Speaker 1: I my Boris and this is a straight talk a
Speaker 1: bit of ball. How are you doing it? A straight
Speaker 1: talk MANE leave a war torn Sedan, you able to
Speaker 1: live in Egypt, you end up in the warmbar. Then
Speaker 1: you go to Perth and you know you're representing your
Speaker 1: country nominated to be Australian year, and then you just
Speaker 1: get whack. Yeah, how do you pick yourself up?
Speaker 2: It's such a xusition. You're you're just not you and
Speaker 2: your own now. It's like if you're not at the
Speaker 2: right mindset, it could destroy you. I had no English
Speaker 2: at all, moving moving to Australia, you find out pretty
Speaker 2: quickly that you're you're the odd one out and now
Speaker 2: you're in this race to kind of adapt. And everyone
Speaker 2: was shocked, like whoa, Like you really have a talent
Speaker 2: for this, and I think you should do it outside
Speaker 2: of school. And I just said, I don't really want
Speaker 2: to run. It's not it's not my passion. Really, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was just not my thing. It wasn't until again,
Speaker 2: I kept losing and coming second. I was pretty competitive.
Speaker 1: I want to win. It sounds like you're good at
Speaker 1: every bloody thing, but don't tell me a great swim.
Speaker 1: It no no bitter bowl. Hey you do a straight
Speaker 1: talk mane.
Speaker 2: No, thank you for having me. I've been one thing
Speaker 2: to come here for. It's pretty cool. Good to be
Speaker 2: first fall Tell me what Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actual first name is, Like, it's not Peter. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a great start. My first name is does
Speaker 1: it mean something? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So in Ira Regardy is my first language. Nugement is
Speaker 2: a star, and then din is religion. Actually interestingly yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: And and your your religion, your Muslim is religion. And
Speaker 1: because because what I got confused is how you got
Speaker 1: Peter in there? Because Peter is a Christian name. And
Speaker 1: did your parents name me Peter or do they call
Speaker 1: you something completely different? Now?
Speaker 2: They actually called me something completely different. My parents actually
Speaker 2: never called me Peter or they called me. I'm Tia,
Speaker 2: which is a nickname they gave me when I was
Speaker 2: a little little baby back home and they kept that forever.
Speaker 1: Does it mean something?
Speaker 2: Uh, it's one of my relative's name. So they just
Speaker 2: named me after them.
Speaker 1: And they okay, so so had you have Peter.
Speaker 2: When I moved here, we kind of just selected a
Speaker 2: different name.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My man was like that when he came in Australia.
Speaker 2: No, one could really pronounce your name.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's and that's a bit of a thing.
Speaker 1: I mean for people who migrate this country from a
Speaker 1: different language or different culture and language, the first thing
Speaker 1: you want to do is trumphit in. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like and you would have been how how how old
Speaker 1: were you when you came here?
Speaker 2: I was ten years old the first touchdown in Australia.
Speaker 1: So were you like cognisant the fact that your name
Speaker 1: was not when you went to school? He was you
Speaker 1: cognisant of the fact that your name was not not
Speaker 1: like everyone else in the class's name. And was it
Speaker 1: was it you who said IM call miss l Peter.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, yeah it was I think I don't even remember.
Speaker 2: It's such a long time ago, but yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it was me.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was pretty pretty hard. And interestingly, oh, my brother's
Speaker 2: names are are kind of similar. So I've got four
Speaker 2: brothers and one is Sempstead Din, one is my head Din,
Speaker 2: and one is better at Din and one is Din.
Speaker 2: So we all have the din in it and super
Speaker 2: Arabic names. And when you come here you realize, like
Speaker 2: everyone's names are kind of different and no one can
Speaker 2: pronounce your name is like a struggle. So actually, in reflection,
Speaker 2: I wish I kind of just went with my last
Speaker 2: name just Bowl, which is a lot easier to say.
Speaker 1: And pronounce, and make that your first name. Make that
Speaker 1: Oh well, hey Bowl Bobo. Yeah yeah cool, that's cool,
Speaker 1: Yeah that is cool. Yeah yeah. But Peter sort of
Speaker 1: makes sense, like like I don't know why you chose Peter,
Speaker 1: but maybe it was someone that you met the called
Speaker 1: because I remember my father Tomas story that when his
Speaker 1: youngest brother came to Australia, his name is athanass Athanasos,
Speaker 1: but the guy at the what do you call it
Speaker 1: the immigration couldn't pronounce it because it's obviously written in Greek,
Speaker 1: and he said, we're called you Arthur, and now he's
Speaker 1: Arthur because it sounds the same, Like my family just
Speaker 1: stuck with it, and now he's uncle Arthur or Artie,
Speaker 1: which is like very assy, very very easy and similar
Speaker 1: to you. Like he came here about he would have
Speaker 1: been about ten when he came to Australia and like
Speaker 1: so Australian, I it is ridiculous, So I can ask
Speaker 1: you about that. So how much of growing up pre
Speaker 1: coming to Australia do you think form part of who
Speaker 1: Peter Bowl is today pre Australia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good question, and it's really hard
Speaker 2: to break up because we've kind of shifted from different
Speaker 2: places in different cultures. I was born in Sadan and
Speaker 2: Katum and that's the Sydanese and South Sudanese culture. My
Speaker 2: dad South Sudanese and well tell.
Speaker 1: Me about it that most audiences wouldn't know much about
Speaker 1: that culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my dad South sudanes so that's where the
Speaker 2: ball comes from. And my mum is from a Nuba
Speaker 2: tribe in the North Sudan and that's where the Arabic
Speaker 2: path comes from legement Din. There is much difference between
Speaker 2: heaps of difference South Sudan, different religion, different languages. So
Speaker 2: my mom and dad actually speak two different languages. My
Speaker 2: dad speaks a trible language called Denka and my mom
Speaker 2: speaks her.
Speaker 1: Trible language called Nuba.
Speaker 2: And growing up, we actually spoke Nuba with my mom
Speaker 2: because we grew up with my mom's side of the
Speaker 2: family never actually spoke my dad's language because he was
Speaker 2: he was kind of the odd one out growing up
Speaker 2: with all my mom has so many siblings and brothers
Speaker 2: and family and that's who we're around.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then and then the national language in Saddan is Arabic,
Speaker 2: So I think we just stuck to that because it
Speaker 2: was just a lot easier.
Speaker 1: Spoke Arabic. Yeah, my dad speaks, so that was a
Speaker 1: common language, and that's the common Arabic. But if you
Speaker 1: want to have a cracked dad, you spoken uage. But
Speaker 1: I've actually completely forgot my mom real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we're so little, like like I mean, Alison,
Speaker 2: when I was six years old and when we met
Speaker 2: to Egypt, Egypt is the primary arab is the primary
Speaker 2: language Egypt, and you just stuck to that and that's
Speaker 2: all you spoke, and you spoke at home, so that
Speaker 2: became the primary language as well.
Speaker 1: Arab You still speak Arabic. I still speak fluent read right.
Speaker 2: I can I can only read now. I've kind of
Speaker 2: lost the reading and writing, so I can only speak
Speaker 2: it fluently.
Speaker 1: You speak, but do you speak it's still at home
Speaker 1: with your mum and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, brothers, yeah speaking now, i'd actually speak to my brothers.
Speaker 2: I only speak it to my parents. Wow, yeah, and
Speaker 2: some in friends.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny, you know, like you know, like when
Speaker 1: you're I mean I'm a first generation, so I don't
Speaker 1: know other than what my dad's or said and what
Speaker 1: I experienced watching my dad. But it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: hear from someone who actually is an immigrant who came here,
Speaker 1: you know, before I became a teenager. What is the
Speaker 1: How do you feel when you arrive in the country
Speaker 1: like Australia. Do you remember when you when first maybe
Speaker 1: the first time at school everyone speaking a different language?
Speaker 1: Did you have English? In English? No?
