What Happens When You Bet on Yourself? The Mindset of a Champion with Chris McCormack

Episode Transcript
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Chris McCormack (00:07):
I mean, look, if this doesn't go your way,
you're done.
And so there was a lot ofpressure on me.
I believe I remember looking atmyself in the mirror race
morning saying, if you don't winthis race, your career's done.
Like a lot of the sponsors werethere and I won it.
I didn't want to go down as thebest guy to never win in Kona,
and that's what I used to tellmyself, and so the relief of
that I'm getting the monkey offmy back was I don't remember the
last mile of that race.

Charlie Reading (00:28):
Welcome to the final episode of season nine of
the Business of Endurancepodcast, and what an episode it
is.
Today we have the incredibleChris McCormack Macca, as he's
known to people who know andlove him, the two-time Ironman,
world champion, founder of SuperLeague Triathlon, or Super Tri

(00:51):
as it now is, and one of themost successful and respected
figures in endurance sport.
In this conversation, makaopens up about his remarkable
journey from leaving a career inbusiness to move to France and
pursue triathlon to becoming oneof the sport's greatest
athletes ever.
He shares the highs and lows ofhis careers, including the

(01:13):
pivotal moments that shaped hismindset and the mental
resilience required to overcomefailure.
But it's not just about hisathletic achievements either.
Chris reveals how hetransitioned from athlete to
entrepreneur, using the sameprinciples that made him
successful in sport to disruptthe triathlon industry with
Supertri.
Along the way, he delves intothe power of goal setting, the

(01:37):
importance of physical fitnessin business and how his
experiences have shaped thelegacy he's building today.
This episode is a masterclassin perseverance, adaptability
and creating lasting impact.
So, whether you're an athlete,entrepreneur or someone just
looking for some inspiration,you don't want to miss this one.

(01:58):
So let's dive into theconversation with Chris
McCormack, or, as weaffectionately know him, macca
Gerard.
When we look at the back end ofthis podcast, then we see
something really interesting.
We see that 57% of the peoplethat regularly listen to it
haven't hit the subscribe button.

(02:20):
So could I ask you a quickfavour before we dive into
today's episode?
If you're enjoying Claire and Ibringing you amazing guests,
not asking you for patronagefees and not jamming the podcast
full of adverts, then the bestway you can help us continue to
do that and make it even betteris to hit that subscribe button.

(02:43):
And here's my promise to youwhen you subscribe we'll make it
our mission, along with theteam that supports us, to
continue to improve this podcastevery week.
So thank you so much for yoursupport and for being a part of
the Business of Endurancecommunity.
Let's dive in.
So, maka, welcome to theBusiness of Endurance podcast,

(03:08):
really really looking forward tochatting to you today, and I
want to kick off right at thestart of your triathlon career,
because I think there's a lot oflessons that people in business
can take from your start andyour arrival in the world of
triathlon, because you left theworld of business to to go out
on a limb and go to France andand pursue a triathlon career.

(03:30):
So for those that don't knowhow your journey started, would
you mind, by starting off bysharing you know what it, what
it felt like to go through thatand make that decision.
And what were those early daysin France really like?
What was it like when you weretrying to make out in the world
of triathlon?

Well, it was a long time ago, I can give you
that.
And triathlon is a relativelynew sport.
So to give it some more contextto that, it was my family were
very education driven and my dadreally only saw sport as an
opportunity to get universitypaid for.
So he was very encouraging ofsport because he realized I
could get college paid forwithout him having to flip the
bill at the end.
But it was always you'refinishing high school, you're

(04:08):
going to college.
You do the typical route thatmost people take.
And during high school I wasvery good at athletics.
I was a good runner.
I had aspirations of being likeSebastian Coe, who was my idol.
I watched him at the 84Olympics as a 10-year-old and
thought I want to be an Olympicmiler.
And triathlon hadn't reallycome to this country.
It came in the mid-'80s,early-'80s, but we started

(04:28):
seeing triathlon in the mid-'80s.
I was in my early teens at highschool.
I graduated in 1990, highschool to go to college in 91.
And the opportunity to do atriathlon was presented to me at
university.
I was 18 years of age and thatcame about.
I had my running scholarship atuniversity, I was part of the
run team and I was working at arestaurant here making $70 a

(04:51):
week, part-time, which, and Isaw a swimming, biking, running
event at a beach not too farthat paid $500 to win and I
remember thinking $500, like wow, that'd be like amazing to win
$500.
And I said, look, I can run.
I grew up on the beaches.
I've always surfed.
My brothers and I wanted to bepro surfers as kids, so we grew

(05:13):
up swimming and surfing ourwhole lives and I arrived to
college so like it can't be thathard.
This was really that raw and Igive people that I talk to
people now when you think aboutwhat probably hydrox or
something is.
Now we've seen that sameevolution in a sport, how it
went from a nothing to a bigthing.
At that time, when I was doingtriathlon here, it was a, it was

(05:33):
a mickey mouse sport.
It was this sort of hybrid ofsports that people found cool
and and it really come on like abit of a hurricane here and I
did this race.
I won four hundred dollars andI was hooked like a second in
the race was like, oh man, I'vegot to find myself some more of
these things.
My father heard that I wasdoing it and was more worried
about me losing my runningscholarship at university.
So he was in the early daysvery anti this triathlon thing

(05:57):
and so I did a couple of theseraces and was ID'd by the
triathlon federation here,triathlon association here, and
I got selected for a juniorworld's team.
That was in the ManchesterWorld Championships in 1993, and
they paid the whole bill to go,which in athletics they didn't
do that down here.
When you made an athletics teamand had to go overseas, you had
a chicken raffle and you raisedas much money as you could to

(06:18):
go to a thing where this newtriathlon sport seemed to have
money.
It was cool and it wassponsored by the chocolate
company Cadbury.
And they asked me if I wouldlike to represent Australia at
the World Junior Championshipsin Manchester, fully paid for
I'm like two weeks holiday, likeI mean this would be amazing,
yeah darn.
So I went over with the team.
I raced in Manchester and was, Ithink, my fifth or sixth

(06:40):
triathlon and I finished fourthin this Junior Worlds.
I nearly or sixth triathlon andand I finished fourth in this
junior world, so nearly won it.
Spencer Smith won theprofessional race that day and a
guy called Olivia Hushmed fromSwitzerland won the men's race
in the junior men's race.
But a lot of the guys that are,that did amazing things in the
sport were in that junior NormanStadler, who I ultimately raced
in the future, lydia Mars somany of the guys.

(07:00):
When I look back at that list Ilove the late, incredible
athletes.
We all did this junior worldsrace and I was from there.
I was.
It was the old day so there wasno cell phones and I remember
getting picked off, picked up bya French club who approached me
and said would you like to comeand race in France?
The world championships were inAugust of 93.
University in Australia isFebruary.
It's a calendar year, februaryto October.

(07:21):
So I was in the middle of myuniversity degree.
My father had only accepted megoing across if I went for the
two weeks only and came back andfinished college and I got
offered a trip to go to Franceand race for a team in Tricastan
, in the Drome region of France,which became Assisten, which
was the great team that thegreat Simon Lessing, a great
triathlete from England, racedfor.

(07:42):
And I was like I've never beento France.
That would be amazing andyou're going to pay for
everything.
No worries, I'm going to extendmy holiday.
It was more about experiencingthings.
I didn't really that, I didn'ttake it seriously, but I was
like, okay, this is a freeholiday, I'll take it.
And to cut a long story short,I did another eight weeks in
France.
They offered me a contract thefollowing year to come back and
race as a professional and theyoffered me 30,000 back then.

(08:04):
It was 120,000 french francs,which the exchange rate was
30,000 australian dollars, whichI always thought I'll never
work again.
You know, I mean this is.
I went home and I told myfather I wanted to drop out of
university and he saidabsolutely not.
You know, you forget this pipedream of being a.
What is this sport?
Triathlon?

(08:25):
It's Mickey Mouse sport.
It means nothing.
No, get back to university.
And so I had to turn down theoffer and I went back to
university, reluctantly, did thegood boy thing, finished
university but dropped out ofthe sport, raced locally in
Australia, just picking up money.
But I was seeing a lot of theAustralian guys that were going
to Europe were coming back and Iwas beating them here in
Australia just because I hadsuch a big run At the time I was

(08:47):
the Australian champion atcross-country running.
So you know, over 5 and 10K.
I had a 28-minute 10K PB, so Iwas a lot faster than these guys
running triathlon.
I wasn't much of a swimmer itwas probably the weakest part,
but I could swim, which was ararity.
And then cable television cameto Australia.
We're starting to see eventsfrom all over the world.

(09:08):
Before that it was just thegovernment channels on TV.
But when this cable TV startedcoming to Australia, we started
seeing triathlon a lot more ontelevision here and I was seeing
a lot of the guys I'd knownover the few years racing in
Europe and I wanted to go overthere.
I wanted to get there and I'dtaken a job at Bankers Trust,
which was, yeah, my dad wasecstatic.
My mother and father couldn'thave been happier.

(09:29):
You know, his one son tippedoff the other two to go and I
was miserable.
I was an accountant.
I studied commerce, accounting.
I'd catch the train to work,like most people from where I
lived.
It was and I tell a true story.
I remember sitting next to aguy at work about six or seven
weeks into my job.
His name was Brian.
He had a picture of his familyon his little booth and I

(09:51):
remember looking across,thinking I'm 21 years of age, 22
nearly and in 18 years I gofrom this seat to that seat.
That's what my life looks like,you know, like I'm going to
have kids and I remember justbeing depressed is the wrong
word, but I remember thinkingthere's got to be more to it.
I've been the perfect son.
You know what I mean.
I really have and I experienceda taste of Europe and coming

(10:13):
from Australia it was you guysare European, so it's just very
common to you.
But coming from Australia Iwanted to see more and and I
decided I'm going to quit my job.
I lasted six months in my job,quit my job, sold everything I
had, didn't have the courage toquit my job.
I lasted six months in my job,quit my job, sold everything I
had, didn't have the courage totell my father that I'd quit my
job.
But I thought if I selleverything I had, book my ticket
, just got up to France, I'd bediscovered as this new super

(10:33):
hope and everyone would rememberme from a few years before as
this junior superstar.
And I had it all planned out inmy head.
I ultimately told my father twoweeks after I quit my job.
He was a little disappointed.
But I tell a funny story becauseI used to my father used to
pick me up twice a week on hisway to work because I wasn't
living at home, and just so wecould catch up and we'd go in.

(10:54):
So for the two weeks I quit myjob, I actually my father picked
me up and took me to a job I nolonger had and then I'd catch
the train.
I'd catch the train back home,train all day, then catch the
train back into the city for himto pick me up on the way home,
and so I had to lie to him for acouple of weeks until I plucked
up the courage to say Mum, dad,I've quit my job, I've sold
everything I have and I'm goingto go to Europe.

