Goodfellow was born in Cambridge on 19 October 1996 to Sharon and John Goodfellow. His father John was diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 28 and died in 2006 aged 39. From 2008 to 2013 he was a student at Melbourn Village College. Goodfellow started attending sessions held by Cambridge Dive Team at Parkside Pools when he was young. He won gold medals in 10m platform as well as 3m and 1m springboard in the 10 to 11-year-old category of the 2007 ASA National Age Group Championships as well as a bronze in the synchro. In 2012, when he was 15, he was selected for the Great Britain development squad for his potential to be successful in sports. He moved to Plymouth to train in 2013 and joined Plymouth Diving Club.
Career
2011–2015
In 2011 at the age of 14, Goodfellow won his first medal in a major competition at the European Junior Diving Championships in Belgrade, winning bronze in the 3m springboard. In 2012, he won silver on the 10m platform, bronze on individual 3m springboard, and gold on the 3m springboard synchro with Freddie Woodward at the International Youth Meet in Dresden, Germany. In 2013, he won gold in the 10-metre platform at the European Junior Championships. Goodfellow also made his senior international debut in 2013 at the European Championships in Rostock and World Championships in Barcelona. In 2014 Goodfellow partnered with Matty Lee in the FINA Diving World Series, and won 10m Synchro bronze in two World Series legs in Dubai and Beijing. However, in the build-up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Goodfellow suffered an elbow injury, which sidelined him from participating in the competition in Glasgow. Soon thereafter, he had a shoulder injury that damaged a nerve, for which he had surgery on Christmas Eve, 2014. The surgery on his shoulder meant that he was unable to compete for some time in 2015. Goodfellow returned to competitive diving competition in the summer of 2015 at the tail-end of the season in the 3m springboard event in Bolzano, Italy.
2016
Goodfellow had to wait until the British National Cup in Southend in January 2016 to again compete in 10m diving. He participated in the individual 10m competition and teamed up with Tom Daley in the 10m sychro competition. Goodfellow first met Tom Daley, the 2012 London Olympics individual 10m bronze medalist, in 2015. He won bronze in the individual 10m dive and a gold with Daley in the 10 m synchro. Goodfellow and Daley earned a place in the 10m platform synchro competition at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro by winning the bronze medal at the FINA Diving World Cup on 21 February 2016. They produced the single best synchro 10m diving score, achieving it with a forward four-and-a-half somersault, with a difficulty of 3.7, which was awarded 91.02 points. Goodfellow and Daley won medals at each of the 2016 FINA World Series 10m synchro events – Beijing, Dubai, Windsor, Kazan – and were second place overall. They improved their score each time they competed in the FINA World Series – Beijing, Dubai, Windsor, Kazan. Goodfellow and Daley were the first Britons to win medals in all the 10m synchro FINA World Series events in one year. On 12 May 2016 at the European Championships, Goodfellow and Daley earned their seventh consecutive 10m synchro medal. They were in position for gold after the first five dives of the competition, but had to settle for silver after Germany passed them by less than one point in the final round. On 10 June 2016 at the British National Championships Goodfellow and Daley won gold in the 10m synchro. Their Front 4 ½ Somersaults tucked dive was their best single dive in the competition, and received a score of 95.46. Goodfellow and Daley earned a bronze medal in the 2016 Olympic 10m synchro competition in Rio on 8 August primarily by scoring 92.13 on their fifth dive, which was a 109C with a 3.7 degree of difficulty. This was their highest scoring dive. This score moved them from fifth to third. Their sixth dive was a 207B dive, with a 3.6-degree of difficulty, and had to be 84 or higher for them to maintain third place and edge out Germany. The score of 89.64 for their sixth dive ended the competition, and resulted in the bronze medal for Goodfellow and Daley.
