Piri Weepu: Manu World Championship ambassador discusses his role and responsibilities

This weekend the Manu World Champs hits the Auckland waterfront for the first of two qualifying rounds in the city of sails. 

Piri Weepu, former All Black and now ambassador for the Manu World Champs joined D'Arcy to discuss.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the All Sport Breakfast podcast with Darcy
Waldgrave from News Talk SEDB. This weekend, the z Money
World Champs hit Auckland on the waterfront for the first
of two qualifying rounds in the city of Sales, and
there'll be a final in the third weekend. Lots of
falling in the ocean, controlled falling in the ocean. We're

(00:29):
joined now by pretty where Boot. You'll remember him as
an All Black plainly, but now he's an ambassador for
the Money World Champs staging York can qualify this weekend.
Good morning to you, pretty great to tenn again after
so long.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Oh yeah, a century.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, but we're not that old. Come on, how did
you get back into this as an ambassador for the Money.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I have no idea. I got asked if i'd be interested,
and I thought, you know what, Yeah, why not since
I enjoy trying to do a few bombs in mine
time and try and compute with my older brother and
cousins in there so and mates. So yeah, I guess
worked out that way that I've done it during my
show a couple of times, and then yeah, became their

(01:18):
ambassador and it's pretty cool actually.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
What do you have to do as an ambassador just
take phone calls from the bloody media.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Oh, just try and talk about water safety. Make sure
people are capable of swimming, not just sort of going
into a swimming hole and then jumping in and you know,
popping my news and then they can't swim. So a
little bit about safety understand, making sure that they know
where they're jumping if they don't, you know, getting a
bit of our local knowledge from people and making sure

(01:47):
that they when they do pop on money, that they
can get out of the water water safe safely as well.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, it's a serious side to it. I think that's
a brilliant part of what you're doing because water safety
New Zealand a lot of people don't know how to
swim and they drowning left right and send it. It's
a horrible statistic. So this is immensely helpful for the
bill out there. Hey, be safe and have.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
You had experience with trouble and the water pity.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Or no, not me personally. I've had mates that have
that have had incidents where I've struggled but was able
to sort of get themselves out of the trouble that
they were in. But I mean, like you said, the
stats aren't great in terms of the drownings, and especially

(02:37):
for I know for myself doing it, we've match that
the Maori and Pacifica people seem to drown majority in
the summer time. But not only that, we all know
that we want to be around the water and things
like that, so you know, when there's a chance to

(02:57):
jump off a rock and try and get the biggest splash,
you've got to make sure that when you enter that
you get up and you can exit at the same time.
So I think water Safety New Zealand and doing a
really good job trying to get opportunities to help our
younger kids with their swimming and try and promote that
as much as possible.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Pretty rare.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
You betrayed your age before you said bombs. Now it
was a bomb back in my day. It's moved to
a moneu now And I see you've been doing this
for a while. Tell me about your first experience. Where
did you used to drop them?

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, back in the day was actually called a mang
it there, and then it moved from that to a
mone who But I'm pretty sure everyone from South Aukland,
I'll tell you, is only called among it here, but
I probably started a swimming hole in Wine when I
was younger, going to the we called it. We called

(03:52):
it the Ultimate, which is probably our deeper swimming hole
that we had out on Wine who was still as
the deepest at the moment, to be honest, And then
if it wasn't there, we were going to the local
swimming pools and wine near Mona. So those are the
places that I used to go to and try and

(04:12):
do a few bombs. But nowadays everyone wants to do
the tuck and see how high they splash go. It's
usually I thought it was the biggest splash, meaning not
just hype, but a bit of girth as well. But
these days it's all about the hype.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
But girth wise, you going to jump in the drink yourself?
Have you been developing a decent girth so to make
a splash regardless of your technique.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, to be honest, since my dad playing days, my
girth on my backside hasn't freaking shrunk in anytime any smaller.
So I've got a bit of power behind you when
it hits the water. But for the direction of the splash,
you could never know whether it's going to go sideways
or not right?

Speaker 3 (04:52):
So you're going to be the Paul side.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Are you going to be the viaducts taking a look
at the accents going on there?

Speaker 3 (04:58):
You get a trip up here for nothing.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Not this weekend, but we'll be in in a few
weeks time when we have the finals and can see
as I'll be a judge on the day, but I'll
be partiking in the celebrity my new camp and I
lost last year, so I'm just wondering whether I got
a bit serious this year and see if I went

(05:21):
back my title, if I just go and have a
bit of fun and just do some random random bombs
in general.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Nah, Nate gone, I had the fast food stores and
prep big. You've got three weeks to grow and even
bigger ass petty wipe and we're looking forward to seeing it.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh well, I'll trying to eat too many pies with
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