(11:16):
I want to be a professionaltriathlete and you know, I've
been told I'm pretty good atthis.
You know good at this.
You know I've been winningthese races here in Australia
and I got fourth in that juniorworlds thing and and I haven't
really focused very hard on itand it sounds really raw, but
that's pretty much what it wasback then.
And I got to Europe and Ivividly remember catching the
plane from Sydney to Singaporeand Singapore to Paris.

(11:37):
And it wasn't until I got toSingapore that I realized I had
no plan, when I actually mywhole headspace was about
getting out of Australia.
I hadn't really thought throughwhat happens.
When I got there, you know,like it was just like let's get
out and become a professional.
And when I got there I Iremember a couple of years
earlier I'd raced a race inOmbra, in in the, in the Alps of
France, near, near, near Gap,and I thought, well, that was a

(11:58):
great place.
It looked beautiful when I wasthere, maybe I could go down
there and train and maybethere's some races.
And back then there wastriathlon magazines I used to
buy and used to look at all theevents at the back and go okay.
So I caught a train down toUmbra and I got out at the town
of Gap and I ended up going tothe office, to tourism you
remember them back then justtrying to find a place to live.
And you know I had $3,000Australian dollars to my name,

(12:30):
like name, like I mean nothingand I just thought I was just
gonna, you know, naively race myway around and and people are
going to find me, and I did endup doing a race in Orange and
won a few francs.
But I just had nothing and noidea.
I ended up living in the backof this guy's house, that I
rented a little room off fromthe office to tourism and just
trained every day and and wasjust picking off races, catching
trains to races and picking up,and it didn't really go as I
had envisaged in my head.
I thought, you know, I'd beenthere five weeks.
I'd race literally Saturday andSunday, any opportunity I could

(12:53):
get to get money because Ineeded it, and catching these
night trains so I could save anight's accommodation.
And you know, I came back oneday to the place, the property
and the gentleman I was rentingit off, a guy called Philip, who
became quite a nice, quite aninfluential person in my life,
just by chance, and he, uh, I,saw a race in in Paris and it
was a world cup event and and atthat time the world

(13:15):
championships was 1996, theworld championships that year in
Cleveland, ohio.
So the Australian team hadopted not to send their athletes
to the which was now the WorldTriathlon Series, but back then
it was a World Cup Series thatopted not to send the
Australians to that race inParis and, by chance, I saw it
and I saw the prize money.
I had no idea about World Cup,nothing.
And I had Philip ring theorganisers and they said, oh,

(13:38):
you need to ring your federationin order to be put into this
event.
So, to cut a long story short,I ran the federation.
They're like who are you?
Oh, yeah, you're that guy.
Yeah, no worries.
And there's no one going go anddo this race.
Whatever, we don't care.
All the good guys are intraining camp in boulder,
colorado, preparing forcleveland world championships.
So I did the race in paris itwas the third race of the world
cup series that year and Ifinished fifth at an amazing

(14:01):
race in this world cup and Iremember winning two thousand
five hundred dollars going whoaus dollars, by the way which was
like I was mad.
I was back in the green.
I remember thinking I've gotit's just as much money.
I've been here five weeks andI'm in front of what I was when
I came here.
Well, that was sort of what mymotivating factor was.
And and again by chance, I metles mcdonald.
He was the, the president ofthe time of the world.
Triathlon was called theInternational Triathlon Union

(14:23):
back then.
But what is now World Triathlon?
And he asked he said who areyou?
You know where did you comefrom, who are you?
And I told him look, a fewyears ago I got fourth in the
junior worlds but my father mademe go to college and I'm over
here and I want to be aprofessional athlete.
And you know, thank you forletting me race.
And he said would you considerracing next week in
Drummondville in Canada?

(14:44):
We're sponsored by Lufthansa.
We'll fly you across toDrummondville.
And I said oh look, I didn'tknow who he was.
I said look, you've got to ringyour federation to get into
these races.
I didn't realize he was thepresident of the whole thing.
And he said look, I'll speak toyour federation.
I'll wildcard you a spot inDrummondville if you want to
come over.
And my first thought was I'dsaid to myself on the plane no

(15:04):
matter what opportunity comes,just go with it.
Don't like, just don't.
I have a tendency to overthinkthings at times.
I said just be loose and freeand go with it.
If it doesn't last and we comeback after two years, make the
experience one of those thingsyou'll talk about to your kids,
you know.
And so I said, sure, I've neverbeen to Canada, sign me up,
I'll come to Drummondville.

(15:25):
So he organized it all.
I flew across to MontrealDrummondville's, a little town
just out of Montreal for thefourth round of the World Cup
Series and I remember all theAustralian team was already
there because they'd been inNorth America training.
And I remember them all lookingat me like how did you get into
this race, like you're a bit ofan imposter, like you're
supposed to go for thisAustralian system, and how the

(15:47):
hell did you get a start in thisseries?
And they sort of were a bitstandoffish and I ended up going
on and winning the second WorldCup race I ever did.
I won the event $10,000.
It was like the most money I'dever seen in my life.
And I was the second, did itwith a big run and that sort of
launched my career and at thatpoint the australians had to
take me seriously because I'dwon a world cup.

(16:07):
I was now ranked in the top 10and and so fundamentally I say
I'm an accidental hero of thesport by, I think, the naivety
being so green and raw.
Because I I say to my kids nowyou know, when you don't fear
anything, you say green, youdon't, and you're so raw and you
don't know what things looklike on the other side.
You have no fear.
You take many chances that Iprobably wouldn't take.

(16:27):
I look at and think to myselfnow oh my gosh, like my
daughter's.
My oldest daughter is the sameage I was when I went.
I couldn't imagine her goingthere on her own and not
speaking to the parents for solong.
But that's how I sort oflaunched into the career, my
career, and I ended up meeting alot of influential people.
On that season I did qualifyfor my first Australian team.
I finished, I think, 12th in myfirst world championships as a
professional, came back toAustralia, I met the Australian

(16:52):
world champion at the time.
It was a gentleman called MilesStewart.
He saw my talent as a runner.
I think he realised I couldprobably help him in his running
to improve his running.
So he brought me into histraining camp on the Gold Coast.
When I came back here inNovember I finished that season
ranked number nine in the worldand then I just had the most

(17:12):
dynamite when I got a coach whoactually I had some structure in
my training.
I wasn't just going to the pooland swimming hundreds and and
stuff and riding as far as Icould ride until I was exhausted
and I knew my running structureand I really replicated my
running programs from my old runcoaches into swimming and and
cycling.
If people saw what I was doingthey'd be like you're far out,
like it's.
It was ridiculous.
You know I do hill repeats onmy bike, like there was sort of

(17:35):
some method to the madness, butit really was structureless and
and when I fit in it, when Ifinally came home to fit in with
a professional coach who reallyshowed me how to train and what
to do and really just sharplike polished the diamond, I had
an incredible season.
I ended up winning everything inAustralia won the national
championships, qualified for the, the Formula One series here,
which was huge, and I startedtaking on the best of

(17:57):
Australians talent Greg Welsh,miles Stewart, brad Bevan, who
were the I mean the best in theworld at that time household
names in this country at thattime, and it was on the eve of
the Sydney Olympic Games, therewas a lot of discussion about
how that point, triathlon hadbeen accepted into the Sydney
Olympic Games and was going tobe the event.
And suddenly I'm a player inthis sport and the 97 season I

(18:19):
ended up, you know, kicking offby winning the first two rounds
of the World Cup was worldnumber one.
You know, kicking off bywinning the first two rounds of
the World Cup was world numberone and by the end of the year I
was the world champion.
I won the world championshipsat home in Australia, in front
of my father and mother, crossedthe line.
I beat Simon Lessing, who waslike, honestly, my idol, and to
beat him in Australia, and Iremember crossing the line, it
was live on Australiantelevision.

Did your dad forgive you at that point?

I said to my father right then.
And there, dad, this is what Ido.
You know what?
Do you think?
There's 100,000 people on thecourse.
It was incredible, one of thegreatest days of my life.
And he said, son, I've neverbeen more proud of you in my
life and that was sort of therelief of that.
I'd made the right choice, I'dnot let my parents down, which
was a subconscious.
You know I sound like a sissykid, but I never.

(19:03):
I think any boy wants to do theright, but my parents were
amazing people and I neverwanted to do the wrong thing by
letting them down.
And I think I carried thatweight on my shoulders for two
years and that really kept memotivated and pushed.
But that's how I ended upbecoming an accidental
triathlete, an accidentalprofessional triathlete.
Yes, my father ended upforgiving me.
He still.
He used to call me the blessedson, the guy, the kid who's

(19:28):
never worked a day in his life.
He worked six months of hislife.
My son, you know like that washis.
That's what he always used tosay to me.
But no, definitely very proud.
And that sort of launched mycareer.
I fell in love with the sportand, just like everything.
I'm very obsessive.
So once I, once I got a systemin place, I knew what I was
doing.
I started really reading andgetting obsessed with with the
training, with my philosophiesand understanding the psychology
of what made people good andbad in the sport.
Because I think the physicalcomponent of triathlon is talked

(19:50):
about a lot, but for me Ialways was always second
guessing, because when you feellike you're an imposter in a
sport and you put people up onpedestals and you make that
transition from being a talentor a junior prospect into a
world champion, you're not toldhow to behave, you don't know
what that is.
You always see these worldchampions or Olympic champions

(20:12):
as enigmas and suddenly peopleare coming up to you you're that
guy.
You don't know how to act.
Am I supposed to be cool?
It's quite a weird phase.
So I never felt like I fit thatmould correctly and so I tended
to retreat.
But I definitely realized thatthat mind and that imposter
syndrome that every athlete hasas a roller can be used in a

(20:34):
positive or negative way, and Ithink I really focused on that
in my entire career being very,very strong mentally and how I
went about my craft was muchmore of a cerebral approach as
opposed to a purely physical one.

Claire Fudge (20:47):
I'm sorry I talked too long.
No, not at all.
I think it's amazing.
Some of the things you sayactually about the advantages
back then were you didn't havemobile phones.
You just went and did it.
You were young and just thoughtwhat the hell I'm going to go
and do it and theseopportunities, that doors were
opened and you just said yes andjust amazing to hear kind of

(21:08):
from where you were to,obviously, where you got to in
your sport.
Obviously, there's been anannouncement recently about Kona
all the girls and boys allcoming back together to the
island, which is absolutelyamazing.
But I want to talk to you aboutKona and your experiences and
your two wins in Kona.
Want to talk to you about Konaand your experiences and your

(21:29):
two wins in Kona.
Was one of those wins for youmore special or the most special
to you, and what?
What in particular did thatrace mean to you?
What did you take from, fromwinning it?

well, that race became my obsession, my life.
I you know, I think you know,coming out of that World Series
racing, what had happened I wasworld number one going into the
Sydney Olympics and on the eveof the Olympic Games, my mother
passed away breast cancer andthe Australian team opted to not
put me on the start line forthat race, which broke my heart,
because I promised her on herdeathbed that I would represent

(22:01):
at the Olympic Games.
And I was devastated,devastated, beyond devastated.
I almost retired from the sport.
I felt like a failure of a sonand and I ended up in my two
greatest short course careers,short course seasons in 2001 and
2002.
I dominated, was world numberone again in 2001, dominated.
The season 2002.
I had an incredible seasonagain, commonwealth games in

(22:22):
manchester.
But I'd opted the federationwas trying to get me to come
back to race the Olympic Gamesagain for Athens.
I'd done the test event withthem.
We tested on the course andthey said you can win Athens,
which Hamish Carter went on towin.
Hamish was an athlete.
We used to have head-to-headraces all the time and I didn't
want to put my life into the, beit naively.

