Olympic medallist ‘will dive into special roast dinner to celebrate’

The parents of diver Jack Laugher have said they will celebrate his Olympic bronze medal success with a roast dinner with all the trimmings when he returns to the UK.

Dave and Jackie Laugher, from Ripon, North Yorkshire said they were “super-relieved” and burst into tears when their son bagged third place in the men’s 3m springboard final in Tokyo on Tuesday morning.

The couple revealed that the 26-year-old insisted on calling his parents to tell them he loved them before being ushered on to the podium to receive his medal.

Mrs Laugher, 57, told the PA news agency they will welcome their son home to Yorkshire with a family celebration.

She said: “It will probably just be a family roast dinner.”

Mr Laugher added: “Mum’s Yorkshire puddings and roast beef and plenty of gravy.

“That’s his usual go-to when he’s been away for a while.”

Speaking from their front garden, which was decorated with Team GB bunting and flags, the couple said they were not sure Laugher was certain of a medal until the last dive.

Mrs Laugher said: “We’re super-relieved and just so proud of Jack and very, very happy.”

She added: “We were relieved for him because, going into competition, he normally would have competed many times, 20 or 30 times in a year before the Olympics, and this time, he’s only competed three.

“He didn’t do so well in the Europeans so we knew that he was very nervous about going into the Olympics without having that record going into it.”

Mr Laugher, 62, added: “We know from watching diving for years and years that there is no such thing as a certainty until the very last dive has been dived, it can just go wrong so easily for anybody.

“We just burst into tears a bit when we finally saw him. It was great.”

The couple said they had spoken to their son immediately after the competition and that he was relieved but thought he could have performed better.

They said: “All of the officials were trying to usher him to go on to the podium but he wanted to FaceTime us first just to see him and say hello to him and to say that he loves his mum and dad.”

Mrs Laugher added: “He was relieved as well. He said he could have done better and had better dives in him, which I think is good, that’s the competitor in him, he wants to compete more.

“We’re super-happy and he should be as well.”

Mr and Mrs Laugher revealed that they had planned a trip to Tokyo to watch their son compete in the Olympics and were “disappointed” not to be there in person.

They added that they were “very tired” after staying up to watch the semi-final at 2am, followed closely by the final at 7am, but they had celebrated with tea and cake for breakfast.

They said: “We’d got a trip planned out to Japan, we had tickets bought, so we missed out seeing that, and we probably wouldn’t have had such an early day, or late night.”

Mrs Laugher added: “We had about an hour between the semi-finals and the finals where we dozed off for a little while but they were quite tight timings.”