Funny, I thought Tom Daley was a diver, not a swimmer, and I think he showed the right spirit.
You don't have to come home with a medal to have done well.
He accepted before the Games that he was unlikely to win a medal as he is still growing, and his body cannot be expected to do dives with the same 'degree of difficulty' as some of his opponents, and so if every dive he did was perfect his available total score would be lower than that for divers attempting more difficult dives.