(22:45):
I didn't want to put my lifeinto the, and be it naively,
it's.
I didn't want to put my lifeinto the hands of selectors.
After I felt so short-changed inSydney and I remember the high
performance director oftriathlon Australia said look,
we've done all this testing onyou, chris.
You're a power athlete, whatare you going to do?
And back then you could only doworld cup or WTS.
There was no 70.3, there was acouple of half Ironmans around
the world.
But there was Ironman and ITU.

(23:06):
They were the two sports andIronman athletes were completely
different athletes to the ITUathletes.
They didn't even really connectlike they do now.
People used to transition up,but it was very rare.
I think only Mark Allen andGreg Welsh and McKeeley had done
it later, but not many hadtransitioned from representing
both sports.
And the high-performancedirector said we've got all the
testing data on you.
Where are you going to go Ifyou don't do the Olympics in

(23:27):
Athens?
What are you going to doIronman?
And he laughed.
I said yeah, well, as a matterof fact, I'm going to do Ironman
and in fact I'm doing IronmanAustralia to qualify for the
2002 Ironman World Championships.
And they just thought I was ajoke in 2002.
So that was done and then Icame back prepared.
I won ironman australia ondebut, which was very rare back

(23:48):
then I beat peter reed who wasthe world champion and it was
the hardest thing I've ever donein my life.
My whole mindset about ironmanand I tell this story a lot
because to see how naive we are,because now everything's so
dialed in and technical and youhave glucose monitors and power
meters and right my was.
I used to race some of theseIronman guys in America, in
Chicago, non-drafting races inChicago, and and you know, over

(24:12):
an Olympic distance which is aquarter of the distance, say, of
an Ironman, I'd beat Peter Reid, the world Ironman champion, by
like six minutes.
Be like, well, if I can beathim by six minutes in that, then
it must be 24 minutes in anIronman, like it's four times
the distance.
I'd just be you.
It was just so naive.
And I remember.
And then when I did my firsthalf Ironman in Wildflower I
broke the world record and thatwas sort of the unofficial world

(24:32):
championships back in thosedays was the Wildflower
Triathlon, the half Ironman I'dwon, that broken the course
record.
So I thought, oh, and then Iwon my first Ironman on debut,
being the most difficult raceI'd ever done was very, very
hard and I just thought I wasgoing to roll into.
My plan was I'll roll into Konain 2002.
I'll win it on debut.
Everyone will love me.
Then I'll come back and winAthens because I'll have enough

(24:55):
money and sponsors that I'llnever have to rely on the
Federation again and they'llhave to deal with me.
Well, it didn't really go downthat way and a lot of people
that know my story I got, if youwatch the 2002 coverage, I
cringe when I watch it because alot of people say it's
cockiness.
But when you listen to thisinterview, I promise you it was

(25:15):
sheer naivety.
And when I hadn't lost a racein three years, I'd done an
Ironman and won it on debut.
I won a half Ironman.
Why wouldn't?
I think I was going to win konalike so when they asked me the
questions and that's why my bookis called I'm here to win the
remember doing the interview inkona and a lot of the ironman
athletes were very humble to thesense that that asked the
question how do you think you go?
And I said I'll just see howthe day unfolds.

(25:36):
I just take it one step at atime it was very, very
politically correct answers.
And when they I sat down theywere like oh, how do you think
you're going?
I said what?
I didn't come here for aholiday, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
win, like I mean, and they'relike I met the camera guy
looking out from his camera likethat, going, wow, like this kid
, who is this kid?
And they're like, what makesyou think that?
I said, well, I haven't lost arace in three years.

(25:57):
I did an ironman six months agoand I beat the guy who won this
race last year.
Like I didn't see him all day,I had swam in our bike about
running.
Like I mean, you know, I didn'tcome here for all, I'm here to
win me and that's and.
And a lot of the guys were like, wow, this is a cocky kid.
And and I just had always hadthat mindset I just want to win
the race.
And I did that first race.

(26:17):
I had a 13 minute lead off thebike myself, thomas hell, regal,
who had won the race and was anidol of mine, jürgen Zach.
We pumped everyone and I ranout of town, high-fived my
father who came over to watchand said bank the check, dad,
$100,000.
Like, this was a mile into therun, they were paying $100,000
to win it and I had a 13-minutelead.
Thinking and I'm a runner, youknow like but I tell you this

(26:46):
story because in an olympicdistance race I used to take one
gel in the ironman.
I'd done that, I'd won adiamond.
Australia broke the courserecord in the entire day.
My math was olympic distancerace, one gel, ironman four gels
.
I'll take one extra one.
So I had five gels at theironman.
Like the nutrition strategy waszero, like I've been so naive
and dumb, like I mean, peoplemust think it must have been a
completely different era andyou're also at a point where

(27:06):
you're a world champion in theshort course and you think you
should have all your stufftogether and you're too scared
to ask all the questions,especially outside your inner
sanctum of people.
So you didn't want to look likethere was a weakness.
As I said before, I was alwaysvery attentive to not looking
weak in any way and trying tointimidate through presence, and
so in Ironman, hawaii, I gotabsolutely exposed in 2002.

(27:29):
I ended up walking, pulling out, and I got crucified by the, by
the, by the sport, because Ididn't realize that.
You know, for me it was like,oh, it's not going to happen,
I'll come back next year.
But finishing Ironman as we allknow is is as much as important
as winning it.
If you start it, you thejourney and I got crucified in
the magazines.
Forums were starting to comeout then on the internet People
were Chris, this kid's a cockykid.

(27:49):
And I just thought, okay, I'llcome back next year and I'll win
.
But to cut a long story short,I ended up winning it twice, but
it took me five attempts to win.
Despite not losing, I'd winevery Ironman.
I to success in Kona wasridiculously important because I
had to turn my back on myOlympic dream to get it, because
I felt that this race had mymeasure and when you said

(28:11):
earlier about the race comingback to Kona in 2026, the men
and women, it's imperative thatthat happens because, yeah, I
believe there's merit to haveworld championships all around
the world.
I think you do that at the 70.3level, but our sport is Kona,
and had world championships beenscattered around the world when

(28:31):
I was racing, I'd have 10 ofthem.
I could not perform in heat andhumidity.
I was a big athlete and I hadto go above and beyond to
perfect my craft to besuccessful there.
Some people find it easy, somepeople can race in heat and
humidity a lot better than thebigger guys, but there are so
many stories of of incredibleathletes who have never won this
race that are probably some ofthe best you'll ever, jürgen

(28:53):
Zach, some of the besttriathletes you don't know of
anymore because they didn'tperform in Kona, but had this
new system come about, wherethey raced in Nice and right,
they'd have three worldchampionships.
It's just not the same rightand for me, winning in 2007,
both of them are very, veryspecial.
But 2007, my first win, afterfinishing second the year before
in almost a sprint, I thought Ihad it won, had my best race.

(29:16):
I finished fifth the yearbefore that and there was a
build-up to get to second andNorman Stadler had beat me in
2006.
We'd had a very big conflictafter the race that that was
very heated and I went out on amission in 2007 calling him out
in the press very publicly, andwe both had a very public spat

(29:36):
that was coming to a head in2007, kona, and so much so that
my wife said to me look, if thisdoesn't go your way, you're
done.
You've.
You've said too much, and sothere was a lot of pressure on
me.
I believe I remember looking atmyself in the mirror race
morning saying if you don't winthis race, your career's done.
Like a lot of the sponsors werethere and I won it.

(29:57):
So for me it was just thejourney to get to that position.
You know a lot of people saysecond's good, fourth's good,
fifth's good, all these otherpositions, but for me it was.
I didn't want to go down as thebest guy to never win in kona
and and that's what I used totell myself, and so the relief
of that I'm getting the monkeyoff my back was I don't remember
the last you know mile of thatrace in 2007.

(30:18):
I remember 2010 vividly.
I was very alert.
I'm going to enjoy it because Iwas just so lost in the moment
of 2007.
I knew from about 4K out thatI'd done the work.
I had the gap to win it and Icelebrated a little early in my
own head and I started trippingover my feet and I don't count
your chickens before they hatchand I got myself to the finish
and I was just an emotionalwreck.

(30:39):
So, yeah, 07 will always besuper special.
Well, if you look at thepictures if anyone sees the
pictures of 07, they're probablyin black and white.
But it was a long time ago.
I forgot to remove the spongesfrom my.
You know, usually you zip upyour uniform Like I was so lost
in the moment.
You know that I left all thesponges in, so I like to look
ridiculous in my finished photo.

(30:59):
And my brothers still tease meto this day.
So my brothers still tease meto this day.
They say, oh, you're the firstwoman across the line, but it
was.
And it's always like a perfectday happens.
But you know, I just tellpeople that's being so in a
moment so lost and so elatedwith yourself that, yeah, you,
just I didn't care aboutanything else and it was just I

(31:21):
was floating on air.
And so 07 will always bespecial.
10 was special for verydifferent reasons, because I
felt the sport was ready toretire me at that point and I
wasn't ready to go.
I promised my wife I'd retirein 09 and I didn't win Kona that
year, so she gave me anotherchance to go back.

But 07 will always be an incredibly special
win amazing, and if you hadn'tleft those sponges there and
been teased by your brothers,you might never have gone back
and won the 2010 to get thebetter finish line photo, might
you?

Exactly.
Well if you watch that 10finish, I very much take my time
stand up right before the zipup and straight down.
I'm very, very attentive tothat because, yeah, we have the
photo at mum and dad's house ofme finishing and every christmas
they used to go, you know, andthey made sure because I want my
.
My agent moved up the finish inone.

He doctored one of the photos so it looked a
bit better, but my brothers inthe family made sure it was the
proper one with the originalbrilliant, excellent, I mean,
it's just, it's just amazing andand I love reading about both
of those wins in I'm here to win.
I think it's a fantastic bookand for those people that
haven't read it, you shoulddefinitely check it out.
Within that book there's a lotof talk of of your and you just

(32:31):
mentioned it, you just alludedto it about your smack talk.
You were known for playingmental games with the, with the
other athletes.
I suppose what I wanted to knowthere was where did, where did
you draw the line?
Where was, where was kind ofintimidation tactics and where
was?
Did you ever overstep the line?
And and did you?
You know?

