Grace Reid has become one of the most established members of the British diving team over recent years, making her mark at two Olympic Games and earning a silver medal at the 2017 World Championships. The Scottish diving star finished 19th in her 3m springboard event in Tokyo and came close to quitting the sport after hitting rock bottom.

After three years, she’s booked her place back on the Eurostar for next week’s French showpiece and eyeing up a medal on the biggest stage of all. Reid believes finding a balance away from the board held the key to her recovery and credits other fun-filled activities for getting her back to her best.

“I’m super excited,” she said in an interview on Discovery+. “It’s been a long time coming, a long build-up and I’m really excited to get back there and start the main event of the year. The biggest thing after Tokyo was taking some time away and having the support of my friends and family just to deal with that anxiety and depression, and feel like a happy individual away from the pool”, she told.

“I’ve been enjoying the small progress I make every day at training, and that has really helped and made me enjoy the bigger picture. I love being active, going out for a long walk and finding a new place to have dinner, or playing pickleball and padel. I’ve got to be conscious of my sport and I’ve got to be able to perform, but playing that with three friends for an hour is so rewarding mentally, that the benefits far outweigh anything else," she said.

When asked if she was as talented with a racket in hand as she is off a diving board, Reid laughed telling definitely not, just “maybe in the off season when I’m not diving I’ll spend some time and hopefully get a bit better, I’m really competitive and love sport anyway, so exploring that side is amazing."

Reid went through the wringer at a behind-closed-doors Tokyo as her lowly finish in the individual event was accompanied by sixth-place alongside Katherine Torrance in the synchro, but three years later and she’s ‘in love’ with the sport again, crediting the influence of long-term coach Alex Rochas for hauling her back up off the canvas.

Reid will be joined in the French capital by British stalwart Tom Daley, who made a miraculous comeback to book his place at a fifth Games since making his debut as a 14-year-old at Beijing 2008. She admits his return – inspired by his six-year-old son Robbie wanting to see him dive at an Olympics – has given the rest of the team a boost and she has loved having him by her side in Rio, Tokyo and now Paris.

“I’m so pleased he’s back, he brings so much experience but so much fun as well,” she said of Daley, who will also be part of Eurosport and discovery+ ‘s TV coverage of the Games. He’s such a great team member – I’m going into my third Olympics and he’s even more of a veteran going into his fifth, so it’s great to have gone through that with him," she says.

Historic women for British Diving Championships

After claiming a couple of silvers in the Women’s 1m and 3m Springboard events at the 2022 British Diving Championships, Grace is preparing for her third World Championships, at the same Budapest venue where she made her Worlds bow in that 2017 edition.

The previous year, Reid and then-synchro partner Kat Torrance qualified a berth for the synchro event at the Olympic Games with a sixth-place finish at the FINA Diving World Cup. At the Olympics, the pair placed sixth again, before Reid came 19th after disappointingly just missing out on a semi-final spot.

Reid came close to finishing on the podium at the Worlds in Gwangju in 2019, placing fourth in the Mixed 3m Synchro, fifth in the Women's 3m Synchro and eighth in the 3m Springboard event. That performance came in the same year as her first ever gold medal in the FINA Diving World Series, courtesy of victory alongside Daley in the Mixed 3m Synchro at London's Aquatics Centre.

In 2018, Reid made history as she became the first woman ever to win a Commonwealth diving gold for Scotland on the Gold Coast, in the 1m Springboard event, and also claimed five Diving World Series medals. 

Later that year, the Dive London Aquatics athlete made a memorable return to her hometown of Glasgow for the first multi-sport European Aquatics Championships as she came away with a gold and silver medal, in the Women's 3m Springboard and Mixed 3m Synchro events respectively. She also finished fourth in the Women's 3m Synchro on the final day of competition.

Reid competed at her first World Championships in Budapest in 2017, when she was crowned silver medallist in the Mixed 3m Synchro, alongside Tom Daley. She also impressed to finish fourth in the Women's 3m Springboard category and fifth, with Kat Torrance, in the 3m Synchro.

Her Olympic debut was followed at Rio 2016, where she reached the final of the 3m Springboard event. A debut appearance at the Diving World Series 2015 in London saw her team up with fellow Edinburgh-based diver James Heatly. The pair secured Great Britain a place on the podium there, after winning bronze in the Mixed 3m Synchro.

Reid made her second Commonwealth Games appearance for Scotland in 2014, a year on from her maiden national title, in the 3m Springboard, at the 2013 British Diving Championships. A first international call-up for Reid came in 2010 at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where she the youngest member of Team Scotland at only 14 years old.