Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Head first into glory - with Matty Lee

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Jane and Fi have swanned off on holiday, so Chloe Tilley and Calum Macdonald are here to hold down the fort.They’re joined by GB diver Matty Lee to chat Olympic gold, I’m A Celeb and performance pressure.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello it's chloe and callum in for jane and fee all of this week i hope you've been listening to us on the radio and enjoying our conversations. Had a brilliant chat today with Matty Lee. I have to say just before we hear from him, we had to invite him into our cupboard today, didn't we? So the main studio's out of action. Just as a little insight into Times Radio Towers, which I think you appreciate,

but the main studio was out of action for us today because they're changing the lights or something. I think for all of the videos for social media, they want the lights to be better. sometimes the lights slightly blind you and then you turn them down and then they don't light you properly so they're changing the lights it's taking quite a long time so we we were we were evacuated to a cupboard to the cupboard in the corner which arguably has a better view of the city of london beautiful view it was a lovely day today and that is where we welcomed Olympic champion diver,

Matty Lee, to come in and say hello. And he did come in, which is always so appreciated, particularly for somebody like him, who's got a mad old schedule of training and, you know, trying to win more Olympic medals.

It's no mean feat. Well, he came straight from training. He came straight from the pool. He trains at Stratford and he was saying that he came straight from the pool. But more than that, one of the things that over the many years of interviewing people,

it makes such a difference when people come in face to face because you've got the eye contact. They relax. It felt like a really honest, open conversation. It wasn't an interview. We just had a chat. And a genuinely lovely bloke who was incredibly honest about mental health struggles, which he had post Olympics. Slightly, I think it's probably fair to say,

living in Tom Daley's shadow up until the 2020, really 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. And yeah, just being really honest about how down he got after such an incredible high, which is completely understandable. Yeah, 100%. It's the first time we've met him. We are absolute Matty Lee fans,

and you will be as well after you've heard him here we uh we're chatting to him first off about that olympic win and crucially crucially and rarely managing to be a chinese pair at diving it's really really rare like in our sport in diving there is only being so each olympics so that olympics we were the only ones to beat the chinese in every other event they got a gold medal and then the same thing in rio there was only one which was the our boys jack and chris um they got a gold as well so it's it's honestly crazy rare to beat the chinese and like usually you kind of just write them off you think yeah they'll be number one we're gonna fight for silver but obviously this time around we didn't so what was different that day?

I don't know. We just, we really just worked together. Like as soon as we woke up, we were like, today's our day sort of thing. And we went for breakfast, not on purpose, in the athlete's village with Adam Peating. And he was also competing that morning. And I think that's when he got his first gold too. So it was almost like, I don't know, we were, I don't know,

thinking about gold obviously gold at breakfast so we all we both all got it can i just say what's really nice about even as you're telling the stories how much you smile as soon as you said and that day we did it yeah the smile on your face is huge yeah no it's because it's just something you always dream of and then like we actually did it and i don't always talk about it so it's always nice to and it's been a while well it's not been that long but it's been about over a year and it's just nice to kind of reminisce yeah for sure what stage are you at now then in the sort of middle of february 2023 what is what stage of the cycle i suppose are we at so it's an interesting bit of the cycle because it's

like it's so everything from the last the previous olympics has died down now and then it were about to start i don't know, getting involved in the hype for the next Olympics. So it's kind of, it's not boring because I'm obviously just training, but, you know, all the fun, the hypeness, the fun stuff outside of the diving has slowed down. But that actually kind of allows us to focus on the training. So it is just this next season,

so this year we can qualify early for the olympic games so it is like a very crucial year um for sure and then obviously the next year is is the year of the olympics how did you cope after the olympics i'm always fascinated when i get to meet olympic champions i've been very lucky in this job to meet quite a few. And I'm always in awe of the sacrifices, the dedication, the single-mindedness to achieve that. And you are special human beings to be able to do that. You're wired in a different way to other people. And I mean that as a compliment.

Yeah. What do you do when you have everything you've worked for, as you've just said, for so many years, you've achieved it? What happens then? You've obviously got the elation but then what um it is a very weird time because not many people can relate because not many people have ever won a gold medal and especially like you know you this is our it's

our job and it's our dream especially from a young kid as well i started diving at seven so straight away i was like you know i kind of want to be an Olympian or like I would tell my primary school teachers I want to be an Olympic champion sort of thing and I was kind of messing around back then um obviously then when you actually go do that at the age of 23 it's like oh wow like what the what on earth do I do now like I've reached the one thing I always wanted um and it is kind of a scary place to be uh and to be fair, I didn't, it wasn't too bad because there was so much stuff going on after the Olympics that just kept me so excited

and I was still on this huge high. And then going on I'm a Celebrity, getting me out of it as well, that really helped because that made me, I don't know, feel like I was still on this really high, cool journey of mine. But it was actually after I'm a celeb where I literally just went back home to my flat in London and then went back to training the next day

and I was like, oh, nothing was exciting anymore. And it was a weird time and it kind of still is a bit like that. But you only kind of get these sort of feelings when you do compete because when you compete, you get to show what you've been working on in front of a load of people. And in a sport like diving as well, it only comes around every four years where people actually care, which is sad, but that is the truth.

