Originally published 2021-09-09.
Jordan Windle is an American platform diver who was born in Cambodia, adopted as a sick toddler by a single gay father from Florida, and grew up to reach the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2021, where he finished ninth in the men's 10-metre platform. He is not an Olympic champion, as some viral headlines claimed, but his path from an orphanage in Phnom Penh to an Olympic final is remarkable in its own right.
Here is the story of Jordan and his father, Jerry Windle, the facts behind it, and what it says about family, adoption and elite sport.
From Cambodia to Florida
Jordan was born on 13 November 1998 in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. His birth parents died when he was a baby, and he was placed in an orphanage in the capital, Phnom Penh.
Jerry Windle had wanted to be a father for years but, as a single gay man in the late 1990s, he found adoption in the United States extremely difficult. After reading a magazine article about Cambodian orphans, he contacted officials there and was matched with Jordan. He travelled to Phnom Penh in 2000 to bring him home.
According to the family's account, the little boy was in poor health: malnourished, suffering from scabies and infections, and weighing only around 16 pounds. Accounts of his age differ slightly; Wikipedia gives about 18 months, while other reports say he was nearly two. Jerry has said he was not sure at first that Jordan would survive. At home in Florida, father and son initially communicated through simple signs before Jordan learned English.
The timing turned out to be significant. Shortly afterwards, in 2001, the United States suspended adoptions from Cambodia amid concerns about child trafficking and fraud, so the route that brought Jordan home soon closed.
A post shared by Jordan Windle (@jordanpiseywindle)
Learning to dive
Jordan showed early talent in the water. He began diving as a young child and joined a competitive programme by around the age of seven. Along the way he met Greg Louganis, the four-time Olympic gold medallist who is one of diving's most famous names and himself openly gay. Louganis became a supporter of the family and later wrote the foreword to their children's book.
Jordan's club coach, Tim O'Brien, has his own link to Louganis: he is the son of Ron O'Brien, who coached Louganis during his Olympic career. That lineage gave Jordan access to some of the best technical coaching in American diving.
Platform diving is unforgiving. Divers leave a tower ten metres high and hit the water at around 50 to 55 kilometres per hour, so years of gradual, careful training are needed to learn complex dives safely.
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
College titles and national success
Windle went on to dive for the University of Texas at Austin under coach Matt Scoggin. He won the NCAA platform title in 2019 and the NCAA 1-metre springboard title in 2021. He has also won seven US senior national titles and six US junior national titles.
College diving in the US is a demanding apprenticeship for Olympic hopefuls. Athletes compete on 1-metre and 3-metre springboards as well as the platform, which builds all-round skill, and they train alongside some of the strongest divers in the country. Many of the American divers who reach Olympic finals come through this system, and Windle's titles on both springboard and platform show unusual versatility.
In competition, each dive is scored by a panel of judges on take-off, flight and entry, and the result is multiplied by the dive's degree of difficulty. That means a diver has to balance ambition with consistency: a very hard dive that ends in a splashy entry can score less than a simpler one executed cleanly.
He competed in several US Olympic trials before finally securing a place on the team for the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games, which took place in summer 2021.
Tokyo 2020: the Olympic final
In Tokyo, Windle came through the preliminary round and semi-final to reach the 12-man final of the men's 10-metre platform. He finished ninth. The event was won by Cao Yuan of China.
Speaking to USA Diving afterwards, he kept it simple: “I was happy just to make it to the final.” For a diver competing at his first Olympic Games, reaching the final is a major achievement, and it put him among the best platform divers in the world that year.
A post shared by Jordan Windle (@jordanpiseywindle)
Keeping his Cambodian roots
Windle has spoken about representing both of his countries. He has often described feeling connected to Cambodia, and he has been reported to have the Cambodian flag tattooed on his arm. His full Instagram handle includes his Khmer middle name, Pisey.
For many international adoptees, keeping a link to their birth culture is an important part of identity. Jordan's story shows that a child can belong fully to an adoptive family while also holding on to where he came from.
A father, a son and a children's book
Jerry and Jordan turned their story into a children's book, An Orphan No More: The True Story of a Boy: Chapter One, with a foreword by Greg Louganis. Told through animal characters, it follows a rooster who is told he cannot be a father without a hen. The message is that love, not the shape of a household, makes a family.
It is easy to tell this story as a simple lesson, but both men are more than symbols. Jerry made a determined, unconventional choice to become a parent; Jordan put in many years of early mornings, hard landings and patient coaching. His Olympic final was earned in the pool, not handed to him by a good story. Together they show how far a child can go when someone is willing to fight for him.
Sources: Wikipedia: Jordan Windle; USA Diving: Windle and Loschiavo place 9th and 11th in men's 10-meter final (August 2021). Earlier story via Bright Side; Instagram: Jordan Windle, Jerry Windle.
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