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August 1, 2026 13 mins

Former Kiwi tennis star Marcus Daniell has moved away from the court and into helping athletes connect with charities.

Marcus is ​​the​​ executive director at High Impact Athletes, a non-profit organisation that he co-founded with fellow Olympian Hugo Inglis - which connects athletes with charities focused on global health, poverty, animal welfare and climate change. 

He joined Piney to explain further.

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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Marcus Daniel one of our great tennis players. He reached
the Australian Open doubles quarter finals in twenty eighteen and
twenty twenty one, the Wimbledon quarter finals in twenty nineteen.
He made fifteen ATP doubles finals, winning five of those.
He was as ranked as high as number thirty four
in the world. He won Olympic bronze with Michael Venus
in twenty twenty one, our first Olympic tennis medal since

(00:33):
Anthony Wilding won bronze and Stockholm in nineteen twelve. With
fellow Olympian Hugo English, Marcus Daniel founded High Impact Athletes.
They worked to connect the sporting world with the most
rigorously evaluated charities on the planet across climate action, global
health and animal welfare, and now High Impact Athletes has

(00:56):
convened Sport One Carbon Zero, a global athlete led climate
fund which involves New Zealand athletes at these Commonwealth Games.
Paul Volt, Eliza Cartney, javelin throw a, Tory Morby and
weightlift to David Letti, all of who have meddled at
these games have pledged to turn their performances into donations

(01:16):
for climate action. With every center, meter they clear, meter
they throw, and kill agram they lift, raising money for
projects aimed at reducing global emissions. Marcus Daniel is with
US Marcus Sport one Carbon zero. Where did the concept
of athletes linking their performances directly to climate donations come from?

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah? Thanks Jashon. That was a hell of a roundup
as well.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
So I think it's human nature to pay more attention
to things if you have something writing on it. And
I thought, instead of, you know, putting a few bucks
towards a sporting competition, why don't we put impact on
the lane. You know, you're more likely to follow an event,
You're more likely to follow a performance if you have
a vested interest. So yeah, these athletes have made these

(02:03):
beautiful commitments where their performances on the field of play
directly related to impact off field and kiwis anyone around
the world can make a pledge alongside them and get involved.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
When you approached the likes of Eliza Tory David Haymish
and pitch the idea to them, what was their initial
reaction on the whole.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Really cool thing is that all of these athletes jumped
at it. I think it's a common problem amongst the
athletic community that a lot of athletes want to give back,
they want to do good in the world, but they're
usually energy poor and don't really trust the charities that
they've come across, that they've grown up with, and so
I think this provided a really deeply researched and veted

(02:47):
way for them to get involved, and also just the
reframing of attacking the climate problem in a really forward
looking positive way. So rather than sort of trying to
put a band aid over past harms, we're looking at
what are the biggest leavers that we can pull on
to make a difference for the future and try to
make sport greener for generations to come. And I think

(03:10):
that optimistic positive framing really really landed with athletes.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Do you think there's a growing feeling among elite athletes
that they have an opportunity but also a responsibility to
use their profile and their platform for causes beyond the
sport that they play.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, I think the opportunity part is definitely becoming more
known amongst athletes.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
The responsibility is mixed.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
You know, there are still a lot of athletes who
are just head down and very narrowly focused on their sport,
and that's totally fine, right like it. I know how
much mental focus and effort it takes just to try
and sort of stay there and make a living out
of sport. So I don't begrudge any athletes who just
want to focus on their sport. But it's pretty amazing

