Tanya Watson: ‘My faith is very important because God loves me, no matter what’

Tanya Watson is the first Irish female diver to qualify for an Olympic Games

Tanya Watson competing in the 10m platform dive at the LEN European Aquatics Championships in Budapest. Picture: Andre Weening/Sportsfile

The pandemic was no time to be on a gap year. A rite of passage the world over, it offers the opportunity to visit and expand new horizons, shrug off the school uniform, and find yourself as a grown-up before university and a modicum of responsibility and routine reassume control.

Covid changed all that. Tanya Watson’s friends found themselves cooped up at home back in Southampton, unable to party on a beach in Thailand, work on a sheep shearing station in New South Wales, or just meet up in the coffee shop or pub. A world of possibilities was closed to them when the door should have been wide open.