Only people care about diving and some other sports in the Olympics when it's the Olympics. So it's a weird one but i mean i i know how great it felt in tokyo so i you know i want that again i would argue it's not that people don't care it's that there isn't the coverage no that's true if it was on the tv you know what it's like people just get excited and will watch it it's to do with the choices that are made about when they decide to put it on would you say then that your mental health suffered as a result after yeah no it did and i i was very aware that this was a thing um that after olympics

even if you've done really well even if you've done terribly bad you can suffer uh people i can't really call it uh uh post-olympic depression that's what it is actually a thing um and it's because you know you you work four years for this one thing you've gone even if you've done good or bad it's still over and there's nothing you can do about it and then you just kind of and because it's so it's just so interesting being around other athletes and going to the olympics seeing those rings everywhere you go and then all of a sudden you're just kind of at home and it's like bang like nothing feels exciting and it's like bang like nothing feels exciting and it's like another four years away like sort of thing um and i definitely did suffer a bit um felt

kind of lonely and a bit just like like i said nothing was exciting which is i guess a kind of form of depression because then you know then my normal day-to-day was just i don't know sad yeah in a weird way that's so interesting it's just it sounds kind of like sort of like thrill-seeking almost is what you have you have to keep pursuing the next thrill yeah and i suppose there's an interesting part of that you mentioned i'm a celebrity because there's arguably a relatively new thing where you are among sort of celebrity athletes and i think that's an interesting concept in all of this too, where people do recognise you and they do know you. And perhaps years ago, that wasn't necessarily the case.

Yeah, no. And that is the weird thing that I had to kind of navigate. Because as soon as after the Olympics, and I'm a celebrity, it was like, life changed. Like, it wasn't crazy, but like I would get recognised and all this sort of stuff. And it did put me on edge a bit because it is strange to get used to that sort of thing because then you're being watched 24-7 in a way.

And that is weird. And then also being surrounded by other... Because I don't think... When I look at athletes, and obviously I'm an athlete, I don't put as... I don't know, you don't feel like a celebrity because you don't really live a celebrity life in a way because it's gruesome.

Like training, you go sometimes, swimmers, for example, get up at God knows what time to go training at 5 a.m. Luckily, I don't do that. But I still get up every day and train pretty much all day. And it's not like a luxurious life at all. So I kind of don't, and not every celebrity has that either, but I just don't feel like we are kind of the same sort of people so i always find it really hard to um kind of connect with celebrities and

stuff did you feel supported in this in this chapter this period that we're talking about you said there were others who had experienced similar was there support there yes um there was and and because i said that i was aware of this this thing i like i made sure that like with my manager luke he like i we made it very um like certain that that i would probably at some point feel rubbish and we need to have a kind of a plan in place and and to really look after my my mental health and like for example like in that department we we tried to do everything everything we could and we did and then like you know my family also understood that as well and my friends and like professional help as well to be fair um after I'm

a celeb uh ITV they like they pay for you to have like um like therapy if you need it and i was like i think i do need it um and that actually helped quite a lot um for sure so we definitely had plans in place but i think ultimately you can't i don't know it's weird when you can't even if you have all those things in place it sometimes sometimes gets you yeah um i've never been elite at anything matty i'm entirely at peace with it, I have to say. I just, I'm so always trying to understand, I suppose, that the mentality, I guess, of when you've peaked, when you've got a gold medal,

and you do go back to training, as we've kind of discussed, that actually you are, you've already proved that you're the best, and you have to get your brain into a place where training to be the best again is something that you really want to drive at. And I just find that really fascinating. Yeah, yeah. No, that is difficult because as soon as you...