(03:57):
to see how many athletes are using their platforms to
speak up, and not just in the climate space, but
more widely. You know, an example that comes to my
mind is Marcus Rashford and Great Britain talking about school lunches,
and he's created a real movement there, So I think,
you know, maybe it just takes a few more superstar
athletes specking out for it to become more of a trend.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
In terms of the climate change side of the there
has been a bit of rain in Glasgow particularly some
of the trend and field that I've seen, but the
backdrop is another European summer of extreme heat. Do you
think athletes are now seeing climate change is something that
is actually affecting their careers rather than just something which
is a bit abstract to them.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
Yes, I do, But I also don't think it's new athletes.
You know, there are plenty of surveys that can be
found that show that elite athletes have been very concerned
about climate issues for a long time. I think that
I saw one recently that it was close to eighty
percent of all athletes surveyed, we're deeply concerned about climate
and the effect that had on them.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
So I don't think it's a new thing, but I
do think, well.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
It seems to me anyway that there are more of
these quite strange, pretty extreme events that are happening around
the world and that are affecting sporting events. I mean,
you know, you saw these hydration breaks at the World
Cup for the first time ever. So yeah, it's sort
of starting to starting to penetrate a bit more deeply
into the day to day of sport.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
You mentioned before, Marcus that some athletes have a bit
of skepticism, maybe some suspicion about the charities that they
are approached to become involved in. How do you make
sure that the money that you know is raised through
initiatives like this go to the right places.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
Yeah, well, that's where I think we have a point
of difference at high impact athletes. A lot of the
charity space is based on vibes, and you need the
vibes right, you give from the heart. But what we
really specialize in is working with research organizations that are
the most rigorous in the world. So these are organizations
that spend tens of thousands of hours a year researching

(06:03):
where the best place to give is, and all of
their research publicly available, and they come out with a
very very small list of recommendations that pass all of
these standards. So the upshot is, if you choose any
of those organizations to contribute to, then you can be
pretty much as sure as you can be in the
space that your dollars doing as much as it can do.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
And I think.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
It's sort of this it's like a high performance framing
of charity, and I think that's actually something that lands
for athletes because athletes, you know, they pretty much every
decision they make in their day is around trying to
trying to find that extra zero point one percent. You know,
it's a high performance lifestyle, a high performance focus, and

(06:45):
it's just applying that same mindset to charity. So what
I think we can truthfully claim is that, especially in
the Sport Times charity space, we are the most impactful
per dollar in the world, and athletes can be very
very comfortable that anything that they choose to support through
high impact athletes is amongst the best the world.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Elite sport involves a massive amount of international travel. So
how do you respond to people who say, well, that's
very difficult to reconcile with climate action.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
I think they're one hundred percent correct. And the question
I'd ask those people is would you rather that athletes
did nothing or tried to do something to address it.
I don't think that sport will ever be will ever
not involve travel. I think the beauty of sport is
that it's loved around the world, and fans of sport

(07:42):
around the world want to see the best athletes playing
on their home ground. So athletes are going to have
to travel. I don't think that's ever going to change.
And so the question we asked is, well, if that
is the case, pragmatically, what is the best thing that
we can do to try to reduce, for example, the
emissions that come from aviation or from shipping, which is

(08:04):
also a huge part of you know, getting gear and
getting teams around the world. So yeah, I think they're correct,
But I also think it's better to do something than
to do nothing.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
In the last ten years of your own professional tennis career,
you donated a portion of your prize money to charity.
In your final year, half of your winnings you donated
to help fight child poverty, animal abuse, the impacts of
climate change. What led to your own perspective changing, Marcus
about what success looked like beyond just winning tennis matches.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
Yeah, a great question. I also I had a shocker
of a year in my last year, so that fifty
percent was not nearly as big as.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
I hoped it would be.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
But yeah, so through through the early stages of my
professional career, I was just head down trying to make it.
You know, it was really touch and go. I was
sleeping on floors. I was trying to just keep the
dream alive. And then when I reached the stage where
you know, I felt some sort of security in the
idea that I could make a living through playing tennis.

