British papers seem unaware synchronized diving requires two people

Let’s have a little lesson in Olympic event vocabulary, shall we?

Synchronized diving features two divers from the same country competing as a pair, doing the same dives, together, and the better the pair – as in, both of them – do in terms of coordinating every aspect of their dives, from takeoff to splash, the higher they will score.

They. The pair. The two of them. Together.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way… On Monday, the British duo of Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow finished third in men’s 10-meter synchronized diving. As we just learned, synchronized diving requires two athletes working together.

Apparently, some of the papers in the U.K. were unaware that it takes two divers to succeed in the event:

Sharon Goodfellow, Dan’s mother, saw the photos and was rightfully bothered that her son wasn’t getting equal attention. When she saw a tweet of The Daily Telegraph cover she asked the poster, “Is this for real?” and told another she’d just done her first bit of “media bashing” in defense of her 19-year old son.

She has a point, of course.

Daley became a star in Great Britain in 2012, when as an 18-year old at the London Games he won bronze in the individual 10-meter platform; he parlayed his success and camera-ready looks into a job as mentor to celebrities on the British reality show “Splash!” in which the celebs learned how to dive (think “Dancing with the Stars” but with a higher degree of difficulty).

But he couldn’t have won his most recent medal without Dan Goodfellow.

For his part, Goodfellow told BBC Radio that the newspaper photos didn’t bother him, and he might have to tell his mother to stay off social media.

“Me and Tom have both been working so hard for this and we’re both so happy for each other,” Goodfellow said. “To me it doesn’t really matter… I’d probably just tell my mum to stay off Twitter.”

A few hours later, Sharon Goodfellow seemed to be in better spirits, tweeting her thanks to everyone that had reached out to offer their congratulations, adding it would take hours for her to get back to everyone.

Another lesson: never anger an Olympic mum, especially when it concerns her Olympic child.