I didn't have any pressure on me, really, going into Tokyo. Obviously, Tom did because everyone has known Tom for years and it was potentially his last Olympics. And I had no pressure pressure but i knew obviously we'll go in to do a job i knew we were hoping to get a medal and you know and the gold but with with with pressure it doesn't like it you just gotta sort of i don't know you just gotta avoid like just ignore it as much as you can and also now it's different because people actually expectations that's sorry that took me a while is there more pressure then or less because you've

done it do you relax or are you like oh my word everyone thinks we're going to win every time now i know you're not you're not diving with tom now yeah it's no it it is like that like it is it's almost worse now because people expect it from you. And that was a difficult thing. I basically spent all of last season, the 2022 season, kind of just navigating this new pressure and trying to ignore it as much as possible because realistically, I know deep down,

I don't really care what I do now. I've got it. And no one can ever take that away from me. Obviously, at the same time time i'm still an athlete and it's still something i love and i want to keep on doing it but like you know like getting an olympic gold medal is really really hard and like going it going for it again like i'm gonna definitely try but like i will be okay if i don't get that again because i've done it and no one can take that away from me you've got a new partner haven't you yes i do so explain how that works because i'm always

fascinated you you talked before about how you know all the pressure was on tom and on you tom daly so you in some ways could almost sit back a bit yeah obviously that's changed now i mean i don't mean in performance but i mean in the limelight um obviously that's changed now are you sort of the senior member in that partnership? How's that working? Tell us about your partner. Yeah, so my new synchro partner, he's Noah Williams. He's a great diver. He's from London and we've been really good friends. So basically he was our reserve for mine and Tom's synchro partnership.

Just in case I got injured or Tom got injured, Noah would jump in. Because imagine if we got to the Olympic Games, Tom gets theoretically my Olympic dreams are over as well and it's not my I haven't done anything so it's always good to have that sort of thing in place and he also competed at the Olympics so he's an Olympian himself and initially when we started I was like oh I need to take on the role of what Tom was for me noah and that just didn't work out for me at all like that's not just that's just not how i work i'm not really a leader in in that sort of way i'm i'm more of a just let me know what i need to do and i'm gonna do it sort of thing i work very simple but it's just the way i work best and it's all about finding how you work best and sticking at it. Don't change for anyone.

And to be fair, Noah is, even though he's younger than me, he's kind of the leader in, but I always see the leader in this synchro partnership as someone who like kind of just says, all right, we need to be here at this time. He's good with like logistics and I'm terrible. I'm always kind of late to things.

So yeah, that's how it kind of works. And you just kind of, we realized that quite soon because it wasn't working for us. And then i just went back to how i normally was and then it yeah we're all good would we see a a tom matty partnership again or has that ship sailed i mean i i would i think we both would love that we we both would really really love that and i miss him terribly at the pool because we were like best friends and for like almost three years, I think it was three years,

I'd see him every single day. I'd know what he's up to. Now I don't, which is sad. But we catch up as much as we can. I think, I don't know. I think that ship sailed, but obviously that's up to Tom to decide. He's that good.

He could just come back within a year of the Olympics and probably be ready to win a medal. Really because I wondered that how quickly you can get it back if you've stepped out. It varies from whoever you are and Tom is just very gifted. He did come in for a fun session

we were just training as normal but he came in to try it out and see how he felt and he actually wasn't like I mean obviously i was better than him at the time like finally finally because i've been training normally and he's had a whole year out but he actually was pretty good when i have four weeks off in the summer i am terrible when i get back like i'm genuinely with diving it's all about muscle memory. And when you lose that, you are back to basics. Like, it's something you can't just keep on for a while. But Tom could do it, I reckon, because he's Tom.

And he's just Superman. How many dives do you do to be, like, in competition prep? So I always apply this to gymnastics because of the world in which I inhabit. And gymnastics, it's always like you've got to compete a minimum of 20 routines before your coach will tell you you can compete that move or whatever um because once again it's all muscle memory do you have a certain like i've got to dive that dive well x amount of times before i compete it or is it not like that no i think it

definitely is uh but that's kind of something that the coaches and the physios and the weights coaches kind of just decide themselves. And then like my coach, Jane, she's amazing. She knows how many dives I do a session. She'll write my plan, first of all. And there's always a meaning behind each training session. And like I, because that's the way I work. I'm not good with logistics and numbers and stuff. Just get told.

Yeah, literally. Tell me what to do. I'm gonna do it and it like it took a while for us to realize that but anyway um but no that is the same sort of thing we've got to do so many hours and so many somersaults and dives to actually finally get it to kind of perfect but it still doesn't mean you're going to dive perfect on the day which is the annoying thing for sure it's like when we have a weekend off we can't say sentences again it's ridiculous i mean it's completely different in some ways yeah i feel like without wishing to be out of turn i feel like i feel like you've recovered the joy and what you're doing if i you know from what you're saying and i think that is

particularly remarkable because you had a really difficult end to last year when your dad died, sadly. But I feel like you've kind of picked up again to that fear. How do you feel about that? Yeah, yeah. The end of last year was something awful and it was very shocking and it just wasn't fair. And that was really hard time for me my mum

and my brother and the rest of my family um but like i always thought with my dad he he loved my diving he absolutely loved it and he was just so and like it's annoying because obviously at the same time like you know when you're you you know, everyone's got a parent. I've got my mum and my dad. Well, anyway. You always take things for granted, you know. Like my dad would always be on my case about diving because he cared so much.