Speaker 2: I had I had no English at all moving moving
Speaker 2: to Australia. But interestingly, every time I reflect on it,
Speaker 2: I think was it was a lot easier because as
Speaker 2: a ten year old you tend to pick up things
Speaker 2: pretty quickly. Yeah, and you go to school, and I
Speaker 2: think what I had. The advantage I had on my
Speaker 2: side is that I had four brothers and we all
Speaker 2: end up similar in the same school, so you have
Speaker 2: something familiar that you can go catch up with your
Speaker 2: brothers during recess and lunch and whatnot. But you find
Speaker 2: out pretty quickly that you're the odd one out and
Speaker 2: if you can't if you can't understand the language, every
Speaker 2: single class becomes really difficult to go to and you
Speaker 2: just get nervous go into every single class. The only
Speaker 2: class that kind of made sense with sports, because like,
Speaker 2: you pick it up really quickly and it's universal. But
Speaker 2: on top of and then you find out, on top
Speaker 2: of the language, the culture is completely different too. We
Speaker 2: had a complete different culture back home, and now you're
Speaker 2: on dis race to kind of adapt. And while you're
Speaker 2: on disraced to adapt, you're also you're also in the
Speaker 2: race you trying to learn the language. And then the
Speaker 2: conflicting part I think was was that the people that
Speaker 2: you looked up to, which is I think the head
Speaker 2: of the house, which is your parents, they don't get
Speaker 2: to experience them, so they remain their culture the whole
Speaker 2: way because they come here pretty old, don't go to school,
Speaker 2: and don't have many Australian friends, and they stay around
Speaker 2: the community. So you go to school and you try
Speaker 2: and adapt to everything, and then you come back home
Speaker 2: back to your own culture, and then you have this
Speaker 2: conflicting side because you're going to school, like most of
Speaker 2: the day, you're spending time, and then over the years
Speaker 2: you start picking up Australian culture and you're going back
Speaker 2: home it's like, well, where does our culture kind of
Speaker 2: fit in the middle and that's kind of I think
Speaker 2: it was really challenging finding that. Rather than everything else,
Speaker 2: finding the language and getting to know people and all
Speaker 2: that and making friends, I think was trying to find
Speaker 2: out where you fit in in a different culture and
Speaker 2: how much do you try to adapt to a new
Speaker 2: culture while maintaining your own sense of purpose and who
Speaker 2: you are.
Speaker 1: When you first came to shop, where'd you gos sort
Speaker 1: of settle down? Timba Toombo queen cle Oh my god,
Speaker 1: like especially like fifteen years ago, like more twenty years
Speaker 1: ago now, Turmber was like fairly Aussie, Yeah why but
Speaker 1: uh the fuck? Like why too?
Speaker 2: Like we never asked questions because we didn't know much
Speaker 2: of Australia.
Speaker 1: Someone sent you there, they know.
Speaker 2: My dad actually had family in Turmber, and I think
Speaker 2: what happened around that time there was a lot of
Speaker 2: migration through Tomba and there was heaps of work to
Speaker 2: be done. I think there was a lot of fieldwork
Speaker 2: and heaps of Sytan needs well moved there and Tumba
Speaker 2: back then. So there was actually a big Sitaney community
Speaker 2: back in tumber around that time, from two thousand and
Speaker 2: two thousand and four. Yeah, we actually grew up with
Speaker 2: heaps of and these kids around.
Speaker 1: It was like a community sort of thing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: what what did you guys leave behind in and not
Speaker 1: so much in Egypt, but what did you leave behind
Speaker 1: Sudan in order before we went to Egypt? Like, was
Speaker 1: it like a civil war? What was going on? Yea,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: I mean Soti as we speak right now, it's still
Speaker 2: going through tension and civil war. Like my grandma's still there,
Speaker 2: and I think it's it's pretty hard for my mom
Speaker 2: at the moment because she wants to see her every time,
Speaker 2: but it's she can't go there. It's not safe to
Speaker 2: go there, and she's getting pretty old. So I think
Speaker 2: the story never really changed between that conflicts, civil wars
Speaker 2: and stuff like that that you have back there. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of the way we left and my dad
Speaker 2: just relocated us all to Egypt.
Speaker 1: May not pardners, but is it a religious what's going on?
Speaker 2: What's the World's probably actually a Muslim country in the
Speaker 2: north anyway, So in twenty eleven they've got the independence
Speaker 2: from from South Souda and obviously and so it wasn't
Speaker 2: really about religion. It's all about power between between I
Speaker 2: guess the leaders and the people. That's it's been the
Speaker 2: same story for years.
Speaker 1: And is it full on, like as in like you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: people getting killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's full on. It's probably not televised as much,
Speaker 2: but it's pretty full on. It's been going for years.
Speaker 1: I guess it's and I don't know, I'm very much
Speaker 1: about them, but I guess it's not as publicly talked
Speaker 1: about because there's no oil there or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's just there's probably no nothing rich there, like if
Speaker 1: if it was Middle East or something like that. Because
Speaker 1: of the oil, et cetera. Everyone's talking about it and
Speaker 1: every going to be buttoning and sort of putting the
Speaker 1: two bobs with him, But he's much going on Sudan.
Speaker 1: I mean, prior to this war, did you ever see
Speaker 1: it in peaceful? No?
Speaker 2: Actually, sadly no. But when I was at school, I
Speaker 2: think that was probably the most peaceful part of it.
Speaker 2: And you could go back to Sudan. So my my
Speaker 2: family actually went back to down a few times while
Speaker 2: we're at school. But ever since, it's kind of been
Speaker 2: on enough on enough and and I think peaceful it
Speaker 2: really depends like it's being kind of corrupt for a while.
Speaker 2: But was it safe enough to go there. Yes, he
Speaker 2: was safe, but still wasn't at the standard that you'd
Speaker 2: probably consider it safe enough. But if you were Sudanese
Speaker 2: and you knew people, you could go there and get away.
Speaker 2: But now it's completely unsafe to go.
Speaker 1: And do you feel it's Peter Bowl? Does he feel
Speaker 1: like he's more Sudanese or more today?
Speaker 2: I mean obviously a combination, but combination, yeah, obviously combination
Speaker 2: of both. And interesting enough, I spent more of my
Speaker 2: life in Australia than I than I.
Speaker 1: Did back home.
Speaker 2: But but what made me is is the culture and
Speaker 2: the personnel that I got I got back from home.
Speaker 2: So it's almost like bang On in the middle, Like
Speaker 2: my my heritage and my identity comes from being having
Speaker 2: suit and his father and his mother and that's and
Speaker 2: that's that's who Peter Bowl is. And then obviously coming
Speaker 2: adopting to a new country and and finding sport, finding
Speaker 2: the love for a new country, that's who I am now.
Speaker 2: So it's definitely both.
Speaker 1: Of them, and from Timbert Withrigenda.
Speaker 2: From Timber, I think we were four years there and
Speaker 2: then we moved to Perth, so all the I O
Speaker 2: was waside.
Speaker 1: Why Perth it's actually beautiful Perth, but like it was
Speaker 1: it chasing work feed da.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad obviously didn't didn't have education and there
Speaker 2: was so much work in Timber, so he kind of
Speaker 2: relocated us all to Perth.
Speaker 1: And as your dad and and or mom sports sports people.
Speaker 2: No they're not actually, but my dad, my dad, you
Speaker 2: can tell if he ever had the opportunity, you get
Speaker 2: pretty far. I think it's it's always about opportunity and
Speaker 2: if he could have done it. I don't think he
Speaker 2: ever had that opportunity to do any sport. But I
Speaker 2: remember as a kid we used to race and he'd
Speaker 2: beat all of us, like he's his strong. Saudis are
Speaker 2: really strong, powerful, and he.
Speaker 1: Described it because I don't know, so describe you know
Speaker 1: what it is? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they actually don't look the way I look
Speaker 2: because they're a lot taller. I'm considered pretty short for
Speaker 2: South Sudanese average heart. It's probably six to one now
Speaker 2: six to two, so wow, they're pretty tall. My dad's
Speaker 2: pretty tall, really strong.
Speaker 1: Really powerful human inters of physique.
Speaker 2: Physique, Yeah, really really strong. So growing up I used
Speaker 2: to look up to him a lot.
Speaker 1: He was just it was just this.
Speaker 2: Big guy and athletics, so it was school to see that.
Speaker 2: And then and then my brothers and that's Nordens, my
Speaker 2: mom's side, the Nuba tripe. They're short, like really short,
Speaker 2: so completely different genetics, right, And it was always like,
Speaker 2: who's genetics are you're going to get? And I think
Speaker 2: my brother's actually all got my dad's genetics, and I
Speaker 2: got I think my mom's height, which is kind of
Speaker 2: crazy because I actually consider myself the least athletic.
Speaker 1: In the family.
Speaker 2: He took me in terms of looking at in terms
Speaker 2: of physicality, physicality, and also in terms of in terms
Speaker 2: of talent. I remember a few a few stories my
Speaker 2: little brother who went to the same school as I
Speaker 2: did back in Perth, and obviously I came to school,
Speaker 2: broke all the records and he'd just break him after me.
Speaker 2: And he didn't really train and do anything. So he
Speaker 2: was just naturally, naturally more gifted than I was and
Speaker 2: he barely trained.
Speaker 1: A different physique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's taller and a bit stronger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we talk we're talking about just when
Speaker 1: you say we're talking about running or you jump.
Speaker 2: He broke my high jump record, long jump and running,
Speaker 2: So you were doing a lot.
