“It’s like I’ve already got an open wound and you’re stabbing me in it,” Matty Lee says as, deep into our second hour at a beautiful old Edwardian swimming pool in Leeds, we turn to Kirsty Coventry’s recent comments that athletes should not be paid at the Olympic Games. In her role as the International Olympic Committee president Coventry, a former swimmer who won seven Olympic medals including gold in 2004 and 2008, has caused outrage among athletes.
The IOC confirmed in its own financial report that it made $12.4bn (£9.2bn) between 2021 and 2024 and so Lee, an Olympic diving champion, grimaces when he considers Coventry’s resistance to paying the people we want to watch – the athletes. It is sobering to consider her stance in the company of Lee who, without bitterness, has told me about his hidden world as a retired Olympic champion now struggling emotionally and financially.
“I know how much hard work I put into diving,” Lee says after we have discussed how he overcame the challenge of training for the Olympics on an initial £12,000 a year and the exhilaration he and his great friend Tom Daley experienced when they won the 10m synchronised Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021.
“I know how much hard work other athletes put in – and how much joy it brings the country,” Lee says. “Nineteen years of doing the same thing, being so regimented and always having a purpose, and loving it. But now I don’t have any real purpose in life and I’ve not got a wedge of money. I’ve not got a house, I’ve not got a mortgage. I’ve not got many assets. It’s 18 months since I retired and I still feel the same as I did in January 2025. I wake up every morning and don’t feel that happy.”
Coventry subsequently clarified her statement on the IOC’s Athlete365 Instagram account, stating she misspoke on camera and meant to specify “prize money” for medallists rather than overall athlete compensation. She defended her stance by arguing that prize money benefits only a small minority, whereas the IOC aims to use its revenues to fund wider athlete pathways.
During our two hours together Lee offers compelling company, and he can be as amusing as he is thoughtful, but he pauses when I ask if he is depressed. “Yes, sometimes, 100%. There’ve been times where I’ve looked at my medal and thought: ‘I wished it had never happened.’ I’ve had that success and it made me understand what it feels like to be at the top, what it feels like to be successful. And now I feel, with how Olympic sport is and what the IOC president said, that transitioning from elite sport is really hard.
“I’ve been depressed here and there, trying to find purpose, trying to find something that aligns with me in terms of work. I was very close to becoming a bartender, because I enjoy making drinks at home. People around me were like: ‘Don’t.’ Being a bartender is not a bad thing and it’s good to do things you enjoy. But I know me. If I was to do that I’d probably get stuck doing it, and be depressed for the rest of my life because I know what I’m capable of. I think there’s still more of my story to be told but, right now, I’m trying to figure it out.”
We return to Coventry’s controversial statement and Lee shakes his head. “I’m disappointed and I’m not alone. Many athletes spoke up but it’s mainly retired Olympians who are talking about it. I know why. When you’re in sport, especially Olympic sport, you don’t want to upset anyone. Not many current athletes are speaking because they feel they can’t. That’s how I felt. It upsets me because it’s obvious that the system needs change. I’ve been alive since 1998 and, in all that time, I don’t think anyone’s looked at the Olympics and gone: ‘Bunch of amateurs.’ And for most sports the Olympics are the pinnacle.”
He hesitates: “I struggle talking about it because I don’t want people to think I’m moaning.”
Lee has done the opposite of moan throughout our interview. Instead, he has explained how he followed his older brother, Tom, into diving at the age of seven and described how, gradually, the fun turned into rigorous discipline. Lee improved steadily and won medals at European junior and senior championships.
He used to idolise Daley, who competed in his first Olympics aged 14. In 2018, Lee was invited to become Daley’s partner in the 10m synchro and he moved from Leeds to London to train with his hero. London was expensive but, rather than fretting over money, Lee felt grateful for the opportunity to become one of the best divers in the world as he overcame the psychological demons of a demanding sport.
“Twisting is so important in diving but it can play with your head,” he says. “We’ve heard it from Simone Biles who calls [the mental block] the ‘twisties’. It’s real and awful because when that doubt, or block, gets into your mind it’s a complete erasure of remembering how your body moves. I conquered it but it came back towards the end of my career.
“It was in training rather than competition but I always feared the twisties. If you let it creep into your mind, you can’t get rid of it. So I would have those doubts and stand on the end of the board with the fear someone would feel if they knew a bull was going to chase them. I’m on the edge of a 10m diving board facing backwards, and I’ve got to do this dive. But, in synchro, you count one, two, three, go. At ‘go’ the memories click in and, phew, I do it.”