(32:51):
Where do you think?
Is you know?
What strategies do you thinkare good for for winning versus
kind of falling out with yourcompetitors?

yeah, it's a good question.
I guess as you get older andsofter you reflect on that a
little bit more and at the timeI didn't think I ever stepped
the line, ever.
I think I used to think it was.
There can be only one, a bitlike Highlander and it's and
there's going to be a winner andwe're going to go away from
this and in 10 years time we'regoing to look back on this and
I'll have won or lost and I cannever take this time back and

(33:19):
it's up to the athlete as aprofessional we're not amateurs
to deal with everything.
And I knew how and I can behonest about this I knew how
insecure I was.
I think every athlete is awareof their own insecurities and
their own weaknesses.
They shield the world from it.
But in-house you know that andyou know your fragilities and
you know your competitivestrengths and weaknesses.
And I think I always believedif you could betray an

(33:41):
invincibility and you canintimidate and almost be crazy,
you, they I think they secondguess themselves and I always
apply it to tennis.
You can win tennis throughunforced errors or forced errors
right, and you know you canforce athletes to do something
and not work for you becauseyou're not physically strong
enough or you can intimidateenough that they start to make

(34:02):
mistakes that you can capitalizeon and win.
And I won a lot of races Ishouldn't have won, I believe,
by athletes second guessingthemselves against me.
They just, I think 2010, kona,beating Andreas Rehler for the
title.
He told me the year prior thathis brother had told me the year
prior that I was his idol.
He had picked my picture up onthe wall.
So I used that very much soduring the race, pre-race all

(34:24):
year to intimidate him, knowinghe was the man to beat in Kona
that year.
And and I think he lost thatrace I say it in the interview
when I crossed the line.
This will be a race thatAndreas Raylet looks back in 10
years and this is the one thatgot away from him because he let
me win that race more than megetting away with winning that
race, because he was definitelybetter than me, stronger than me
.
At the back end of that race, Ijust intimidated him enough

(34:45):
through presence that he henaturally cracked.
So you know with there athletesthat I picked on more than
anything, I think.
I think we all behaved in adifferent way back then there
was no social media, so what youhad back then was relationships
with editors of magazines andother people wrote about who you
were and I used to find thatreally unfair.
So, if you know, nowadaysathletes have the ability to
tell their story naturallythrough their, through their

(35:06):
social channels.
But back then you hadrelationships with Timothy
Carlson or Triathlete magazineand I can't tell you how many
times I was on the telephoneringing a triathlon.
I never said that man.
And they used to create theserivalries or these and I think
they liked me being the villainright because I was the only one
that would say outlandish,stupid stuff, and a lot of
people that were in my camp werelike, geez, you get a hard run

(35:29):
at it.
And so when it was sort ofcreated, you just lived it, if
that makes sense.
You just lived up to what theirexpectation was.
And there was an underlyinganger in me that I always felt
that I was misrepresented or,yeah, misrepresented in a lot of
things.
And I think other athleteswould read those articles and
I've since had conversations.

(35:50):
Craig Alexander, one of my maincompetitors in the back end of
my career, lives literally amile down the road from me here
and we've had a talk about thisand you know, our last few years
in the sport, despite beingfriends earlier in their career,
were very rocky, very rigid,very uncomfortable, and we both
agreed that we should have justsat down over a coffee and had a

(36:10):
talk, but we communicated witheach other through the magazine
you know what I mean or throughthe press we didn't have.
So it was always misconstruedand and and obviously they had
an agenda and the tv had anagenda that it was nice to have
conflict.
But yeah, I don't think I everoverstepped the line in the
sense that I think it was alwaysin relation to performance.

(36:31):
I never.
There was never anythingpersonal or you know, but I
would always call it out, youknow, I would always say you
know, I'm a better bike riderthan me.
You can pretend with your teamthat you're better and you can
tell all your sponsors here, butwhen you go home at night, mate
, you know you go home at nightand you sit in bed in the pillow
, talk with the wife.
You, you know that I'm stronger, I'm better than that and it
plays in your head all the time.

(36:52):
I constantly say that toathletes and I believed what I
was saying right, and I used tothink you know that's the fact.
You're going to pretend here infront of everyone.
Oh, you know, I prepared reallywell, I'm riding really strong
now, but you know that that's afear and I used to like to
instill that fear that I knewtheir weaknesses and I'd
highlight them and hope theywould have unforced errors that

(37:13):
ultimately allow me to tocapitalize on a mistake.
And you gotta remember, anIronman might be, you know,
seven and a half, eight hourslong for the pro man and but you
win the race.
It's not like we start and thenI'm a centimeter in front after
the swim and then over eighthours you get a distance.
You win these races in momentsLike you can be together with

(37:33):
someone and in a moment they gofor a bad patch, bang, that's
the crack.
And you need to be able tocapitalise on those moments,
those storms I used to call them, and those moments can be
self-inflicted.
For your own second guessing ofthat situation, both emotional
and physical distress, and theemotional stress is just as as
as heavy as as a physical stressin an iron man.

(37:53):
You know you run out of thatenergy lab.
You are emotionally,spiritually and physically
exhausted and and everyone beingiron man, is such a difficult
sport, everyone's so focused onthe physical enormity of the
race and all my muscles weresore and this was sore, but I
think the emotional distress isis just as, if not more, and

(38:14):
those voices in your head, thatuncomfortable conversation you
have with yourself, is such araw, honest reality.
And people talk to me now aboutwhat you miss most about racing
at a professional level.
There's two things wantingsomething so much, wanting
something so much that you willdo anything to get it, and the
honesty of those conversations.
Out in an eye, man, the honestconversations of you cannot lie

(38:37):
about anything because it'struth and it's those truthful
moments.
A lot of people don't, a lot ofpeople in training like to push
that to the side and not reallyhave those honest conversations
with themselves and pretendthey can bypass it.
And I say in my book embracessuck.
It sucks to have theseconversations, it sucks to deal
with that pain, it sucks.
But it's also so pure and sohonest and so real.

(38:59):
I don't think in a world that'sso fake.
Now I think I miss thatintensely, I miss that honesty
and I think that's where thatthat smack talking was a big
part of my game because I thinkit made others second guess
those conversations and maybeslow up for a second.
That enabled me to to get thegap it like I like it.

When I read the book I remember reading some
stats ages ago around how, whenTiger Woods is in the sort of
chase pack of of a major the,the average score of all the
other players around him dropsby something like five shots.
There's something in the mindgames that Tiger Woods played,

(39:41):
or just the fear of knowing thatTiger Woods was potentially
chasing them totally destroyedso many golfers' gains, and I'm
not sure it was the smack talk,but there was definitely the
psychology around the fact thatit's tiger.
We need to be worried.
What would your advice be to ayoung athlete that is is so now,
with the, with the benefit ofof hindsight and wisdom and

(40:02):
talking about how you now youknow, should have catched?
You should have just chatted tocrowey over a coffee.
What would your advice be to ayoung athlete around this sort
of mental side of the of theracing?

and I'm gonna go one step back because I'm not
gonna say everyone called itsmack, talk I.
It was because it was so uniqueto the sport.
It wasn't like these boxes thatare like I'm gonna kill you.
You know you're a piece of.
You know it wasn't that it was.
It was just honestly answeringa question and I think a lot of
people I say it a lot now a lotof people, a lot of the old guys
in the sport, are like I say,oh, you miss me now, don't you?
Because it's so vanilla.

(40:34):
Now everyone's like, everyoneloves each other, everyone's.
I'm so proud of you, I'm sohappy for you.
I'm like, okay, I get that, butyou know there's there's.
There's a real honesty when yougo home.
If you're so happy for everyoneelse when you go home, then why
are you sad with your family?
They'll ask you to one.
So my advice to a young personis to be authentic and honest to
yourself.
Embrace that honesty right like.

(40:55):
Don't be scared to backyourself, because your brain's
very, very good at telling youall the things you're weak and
soft at and and all yourinsecurities.
They always bubble to thesurface and you need to deal
with them if you want to be anelite in anything.
As you said with tiger, thereason those other athletes'
scores dropped off?
Because they know Tigerperforms, they know his history,

(41:16):
they know what he's capable of,so they second-guess themselves
.
They know worse a player.
It's not as if in one secondthey forgot how to play golf.
It's them.
That's the unforced errors partI talk about, and I think it's
such an integral part ofendurance sports that I
encourage young athletes toembrace that.

(41:38):
I think be authentic, backyourself, be honest to yourself
in many ways and don't be scaredto share that honesty.
It's not nowadays.
It can be borderline,politically incorrect at times,
but if you're asked a question,don't feel the need to give the
honest, don't feel the need togive the the public answer like

(41:58):
how do you think you'll go today?
Look, you know, I've worked outhard.
It's been a major goal formyself.
It's primary focus.
There's some great athleteshere, but none that I haven't
beaten before.
So I'm in great shape.
I mean, I'm ready.
Rock it.

That's the answer you want to give, because
it's coming from.

What you put out to the universe is how
you're going to behave.
And I see these sponsors now.
It's like, oh, we see how itgoes.
You know, so-and-so is reallygood and I'll be happy for her
if she does well.
It's like, well, you won't be.
And I think you get what youask for.
The universe is is is anamazing thing.
So be honest, be open, have thecourage to state your
intentions, because if you'renot prepared to state them

(42:35):
publicly, then how can you livethem?
And and and I think that'simportant.
But but people politepoliteness is very important and
I guess sportsmanship is veryimportant, but honesty can exist
in that box as well.
Just because you're you'reconfident or you're not
confident, but you're expressingwhat you want, it's not a
negative thing in this day andage where everyone's very, very
sensitive to to any, anyoutburst at times of confidence

(42:59):
oh, this is cockiness.
It's.
A lot of people feel feel veryrestricted in being that.

But I think you need to be honest with yourself
if you want those results and I,like your, you know your
description of actually you'reyou're saying how it is and
that's how it's going to playout, whereas actually, if you're
kind of talking about, well,you know, I'll be happy for them
, I'll see, you know, see how itplays out, you're not, you know
, you're not thinking that ininside that you're going to win.
So I was.
I was thinking back to some ofthe things that you said about

(43:23):
these emotional stressors andembracing the suck, as you call
it.
Loads of athletes now train withmusic.
They'll go on long runs withmusic.
They'll even listen on the bike.
You know, for a five hour, sixhour bike ride to music.
I don't know whether you usedmusic at all during your
training, but what do you thinkabout that?
Dealing with emotional stress,dealing with emotional and

(43:45):
physical pain when you'retraining?
How do you think that thatchanges?
How you know your mindset, howyou can deal with just being in
the moment, just being withyourself, being able to deal
with all of that stuff in yourhead?