Speaker 1: So when you were at school, yeah, you weren't just
Speaker 1: an eight hundred meter runner or a middle distance runner.
Speaker 1: You're more everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, because again, like coming coming from where we
Speaker 2: came from, there wasn't there wasn't much outside of football.
Speaker 2: We played soccer and that's purely what we played. And
Speaker 2: you go to school here, there's there's all these sports
Speaker 2: that I chucked at you, and you're like, man, I
Speaker 2: would I'd love to give it a go. So when
Speaker 2: it was only purely just through athletics, carnivals and whatnot,
Speaker 2: and it's like, yeah, I want to give high jump
Speaker 2: a go. Like I think I jumped at school. I
Speaker 2: jumped one eighty and I could on Frosby flops. It
Speaker 2: was a sissy kick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the old scissors. This is as opposed to
Speaker 1: the West roll or whatever they call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I could jump pretty high.
Speaker 1: What'd you say? One one? That's not bad because like
Speaker 1: when you consider the records like two ten or two twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so it's it's not that far kick. And
Speaker 2: then my brother broke it and jumped like one eighty
Speaker 2: five and he could scissor kick that.
Speaker 1: And for those who don't know this is means you
Speaker 1: don't turn on your side. You actually run and jump
Speaker 1: up and one leg goes over and the other leg follows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a scissor. Like a scissor. Yeah, yeah, that's mad.
Speaker 1: Like that's so old school. Probably stops just kicking twenty
Speaker 1: years ago at the high levels, at the say, Olympic levels,
Speaker 1: et cetera. At every level. I think, because you get
Speaker 1: much mechanically, you can jump much higher if you do
Speaker 1: the other style. But when I was a school, they
Speaker 1: called the western robert as oppose. Yeah, so but I
Speaker 1: don't know what you call it. Now you just mentioned
Speaker 1: another name. I don't know what it is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just biomechanically a much more efficient way of jumping
Speaker 1: over the high jump. So but one eighty five that's
Speaker 1: pretty high. That's pretty high.
Speaker 2: But if you'd never done long jump before and someone
Speaker 2: tells us you get off the bar, I think the
Speaker 2: easiest way he's probably trying to do this is a kick. Wow,
Speaker 2: you don't have that training, so you just try to
Speaker 2: get over instead of Frosby.
Speaker 1: So when you went to school, when you first time
Speaker 1: on Perth, how were were so?
Speaker 2: How old? I was probably just out of primary so
Speaker 2: I was. I was fourteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: So you're a local school in Perth, which where we're
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 2: Per I was on the south side, so we grew
Speaker 2: up in Thornleigh the whole time I was in Perth.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's this kid at the local school. The
Speaker 1: first athletic carnival comes up. At this stage you speak
Speaker 1: in English probably perfectly. Yeah, yeah, and they say the
Speaker 1: athletic Carnival's coming up, and there wouldn't be many kids
Speaker 1: from Sedan in your school in Perth.
Speaker 2: In Perth, actually sure, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And because I lived over there for a while, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty unusual. So I love Perth. It's pretty
Speaker 1: unusual sort of plays relative to the restress and as
Speaker 1: multicultural as a rest a lot of Asian people now,
Speaker 1: but not very multicultural generally speaking, because Asian is very
Speaker 1: close to Perth, or seeing pol was very close to
Speaker 1: Perth and it is quite as short commute. Indonesia is
Speaker 1: quite close to And they see this kid and they
Speaker 1: go in the athletic carnival and did everyone so to say,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? Who's this guy? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2: When when we went to Perth, it was actually like
Speaker 2: I can't I didn't like it because we spent his
Speaker 2: four years trying to adapt and make friends, and now
Speaker 2: you've got to move to a different, different state and
Speaker 2: then you find out like it's across the country. So
Speaker 2: it was it was a little bit tough. But I
Speaker 2: wasn't really interested in athletics either. I wasn't doing athletics.
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested.
Speaker 2: No, no, no like. And I think that's purely because
Speaker 2: I thought about it a lot, and I think purely
Speaker 2: because athletics is individual sport. I never grew up individually.
Speaker 2: I grew up with with a team of brothers and family.
Speaker 2: We've moved everywhere together, We've played and shared everything, and
Speaker 2: athletics is just individuals just made no sense, made no sense.
Speaker 2: And and on top of that, like running is just
Speaker 2: just doing lips.
Speaker 1: Is boring, totally boring.
Speaker 2: I did not want anything to do with that, but
Speaker 2: I was. I was good at it, and and I
Speaker 2: went to school where it was compulsory, like a cross
Speaker 2: country was compulsory. I really had to run. Swimming, carnivals
Speaker 2: was kind of compulsory everything. So I'd rock up and
Speaker 2: I would win cross country and and everyone would be
Speaker 2: like impressed. It was like man, this is this is
Speaker 2: just what we did. Like it's not it's not a
Speaker 2: big deal. We just we just ran around so many times.
Speaker 2: So I think it impressed everyone, but I was. I
Speaker 2: was so passionate about basketball, and I actually went to
Speaker 2: that school in a basketball schoolship. So I just wanted
Speaker 2: to stay, to stay playing basketball, and.
Speaker 1: We obviously, I mean, it sounds like you're good at
Speaker 1: every bloody thing. But you know, okay, tell me, don't
Speaker 1: tell me a great swimmer too. Was that, don't tell
Speaker 1: me you're a great swimmer too? No, no, no, told
Speaker 1: basketball athletics jumping the pool to one hundred Carnival. I
Speaker 1: was kind of sick. I actually ropped up to the pool. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I actually make you feel bit better now because I
Speaker 1: was tanting to get a bit sort of annoyed with
Speaker 1: myself when I'm annoyed with my own genetics. But so,
Speaker 1: but you you love your is that you're still your
Speaker 1: first love basketball?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say as a support to watch too,
Speaker 2: as a support to watch, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if I go back to the running though,
Speaker 1: like you, they're putting across country and you're going to
Speaker 1: just have a blitz in the cross country if you
Speaker 1: know a lot about buying mechanics. Now obviously you know
Speaker 1: a lot about buying mechanics, and and I want to
Speaker 1: go back to if you attended as or the equivalent
Speaker 1: of the West Australian Institute Sport, if I assume there
Speaker 1: is one, or did you go to any of the
Speaker 1: Institute's sports. I want to come back to that in
Speaker 1: a second. But in terms of biomechanics, what do you
Speaker 1: think it is that especially when you're say fifteen year
Speaker 1: old and I don't know if you're the same size
Speaker 1: as fifteen as you right now, whether you're early mature,
Speaker 1: and in terms of general stature, what do you think
Speaker 1: it is that makes a good runner for safer distance
Speaker 1: let's call it eight hundred middle distance and beyond.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely. I think that advantage
Speaker 2: we have where I'm naturally pretty light and quick on
Speaker 2: my feet. So if you've got to have that power,
Speaker 2: you're going to have that endurance, which I was winning
Speaker 2: cross country at school without any training, so I've had
Speaker 2: that natural endurance and then you just had to biomechanically
Speaker 2: you have to get stronger and have that power, so
Speaker 2: and naturally as you grow you get stronger and bigger,
Speaker 2: so like my times are just improving as I continue
Speaker 2: to grow. So there's the strength component which you have
Speaker 2: to have. There's the physique that you kind of have.
Speaker 2: We naturally have that physiquecause being so servents, we're tall,
Speaker 2: I'm quite skinny, but powerful. Yeah, so it makes it
Speaker 2: makes for a great runner because.
Speaker 1: You got your leg and I know when I've watched
Speaker 1: you when you've competed, and you've got long legs, very
Speaker 1: long legs. Yeah, long legs relative to the your torso
Speaker 1: so to speak as opposed to say someone like me,
Speaker 1: I got a long tor so and short legs, so
Speaker 1: I'm obleiss. But but and then you know your the
Speaker 1: powers because comes from the back of your body, like
Speaker 1: your glutes or your posterior chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, glutes and core and cork. We got strong core.
Speaker 1: But so would you would you say that that's just natural? Well?
Speaker 1: You was your dad saying to you everyone to listen,
Speaker 1: get do sit ups or something.
Speaker 2: No, my dad, interestingly, as my dad has never told
Speaker 2: me to go to training in in my life, like
Speaker 2: neither has my mom. But I always thought it was natural.
Speaker 2: But then you think about it, like where where we
Speaker 2: came from we we didn't have much, but we can't
Speaker 2: at each other, and every single chance we get we
Speaker 2: were training, like but we it wasn't structured. We were
Speaker 2: always out there playing football, running around. That's all we did.
Speaker 2: So so you build strength, right, you're wrestling with your brothers.
