Leon Taylor's daily diary from Beijing

Wednesday 28^th August

After the intense heat of Beijing I’m back in London, and isn’t it meant to be the tail end of summer? The 29^th Games is over and the thrilling excitement of it all has been and gone. I got back on Sunday night into Heathrow (leaving before the Closing Ceremony to avoid the mad rush to the airport the following day) and watched all the coverage of the handover online.

Team GB finished with a bang with the 10m men’s platform. It was a day of mixed emotions for me – I was elated for Tom who qualified for the finals and finished seventh. Unfortunately my close friend Pete finished an agonising 13^th in the semi finals – one spot away from a finals birth. It was one quite large mistake on a dive in the semis which blew his chances.

I was commentating at the time and it was hard to hold back my emotions. It was like having a knife in one side and a raised fist in the other – a real tough one for me. I had to console Pete but he’s only 27 and has the opportunity to continue in diving, although with all his injury concerns he may have to step down to springboard from the platform. The 10m platform is tough on the shoulders and after having four shoulder surgeries myself, it’s a long hard road of recovery and maintenance.

Tom’s final was one of the most exciting I’ve ever seen. Tom dived very well and before the semi I gave him one piece of advice - just to smile. He climbed the platform and wore a big smile which certainly had a very positive effect on his performance. The Chinese diver Zhou Luxin botched his final dive to open the door for Australia's Matthew Mitcham who perfected the dive I invented – the backward two and a half somersaults with two and a half twists piked – and he scored a massive 112.10 points to finish with gold. What a final.

The BBC were happy with my commentary from what I’ve heard and I absolutely loved it so we’ll see if I can continue with them down the track. I plan to play an integral part in London 2012 with my mentoring and commentary. It’s going to be an exciting four years. I’m 100% with Tom over the next few years and my mentoring will extend onto the rest of the GB team. I’ll be sitting down with British diving and working out how I can be used to build our pool of talent towards London 2012.

I’m now off to Spain for a week fun in the sun after all my hard work in Beijing. Then I’ll be back to London doing my speaking work in schools and the community, as well as my work with BT which is thoroughly enjoyable and I’m looking forward to supporting them in the future. Now we can look back over the last few weeks – what a fantastic time for British sport. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!