I.
I see a lot of it today and I Idon't train anywhere near the
way I used to anymore.
But there's all the straversand there's the the garments
that tell you exactly how fastyou're running in there.
And you know, you watch racesnow and every two seconds the
athlete's looking at their watchto monitor their pace.
You know, to give you someperspective, we had a stopwatch,
a Timex stopwatch, and we onlyknew what pace we were running

(44:21):
by the mile markers.
So I'd sit there and go okay,well, that mile was five minutes
, I'd better slow up.
Now it's instant, right.
So you monitored pace in a verydifferent way back then.
It was very much harder to doand you didn't have iPads what
do you call them iPods?
And you know there was.
You know I remember my firstyears in France.
I had a Walkman, right with anAlanis Morissette tape that just

(44:44):
kept clicking over right, LikeI mean completely.
So I had the Alanis Morissette,Craig Jagger, Little Pill album
better than anybody, because Ilistened to it for hours right,
because it was the only tape Ihad in my back pocket.
But I think I never ran withmusic.
I found immense meditativesolace in the time I had alone,

(45:06):
Like I like to train with groups, my long runs, and that with
groups and talking to my friends.
But a lot of my runningtraining, a lot of my longer
rides, groups and talking to myfriends, but a lot of my running
training, a lot of my longerrides I would do alone and and I
enjoyed that.
And I didn't have music.
I never it was around.
But I, you know, I used to letmy mind drift and because I used
to think this was the place togo, and especially, let my mind
drift because I knew that thatwas how it was going to become
race day and and and it wasn'tas easy to listen to music as it

(45:26):
is today either.
So it was like, oh, forget it,you know, and it was always
better to find a trainingpartner and have a great
conversation than it was to belost in music.
I guess the question was moreabout how, that the question
about how it's different now, oris that, was your question
about.

So, in terms of being in your head and I guess
you know during training,learning to cope with all of
those emotional stresses,learning to be with yourself for
that period of time, and howthat translates you know on race
day that you have done it,you've learned it, you've been
there.

Yeah, well, it's very raw and I'll give you
a great story One of my closestfriends in the entire world,
susan Krafner.
She was a German psychologistwho created a product that she
ended up being a sponsor of minecalled Beast Milk, which was a
colostrum-based product, and webecame some of the closest
friends and still to this dayand she became like my surrogate

(46:24):
psychologist.
Right, we connected becausewe're very deep thinkers to some
degree.
We connected because we're verydeep thinkers to some degree
and I was always trying tounderstand.
I was always obsessed withwhere my head went in a race and
and quitting, quitting onmyself, and the anger I'd have
at myself for that moment whenyou let a guy go, when you, when
you're both struggling andyou're, I'm like why was it that
moment?

(46:44):
Why didn't I just hang on alittle bit longer and and?
At other races where you'd hungon and and and.
At other races where you'd hungon and we're talking one night
and we're talking about I saidI'm a very positive person and
she's like how do you know that,chris?
And I said well, I just know Iam Like everyone says I'm happy
and positive.
She said yeah, but who you arenow and who you are under duress
is two completely differentpeople Like I mean, it doesn't

(47:07):
matter how you are now,everyone's confident six weeks
out or 10 weeks out, before arace, I'm going to do well.
And as the race gets closer,the nerves climb because reality
starts to sink in.
And then, as duress hits duringa race and you're very
uncomfortable, that's when youknow who you really are.
So how can you say you're apositive person when you're
under duress?
And I said I just think I am.
She's like well, where doesyour mind go when you're
suffering?

(47:27):
I said, oh, I don't know.
I think I just think about themoment, what's happening now?
And she said, oh, why don't wego down to the track?
And this is how raw it was, butI love these raw experiments we
used to do.
And she rode a bike and she said, oh, we're going to run to
exhaustion, we're going to starton the track.
And she just had a recorder,like you, she was very deep.

(47:49):
She used to work withschizophrenics and she she tells
a funny story that athletes andschizophrenics are very, very
similar people.
But it's another story.
And we started running aroundthe track at a very comfortable
place, say.
I kind of remember say, aminute, 40 per 400 per 400, and
we just got quicker and quicker.
She rode a bike and she justasked me questions and talked to
me and then she would getquicker and she quicker, and I

(48:10):
think we ended up getting about14 or 15k out on the track until
I was exhausted towards the end.
But she played back the tapethat evening and you see, when
it starts to get uncomfortable,and a lot of the questions she
would ask me were just stupidquestions like tell me about
what you're thinking, tell meabout today, what you did today.
And I remember you could feelthe tone in my voice change, not

(48:30):
from fatigue but fromfrustration, and you see where
you went from being highlypositive to to being under
duress, to being basically youknow what I mean like just let
me focus right.
And and she said that's theperson we need to deal with.
See that about this point here,this is the person we need to
understand.
And now we're going to talkabout and understand where your

(48:51):
brain goes in that point,because that's the point that
wins and loses races.
And so we we basically changedour training around at that
point, basically when we gotuncomfortable.
Every time I did a session thatwas uncomfortable.
She's like make sure youunderstand where your head's
going and focus on what you'refocusing on, because that's the
uncomfortable conversation Italked about earlier and that,

(49:13):
that devil side of the brainthat's telling you all the
things, all the weaknesses youare, why you haven't trained
hard enough.
You didn't sleep well lastnight.
You need more nutrition.
They're better than you.
And how you deal with thatperson then is important.
And then we started setting insystems that we would deal with
on a day.
So she said I used to smile.
She said the first time, whenyou feel that pain, smile,
welcome it, embrace it, don't befearful of it.
There's a lot of people oh,it's uncomfortable and they

(49:35):
don't want to deal with it andtheir brain goes really loud,
which is what I used to do.
So I used to smile, embrace it,talk to it like it was a living
thing.
It sounds nutty, but say, hey,welcome, you know, here we go,
let's go.
And she was right.
It used to come and go like astorm and you could deal with it
by being very, very present inthe moment.
So in the last probably five orsix years of my career, I really

(49:56):
embraced, trying to learn thatabout myself and, as I said
earlier, I think I miss the mostabout being a professional
athlete.
I wish I learnt that earlierbecause, whilst I used to say I
was very cerebral in dealingwith it, I didn't really have
any systems in place thatenabled me to understand the
person that this sport wasmaking me and the person I came
out.
I believe that experience ofdealing with myself in that way,

(50:20):
under these conditions, I cameout the other side in this sport
very centred.
Maybe my wife thinksdifferently, but I feel very.
But I knew who I was and I knewthat I could handle things and
I knew I could do things understress and I knew the
conversations I could have andhow I responded and and I dealt
with the successes and failuresin a completely different way
than just the the color of themetal.
So yeah, and I did that intraining a lot.

(50:42):
So I didn't used to train a lotwith those with with machines
and things and and and one ofour coaches another before we go
, another one of our coaches,another before we go, another
one of my coaches.
When all the garments came out,it was right at the end of my
career and I used to know allthese loops that I used to do,
basically by time.
You know, this is about 10kilometres, it's about a
16-kilometre loop and Brett, theold national coach, he trained

(51:03):
Daniella and everybody.
He used to say, man, you'reamazing at your pacing because
we've got these garments.
We.
He used to say, man, you'reamazing at your pacing because
we've got these garments.
We do it at Macca's Loop inDavos in Switzerland.
Before these garments came out,I said, oh, it's about 16K,
brent, you know he's like youreckon.
I said, yeah, give or take.
They got the garments and itwas like 15.8K.
It was out by like 200 metres.

(51:24):
And you know he's like becauseI was very good at pacing and he
did an experiment with hisathletes that he said, okay, I
want you to go and run for anhour.
And I was there for the firstrun and without a watch, we took
the watch off and we ran aroundfor an hour and I literally got
an hour to within 25 seconds.
So that would be about it,right.
And Brett was like, oh, I wasout by probably a minute 25.

(51:45):
But a lot of these otherathletes were stopping at the
ones that have been trainingwith these watches.
You see how much they'redisconnected from time and and
and feeling they're running for45 minutes, thinking it was an
hour without the watch.
They had no idea where theywere.
And then we did the same withdistance and brett was like this
is the difference between oldschool athletes and the new

(52:07):
brigade.
You guys are obsessed withsomething you've lost, the,
which is the whole drug thatbrings us to endurance.
Sports is connection with bodyand mind.
You've lost it and you'retrusting a computer and you're
really losing the romance andthe essence of what the sport is
.
And it was towards the end of mycareer.
It was in 2012.

(52:27):
It was the last year of mycareer and I went from there to
win the long distance worldchampionships off that.
But I was training withdaniella reef a lot of the guys
preparing for the olympics atthat time and daniella and I
still talk about that.
She's like remember thatsession where you could nail the
time.
I said I just didn't train withwatches.
I always knew, sort of byfeeling, what the distances were

(52:47):
and the old brigade of runnersthat you grew up with in in your
area.
It's a 10 mile loop, that's asix mile loop, and you just
trusted the distance and and soit's a very, very different.

I think I was very connected in that sense with
with pace and and and feelingbeing down at the track with
your friend he's a psychologist,you know being able to learn a
little bit more about your bodyand you know, just bringing in
what you're saying about all thedevices we have, you forget or
you don't listen to your own,your own body, your own mind, um
, so it's really good to hear itfrom from your angle and and

(53:19):
the way that you sort of came upin sport where you didn't have,
you know, all of all of thesedevices springboarding into the
world of super league triathlonor super.
Try, talk to us a little bitabout how you used your
experiences, I guess, as anathlete and the way that you
built up Super League triathlonand what do you think you know

(53:42):
this is going to do to sort ofchange how triathlon is,
potentially as well?

Well it's a deep I think I think people in
the sport knew me from.
I was, I represented myself,had a friend who was my agent
and I always believed that I hada semi-savvy around value,
being an economist, I guess, atschool and I did very, very well
commercially out of the sportof triathlon, which I think you
know a lot of the guys will say.
I had the underarmors andbrought the specialised bike

(54:10):
deals across, and so when I leftthe sport I left in a very,
very good spot and I believed Iwas relatively astute when it
came to commercialising an assetright, and that asset when I
was racing was myself andmilking the most out of what I
could get out of it.
When I retired I moved to Asiato build a sports center in

(54:34):
Phuket.
We'd raised a bunch of moneyfor a German guy who had read my
book and he wanted to buildthis wellness center called
Tanyapura, which is now aninternational school in Phuket,
and so I spearheaded thedevelopment of this school.
So I was very and for me Ijumped into that with vigor and
I recall the transition frombeing an athlete to the

(54:56):
corporate world and I must admitI thought there was a lot more
phonies in the corporate worldthan there was in the.
I think sport is very real,right, like you can't hide a lie
, right, you get exposed veryquickly If you tell them,
fibsebe, so you've done the work.
No, you haven't.
You know, we're in thecorporate world.
I was like, oh, I just feltlike I could steamroll people

(55:18):
Like they didn't have a very,very you know these big titles
but their work ethics suckedright, like I mean, that's how I
felt.
So when I moved to Thailand, youknow, I had this $250 million
budget.
We were building an incrediblecenter and I sort of stepped in
as his executive chairman.
And when you had this money, Ihad a lot of.