Speaker 2: You're doing this and I remember growing up we used
Speaker 2: to do boxing with each other. So you think it's natural,
Speaker 2: but there was. You were just training, but you just
Speaker 2: didn't really think about it.
Speaker 1: And at what stage did someone say to you aka Peter,
Speaker 1: like we've been watching you in school sports and you
Speaker 1: know various carnivals, et cetera, we want you to join
Speaker 1: athletic club.
Speaker 2: When I think it was when I was year ten,
Speaker 2: when I was yet ten, and you have obviously the
Speaker 2: school class country, which are one, and then you had
Speaker 2: the inter school cross country, which gets a little bit
Speaker 2: more serious. Now you've competing against every single school and
Speaker 2: you have kids that are specializing in athletics, and and
Speaker 2: I came second and everyone was shocked. Like I was like,
Speaker 2: it was like whoa, Like you really have a talent
Speaker 2: for this, and I think you should do it outside
Speaker 2: of school. And I kind of like just declined in
Speaker 2: a nice way, and I just said, I don't I
Speaker 2: don't really want to run. It's not it's not my passion. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was just not my thing. So I think it
Speaker 2: wasn't until year twelve. Again I kept losing and coming second,
Speaker 2: and I was pretty competitive, like growing U would rather
Speaker 2: be super competitive. I was like, why why am I
Speaker 2: always coming second?
Speaker 1: Like I want to win?
Speaker 2: And I took the offer in eleven and I started
Speaker 2: training outside of I started school.
Speaker 1: But was it somebody who who sort of like picked
Speaker 1: you out as great potential like something my teacher?
Speaker 2: Actually, my teacher picked me and she had a conversation
Speaker 2: with me, like I think for two years in a row,
Speaker 2: trying to convince me to do this outside of school.
Speaker 1: And she was persistent, She was very persistent. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: do you think that is the case. Why do you
Speaker 1: think someone like that becomes persistent? Why do you think
Speaker 1: that in our lives we come across somebody who maybe
Speaker 1: doesn't give up on us, but won't give up on us,
Speaker 1: and of course we don't see it as a cad.
Speaker 1: Why did think someone chose you to be someone who
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give up on and keep encouraging him to
Speaker 1: do something.
Speaker 2: I think it comes it comes from from within and
Speaker 2: also comes from from their story, because as I get
Speaker 2: to know my teacher outside of school, and she got
Speaker 2: her father involved, which he meantled me. She used to
Speaker 2: be a great swimmer and her dad never gave up
Speaker 2: on her, and he's so great potential on her. But
Speaker 2: she also thinks so great potential on me as a
Speaker 2: person and someone that she wanted to help. And she
Speaker 2: would ask me every single year and I'd say no.
Speaker 2: But then she realized, maybe maybe it's not because he's
Speaker 2: not passionate, maybe he doesn't know where to go. And
Speaker 2: she got her dad involved, said do you know athletics
Speaker 2: clubs and all this stuff? And as soon as those
Speaker 2: doors opened and all I have to do is rock up,
Speaker 2: I said yes. And I think once she figured that out,
Speaker 2: she's like, maybe maybe it's not about passion. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: not about laziness and all these things people kind of say,
Speaker 2: you've got so much talent, but you don't apply yourself.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's more about opportunity because other people.
Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of books written about this is
Speaker 1: a very famous one called Outlies, written by a go
Speaker 1: called Malcolm Gladwell, and he's talking about intellectually outlies, but
Speaker 1: sort of like just talent outlies. Generally speaking, the same
Speaker 1: would apply. Often outliers don't realize how strong their talent
Speaker 1: is relative to everybody else, and on many occasions a
Speaker 1: lot of the outliers never actually achieve anything. It's only
Speaker 1: rare that you get an outlier, you know, someone like Oppenheimen, etcetera,
Speaker 1: who wants to pursue with their outlier talent. They want
Speaker 1: to pursue something very important and end. In his case,
Speaker 1: he did something fairly important for very important relative to
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. You wonder why, I of
Speaker 1: wonder why someone like you who is an outlier doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to do it. Not lazy, just can't see
Speaker 1: the points in it. But why am I doing that?
Speaker 1: I often wonder what it is the thing it is
Speaker 1: that actually made him change their mind on a particular time.
Speaker 1: So stuff, and yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm
Speaker 1: going to have a crack at this. I'm going to
Speaker 1: pursue my talent, not pursue a career, not pursue an outcome,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna pursue my talent. What do you think
Speaker 1: it was that got you to make the call because
Speaker 1: she was consistent. She kept asking, but what was it
Speaker 1: that clicked in your mind and said, Peter, come on,
Speaker 1: let's give this a crack.
Speaker 2: I actually think it's the way you see the world
Speaker 2: and a different perspective you get to see the world.
Speaker 2: For me personally, was that I had I saw the
Speaker 2: world in different scales, obviously in such a small scale,
Speaker 2: and then when you get to athletics you get to
Speaker 2: see see so much.
Speaker 1: Of the world.
Speaker 2: And I was pretty talented pretty early, so like as
Speaker 2: soon as I committed to running that first year, I
Speaker 2: was like, I was like in Sydney. So I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: Like you get to travel for free, Like that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Right with the athletics squad he came over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I came over, like because I came to
Speaker 2: Turmba in Perth and that was it. I never saw
Speaker 2: any the rest of Australia. I was like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: sport can be your passport. So you get to see
Speaker 2: the world in a different sense. And then and then
Speaker 2: you're seeing like and then on top of that, you're
Speaker 2: seeing like you're learning about different athletes and what they're doing,
Speaker 2: how they apply themselves and and then that drive and
Speaker 2: then the second is I think my drive is like
Speaker 2: I want to be the best and and I will
Speaker 2: not stop until I get there. I was second, I
Speaker 2: want to be first, and then I get first. And
Speaker 2: then you find out like oh you just first at
Speaker 2: the school, like there's there's like people in Queensland, there's
Speaker 2: people in these up wells and there's a title to
Speaker 2: be one, and then it's like the fastest Australian Junior
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, I want to get there. And
Speaker 2: then once you set yourself that goal, you kind of
Speaker 2: try anything to get there and you just you just
Speaker 2: want to get to that top.
Speaker 1: Because I often think of her self, is it people
Speaker 1: say I'm competitive and therefore I want to win? Or
Speaker 1: is it is it something sort of greater than that?
Speaker 1: Is it like I want to travel Australia and if
Speaker 1: this is why I can, Like I know a lot
Speaker 1: of boxers do this, you know they're only way out
Speaker 1: and Philly players a lot of times the only way
Speaker 1: out of the shit life that I might be presented with.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying your life with a ship life,
Speaker 1: but the excitement life, the excitement of life that you
Speaker 1: may not be getting presented with living at home with
Speaker 1: your family. The things that look exciting, especially to a
Speaker 1: young person. The only way I'm going to get to
Speaker 1: taste that stuff is to compete and win, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people I'm competitive and therefore I want to win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I see lots of other reasons why people even
Speaker 1: at a young as a young person, we can recognize
Speaker 1: that I'm not going to get to do what everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing unless I take this risk and try
Speaker 1: harder and train harder, and a lot of times that's
Speaker 1: our greatest sportsman in this country. Very rarely have come
Speaker 1: from the really expensive schools where families are really wealthy.
Speaker 1: Particularly if I look at the boxing, boxing grades, et cetera.
Speaker 1: In our football grades. I don't know a lot about athletics,
Speaker 1: but our athletic grades, but swimming rates as well. So
Speaker 1: we slightly different because your parents have to have money
Speaker 1: to be able to push through the program. But nonetheless
Speaker 1: it's about improving your life. How much of this you know,
Speaker 1: Like I'm seeing myself on the improvement curve. I've come
Speaker 1: from Sudan. I went out of there. I got out
Speaker 1: of there. That was a lot of drama there having
Speaker 1: in Egypt and that was pretty good but better, better
Speaker 1: than Sudan, but not as good as we went to
Speaker 1: the moment torn but too was pretty good. Now I'm
Speaker 1: in Perth perse pretty good, but maying there's a lot
Speaker 1: more good stuff out there. Yeah, I want to keep
Speaker 1: pushing on the improvement curve. How much that is about
Speaker 1: is put of balls?
Speaker 2: I actually I think it's about eighty percent. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: I'm I always struggled with you know, when you're doing
Speaker 2: something for so long years and you get to meet
Speaker 2: people that are that do it out of pure passion,
Speaker 2: I always I was always kind of jealous of that.
Speaker 2: I've seen people that are so passionate about about athletics,
Speaker 2: about running, and I wasn't really a student of running.
