Exclusive Interview: Catching up with Matthew Mitcham

Admit it: if you were talented and lucky enough to make Olympic history by winning a gold medal on your final dive by scoring the highest point total in Olympic diving history, you’d do something amazing to celebrate the first anniversary of that moment. You certainly wouldn’t neglect to commemorate the event and further, actually forget the date you did it entirely.

That is unless you are twenty-one year old Aussie Matthew Mitcham.

In fact, when I point out I’m interviewing him almost exactly a year to the day since he single-handedly stopped a Chinese diving sweep at the Beijing Olympics, and ask him what he did to celebrate the anniversary of his achievement, Mitcham laughs and says, “It didn't even occur to me that [this] was the same date. In fact, I can't even remember what day I won it on. I only just flew in from Rome, so I was just recovering from jet lag and doing lots of laundry.”

Jet lag might not have been the only reason Mitcham was exhausted. While it’s a little before 1 PM on the west coast of the U.S., for Mitcham, who is in Sydney, Australia it’s, 4:50 AM and he’s woken up twenty-five minutes early for our interview. A little less than an hour after we’ve finished talking, he’ll be hitting the gym for training before heading off to college.

What's a typical day like for Mitcham these days?

I get up at 5, I'm at training by 6 until 9. I'm usually in the gym in the morning. I'm always dry in the morning. During the day, I'm either doing media obligations or at university, then I start training for another three hours in the afternoon. I get Saturday afternoon and Sunday off. I try to spend as much time as possible with my friends and partner since they tend to get a bit neglected during the week. We just like to spend quality time together.

Mitcham with parnter Lachlan Fletcher

Mitcham’s partner is Lachlan Fletcher, a man most of the world first saw when Mitcham climbed into the stands and embraced him after the winning the gold medal. The two met more than three years ago, and according to Mitcham, theirs was a relationship that happened quickly.

It was all very sudden and straightaway. I was living in Brisbane at the time, and he was living in Sydney, and I met him in Sydney. I saw him again the next weekend, and he saw me the weekend after, he came up the weekend after, and a month after meeting each other, he'd moved up to Brisbane to live with me because of my diving. So we've been pretty much living together for three years. [laughs] We're boring.

Quality time with Lachlan is especially important to Mitcham as he has to travel so frequently. Asked if Lachlan comes with him, Mitcham explains, “He would if we could afford it, but we'd have to pay for that ourselves, which is, frankly, not possible. For very major competitions we try to make exceptions and find the money.”

Asked what Lachlan would say is his worst quality, Mitcham laughs and says, “I'm messy and I'm messy. I'm really messy, but he loves everything about me.”