(09:11):
You know, I was getting to the end of the
year and actually actually having a little more money in
the bank account than when i'd started the year, and
that was new But when that happened, I felt this
really strong urge to give back because sport is selfish
like that, I don't think there's anyway around it, and
it's necessarily selfish. You know, you're trying to outcompete everyone,
even in a team situation, You're trying to outcompete for

(09:33):
the position that you play.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
And you know, I'm a.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Competitive person by nature, but that sort of killer instinct
way of being on the field of play, it never
really sat perfectly with how I wanted to.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Sort of be in general life.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
And so, Yeah, I felt this urge to give and
didn't really know what to do with it, and ended
up coming across this sort of niche in the charity
space of giving effectively, so trying to make your dollars
do as much as they could do. And the more
I read about it, the more it resonated with me,
and I realized that I needed to pull the trigger.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, made a.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Donation, and then, honestly the biggest change for me was
the following year. I started with a one percent pledge,
so one percent of my earnings on tour, and the
moment that I internally committed to that pledge that that
was a real turning point for me because suddenly it
meant that every match that I won, Okay, it was

(10:29):
great for me. I was ambitious. I wanted to, you know,
get to the top of the world in tennis. So
there was all of that sort of personal benefit, but
there was also this really small piece that was for
something so much bigger than myself. And it sounds I
don't know, it sounds like a bit of a cliche
or maybe I'm exaggerating it, but that actually that had

(10:50):
a huge impact on my enjoyment of the whole process.
You know, it's like getting out of bed in the
morning and your body's just in pieces and you're in pain,
and you need to go out and do another six
hour training day, and then there's this little piece in
my mind that's like, well, just shut up and stop
being a selfish prep like this is for something bigger
than yourself. And yeah, ultimately it's been a huge positive

(11:16):
in my life. Like getting to the end of the
year and making those donations, figuring out what that percentage
meant in dollar terms, and clicking the buttons to get
the money to where it needed to go. Those are
some of the most sort of positive beautiful moments of
those years.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
So I don't regret a single moment.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
I can see why those you approached to link their
performance to the sort of thing we're convinced by. By
what you've just said there, you're on the IOC Athletes
Commission as well, you're having these conversations around sustainability. My
cup field Markers is that younger athletes would embrace these
conversations more readily perhaps than older athletes. But are you

(11:55):
seeing support for this sort of thing in older athletes
as well?

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Yeah, I am.

Speaker 4 (12:01):
It's climate's an interesting one, right, Like even that word
I think has become a little bit polarizing in this
day and age, and it's a shame that that's the case.
But I've seen research recently that shows that, especially younger consumers,
they would only buy from brands that they feel have
a purpose driven.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Piece of what they do.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
So I think, you know, I think, and I hope
that the younger generations are leaning into, you know, the
wider picture and thinking more about purpose and yeah, the
good that can be done in the world rather than
just consumerism to finish.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Then if people are listening, they like the concept, but
they're not eleade athletes, I mean most of us aren't.
Can everyday sports fans make a meaningful contribution in the
space as well?

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Oh absolutely, Like at the end of the day, a
dollar is a dollar, and I'm really bullish on athletes
being the leaders in this space, so you know, stepping up,
putting their money where their mouth is, and then trying
to bring as many people along with them on the
journey as possible. So you know, for everyday people, you know,
if you appreciate it, admire some of these amazing Kiwi

(13:13):
athletes who are competing at the comm Games, then check
out their campaigns, check out what they're committed to and
get around them. Or if you wanted to give directly
to the charities, then give give directly to the charities.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Like what we care about.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
What I care about is that at the end of
the day, good is done in the world. And I
just think athletes are incredible front people to be pushing
this forward.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Sport one carbon zero driven out of high impact athletes. Marcus,
amazing work you're doing, mate, Thanks for joining us and
telling us all about it. I hope I hope that
it that it grows and grows and grows, Mate. It's
always good to catch.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Up with you. Thanks so much, Jason, appreciate it, No.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Thank you, Marcus Marcus Daniel there with us on Weekend Sport.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to News Talk zed B weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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