Speaker 2: I don't even know who I was running against in
Speaker 2: my first Olympic Games. So I was just there because
Speaker 2: I wanted to be in that improvement improvement curve. I
Speaker 2: wanted to represent now like you see, like I became
Speaker 2: a strange citizen in two thousand and two thousand and
Speaker 2: six around September, I was like, man, like I became
Speaker 2: a strange citizen now, like I'm running for the country.
Speaker 2: I'm now representing so many people. And then and then
Speaker 2: you see like the world kind of get behind you,
Speaker 2: Like Australia gets behind you, and then you see the
Speaker 2: whole the migrants get behind You're not even just the
Speaker 2: South Sudanese, they kind of just get behind you. And
Speaker 2: now like you stand for something for these people, and
Speaker 2: it's like that, that's like eighty percent and you still
Speaker 2: have to enjoy.
Speaker 1: And I still do enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I don't hate it, but there's no way I'm as
Speaker 2: passionate as anyone else around there because I could tell
Speaker 2: you now like I'd barely watch I don't watch much athletics.
Speaker 2: The first Olympics, I didn't know who I was running against.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until like two years ago that I started
Speaker 2: looking at my appoints because and mainly because someone told
Speaker 2: me that's how you improve. You gotta you gotta study
Speaker 2: your points, You've gotta be a student of the sport.
Speaker 2: You gotta know splits, you gotta know time. And that's
Speaker 2: when I started looking into it. I've been to three
Speaker 2: Olympics and after my events, barely going to any athletics
Speaker 2: to watch. I've definitely gone to basketball every time I
Speaker 2: had a chance to go watch that.
Speaker 1: Because that's your love. Yeah, that's your passion. That's your passion,
Speaker 1: and that's what you love. It doesn't, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you don't apply the same out of effort to
Speaker 1: the thing. Your job. Your job is the eight hundred.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you do it? Do any other
Speaker 1: events apart from the eight hundred? Have you done it?
Speaker 1: Not in the limits but outside Olympics? Was another event
Speaker 1: that was your favorite?
Speaker 2: No, it's just kind of eight hundred.
Speaker 1: It was because that's a tough run, by the way,
Speaker 1: But eight hundred? Why that is it? Because that you
Speaker 1: felt felt that's what you're best at? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I just felt I was too lazy to do the
Speaker 2: training for anything longer. I thought I would be, honestly,
Speaker 2: I think probably naturally better, maybe a more fifteen hundred,
Speaker 2: a little bit longer, because I came from winning cross
Speaker 2: country pretty easily, naturally, But I just didn't want to
Speaker 2: do that training and running so much.
Speaker 1: The difference between eight hundred training and fifteen hundred training,
Speaker 1: it's more COMMONI so you's got to get more on
Speaker 1: your legs.
Speaker 2: You's got to get more on your legs, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't interested in doing that. I was more interested in
Speaker 2: just staying explosive, powerful, because I was still playing basket
Speaker 2: on the side. I wanted to keep playing basketball. If
Speaker 2: you're running fifteen and longer, you're running like eighty k's
Speaker 2: or more a week. Not really, Yeah, I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: I wasn't interested in running anything more than forty fifty
Speaker 2: k's a week. That's a lot, too, But that's a lot,
Speaker 2: but for a runner, it's not that much for a
Speaker 2: distance runner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And can I ask you, like,
Speaker 1: I know you're Muslim by faith, and you still live
Speaker 1: a faithful life today. We try my best, Yeah, you do.
Speaker 1: I guess that. I mean everyone try best and then,
Speaker 1: which basically means we're not perfect at it, but we're
Speaker 1: we have the structure to try to live it that way.
Speaker 1: How much of the Muslim religion dictates or determines that
Speaker 1: we must take advantage of what God has given us
Speaker 1: in terms of talent? In other words, And I don't
Speaker 1: know a lot about the Muslim religion, but and therefore
Speaker 1: I'm asking you, is it considered disrespectful to God not
Speaker 1: to take advantage of the skill you've got.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know if it's if it's so
Speaker 2: much disrespectful, I think you're you're on this earth on
Speaker 2: a learning curve, right, You you make mistakes and you
Speaker 2: just can't learn from them. But but if you have
Speaker 2: a gift, it is considered. You use it and you
Speaker 2: don't just use it for yourself. You use it to
Speaker 2: better your life and better the people around you. Right,
Speaker 2: you got to give, you got to forgive and and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. So I think it's it's in your
Speaker 2: duty to use your.
Speaker 1: Gift, and that's the way point.
Speaker 2: Is a duty, Yeah, to use your gifts and talents.
Speaker 1: Yes, cly So, does that drive you or did that
Speaker 1: drive you during that period?
Speaker 2: It definitely definitely drove me a lot because I had
Speaker 2: this that I knew I could not just change my life,
Speaker 2: but change everyone around me. So I think that definitely
Speaker 2: made me wanted to do it a little bit more,
Speaker 2: and it made it a little bit different to having
Speaker 2: having faith on your side and having family and having
Speaker 2: like strong values. Actually made the sport more enjoyable because
Speaker 2: how so, because because it's like you had less pressure.
Speaker 2: You're like, this is a gift and I'm going to
Speaker 2: do the best I can. But the most important thing
Speaker 2: is is your faith and your family and your values.
Speaker 1: Outside of that. So you had a full back position.
Speaker 2: You always had a full back position, right, So like
Speaker 2: those are as strong, those what you need to strengthen,
Speaker 2: and the sport will strengthen self. But you've got to
Speaker 2: keep you in the training, right. But you can't. You
Speaker 2: almost can't do sports without strengthening that. It's especially especially
Speaker 2: if you're.
Speaker 1: Tired in the middle.
Speaker 2: You've got to like be a non believer and to
Speaker 2: try to strengthen that. But if you're a believer, you're
Speaker 2: always kind of conflicted in the middle, so you've got
Speaker 2: to you've got to work on them both.
Speaker 1: So because you know, see some young Muslim not so
Speaker 1: much young anymore, but something like Sunny but Williams who
Speaker 1: is quite open about his faith, and also a lot
Speaker 1: of the Islander boys who are quite open about their
Speaker 1: Christian faith in terms of where it fits into in
Speaker 1: terms of league, because that's more the area I'm interested
Speaker 1: in my own personal life. But the way they openly
Speaker 1: display it and they openly lean into it in order
Speaker 1: to help them do what do what they're about to do,
Speaker 1: and in fact, actually to some extent, and I saw
Speaker 1: it during the paras Olympics obviously just finished, but especially
Speaker 1: in the athletic field, I saw a few people sort
Speaker 1: of look up to Allah and do the sign that
Speaker 1: they do prior to their event. Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how strictly religious you are, but what is it that
Speaker 1: people are asking for when they do it or what
Speaker 1: are they giving when they look up and or think
Speaker 1: before a race? In relation? In relations just sort of
Speaker 1: the Islamic faith, like you know, the Muslim faith. What
Speaker 1: is it they're saying or thinking about? Yeah? Are they
Speaker 1: offering it to God? Yeah? I think different.
Speaker 2: Different people have obviously different but but for me personally,
Speaker 2: I do pray and I just pray to be able
Speaker 2: to do the best stuff prepared for. So and someone said,
Speaker 2: do you do you pray that you you do better
Speaker 2: than your opponents? I said, I said, no, Like you,
Speaker 2: you just pray for safe journey and you pray that
Speaker 2: you can do the best, the best that you're prepared for.
Speaker 2: And that's and that's it, and you and you leave
Speaker 2: the rest up to you lift the rest up to
Speaker 2: a lie, right, you just do the best you can.
Speaker 1: Because that's interesting, you should say that the best you
Speaker 1: prepared for, which then takes you down to the pre
Speaker 1: ration period. Yeah, if you don't do well, you can
Speaker 1: just sort of say, well, maybe I didn't prepare well enough,
Speaker 1: and then you can look at all the reasons why
Speaker 1: I didn't prepare well enough and for the next period's
Speaker 1: the next race period is coming up with six months
Speaker 1: is accountable as well, totally because it's up to you.
Speaker 2: It's up to you God obviously, God obviously knows knows
Speaker 2: what you want. But I don't think you're just given it.
Speaker 2: You still have to work for it, so do you do?