And I now wish, you know, I could go back a few years and just let him be like that. Because, you know, as a as a son you know you're like oh i'm all right dad leave me alone sort of thing that's what kids do exactly exactly normal exactly exactly but now i'm now i'm just like all he did was he just cared and i i love that and he so like coming back to diving wasn't too difficult for me because i knew he loved that and he loved the fact that like he was kind of part of my career and well he was um and he couldn't help himself anyway um so you know it it has been a really tough period and it

will be a tough period you know my life won't be the same ever again um but for diving diving wise i feel i feel all right because you know i feel like i'm probably most closest to my dad when i'm diving nice in a way. That's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Just briefly, because I can't believe we've nearly run out of time here. The future, give us a little,

what are we working towards? Where are you at? So what we're working towards is the Paris Olympics. Obviously, that's the long-term goal. Even though it's only next year, there's obviously a lot that goes in before that. We have to try and qualify at the world championships this year which is in japan uh so hopefully i can explore a bit of japan and

it's not in covid whatever yeah um so yeah hopefully uh qualify for individual as well i want to go because i only did synchro the olympics i want to do both this time so that's quite different it is it's very different. And it's a lot harder. You're doing two different competitions. But as long as I don't jeopardise one or the other and I can do both fine, I'm going to do that. But obviously if I'm struggling and I'm going to jeopardise both,

I'll take one away and concentrate. Because it's all about the medals, really. It really is at the Olympics. So I want that again. This is Chloe and Callum sitting in for jane and fee this week they've swanned off on their holidays i imagine they're having a lovely lovely time of it they strike me as a pair that will have a lovely time on a holiday they will holiday well i think it's what i'm saying they were absolutely quite right team all happy absolutely they're

having a rest and we're very glad to be here with you on off air and thank you for listening to our big guest today olympic champion and gb diverie Lee who we love. Yeah and I thought it was quite incredible actually the motivation that he's managed to find to push on and the fact that he was talking there not just about wanting to try and get another Olympic medal in the synchronized diving but wants to try and get an individual as well so still kind of striving and you know he's had a lot of change he talked in the at the end but you know the awful shock of his dad dying at the end of last year and the impact it's had on him and his outlook um but he's managing to kind of focus and and try and push on and yeah i mean if you could go to the olympics what is next year isn't it paris 2024 and compete

and get medals both in synchronized and individual diving will be incredible. I think the theme of the interview, while it is a bit of a cliche, was highs and lows, because he seemed to sort of talk about the spectacular thrill of winning an Olympic gold medal, also doing I'm a Celebrity, and then trying to get back to just normal, going back to training and processing that thought of, I've already peaked in in that way I've won I've reached the summit and now I have to keep training so that I can do it again and I just thought it was so fascinating actually how much that theme as I say sorry it's a cliche but it is the reality the highs and lows of what he has experienced in the last couple of years that really came through I think we were talking to him off air when he came

in just to kind of get him warmed up and let him know that we weren't trying to catch him out or anything just wanted to have like a nice conversation with him and it was really interesting he was talking about the pressures that young athletes can feel particularly from parents and he said he didn't feel it himself but often when there are kids who are training hard and have got a dream the parents put this huge amount of pressure on their kids and actually that is the worst thing you can do and it must be very difficult because if you want your child to do well but he says you know you just gotta you gotta sit back you gotta be hands off you gotta support them be there for the journey cope with the sacrifices whatever it may be but actually just hands off and let them do their thing lovely man successful man already

and we got a selfie yeah we did get a selfie of course absolutely and i imagine more success to come with his new partner who is noah will Williams, who seems to be an absolute superstar as well, it has to be said, at diving. So lots more to come from Matty Lee. It was a great, great pleasure to speak to him today. We love hearing from you as ever. Do make sure you keep getting in touch with us. You can email jane at fee at times.radio

because we've hijacked their email account for the week. Of course, you can tweet us at times radio and make sure that you follow us if you can. You can leave a review of the podcast. It would be really, really good. And really nice, we got a lovely message actually just as Matty had left the studio, so we couldn't read it to him.

