Interview: Chris Mears: 'It's been a hard year'

Team England diver Chris Mears has spoken about his 'hardest year' trying to come back from injury.

The 21-year-old, who is expected to take gold in the 3m synchro with diving partner Jack Laugher, suffered a double ankle injury at the end of last season and spent the early part of 2014 in recovery.

"It wasn't too good, to be honest," Mears told Sports Mole. "It wasn't the highest point of my life. It's been a hard year trying to come back from that but I'm really lucky with the support team I've got. They've been so helpful and done everything in their power to get me back up on the board.

"I've now moved programmes to train with Jack full-time. We are the best of friends so it's absolutely awesome. I think we're getting a flat together, so it's pretty good."

Asked if the pair are confident of taking gold in Edinburgh next week, he added: "Yeah, 100%. We're the top-ranked team going into this and we've been smashing it up around the world getting medals. It's still a very big deal [though]. I want this so badly and so does Jack. But in the [Diving] World Cup we both wanted it badly too and we ended up fifth, so let's just hope that we've done everything right in our preparation and it works out for us."

Hit play below to watch Mears's full interview with Sports Mole, in which he also discusses his "very scary" emergency plane landing in Russia last week: