53 years after his father was shot and killed in the street, Daley Thompson, the Olympic great, has finally made his first visit to the place. He was 12 years old at the time.
The British decathlete, who won gold in the 1980 and 1984 Games, has opened out about the difficult upbringing that inspired him to pursue an athletic career ahead of the opening of the Paris Olympics next week.
Speaking outside his father’s home in Streatham, south London, Daley, 65, described the impact it had on him. “It didn’t feel personal to me, but my mum wanted me to be more concerned,” he stated. My life was all about going forward; that’s how things turned out. It was always an opportunity to learn, never a loss.
In the BBC2 documentary Daley: Olympic Superstar, which aired on Tuesday night, Daley—whose mother is Scottish and his father is Nigerian—describes how he found out about his father’s passing while attending boarding school.
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Daley at this moment
At the age of twelve, Daley, whose mother was Scottish and his father was Nigerian, witnessed his father’s murder (Image: Getty Images)
Daley Thompson, a British decathlete, celebrates taking home the gold medal from the European Championships.
Delay remembered the instant he learned his father had died (Image: Getty Images)
Frank Thompson was slain while he and a companion were dropping off a woman at her home. Frank Thompson owned a minicab firm.
“You have to go to the headmaster’s office,” the teacher told Daley. “Oh my God, have I been caught?” I exclaimed. And we all chuckled.
“No, you’re not in danger for once,” he responded. I marched off and went there, where they informed me that my dad had been killed and that there was an issue back up in London. He and another man were with two women when one of the women’s husbands showed up and shot him, according to what my mother told me.
Instead of derailng the child, it had the opposite effect. Daley, who was taken to a residential school when he was seven years old, stated, “I had been taking care of myself ever since I was seven years old.” I started performing athletics because I wanted to be the greatest at something and wasn’t dependent on other people for my emotional well-being.
It was the beginning of a career that would make him the greatest decathlete of all time. His early years in Notting Hill were very different from the fame and wealth that followed.
“We shared bedrooms in a council housing,” he claims. I would visit my dad maybe four or five times a year. We visited him in prison a few times.
“My mother had two or three jobs at all times. She would clean my junior school at 4:30 or 5 a.m. or spend sixteen hours a day as an office receptionist. Food banks were something we used to use, but everyone I knew was the same.
Daley acknowledges that he would never have sent his struggling mother Lydia to a boarding school in Sussex if it had been his own five children.
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