC documentary Tom Daley: Illegal to Be Me, which shows the athlete campaigning for the Commonwealth Games to be more LGBTQ+ friendly.
The Olympic gold medalist, 28, came as gay in 2013, and wed filmmaker Dustin Lance Black in 2018.
While making his documentary, he spent four years visiting the ‘most homophobic countries in Commonwealth’ in a bid ‘to explore how gay athletes are facing extreme persecution’.
What he learnt during filming prompted him to change his initial opinion that countries with anti-LGBT laws should be banned from hosting sports events – instead concluding that banning countries from hosting these events ‘puts a target on the back of LGBT people in that country’.
Responding to the programme, which aired on BBC 1 tonight, a number of people praised the athlete, with one Twitter user branding him a ‘national treasure’.
