It was a joke between teammates that started it all, smiled Jack Laugher when he chatted to Olympics.com at the Aquatics GB Diving Championships at the Sandwell Aquatics Centre in Birmingham in June.
The second most successful British diver of all time, with four Olympic medals including one gold, was talking about how he and teammate Noah Williams found themselves 19,341 feet (5,895 metres) up on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania just 61 days after the Olympic Games Paris 2024 had concluded.
“Me and Noah, we were joking around at the Olympics saying that we’d (climb Mount Kilimanjaro) and I think that we kind of joked our way into it actually being a serious thing, joked our way into turning up at Heathrow and getting on a flight to Tanzania,” said the Leeds native who is next competing at the World Aquatics Championships 2025 in Singapore with the diving event held from 26 July to 3 August.
The pair had left behind the hardware they had both just earned at Paris 2024, where Laugher had come away with bronze in the men’s 3m synchro alongside Anthony Harding while Williams claimed both silver and bronze in France, the former in the 10m platform synchro event alongside the most successful British diver Tom Daley, and the latter the individual event.
But for this trip, they needed to keep things light, especially as their fitness as Olympic athletes honed them to perfection for a seconds-long dive, not so much for a days-long endurance hike carrying loads of gear.
“It was really good fun to push ourselves in something different than what we normally do,” said the just turned 30-year-old. “Obviously me and Noah, we specialise in a 2.5 second sport, right… (but for the climb) it was five days in total, four days up, one day down on the other side, and it was really difficult having to acclimatise to something completely different.
“It’s basic stuff, it’s not a technical climb, but it’s something that we’ve never done before and we were pushing our bodies to do something different, which was good fun.”
Not only did the trek test the pair on their physical form but the bonds of their friendship in an alien environment, too. As it’s turns out, the balance of their very different personalities created an equilibrium that benefited both.