People no longer think of me as the daughter of First Dates Fred! How Team GB diver Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix stepped out of her dad's shadow to make a name for herself

‘Do you want me to dive in wearing my dress?’ asks Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix, excited at the prospect of throwing herself off a 10-metre platform in a ball gown rather than a swimming costume.

As it turns out, we only need the 19-year-old to fall into the water off the side of the pool for the purpose of our pictures. But her willingness to go the extra mile tells you everything about the character of the daring diver looking to make history in the pool in Paris.

For our interview at the London Aquatics Centre, Spendolini-Sirieix is accompanied by her Italian mother Alessandra, who helps her select her outfits for her first photo shoot of this kind. The teenager still lives with her mum, but you are more likely to know of her dad - Fred Sirieix, the French maitre’d from Channel 4’s First Dates, who will be working for the BBC during the Olympics.

In her younger years, Spendolini-Sirieix would get frustrated at only being talked about because she has a famous father. However, thanks to her recent diving achievements – winning medals at world, European and Commonwealth level – she has more than made a name for herself.

‘I am growing out of his shadow, which is something that’s really lovely to see,’ the rising Team GB star tells Mail Sport. ‘Actually seeing the word “Spendolini-Sirieix” and not “Fred’s daughter” is a great achievement. It’s lovely to know that I am being appreciated for the things that I am doing and not just for being someone’s daughter.’

Spendolini-Sirieix, though, has found having a celebrity in the family useful as she learns to deal with some of the pitfalls of being in the public eye, including online abuse.

‘For some reason, people find it necessary to comment on the way that you look, on your weight, on the way that your body is,’ she says. ‘I have had people asking why I am eating that kind of food or why I am wearing my costume a certain way.

‘I didn’t understand where it came from, why someone would want to do that to me. I would take it as my responsibility to change something in me.

‘But when I want to reply to people that are rude, my dad always stops me because he’s been through it and it’s not worth it. I have learned it’s better to block them and never hear from them again, rather than to reply and you could potentially cause a problem.

‘Some people are just rude, jealous and insecure. They are just trolls. I don’t really understand where people get the chest and the bravery to say that on their phones because they would never say that in front of your face.

‘They want to know that they’ve hurt you or made you uncomfortable, so don’t give them the satisfaction. That’s what my dad has really taught me.’

Spendolini-Sirieix's first sporting loves were gymnastics and swimming, but she switched at the age of eight after Crystal Palace Diving Club paid her primary school a visit.

‘They did a couple of tests in jumps and flexibility,’ she recalls. ‘I passed those and they said, “Why don’t you come down and do a taster session?”.

‘I really didn’t want to go. I didn’t know what diving was. I was like, “That sounds a bit silly, why would someone create a sport like that?”. But my mum forced me to go, it went well and I haven’t stopped since.’

It was another couple of years before she set foot on the 10m platform. She was so scared that her first dive took her 40 minutes to complete. As soon as she jumped, though, she was hooked.

‘It was like flying in the air, it was absolutely incredible, it was such a thrill,’ she says. ‘When you overthink it, it’s the scariest thing. But when you trust and let go, jumping like a leap of faith, it’s really freeing. You hit the water so hard, but it’s a lovely thing. It’s really beautiful.’

As a 16-year-old, Spendolini-Sirieix was selected for the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the same summer she took her GCSEs. She finished a superb seventh in the 10m platform final. But she almost gave it all up at the end of that year, having developed, in her words, a ‘fear of diving’.

Spendolini-Sirieix describes her struggle as a ‘mental block’ and compares it to the ‘twisties’ American gymnast Simone Biles suffered from very publicly in Tokyo. Things got so bad that she was even too scared to stand on a one-metre springboard and was left in tears at training.

‘After the Olympics, I struggled because I didn’t give myself a break,’ she says. ‘When you are mentally exhausted, you can’t really think properly, and that’s when mental blocks come and hit you hard.

‘It was affecting my home life, my school life, everything, because I was so miserable. I had fallen into sadness. Every training session there was something wrong. You can’t come into training and cry every single day. It’s really not healthy.

‘In December 2021, I remember breaking down completely in the changing rooms after a session. I just felt that something broke in me. In that moment, I knew I needed to take a week off and think about whether I actually wanted to compete and train or if I just wanted to give up.

‘That was the hardest moment in my career. I was just desperate to change. When I went home, I was just crying upstairs. I said to my mum, “I need to take a break and think about what I want to do. I want to just be normal and go to school”. She was like, “If you want to quit, you can do it”, because I really wasn’t happy.’

But Spendolini-Sirieix did not quit. After all, as she admits, ‘normal life is boring’. And there was nothing normal about her summer in 2022, when she won her first medal at a World Championships, claimed two gold medals and a silver at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and then double gold again at the European Championships.

Spendolini-Sirieix completed her A-levels last summer, gaining As in history and her Extended Project Qualification, which was on ‘how food and body image negatively affect women in athletic sports’. She also got Bs in English Literature and Spanish.

In September, she will start a journalism degree at City, University of London. But before she learns to write the headlines, she hopes to be making them by becoming the British female diver to win an Olympic medal in 64 years.

As ever in diving, Spendolini-Sirieix’s biggest competition comes from China. At the World Championships in February, she won a bronze in her individual event behind Quan Hongchan, who won Olympic gold in Tokyo aged 14, and Chen Yuxi. 

The same Chinesea duo also beat Spendolini-Sirieix and Lois Toulson in the synchronised final.

But Spendolini-Sirieix insists: ‘It’s very difficult to beat them but it’s not impossible. They are not robots, they are human beings. It’s something that drives me every single session.’

Spendolini-Sirieix competes in the 10m synchronised final alongside Toulson on Wednesday, ahead of her individual final the following Tuesday. The Aquatics Centre in Paris will be packed out with her friends and family, half of whom are from the host country.

So how would she react if she made it on to the podium? ‘Gosh, I’d probably cry a lot,’ she adds. ‘I don’t think I’ll be standing. It would be an amazing moment.

‘I have always wanted an Olympic medal. Sometimes you need to be crazy to believe in things - and I am crazy enough to believe that that can happen.’

Spendolini-Sirieix receives funding from the National Lottery, enabling her to train full-time, have access to the world's best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support, which is essential to help her on her pathway to Paris 2024. Find out more at: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk.

National Lottery players have transformed athletics in the UK, with more than £300m invested since National Lottery funding began. They support our elite athletes to win medals on the world stage and have invested in clubs, facilities and programmes across the country to enable more people to take part in the sport.