Speaker 1: You have to practice in your faith gratitude for what
Speaker 1: you've been given.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gratitude is a big one and it keeps you
Speaker 2: kind at peace. And that's honestly what I pray for
Speaker 2: if if I want to race, because like, you become
Speaker 2: a dangerous appointment when you're just at peace, you're calm
Speaker 2: and chilled and and that's all you ask for and
Speaker 2: then the rest is up to you to execute a race. Right.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. You become a dangerous opponent in that you're
Speaker 1: not putting too much pressure on you know, your biochemics, chemistry,
Speaker 1: that that's your you know, your quartersole and your adrenaline
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff, you know, because I do
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about nervousness before a race,
Speaker 1: that adrenale for fatigue. Maybe you could take me through that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll take an audience through that I've experienced,
Speaker 1: but like, what does it mean? So I want to
Speaker 1: know how you control your state of mind and have
Speaker 1: you had some really crazy moments where your heart's pumping
Speaker 1: so hard? You know? And by the way, this happens
Speaker 1: to everybody, especially in the early stages of their career,
Speaker 1: sporting career, that you suffer fatigue because eight hundred legas
Speaker 1: one hundred is explosy, but eight hundred you've got to
Speaker 1: have endurance and you can't be fatigued. You've got to
Speaker 1: slept properly, you can't hopefully no injuries, but you've got
Speaker 1: to be able to keep your pace going, and you've
Speaker 1: got to be able to have that burst of energy
Speaker 1: at a later part of the race, so you can't
Speaker 1: be burned out early early on. As this whole thought
Speaker 1: process and strategy going into the race, and the if
Speaker 1: all of a sudden the strategy gets stuffed up for
Speaker 1: some reason, you know, you've got to get your head
Speaker 1: around it. Somehow, maybe you just take me through the
Speaker 1: way you understand your own biochemistry in terms of being
Speaker 1: one hundred percent ready set for your best performance in
Speaker 1: an eight hundred. So what are you trying to achieve
Speaker 1: the night before? Perhaps nutrition, perhaps a week before, you know,
Speaker 1: what's your little process and other any superstitions sitting there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that is a really interesting question, And I
Speaker 2: think it's a huge question because I think all that
Speaker 2: stuff matters, like the preparation beforehand, the night before, the
Speaker 2: fuel you eat, all those kind of matter, And I
Speaker 2: think the matter because they'll keep you in a peaceful mindset.
Speaker 2: You don't want to rock up to the start line
Speaker 2: and saying I wish I would have prepared better, Like
Speaker 2: that's already doubt. And when you have doubt, it's tough
Speaker 2: to compete without. You don't want to rock up thinking
Speaker 2: I've got a niggle and I'm a little bit injured.
Speaker 2: That's another thing in your mind. You want to remove
Speaker 2: as much thing out of your head to kind of
Speaker 2: stay present. Like the best races I've had is being present.
Speaker 2: Like you spoke before about, obviously your strategy can go
Speaker 2: out the way. The eight hundred is one of the
Speaker 2: most brutal races to have a strategy for, because in
Speaker 2: that first two hundred you're all in different lanes and
Speaker 2: then your crossover, so your strategy might be I want
Speaker 2: to be first across that line, and then you end
Speaker 2: up being at the back. What do I do now?
Speaker 2: And you have to prepare for those in training.
Speaker 1: You have to.
Speaker 2: And the best race I've had is just being present
Speaker 2: and your body and your muscle memory just knows when
Speaker 2: to make those moves. Because if you think, if you're
Speaker 2: trying to think about should I make that move, someone's
Speaker 2: already made it and you're too late. Like there's no
Speaker 2: time for error, there's no time for thinking. It's like
Speaker 2: just muscle memory making those moves. And a few races
Speaker 2: that I've raced really well and I was like going
Speaker 2: through first lap, going through second lap and there's a
Speaker 2: gap open.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it. I just moved.
Speaker 2: And a race that I was thinking about should I
Speaker 2: take that gap? By the time I decided, someone's already
Speaker 2: taken it and you're kind of set up the back.
Speaker 2: So you've got to be apps litely present, and to
Speaker 2: be present, you've got to be calm, and there's things
Speaker 2: you kind of do and apply, like before you've a race.
Speaker 2: I'll do my breathing, I do my prayers whatever, just
Speaker 2: to try to get myself in that calm state. And
Speaker 2: you rock up to the stadium with like im off games.
Speaker 2: I rock up the stadium. I think it was like
Speaker 2: like solve that crowd, and and you don't really heat
Speaker 2: a crowd. You're just you're just present.
Speaker 1: Because you're so far within your own mind.
Speaker 2: And when when I have no destruction and think about
Speaker 2: anything else, I know it's going to be a good race.
Speaker 2: First as if I'm thinking about like injury, thinking about
Speaker 2: the next opponent, think about that.
Speaker 1: You know it's going to be a difficult race. So
Speaker 1: are there's some things you rule out? Then during let's
Speaker 1: say you're getting ready for the Corm Games and or
Speaker 1: any other equivalent, do you sort of say, okay for
Speaker 1: the next six six months before I don't know what
Speaker 1: the period is for prep. I mean, obviously it's it's
Speaker 1: a long prepay it's years. But the last six months
Speaker 1: before you you you compete or race, do you sort
Speaker 1: of say rule out girlfriend. I don't know your girlfriend, boyfriend,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. But let's say it's a girlfriend,
Speaker 1: real our relationships one because you know, like and I'm
Speaker 1: looking for like strict rules. I rule out late night,
Speaker 1: so really out hanging out with my mates. So rerul
Speaker 1: out blah blah. These things you cannot do because they're
Speaker 1: distractions and or things that could change your peace of mind.
Speaker 1: Give you that little thing that pisces you off, that
Speaker 1: sort of will you know, because in your case, we're
Speaker 1: talking about points of a second. You know, tenth of
Speaker 1: a second is a you know that far at the
Speaker 1: speed you guys are running. So do you like have
Speaker 1: a mindset of structure that you stick to, like a
Speaker 1: game plan?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And part of that is actually ruling out training
Speaker 2: hard really yeah, because you don't want to rock up
Speaker 2: to a start line fatigued and too tired.
Speaker 1: So you want to be pe king.
Speaker 2: And that's the hardest one because you always want to
Speaker 2: push at.
Speaker 1: Training because I need more, I need more.
Speaker 2: But the reality is you're not gonna you're not gonna
Speaker 2: get any fitter in a week.
Speaker 1: But but what you.
Speaker 2: Can get in a week is get injured, right, You're
Speaker 2: not going to get any better. So so ruling out
Speaker 2: hard training is probably one of the most important thing
Speaker 2: because because an athlete at our level, Like if you're like,
Speaker 2: of course you're only human, and you still face distractions
Speaker 2: and you face all this stuff, but you've you've kind
Speaker 2: of worked out a system where where you work that
Speaker 2: stuff out. It's it's like you don't get there by fluke.
Speaker 2: Like you've ruled out distractions, You've ruled out like late
Speaker 2: nights before a race and all that stuff. Like if
Speaker 2: you still have to rule that out, you've got a
Speaker 2: long way to go at that at that high level.
Speaker 1: You've got to you've got to be able.
Speaker 2: It's to do with training, I think most importantly training, sleep,
Speaker 2: recovery so important, so important. You've got to get the physio.
Speaker 2: Some of these things are like just time, right, they're boring,
Speaker 2: like why why do I want to go to physiog
Speaker 2: get a massage? Why do I need to stretch? Like
Speaker 2: why do I have to sleep early? And all those things?
Speaker 2: But you've got to do these things and and.
Speaker 1: So what period would you be doing that for us?
Speaker 1: Because it because it can get a bit I'd imagine
Speaker 1: it can't get a bit boring.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and and for me, for me, it's got
Speaker 2: to be like I know I've got a race in
Speaker 2: about about six or two months or something like that,
Speaker 2: I'll have a training camp and that's where everything is
Speaker 2: ruled out. And training camp you go away. So we
Speaker 2: usually go up. Sometimes I'll go up to Perisher in
Speaker 2: I think New South Wales and and there naturally rules
Speaker 2: out all distractions, like there's nothing to do in Parish
Speaker 2: and I then kind of run and be a piece
Speaker 2: of yourself. So you rule out through training camps is
Speaker 2: a great way to do it. Like you set your
Speaker 2: stuff up for a training camp for three weeks and
Speaker 2: you're there just purely training, getting the right food, and
Speaker 2: that's all you're doing is running. I think it's harder
Speaker 2: to rule out when you're when you're back home because
Speaker 2: now you've got friends, family, you've got everything. So instead
Speaker 2: of avoiding distructions, you just move away from it.
Speaker 1: So when you're saying you're you move away from distractions,
Speaker 1: would you do you take you know, like iPads and
Speaker 1: start do you get sort of stuck in things like
Speaker 1: YouTube or whatever? I mean, yeah, what what do you
Speaker 1: do to you Or you're meditating, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know what's gonna it's whatever you're passionate about. Because majority
Speaker 2: of ice training is recovery right, You've got to recover enough,
Speaker 2: which means you have time. You have so much time,
Speaker 2: and you know you don't want to get on the
Speaker 2: other side of underperforming, which which is boredom bottom can
Speaker 2: also lead to underforming. So you don't want to be
Speaker 2: too bored. So Number one, you've got to have the
Speaker 2: right the right group of training group that surround you,
Speaker 2: that that you kind of enjoy being around, because you
Speaker 2: don't want to be in your head the whole time.