(55:38):
I was running a lot of peopleand people started taking you
seriously and this is how we gotto Super League.
And so I set up all mystructures and my business at
the time was called Mana, out ofSingapore, built Tanyapura, we
launched it, launched the school, changed the face of Phuket and
my family was living inThailand at the time.
It was an amazing time.
And then I'd met the royalfamily of Bahrain who were

(56:00):
building a sports city.
I'd met Sheikh Nasser andbasically said I can build you a
sports city.
I just built Tanyapura and alot of people are like, how
arrogant are you to say you cando these things?
But I was, like I was in sport,like why not?
Someone has to do it?
Like I've done a little one,why can't I do a big one?
It's sort of like the naivetyof going from Olympic distance
to Ironman.
You can do that.

(56:21):
Well, why can't it just be that?
And naivety is bliss.
Kids to this day and a lot ofpeople that in the same way,
sports you second guess yourselfand you tell yourself what you
can't do.
A lot of people do that inbusiness and put themselves in a
box and especially when I'dcome out of sport, I felt like
I'd been at the top of something.
Then why can't I be at the topof something else?
And so when we went to Bahrain,we started working on on the

(56:44):
development of the at next tothe Formula One track there, the
conference center and sportscity.
And then I learned the errorsfrom Thailand about when you
build a city, you should bringthe soft assets in first.
Like Tanjapur, we built thisincredible wellness center
athletics track, swimming poolsand we finished it and then we
marketed it.
So we burned a lot ofoperational capital, in trying

(57:05):
to tell people what we justbuilt.
We should have done it on thejourney.
That was a big error.
So I said the same thing toSheikh Nasser and the Economic
Development Board there.
And so we said why don't weacquire sports assets?
Why don't we do a Tour deFrance team and start talking
about the victorious city, thesports city?
And why don't we do a triathlonteam?
And why don't we buy footballteams?

(57:26):
And then in the future, whenthe city's done, we by football
teams, and then in the future,when the city's done, we'll park
them all in your sports cityand and sports tourism will
become a thing.
That was sort of the the widepitch and he's like great idea,
let's do it.
And so then we launched theBahrain Victorious 13 team,
which is now and it's like 11thyear of racing.
We launched, we went to theTour de France, we bought the
old Mappe team.
We launched Bahrain VictoriousTour de France team.

(57:47):
We ended up buying McLaren.
We ended up a whole bunch ofthings, which was just an
initiation of fire for mycompany.
I was like unbelievable.
I grew it out of Singapore andwas living in Thailand.
It was just the greatest periodof my life and at the same time
I just thought and MichaelDulce is now the CEO of Supertri
, he was working for me atTanyapura, running this whole

(58:08):
sports division and we werehumming.
You know, we had all theseprojects on, or my company did
and Michael and I went to do asports conference in Moscow and
I'd met Leonid Boguslavsky, whoended up he was keen to buy
Ironman At the time.
He was a Forbes list inCanadian Russian gentleman who
was obsessed with triathlon andhe missed out on buying Ironman

(58:31):
to the Chinese.
And I was at that time theambassador for Challenge.
I'd signed a 10-year deal asthe ambassador of Challenge.
I'd won Roth a few times, fourtimes, so they'd sign me up to
help them promote the brandworldwide and build the product,
especially in Asia.
And he said tell me about thisChallenge brand, this Challenge
brand, what's your perception ofit?

(58:52):
He says it's a fantastic brand.
You know it's WilloughbyIronman.
Look, it needs a lot of capital.
How much capital does it need?
To cut a long story short,there was a whole bunch of them.
There was Leonid Boguslowski,there was Alexei Pamferov, who
owns Bournemouth football team Awhole bunch of these high net
worths.
And they said we want to dosomething in the triathlon space
.
And I remember in my headthinking mate, this is your

(59:13):
chance.
I'd always had this vision of aclosed league triathlon series,
building a professional serieswhich could escape the
federations.
Give athletes like aprofessional chance where a
young kid goes here's the wayyou get in.
It doesn't matter if you don'tlike the high performance
director in your federation orhe doesn't like you, it's just
bang, bang, you're in right,just clear pathways to a pro

(59:35):
league.
So it's just simple.
I said if we could build asimple pro league, make it
consumable for televisionaudiences, get it on networks.
I love triathlon, I'm sureeveryone else loves triathlon.
Right, that was my naivety, butI I thought so I'm going to
swing for it.
So I said look, I've got anidea.
I've got a closed league ideawhere we own all the best
athletes in the world.
They race into our series.

(59:56):
We condense the formats, wemake it live on television, we
put it into a you know one hourpackage, broadcast live on bbc,
worldwide, fox sports,everything.
But it needs to be short andand you need to have the best
athletes in the world racingweek in, week out, not avoiding
each other, not one doing thisweek, one doing that one, one in
training camp, which is whereit's going.

(01:00:16):
Nowadays we contract the best,like they've done with the UFC,
dana White, right, look whathe's disrupted the MMA space.
And Leonid said to me and youknow who does, you know who can
do this league?
I said I've already got it done, I've already signed.
I had nobody.
I said I've already spoken toall the best professional
athletes.
They're in.
I'm in the process of buildingthis league out and I know you

(01:00:39):
want to buy a challenge, but Ihave this league.
I'm nearly done with it.
I've got all the pitch paperswith my team.
Didn't have a team back in Asia, asia, and I'd love to present
it to you guys.
If you guys legitimately wantto invest in triathlon, this is
the way to go.
And he asked a couple morequestions and they spoke a bit
of Russian and he said can yoube in London next week?
I said absolutely so.
I flew back to Thailand, Igrabbed Michael Durst, who was

(01:01:03):
really good at computers, and weput together a pitch deck for
Supertruck and I've done thisracing in Australia.
It's called the Formula OneTriathlon Series in Australia in
the 90s and the juniors used todo it.
And then the pro.
It was on live television justbefore the Sydney Olympics.
So I knew that this formatworked very specifically in
Australia and so we copied a lotof the formats, changed the

(01:01:25):
names, changed the distances.
I'd raced it so I knew whatworked and what didn't work,
created these short shootconcepts, created the branding,
went up there and pitched.
I remember being in London atthe Canute Hotel, canute or
whatever it's called and sitdown with the both, and the
first guy that owns theBournemouth football team said
no-transcript, no.
I'm thinking, oh, all, rightand lean.

(01:01:48):
It's like, oh, what aboutalistair brown?
You know?
I said, yeah, no, alistair,will he do it?
I said, absolutely, he'll do it.
I hadn't spoken to alistair atall about series.
I'm thinking, mate, the money'sright, he'll do it.
Um, and he likes his concept.
I said he absolutely loves it.
He can't wait for me to get itoff the ground.
He had no idea it even existed,right, like I mean.

(01:02:09):
And um, he's like, I like, Ilike how much money you need.
You know, I need x amount ofdollars to launch it.
Let's do proof of concept.
Okay, I do, we do it.
And I remember you'll neverregret it shook his hand and I
remember trying to be cool, theamount of money we had.
And michael, I remember I'mtreading on his foot because I
didn't want him to like I cancelebrate that I wanted to look

(01:02:29):
like this has been in theplanning.
It had been one week of work,like I mean, I'd been thinking
about it for years but I neverthought the opportunity would
come.
And that's why I tell peoplealways swing man for the
opportunities.
Right, you've got to swing.
And Leonid became an incrediblepartner to have.
Like I mean, we launched thefirst race in Hamilton Island.
It was successful, and my firstthoughts were that the you know,

(01:02:51):
the entire sport of triathlonwas going oh thanks, macko.
Like oh, man, you're investingin triathlon.
And I had no idea that.
I guess, naively again, thatyou know, when you disrupt other
people, they, they don't taketo that too kindly.
So the, the world triathlonbody, was a little bit taken
back by it and they tried to sayyou're not doing this.
So I ended up getting back intothese arguments with you know,

(01:03:12):
iron man was like who are you todo this?
And I thought everyone would belike happy, you know, like
there's a new player.
But it didn't really work outthat way.
And then obviously, thefederations world triathlon was
working with the federations tonot let athletes race in the
series and when.
So then we end up having to dodeals with them to pivot the
series to a certain time of theyear.
So our long-term, my naive game,thought that we'd take not take

(01:03:37):
over the sport but be like theGrand Slams of tennis and the
World Series would be like theamateur racing, get into the
Olympics.
But this would be like a proleague and we raised Leonid,
just fell in love with it andit's become his legacy and he's
like look, I want to leave alegacy in this sport.
I think this sport is anabsolutely incredible sport.
I want to build this league.
And we went all the way throughuntil we were booming and then
COVID happened, which was wejust moved to London from our

(01:03:59):
Singapore offices.
We moved a lot of our staff, wejust done a huge raise with two
big investors and a guy out ofJersey and Leonid again, and
we're about to double down on it, or we establish a three, three
, two, two level series.
Covid locked the world down anda lot of our staff were living
in the UK but they weren'tBritish so we didn't get furlong

(01:04:21):
.
Was it furlong?
The money from the furlong?
So we went through incredibleamount of money to keep our
staff there and employed and noevents.
And then we by chance pivotedto that.
It was called the Arena Games.
It's now Super Tri-E.
We had all these athletes oncontract which we had to pay and
we're burning through moneyleft, right and center.

(01:04:42):
And we knew Zwift and I rangthe Zwift guys and said how
about we broadcast a triathlonwhere they run on your
treadmills and we'll do it at aswimming pool with masks on, and
I've got the best athletes onthe world on contract.
Like, I mean, I'll put them onand we can broadcast.
And everyone was stinging forany sport and it sounded Mickey
Mouse at the time.
But we thought we've got to dosomething with this.

(01:05:03):
We're paying these athletes andSuper Tri he took off at work.
So we're like, oh my gosh.
And so then we had these twoproducts, we got out of COVID
and we'd burnt through a lot ofmoney and then the landscape was
very, very different.
A lot of countries that werepaying money to have your events
there weren't in the place topay that anymore.
They spent a lot of moneyduring COVID so the landscape

(01:05:24):
looked very different.
It's coming out the other sidenow, without question.
But I think fundamentally forthe short course space and I
think from a from a consumablepoint of view, it's been
remarkable.
You see it in the in the medianumbers.
The following is has been great.
But triathlon is a difficultsport right to to commercialize
to a broader audience and, and Ithink the way people consume

(01:05:44):
media now, super tri isdefinitely the way to do it.
We're pivoting a lot now intothe acquiring a lot of the mass
participation races.
We used to be called superleague triathlon but internally
we discussed that super shouldbe attached to the sport, not
the league, and so we changed itto super try and we thought we
could change the narrative onolympic distance and make us own
that whole entire short courseecosystem worldwide.

(01:06:06):
So we bought, you know, torontotriathlon, we bought austin
triathlon, we bought malibu, webought chicago.
We buy, we're gobbling up a lotof those short distance
triathlons which are the youknow 70 of athletes to do a
triathlon, do it through thisshort course, even though
they're very community based.
But we want to get thatsingular brand and then feed
into that pro league.
We sold off franchises.

