By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING — Like most 14-year-old foreign boys who visit Beijing, Tom Daley had a list of sightseeing spots he wanted to visit, among them the mountainous Great Wall of China, which he toured earlier this week.

"We went up in a cable car and a toboggan down, so that was really good fun," Daley said, smiling broadly.

Daley's got another rather important item on his "to do" list, and that is to represent Britain as the youngest official competitor at the Summer Games. He's a diver, and the British press has dubbed him "diver boy" because of his reduced age.

So far, Daley is holding up quite well, not in the running for any medals but competing nearly shoulder to shoulder with far more experienced divers, including a few twice his age. The other Briton in the men's 10-meter platform diving competition, Peter Waterfield, is 27 years old.

On Friday night, Daley kept alive his slim chances for a medal by making it into the semifinal round of the men's (and boys') platform diving. Apparently affected by jitters, he faltered in the preliminary dives, ranking 24th among 30 divers, but later rose to 12th place with well-performed difficult dives like a backward three-and-a-half somersault and tuck.

Daley improved in both sessions Saturday, improving to eighth place after a strong morning effort and finishing seventh in the evening finals.

Walking out of the diving zone alongside a British press attache, the diver boy, who measures 5-foot-1 and tips the scales at only 104 pounds, was peppered with questions by the British press corps about how he's been spending his days at the Olympic Village.

"The village has been amazing," Daley said. "Sometimes you see all these people walking around and it's like, 'Oh my God, I just walked past an Olympic gold medalist!'" Daley said. "Everything I imagined the Olympics to be, imagine that times 10 and that's how it feels to be in the Olympics."

Daley started swimming at the age of 3 at a local pool in his hometown of Plymouth, England, and started diving at age 8. He regularly trains six hours a day before and after school.

In some ways, Daley's focus isn't so much the Beijing Olympics as the London 2012 Games, when he'll be a more experienced and mature 18 years old.

Unlike Olympic gymnastics, which has a minimum competition age of 16, and is embroiled in controversy over allegedly underage Chinese gold medal winners, diving has a lower limit of just 14.

Even at his young age, Daley is not Britain's youngest Olympian ever. That honor goes to a boy who was a cox in a men's pair rowing race when he was some 10 months younger than Daley is now.

Yet Daley has captured the imagination of the world's media, appearing on television and smiling his perfect smile, friendly and articulate, only recently getting accustomed to the handlers that now must deal with the media crush around him.

There are moments when it becomes apparent that Daley is still a boy. Daley was involved in a poolside squabble with his 26-year-old partner, Blake Aldridge, some 10 days ago in an earlier Olympic event, synchronized platform diving. Aldridge saw his mother in the crowd and decided to give her a call before the sixth and final dive, creating an anxiety bout in Daley

Aldridge later blamed Daley for "worrying about everyone and everything."

Daley still struggles at times even among his teammates. He ranked 12th Friday evening, far behind colleague Peter Waterfield, who nailed four of his six dives in the preliminaries and coming in fourth place. But when the event ended, Waterfield faced few questions from the press. Most were eager to speak only with diver boy.