Speaker 1: That's not helpful.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you take your iPad, you take your books,
Speaker 2: you have some friends. Some of the best training camps
Speaker 2: I've had is going going over season, just going a
Speaker 2: few friends and and just running with them or Perth.
Speaker 2: I'd get some of my brothers and some of the
Speaker 2: people I grew up with to.
Speaker 1: Come and do training with me.
Speaker 2: They're not professional athletes, they're not even runners, but they
Speaker 2: will come. The beauty of it was just being amongst people.
Speaker 2: Because if you're doing a law by yourself, it gets
Speaker 2: really hard. So you're not really trying to rule out
Speaker 2: everything because you get too bored. You've got to be
Speaker 2: able to like leading up to a championship, You've got
Speaker 2: to be able to make sure everything's the same. You
Speaker 2: don't want to change too many things. You don't want
Speaker 2: to completely rule out everyone. You know, you just end
Speaker 2: up stressing yourself. So I try to stay pretty pretty
Speaker 2: calm and pretty normal, but obviously like less of everything,
Speaker 2: less of training, less of socializing, less of going out,
Speaker 2: more of recovery, more of sleep, more of eating good
Speaker 2: and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It sounds pretty intense though, in intense and is sort
Speaker 1: of reverse way, and in that the it's everything on
Speaker 1: the edges doesn't exist. You're just sort of keeping everything
Speaker 1: within a nice range pretty much, which that's sort of
Speaker 1: intensient self, because you know, human beings by nature wanted
Speaker 1: to go to the edge. You pushed me on, and
Speaker 1: let's do this little bit extra training or let's do
Speaker 1: something bit crazy whatever, specially when you're young man. You know,
Speaker 1: like it's pretty natural, but keeping it all in a
Speaker 1: in a like a contained space in itself is quite intense.
Speaker 1: I would have thought, Yeah, I mean, like, and do
Speaker 1: you ever get to the point where you say, why
Speaker 1: am I doing this? Yeah? Yea, heaps the time? And
Speaker 1: what do you do then?
Speaker 2: Like, through different years you kind of go through it
Speaker 2: like I got to the edge through training, and I
Speaker 2: got injured before before the two eighteen Coming Off Games,
Speaker 2: which is the one I was looking forward to the
Speaker 2: most being in Australia. So I pushed myself to the
Speaker 2: edge through training too hard. Then so after that I've
Speaker 2: learned like you've got to you've got to train smart,
Speaker 2: you've got to be wise, and you've got to not
Speaker 2: push too hard sometimes.
Speaker 1: Right, what does it mean you end up getting an
Speaker 1: overuse injury? Overuse injury, So how to stress fracture? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so overuse just repetition, repetition, repetition. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I pushed myself through that edge. And then other
Speaker 2: times I went to training camps with with just purely runners.
Speaker 2: Remember I'm not really that interested in in the running itself.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm kind of interested in the training, yeah, and
Speaker 2: developing myself. Right, So going purely with like passionate runners
Speaker 2: and then you just you just mentally train yourself and
Speaker 2: no matter how hard I'm training, my performance going down
Speaker 2: like that's that's not where I'm blong. That's too intense
Speaker 2: for me. So it's all about you finding finding finding
Speaker 2: your place, right. My place is not to go out
Speaker 2: to go on to a training camp with a bunch
Speaker 2: of runners and all we're talking about is running and
Speaker 2: catching up after after running. It was like, No, my
Speaker 2: place is Loto Camp with good people that I can
Speaker 2: talk outside with and that has nothing to do with running.
Speaker 2: It's like, that's my place. We can still train, but
Speaker 2: we leave it all as soon as we leave that track.
Speaker 1: Well, because when I I just want to change slightly
Speaker 1: changed place. Part of the punt pun intended doube when
Speaker 1: they I just like your maybe your opinion on this
Speaker 1: or your commentary on this, but and it's sort of
Speaker 1: a diametrically opposed to the person you just presented to me,
Speaker 1: being yourself that is. And obviously they are others similar
Speaker 1: to you. But if you look at the Jamaicans and
Speaker 1: the USA, particularly the one hundred million of the glamour events,
Speaker 1: like one hundred million to hundred events, and you see
Speaker 1: if I could just reflect on the women's events. First,
Speaker 1: they've got the massive eyelashes, they've got things going on
Speaker 1: with their hair and ear rings, and the fingernails are huge,
Speaker 1: massively long, and they're playing to the camera big time,
Speaker 1: barely big time. It's nearly like entertainment. And then the
Speaker 1: guys are the same but in a different format. But
Speaker 1: there's the same sort of deal, you know, And they
Speaker 1: look to me. That looks to me if that was
Speaker 1: me in their shoes, that would be a massive distraction
Speaker 1: for me, Like that be hard for me to concentrate
Speaker 1: on what it is I'm about to do, particularly you know,
Speaker 1: because it's not just on the night of the event,
Speaker 1: particularly in the last Olympics. They're doing this all the time.
Speaker 1: In fact, they've made Netflix to move a series of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, it's nearly like they're marketing
Speaker 1: themselves as individuals because they've got to make money in
Speaker 1: the future. It's one where they make money. They get
Speaker 1: sponsorships on sort of stuff. I get it, But I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, it would be very difficult if you're
Speaker 1: in your athletic world to be that person, especially like
Speaker 1: one minute before the race, you're pitching up in front
Speaker 1: of the crowd, and you're during the crowd up, etc.
Speaker 1: But you're presenting a different type of person to me,
Speaker 1: What do you think about that type of I don't
Speaker 1: want to call it behavior, but that type of those
Speaker 1: types of characteristics relative to say, the way you present.
Speaker 2: I mean I've got a good story. I think it
Speaker 2: was my first Olympics I was in. I was in Rio,
Speaker 2: and like, as I said, I didn't really know much.
Speaker 2: And I went to a warm up track and you
Speaker 2: just you get to see every single person. And the
Speaker 2: beauty of athletics is you're seeing every different culture in it.
Speaker 2: And I was there trying to warm up and it
Speaker 2: was actually quite distracting because I was trying to see
Speaker 2: every single person. I saw the Kenyans and the East Africans.
Speaker 2: They were just like really shy. They're like like, look
Speaker 2: really nervous. I was like, man, like these guys are
Speaker 2: gonna underperform.
Speaker 1: They just look too shy.
Speaker 2: And then I looked on the other side and the
Speaker 2: Americans and Jamaicans and Bolt Funny was there. They had
Speaker 2: music blasting and they were just having the best time.
Speaker 2: I was like, these guys are gonna clean up the
Speaker 2: metal tally. But because they were relaxed, they just looked
Speaker 2: so relaxed and so confident. They're like, we're gonna win.
Speaker 2: They had that show and they were in charge of everything.
Speaker 2: But it was really interesting that at the end of
Speaker 2: the Olympics, like the same East Africans that were shy,
Speaker 2: they collected, they cleaned up the medals, and you just
Speaker 2: realize it was just a personality thing, and Bolt and
Speaker 2: stuff still collected metals. It wasn't it wasn't about their behaviors.
Speaker 2: It wasn't about that. It was it was truly about
Speaker 2: them being who they are, and that's who they are.
Speaker 2: Like they can be comfortable in their own shoes and
Speaker 2: do that stuff and it elevates them. But if you
Speaker 2: switch that around and you try to get a Kenyon
Speaker 2: to do what the Americans and the Jamaicans were doing,
Speaker 2: I think we'll create too much stress and it won't
Speaker 2: be good for their performance.
Speaker 1: So in short, it's it's definitely what.
Speaker 2: Your personality is and if and if you're putting it up,
Speaker 2: it's pretty hard. I think, like Noah Laws, that's who
Speaker 2: he is. Is confident, he loves the crowd. He gets
Speaker 2: something out of it. You're saying boths the same, he
Speaker 2: gets something out of it. But I don't think I
Speaker 2: could go do that. It's just it's just not my personality.
Speaker 2: And then and then also create too much stress. And
Speaker 2: then again creating stress, you're not really at peace, you're
Speaker 2: not present during the race, and it's just gonna underperform.
Speaker 1: Because you did say about being in your occasionally it's
Speaker 1: being at peace and being present in the moment of
Speaker 1: doing it and without distraction. Then I look at No
Speaker 1: like he's he's it doesn't look like he's a peace
Speaker 1: to me, Like then it looks like he's completely distracted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes and does you know, you know, really braceive
Speaker 1: world record in that.