But we got an anonymous message which said, I used to dive with you, Matty, and your brother in Leeds. And now I'm listening to your interview from Istanbul. Amazing to see how far you've come and lovely to hear that you haven't lost your accent. Yeah, that's nice actually. He's from Leeds. He's very proudly from Leeds. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, he said it was quite hard actually because he had to move down when he was training with Tom Daley. He had to move to London. It was kind of weird sort of working out where he should live. And initially he made sure that he lived quite close to where

he was training. Then it all felt a bit much. and then he moved somewhere else and he kind of had to find his way because yeah, it's another one of those sacrifices. Exactly. One of the other things we were talking about on air that we're bringing off air was GPs and the difficulties actually that GPs are facing which is probably quite well advertised but today new numbers on this that GPs are dealing with up to 3,000 patients each which is astonishing utterly astonishing what a remarkable number and we were speaking to the chair of the Royal College of GPs today Louise and Hull gets in touch in my experience of calling 111 and consulting a pharmacist on both occasions I was sent to A&E whilst at A&E I was told I'd have been better off

seeing a GP just Just worth throwing this kind of experience into the mix, says Louise. I think how to work the health care system often catches all of us out. Where do I go first? Where is my first port of call? How does this work? How serious is this? Am I misjudging the seriousness of what I'm feeling just now, and therefore I need to go to the next stage and cut out this first stage. And it's something that we probably all need to learn a bit better in terms of how we're adapting to the pressures

the health service is under at every level. I remember dialing 111 a couple of years ago when my daughter had a rash. And I was pretty certain she had a rash on her face that she had been doing a handstand for too long at gymnastics not breathing properly and it was basically just little red pinpricks if you like on her face it was almost like burst blood vessels i was pretty sure about this this had happened before i dialed 111 because i've done the glass test on her face for meningitis and it hadn't disappeared which as a parent you always think gosh this is worrying and i told them all

this i said look she's had this before I'm pretty certain this is what it is. But they don't want to make a mistake. So they said, well, you've got to go to A&E. I get to A&E. And they said, well, it's just burst blood vessels from doing a hand stab too long. And you're kind of like, oh. It's difficult.

You don't want them to make mistakes and say, oh, it'll be all right. Don't go to A&E. But then equally, I kind of wanted them to say, don't go to A&E. Because I thought I knew what it was. And I did know. But that's the problem on a phone.

They're not looking at it. They can't see what her face is like. So you're diagnosing over a phone, which is never ideal. And just on a slightly corporate but important note, the Times is running its health commission at the moment, which is one of the brilliant things the Times does where it gathers experts. They did this with education.

And they meet throughout the year. They hold summits. They speak to experts. They are experts themselves. And the whole point is to suggest policy initiatives that can make a real difference. And a few weeks ago in The Times, they were reporting on a GP surgery in Somerset, where it's basically the front line of it has turned into a call centre, effectively, where they can then triage the patients that are calling in.

But they have skills and expertise. They've done away with titles like receptionist. That's not a thing anymore. For example, these people have all got better training than, you know, in inverted commas, sorry about this, simply a receptionist. Or just medical training. Exactly, there's medical training there.

And so that's a really interesting example of an evolution of a GP practice. And they guarantee an appointment to everybody that needs it same day, which is unheard of in so many parts of the country at the moment. I haven't had a GP appointment in ages and ages, but I went very recently, and I needed my blood pressure

taking. Now back in the day, you'd have to get an appointment with a nurse to have your blood pressure taken. Now they've got this gadget, this machine in reception. You just go in, you put it on your arm, you get your blood pressure, and then you hand it in at reception. They pass it to the GP so that cuts out

having to go in it's about innovation isn't it 100% that's the thing so Louise thank you that was a thought-provoking email we love getting your emails

janeandfee at times.radio is the email address to send to by the way Louise signs off by saying I'm not listening at breakfast so it's interesting

to hear you two in the afternoon we'll take that I hope interesting is good we'll take interesting absolutely oh and by the way we should say if you missed today's winning word oh yes on air well let's

take it off air today's winning word in tribute to matty lee is diving so that's your second word of five of the week the other three will come on the programs that we're looking after this week so wednesday afternoon three till five th Thursday afternoon, 3 till 5. Also on the Off Air podcast. But then, crucially, on breakfast. Between 7 and 9 for the word. We're on air from 6, but you can join from 7 if you want. Between 7 and 9 for your fifth word

for a chance to be one of five winners of a six-month digital subscription to The Times and The Sunday Times completely for free. So gather your words. You should have two written down now and we'll catch up again soon try and contain your excitement to that gift you're welcome you're welcome we worked hard for that you have been listening to off air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover.

Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy.

Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.