Daley struggled even more with twisting manoeuvres and he and Lee settled on a different routine. As Lee says: “Me and Tom went unbeaten the whole year [in 2021] at the Europeans, World Cup, nationals and Olympics. I’ve never been able to dive that well before or after. Everything aligned and all the years of training paid off.”
The Chinese pair, Cao Yuan and Chen Aisen, came into the Olympics as seemingly unbeatable world champions. But Lee and Daley believed they could win gold. By the time they climbed the stairs to the board for the sixth and last time, Lee “could tell Tom was more nervous than I’d ever noticed”, adding: “There was a lot of pressure as he had been chasing a gold medal for a long time. I just thought: ‘I’m going to do this to the best of my abilities.’ People talk about ‘the flow state’ and I had it for that dive. I felt like I was watching myself dive and then I was buzzing.”
The wait for the final dive by the Chinese was agonising and, after they produced another stunning display, “Tom was like: ‘I think they’ve done it, just.’ I said: ‘No, this is our time.’ Then, when the scores came up, I felt euphoric as a huge weight had melted off me. Everything we had worked towards our whole lives had happened. That feeling was out of this world.”
The elation lasted for a while and at the end of that year Lee was delighted to finish fifth on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! He was also the leading British diver as Daley took a sabbatical in the US. But life can be cruel. Lee’s father, Tim, died suddenly, from an aneurysm, in October 2022.
The devastating loss was accentuated as Lee felt his identity crack and then one injury after another followed. He eventually needed major back surgery which ended his career – and before then he had been crushed when replaced by Noah Williams as Daley’s partner for the 2024 Olympics. “I was only slightly injured then,” Lee says. “I felt shunted to the side [by the coaches] and very hard done by.”
We talk about how “the rest of the world thinks you’re flying first class everywhere, with lots of money, but Olympic sport is the most brutal place”, and Lee adds: “There is no glamour most of the time. For a few weeks every four years everyone cares about Olympic sport and then, the rest of the time, it’s not thought about.”
As he faded back into obscurity, and financial pressures intensified, Lee experienced his first panic attack a year ago this month. “I was struggling loads with my anxiety and that’s one of the main reasons why I came back to Leeds. Last June my girlfriend Molly and I went to an event at Silverstone. It was really busy and I sat on the bus with Molly and couldn’t speak. I was sweating, my mouth was extremely dry. I felt sick and dizzy. From that point I was more fearful because I knew what had happened, and that it can happen at any point. I feel a lot better since coming back to Leeds. I’d been in a rut of unhappiness.”
Lee has just completed the first season of his podcast, The After Dive, which features revealing in‑depth interviews with former sports stars such as Rebecca Adlington. But he admits: “The reason why I’m not doing season two yet is because I can’t afford it. I’m losing money and haven’t had a stable income since I retired. I have a decent following on social media but I don’t know if people still care. That’s definitely something you battle with after retiring. You think: ‘Oh, everyone’s forgotten about me.’ Or I’ll go to an event and none of the interviewers ask me anything. It hurts, especially when you’ve been at the top before.”
The 28-year-old felt that pain acutely when “a couple of weeks ago I went to my dad’s grave with Molly because I’ve had a real struggle finding motivation,” adding: “This was around the time I’d looked at my bank account and I was like ‘that’s going to run out if I don’t start working my bum off’. I was in a real awful place but I was like: ‘This needs to stop. I need to somehow refresh myself.’
“At the graveside I let out a load of emotion because I’d reached a point where I was thinking: ‘My dad wouldn’t recognise me any more.’ That’s obviously silly because of course he bloody would, as he was my No 1 supporter. So I’ve felt better since then.”
Lee is open about his feelings but says: “I haven’t been talking as much because I’m not around lots of people. But I try very much to speak to Molly and my mum about it.”
He met Molly near the end of his career and says “she’s actually never watched me compete, sadly”, adding: “I try to remind her what I was like in my glory days – but I fell in love with her because she’s very supportive and caring.”
The glory days might have gone but I tell Lee he has spoken like a champion in addressing the IOC’s non‑payment of Olympians and his own subsequent struggles. He nods quietly and then says: “I spoke to Molly yesterday about this interview and I was like: ‘I don’t know how honest to be because I haven’t done any interviews for a long time. And in the past they’ve just been about my diving result and good things.’ This is the first time I’ve done an interview where things aren’t going that well. But that’s why it feels so important to be honest now.”
