For some reason most people think that icons are old. Well, here's one that's not. He's just 21, and he has a tongue-piercing. Step forward, Matthew Mitcham.

After competing in Melbourne's Commonwealth Games in 2006 he seemed to have peaked, and took the difficult decision to take a break from the sport.

He came back the next year, with a focus on the Beijing Games in 2008. And 2008 was the year that he created history. First off, he chose to come out as a gay man, before the Games.

With over 10,000 athletes competing, I think it's reasonable to expect a fair few to be gay - but the surprise for me was that he was, for a time, the only really 'out' athlete competing.  Just how hard must that have been? 

How much strength of character is required to do that on the world stage - to be 1 out of 10,000? I'm proud that one of the reasons that London won the bid for 2012 was the fact that we are one of the most diverse cities in the world, including a strong and vibrant lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (or LGBT) community - and I hope that that means that gay athletes will feel doubly welcome here in 3 years' time.

But that on its own isn't enough to be an icon, let alone an Olympic one. For a start he hadn't yet competed at Olympic level. Yet, there's no way he could have packed his bag for Beijing knowing what would happen to him next. In the Water Cube, the 3-metre springboard competition began. 

Matt would finish 16th, not enough to make the finals. But in the 10-metre platform competition he made it through to the final where his first dive placed him 9th, and from there he made up ground up in later rounds. China's Zhou Lüxin, a home crowd favourite, led throughout the competition. 

He was a good distance ahead and looked unassailable. As the final round started, Zhou's last dive wasn't technically brilliant, but he still looked moments away from securing a historic China clean-sweep of the gold medals in the diving pool.

Sat at home watching this unfold, and listening to (British diver) Leon Taylor commentating on the BBC, I realised how big the score-gap was, and how Matt couldn't possibly close it. Matt walked slowly up to the platform for his final dive and waited for the Australian crowd's heart-screaming din to stop. 

Just like British BMX rider Shanaze Reade, he knew he wasn’t going to play it safe to secure a medal of any form - he took the riskier course to go for the gold, trying a particularly difficult dive. 

He stepped to the platform edge, turned around and tried a dive that had only ever been seen once before (Leon Taylor himself at the Athens Games). The back-two-and-a-half-somersault-with-two-and-a-half-twists in pike position was executed flawlessly - and became the highest-scoring dive in Olympic history, breaking 112 points. The gold medal was his. In Leon's excited words, "I invented that dive, and he's just perfected it!"

21-year old Matt is already looking to London 2012, and at his age he's got a few dives left in him yet. He will of course face another strong home contender, Team GB's Tom Daley, who is still only 15. 

In Beijing, Tom was the UK's youngest competitor, finishing an impressive 7th while watching Matt become Olympic champion. Since then Tom has won the World Championships, so he's clearly seeking his own youthful Olympic icon status too.

In the mean-time, Matt, I salute you. Olympic Icon, and possibly the only one with a pierced tongue.