(01:06:27):
We create a different model inthat sense, where we have teams
racing.
But for me, it's been anabsolute buzz trying to create
something from, from an idea,and then seeing it come to life.
And then you know, watching it.
I remember watching the.
There's a race we did in jersey, I think in 2018.
It's on the, on the website.
It's where vincent louis, henryskuman, richard murray, johnny

(01:06:49):
Johnny Brownlee and ChristianBlumenfeld have an absolute war
and it is packed streets.
And I remember being thecommentator, with Ali Brownlee
in commentary and Will McCloy,and I remember watching the
screen.
I just went quiet for a while,going, shit, man, this is really
cool.
It's an amazing feel.

(01:07:09):
It's a racer like the best guyson the planet racing
head-to-head on a incrediblytight circuit, like real, real
racing.
And I just remember sittingback and just going, wow, like
we've done something really coolhere.
And you know, speaking to theathletes, they absolutely love
the racing, they love the beinga part of it.
We treat them very, very welland and I think you know all of

(01:07:30):
them will say for us we used tosay, if you don't do super try,
you're not going to besuccessful at the olympics and
you saw the line all the guysthat do super try won the
olympic games.
It just really refines yourcraft you're doing, you're
perfecting transitions, you'reperfecting explosive racing and
and, and we believe whetherwe're right or not, but we do
believe that we've been a bigcatalyst in that whole big step

(01:07:51):
up in that short distance racing.
You see, the athletes that haveraced our series and those that
haven't, and if you haven't,you're at a distinct
disadvantage.

Charlie Reading (01:07:59):
And it's going to be a huge.
I mean we've had Chris Williamson, we've had Alistair Brownlee
on.
We've talked about it a littlebit before on the podcast, but
it's going to be so I I see itas the, you know, the it's going
to have this really importantrole in the future of triathlon
because, like, if we, if we usecricket as the analogy test,
cricket is great.
If you love cricket, if you're,if you're an advocate of

(01:08:19):
cricket and you're happy to sitthere for five days, it's a
beautiful sport.
But t20 and the 100 is iswhat's going to get people in at
a young age and kind ofwatching it, engaging, and so I
think I think that's, I thinkit's brilliant, um, and yeah,
really exciting age for themthrough that, because it was.

Chris McCormack (01:08:37):
It was packer that brought in the one days and
the.
You know, the cricket was veryenglish and so we grew up with
with kerry packer disrupting thecricket space with with the one
day cricket thing he took onthe English cricket board.
Nelly sent himself brokebecause he loved the sport so
much.
And as Australians we're like,yes, we're such disruptors, you
know, like taking traditionalsport and disrupting it.

(01:08:58):
And then obviously, t20 camealong again and it's just
changed the entire cricketlandscape and I think you know
you can be a purist and a lot ofthat.
That was a lot of the pushbackwhen we had short shoots and the
purists were like, oh well,this isn't really triathlon, you
shouldn't be.
I'm like, guys, it is veryexplosive, it's swimming, biking
and running.
It's very difficult.
But you've got to understandthat media is consumed

(01:09:20):
differently now and withoutpivoting in that direction,
you're going to become obsoleteand we're not competing.
And I used to say a lot of timewe'd have all these agencies
come in and they'd sit there andgo triathlon in formula one
tennis and I'd be like, guys,we're not, we're not formula one
, we're not tennis.
I mean, you can show me allthese great numbers on these
amazing sports, but let's, let'scompare apples with apples.

(01:09:41):
You know, if you talk to meabout surfing and triathlon or
athletics and triathlon, I could, I could, you know they're both
tier two, tier three sports.
Like I mean, athletics isprobably a lot bigger, but I
mean, start talking to me inthat space.
And how do we go from a tierthree to a tier two sport?
Let's start there.
Give me the grand sports.
I don't know how good they are.
We're a long way off that, andyou know, and so it is a

(01:10:03):
difficult.
And now I've seen the PTO comein and they're trying to disrupt
that whole long distance space,which is very interesting it's.
You know, I'm not overly.
I love what they're doing, Ilove anything with triathlons on
television, I enjoy it.
I just I'm not overly.
I don't understand the businessmodel too much because I just
it's a very you can't.
You're buying the TV time andyou can't get the lives.

(01:10:25):
You can't.
They're not doing apost-production cut, which if I
was them I'd I'd forget thelives.
Post it up into a, into apackage.
It's really, really cool.
Be more story, story tillnarrative, led like a bit like
the formula one's done with thenetflix series.
Be more narrative, led, storyled and tell that story.
The racing's boring.
I.
I love triathlon.
I said they are definitely thebike you know I want you to run,

(01:10:46):
be it's.
It's too much and I think theyshould.
I will focus my attention inthat space because there's a
long course guide above nothingmore than to see that that work.

I think you know we've said it a few times
it would triathlon the longcourse.
Stuff needs an unchained or adrive to survive, or whatever it
is, because it's the storiesbehind what those athletes are
doing.
It is better than the actualsitting there and watching the
race unfold over eight hours.

The money they're spending on the live.
You know there's a lot of likeIronman's trying to do a couple
on YouTube, but you can see thespend.
The spend's not there to deepdive enough to follow enough, so
it's very shallow and hollow,but the amount of money that
they're spending on each liveplay, they've got the funds to
do a Netflix style.

(01:11:33):
It doesn't need to be Netflix,but that type of deep dive into
the sport, which isgame-changing, it wouldn't be a
good idea.

Yeah, brilliant , yeah, well, yeah.
And also, what I love is thesimilarities between your
approach to going into businessand Supertri to where you
started in France, and yourapproach to going into business
and and super try to where youstarted in France and your
approach to going into triathlon.
So I think it's a, it's a, it'sa fascinating.
It's fascinating to hear thesestories kind of come full circle
.
One of the things that we do atthe end of this podcast is we

(01:12:02):
always ask for books that haveinspired you on your journey.
So, like I said, I love, I loveyour book.
I'm here to win, but what bookshave you found yourself either
recommending to others or booksthat have helped you on your
journey?
I think we all loved it when weread it and and then like, like.

Like we said that you know they moved into
the fiction section, but that'sexactly um I read a book least
recently called the Value ofOthers, which was a very
interesting book about humanrelationships.
I like books that are.
You know.
I do like autobiographies,especially this one, but this
one I found really interestingthe Value of Others, by Albion

(01:12:41):
I've forgotten his name, albion.
It was about relationships witheach other and how we operate
in the world, especially from abusiness perspective.
It was very interesting.
It was not just very businessrelated but it was more
relationships with lovers, withpartners, with parents, with
friends and how they interactand it was an economics, very
much an economics-driven look atthe marketplace of

(01:13:02):
relationships, which I loved.
I enjoyed.
What other books will I say?
I loved Open by the AndreAgassi story.
I was a big andre agassi fanand so open I really loved.
But what else I'm not?
I haven't read outside of thevalue of others.

I haven't read a lot recently I've been no well
, we love a good podcast,obviously, but no, that's
fantastic and actually the valueof others is not a book I've
heard of before, so I'm going tocheck that out.
That's that's.
That's, that's a brilliantrecommendation.
Now we also have a closingtradition on the podcast where
the like we asked the last guestto ask the next guest a
question, without knowing whothey're leaving it for.
So our last guest was was mattytrautman, the south african

(01:13:40):
ironman athlete.
So what's one belief that youheld early in your career that
you've since completely changedyour mind about, and what led
you to that shift?

um, one belief that I've checked, convinced
that the best, the best guys, orbest guys or girls always win
on race day, and that's you know.
I always thought that the mosttalent the best, and that's not
the case.
I I've realized that a lot oftimes.
You know, when I was young, Ithought if you trained harder
than anyone, you would win, and,as I said earlier, I don't
believe that's the case.

(01:14:12):
I think you can be outplayed,outsmarted out.
There's a lot of tacticsinvolved in sport that we don't
talk about enough.
We do in team sports andfootball, but in these sort of
sports, we just there's such aphysicality around it.
Everyone like, oh well, he'sjust dropped off.
But I don't think the bestalways wins and, as I said in
2010 with andreas rayler, Ithink he was the best athlete on

(01:14:36):
that day and he got the silvermedal and uh.

So the best doesn't always win brilliant,
excellent, and I'd like tofinish off by asking you so.
In your book you tell a jokeabout the bull.
I'd like, I'd like you to tofinish off this podcast by
telling that joke again, butalso telling us what it meant to
you at the time and what itmeans to you now what a joke

(01:14:59):
about the old bull and the youngbull.

Everyone knows that's, it's not really.

I don't think in england we did.
I'm not sure I'd heard itbefore.

Yeah, I don't know how crass it was in the
book, I can't remember, but it'sbasically the story of the old
bull and the young bull and andthe young bull's looking down at
the, the cows in the paddock,and says, dad, dad, let's run
down there and and and have ourway with the, with a cow.
And the old bull says why don'twe just walk down and and have

(01:15:26):
our way with them?
All sort of thing was the storyof the and so, and it was for
me, it was the story that I Iused to think to myself that
impatience, the youthfulimpatience, and the youthful
makes you, not makes you, makeerrors.
You know and I think youthforgives, like errors in
training and everything.
I say it a lot that you canover train.

(01:15:48):
You make mistakes a lot whenyou're young and youth will
forgive you.
And as you get older, if youdon't start being a lot more
clever in your training, a lotmore clever in the way you
approach things, that yourlifespan in the sport is
diminished and about thinkingthings through, being patient,
being alert, being reactive, Ithink a lot of people can
overthink things.

(01:16:09):
I think it's important to makea decision, but I think being
aware of of your surroundings,being aware of the situation,
being aware of what you want andthen looking at the best way to
get there, because not alwaysis what you see the easiest way
to get there.
It can.
It might seem easy, but it'sactually the longer way.
So, to be more attentive tothings and I think, my last part

(01:16:30):
of my career, I and I thinkeveryone says that my father's,
they can't put an old head onyoung shoulders and it's such a
true statement.
You know, I wish I could havebeen the, the, the athlete.
I was at the end of my career,in my early career, because I
would have.
I would have really utilized mytalents a lot better than I
actually did.
I think I I was so impatient,so almost ADD-like and wanting

(01:16:51):
to prove myself so much that Iunderperformed, even though
people were like, wow, you had agreat career.
I was like, yeah, but a lot ofthem got away.
So, yeah, I think that's sortof the whole story of the old
bull and the young bull.

Brilliant.
Well, I think it's a lovely wayof finishing off because I
think, yeah, I think it's alovely way of finishing off
because I think, yeah, I thinkyou can see it as you gain the
experience throughout yourcareer.
But equally, I think there's,you know, some of your success
is driven by the young bull'senthusiasm to charge, and
likewise in business as well.

(01:17:25):
I think you know there wouldhave been many people that would
have said, oh now, theexperienced version of me is I
need to go off and do a year'sresearch into this concept, as
opposed to sell it and then makeit up in a week and just go.

So I think, more than anything, I think I
think I've found being inbusiness.
As I said earlier, I think I'veentered the workforce to my
father's delight, but I enteredthe workforce almost more than a
decade ago, but I was a muchmore.
I'm so happy with where I cameout of my spot.
I retired on my own terms, Iwas ready to leave and I was in
such a strong headspace and sucha different person.
Had I entered the workforce asa young entrepreneur, I would
have made a lot of the mistakesI've made in my career and I was
such a such a stronger,cerebrally, more more balanced

(01:18:09):
person to rush into things,definitely, to have the courage
to explore every rabbit hole andyes, I can do that and then
unpack it and work out thepeople be confident enough to
put the people around me to helpme do that.
And I think, being in a sportthat was very individual, like I
, was very happy to work withinteams and and share the

(01:18:30):
experience with others.
So I found, as I said, I foundI enjoy business very much.
So and and I've taken so muchfrom my sporting career and I
say to a lot of athletes thatyou know there's a lot of
discussion around what you dopost-career, and there's a lot
of post-career depression andand I say a lot of I find that I
meet athletes that they becomea different creature when they
leave sport.

(01:18:50):
You know, they're such bravepeople in sport and they take
chances and risk to win racesand then they get out of the
sport and they clam up andthey're like I won't do that,
what if it doesn't work?
What if I get judged?
What if I'm like you were justa beast when you raced.
You took chances in everything.
You'd attack off the front andblow up and you didn't care.
And now you're this completelydifferent being.
Why don't you just be the samebeing that was successful in

(01:19:13):
sport, that gave you thatsuccess?
And and I say that to you know,one thing I learned from sport
is trust your instincts, have acrack, and what do you got to
lose if you fail you?
In sport, you fail more thanyou win, and it's the same in
business and life.

So yeah, brilliant swing for the fences
absolutely.
Maca, it's been fantasticchatting to you.
I love listening to the stories.
There's so much wisdom therebut it's also there's so much
raw kind of energy of everythingthat you've done in in that
journey.
So it's been it's beenabsolutely brilliant.
I I strongly recommend peoplewatch super try, check out your

(01:19:45):
book and yes, it's a huge thankyou for for everything you've
done for the sport and for forjoining us on the business of
endurance it's been a pleasure.

Thanks for having me?

well, wow, what did you make of that one claire
?

Claire Fudge (01:19:56):
it was, honestly, I haven't laughed so much in
ages although I was on mute, notlaughing at him, laughing with
his stories.
I mean just the, the enthusiasmthat comes across about how he
got into his sports, I think is,and what happened like during
his sporting career.
And he he talks a lot like bothin the the other interviews

(01:20:17):
that I've listened to him talkabout, in terms of you know how
he came across at the time ofhim being at the top of his
career and actually now himexplaining himself about you
know why he came across in thatway?
Cause when you listen him speak, you can you know, yes, you can
really feel that kind of youknow he just goes and gets

(01:20:38):
things and he just says yes.
But I thought it was reallygreat just to hear the you know
from him the other side as well,in terms of the mind games and
and kind of what he was about.

I thought it was brilliant.
I love the story of him gettinginto triathlon and going over
to France and and then you hearthe story of of super try and
you're like it's basically areplay, isn't it?
it's just like right, make it up, and I'm just gonna go for it,
say yes and see where it takesme, but there's a, there's a
huge amount to learn from thatisn't there.
There is, you know that andalso that ability to be able to

(01:21:11):
say well, this is the goal, thisis where I'm aiming for.
I don't know how I'm going toget there, but I'm just going to
go at it and go hard at it, andthen we'll work it out along
the way.
And that is phenomenal.
I mean like great athlete,great stories, but but also what
he's done in business sinceretiring is is absolutely
phenomenal.

So, yeah, so the, the saying yes principle, as you
said, like this, that's exactlywhat I took from it this
playing out of yeah, yeah, okay,cool, great opportunity, we'll.
We'll do it.
But also he did talk aboutwhich I thought was really
interesting and comes back to acouple of things that I think in
business is sometimes ideas.
You think is an idea thatyou've just had and actually

(01:21:52):
it's an idea that's been playingout in your mind for like five
years, 10 years, maybe longer,and it comes to kind of fruition
, doesn't it In some shape orform?

Yes, so it's interesting to hear that Carol
would say to me that that's thesort of idea that I came up with
a year ago.

And you've been, and you've been sort of bouncing
around and now it's your idea,it's a good idea.
How?

irritating, yeah, but I think it's just.
I thought it was brilliant.
I loved also where he startedtalking about where the
psychologist was trying tounderstand who the person was
when he was kind of in the paincave.
You know properly, and Ithought that was.
That was fascinating.
It reminded me a bit of RyanStranbury talking about becoming
an excuse magnet and who areyou at that point and trying to

(01:22:36):
get to the bottom of who thatperson was.
And then that strategy of whenyou're in there, smile, embrace
it and talk to it.
I thought that was a reallygood.
I yeah, I probably could havedone with a bit more of that in
while I was in the energy lab onmy on my arse.
So, yeah, yeah, really, reallyinteresting.
What else did you take from it?

Well, do you know, I'll tell you.
I'll tell you a very shortstory.
When I first got into doingIronman, maka was at the top of
his game, like so this was theyear that he won Ironman World
Championships.
So I really sort of rememberkind of what that time was and,
yes, we had kind of you know,watches and things, but we
didn't have as much as we do now.

(01:23:18):
Um, so I was really interested,as I always am, to ask these
questions about, you know,headphones, and so I did think
it was interesting how hebecause they didn't train with
lots of things how theypotentially, you know, more in
tune with their body than we aretoday, you know, in terms of,
in terms of racing.
So it's really good, reallygood to hear him talk about that

(01:23:39):
and hence, you know this, thispart about learning a bit more
about yourself and these, youknow, embrace the suck legals
that you know, learning to dealwith these emotional stressors
rather than just going on.
You know, I'll deal with itanother time.
I thought that was.
I thought that was reallyinteresting.
Also, going back right to thevery beginning, I just picked up
on what he was saying about,you know, at the beginning of

(01:24:00):
triathlon, that it was kind ofthis, you know.
You know sort of three sportssort of mashed together a little
bit and how actually he wasdoing all of those things.
You know he was surfing, so hewas confident.
You know, swimming in the water, he was a runner but also this
idea of I don't know he was grewup in Australia but children
did a lot more, you know, likecycling, he said.
You know I cycled to schoolevery day.

(01:24:21):
I was running for my sport andI loved surfing, so I was
swimming and I was thinking, god, what do our children in the UK
do right now?
They get in a car, probably,and go to school, or they get on
a bus.
They're maybe not walking,maybe not, but they're.
It's not safe enough to cycle,you know.
So the opportunity of beingvery, very active as a child, I
think, and you know, as youalways talk about like doing all

(01:24:42):
of these different sports, Ithink it's really uh, is is
really really useful to becomingan athlete yeah, yeah, you're
right and it's interesting,isn't it?

because you say it's not safe to cycle now.
But is it that's?
It's actually probably just assafe to cycle now as it was 10,
15 years ago.
I would suggest it's just anawareness of, of the.
The risk that is is greater nowthan it was then, you know, but
I, I agree, I think it's.

(01:25:10):
It's really.
It's really sad that the, thekids, are spending way more time
in front of a screen and andgaming than being out playing
sport and and, and I think it'salso a reflection on the aussie
lifestyle you know, with withgreat weather, there's a,
there's definitely.
You know, that is definitely aculture that spends way more

(01:25:32):
time outdoors.
I remember seeing a stat yearsago where apparently Australia
has the highest sick day rate ofof any country on earth, and it
is perfectly in tune with howgood the surf is.
So, but it's like, yeah, itmight not be the the most
productive business way of doingit, but if the surf's good, you

(01:25:52):
should just go surf.
You know, I was listening to abook recently, actually, and it
got me really thinking.
It was like it was.
It was somebody, what was it?
It's the good psych, it's thegood psychopath guide, I think,
is the book called by AndyMcNabb and another guy who wrote
, and they were talking abouttaxi drivers.
He, I was chatting to this taxidriver and he said you know,

(01:26:13):
it's really tough being a taxidriver.
When the sun's shining, I haveto work twice as many hours
because everyone wants to walkwhen the sun's shining, when
it's raining, everyone wants tojump in a taxi.
So and he said you know, I paya monthly amount to have this
taxi.
So he said, I know I need toclear £200 a day to pay my way

(01:26:35):
in the car.
And they said to him so whatyou're saying is, on a lovely
sunny day, because there's notmany punters, you have to work
twice as many hours.
And then, on a rainy day, youhave to work, you can knock off
early because you get all your £, all your 200 pounds, you know,
by lunchtime.
So have you ever, have you everthought of just working longer
on the rainy days, so that youand then just having the sunny

(01:26:56):
days off?
They're like, well, no, Ihaven't.
Actually it's sometimes youhave to.
Just yeah, yeah.
I can't even remember wherethat transition went, where it
took my brain, but it's likeyeah, you've got to.
You've got to work hard on onthe on the days where there's no
, no surf, and just take the dayoff that where there is surf,
you know just enjoy it and yeah,so I thought, I think it's like

(01:27:19):
I really really enjoyed intoyour maca.
I think he's a he's a great guyand I think and I think the
smack talk bit was interestingin the sense that they, you know
, like his relationship withcrowey, they could, should have
just sat down and had a coffeeand they would have all resolved
it, but because it was allthrough through the magazines
and it probably got blown waymore out of proportion than it

(01:27:39):
ever needed to any finaltakeaways from the the interview
with maca I think, well, Iactually think there's a lot to
be taken from listening andreading again from athletes, you
know, from years ago, because Ithink there is so much to take
from the way that they trainedtheir mindset, the things that
they had to get through, thatreally, for athletes today is

(01:28:01):
maybe easier, you know, in termsof all of our devices.

So I think there's loads to learn as as an athlete
.
So I think there's loads tolearn as as an athlete and I
love I, you know, I love theidea of, from an entrepreneur's
head, how you can bring thatathlete head and sports head
into the world of business.
I mean, you know, he just gaveus a really good example of that
, didn't he?

He did and the other the other one that I'll
throw out there is it doesn't,it doesn't it wasn't a great
example of the power ofstorytelling.
You know, he made our jobreally easy because he could
tell the stories and withinthose stories was all the
lessons that we needed.
We didn't need to ask specificquestions.
I mean, we didn't ask even athird of the questions that we
had lined up, but he answered agood good most of them because

(01:28:46):
because of the way he could tellthe stories and weave those
lessons in.
So I think you know, inbusiness, if you can master the
art of storytelling, whetherit's in your marketing, whether
it's your new york communication, anything like that, it's um,
it's just incredibly powerful um.
So, yeah, a brilliant interviewas as far as we're concerned
and for all of the listeners outthere, keep on training.

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