Speaker 2: And he wins when everyone's betting against them. Yeah, at
Speaker 2: the highest level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, but but that comforts him. Did you get
Speaker 1: to meet these dudes? Yeah, yeah, you get to meet them.
Speaker 1: What are they like outside of the camera.
Speaker 2: Away from the camera, they're pretty They're pretty normal, but
Speaker 2: like their personality is not much different. That's that's who
Speaker 2: they are. They're lowed, they're confident. I think it's the
Speaker 2: whole culture thing. And I wouldn't say, for example, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say it's Australian culture. You don't see that. You
Speaker 2: don't see that. You don't see like like we obviously
Speaker 2: clean up in the swimming pool, but you don't see
Speaker 2: people doing all of that. But America, like I've watched
Speaker 2: American sports for a very long time. That's that's their culture.
Speaker 2: I know, I've got a few Jamaican friends. That's their culture.
Speaker 2: They just love the hype. They're created, they're believe in it.
Speaker 2: While I think in our sense, in our culture, like
Speaker 2: even versus with Australian culture, like yes, we create the hype,
Speaker 2: you believe in it, but you kind of still stay
Speaker 2: focused and you just just created and it has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with you. It's just your job to get
Speaker 2: in the pool and and swim. It's funny like, wasn't
Speaker 2: create the hype and you don't believe in it versus
Speaker 2: you create the hype and you're believe in it.
Speaker 1: And well, if you create hope, you got to believe
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, you must, you must otherwise you'll cook
Speaker 1: it one hundred percent. It's funny you should say because
Speaker 1: sitting in that chair, yesa was Cody Simpson leader and
Speaker 1: Cody came in with Andy. There was two women came
Speaker 1: in with one of whom was his PR person and
Speaker 1: the other person he he just said to I'll see
Speaker 1: in a minute of them and mc canned like and
Speaker 1: like I'm standing like what the hell is a mc
Speaker 1: cann and but like it was and she was just
Speaker 1: like because he was she was accompanying him because there
Speaker 1: are a couple and he was the staff for the day,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like and she just took
Speaker 1: the backwards step. And whereas my gut feeling is that
Speaker 1: was an American you were that was can I sit
Speaker 1: down here with him sort of thing or whatever, and
Speaker 1: that you're right, it's probably Australian. Yeah, like it's or
Speaker 1: it's not Australian to be that way, to be that way,
Speaker 1: and in Jamaican culture. I'm not man Jamaica, but like
Speaker 1: just I expect I suspect from what I look at,
Speaker 1: not necessarily athlete, it's just generally they're pretty, are going
Speaker 1: having a lot of fun, hanging out, music, dancing, chill
Speaker 1: and you may be right, and that's like people like Bolt.
Speaker 1: That's just you don't have to be Who's I in
Speaker 1: Bolt to have that personality. Probably everyone in Jerbicas like that.
Speaker 1: That's the deal. I think.
Speaker 2: The hard thing is if if you are Australian and
Speaker 2: that's your personality and you try to show it and
Speaker 2: people are like, well, well that's that's not who we are.
Speaker 2: They do, but that's that's what you need to perform
Speaker 2: the best. And I think that's the hard part because
Speaker 2: then you know you have the public knda against you.
Speaker 2: But that's who you are and that's what you need
Speaker 2: to perform, So it should be fine. Like sport, sport
Speaker 2: is entertainment and that's what you're there for, entertainment. Everyone
Speaker 2: has a different purpose and different reason to be there, right,
Speaker 2: Not everyone's the same.
Speaker 1: But if you're.
Speaker 2: Competing by the rules, you're competing by the rules and
Speaker 2: your personality should show.
Speaker 1: Do you think Australians looking to you for entertainment or
Speaker 1: they're looking for you? Do Australians look more not just you,
Speaker 1: but all our competitors and representatives. Do you think Australians
Speaker 1: more looking for you to do your best outcome to
Speaker 1: try hardest. What do you think Australian's expectations are of
Speaker 1: our athletes?
Speaker 2: I think the Astralian expectation is go out there and
Speaker 2: give it a go. Yeah, like like give it all
Speaker 2: you can. Yeah, that's that's the expectation. With the US,
Speaker 2: it's like the expectations are like go out there and win, yeah,
Speaker 2: because they believe they're best at everything. Right, It's like
Speaker 2: go out there and win. It's like Australia like go
Speaker 2: out there do your best, and both create different comforts.
Speaker 2: Right when you're going out there doing your best, it's like,
Speaker 2: well you got you don't have that pressure of trying
Speaker 2: to impress and everyone proud and all that stuff. You're
Speaker 2: just going out there and being you and that's what
Speaker 2: we want from you. Right while America, I think it
Speaker 2: creates a very competitive world and like they're dominating a
Speaker 2: lot of sports because like like if you're going to Olympics,
Speaker 2: we want to see metal and it's intense. It's intense,
Speaker 2: but they still get results. Both get results. So it's like,
Speaker 2: it's just where you're at.
Speaker 1: Did you I just thinking while I was talking to then,
Speaker 1: the only other person I really met in person and
Speaker 1: I had a good friendship have a friendship with him
Speaker 1: was Johnny Stephenson, which was who's a four hundred runner?
Speaker 1: Four hundred Ye yeah, And Johnny was used to always
Speaker 1: talk to me about and he actually we got him
Speaker 1: and I put him put him into the Celebritypprentice one
Speaker 1: of the series because Jeff Fannick asked me what I
Speaker 1: do because because did you know that John Stefferson originally
Speaker 1: was an amateur fighter? No, No, I box up before
Speaker 1: before he even put a pair of running shoes on
Speaker 1: his first pair of running shoes, like he's twenty one
Speaker 1: or something. He had like thirty amateur fights as an
Speaker 1: amated boxer, and then then he went into the four hundred.
Speaker 1: It became a feigned runner, went to limits, and he
Speaker 1: went to the Common Games. I think he won a
Speaker 1: Comic Games medal in the four.
Speaker 2: A great example of a person was personality. Some of
Speaker 2: the Jamaicans he totally he's outgoing, very quick, which one
Speaker 2: of when we're talking, he's got John Stepf's got that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's good mates. But Bolt, for example, they're great, great,
Speaker 2: there's sort of similar characteristics and and and another great
Speaker 2: success story for Australia in terms of you know, I
Speaker 2: guess for hundred middle distance but middle distance runner, but
Speaker 2: came out of nowhere, literally came out and over. I
Speaker 2: think he's he's South African from not not South African,
Speaker 2: but like southern part of Africa where his family is.
Speaker 1: You're more north of northern part of Africa. It is
Speaker 1: more north. Sudan's more north north of Africa. That is
Speaker 1: that correct.
Speaker 2: Sudan is in the east East Africa, but.
Speaker 1: It's more to the less less or towards the bottom.
Speaker 1: You know, by the way, when you say did you
Speaker 1: know there, you probably don't know because you're much too
Speaker 1: young for it. But forty years ago there was an
Speaker 1: unbelievably great movie called Khartoum. The movie was called Cartoon.
Speaker 1: It's a really old black and white movie, old enough
Speaker 1: to remember, and it was like one of the greatest
Speaker 1: movies of all time, Like you know, like some really
Speaker 1: famous actors are in it. I can't Peter O'Toole and
Speaker 1: those sorts of people like people again you would never
Speaker 1: heard of. But and Kartoon to me when I saw
Speaker 1: it when I was a kid. But Cartoon my memory
Speaker 1: of Cartoon, and the only memory I have of because
Speaker 1: I've never been there is a very exotic place like
Speaker 1: and I just I don't know why. I just exotic
Speaker 1: from the way the film came across. And then when
Speaker 1: I hear when someone like you tells me a story
Speaker 1: about how it's been bitten by war for such a
Speaker 1: long time, it's sort of a little bit of anathemat
Speaker 1: for me. It's it's nearly like, how can that be?
Speaker 1: Because Cartoon was such a in my mind, such a
Speaker 1: romantic sounding place, and the vision of what I saw
Speaker 1: on the TV in the movie we are talking, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sixty eight, so actually it's more than foot years ago.
Speaker 1: It's sixty years ago. I saw them. It was just
Speaker 1: a kid, and like sixty years ago there was a
Speaker 1: movie called Kartoon and it was presented like and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a movie of the time, it was a movie
Speaker 1: representing what was happening in the nineteen twenties. So it
Speaker 1: must have been a pretty cool place at some stage
Speaker 1: Kartoon Do you know if anything of that? Does you
Speaker 1: know where a period when cartoon was cartom was considered
Speaker 1: a safe and a vibrant and exotic place.
Speaker 2: Me personally, I wouldn't say I have because I left
Speaker 2: when I was six and I never went back. Versus
Speaker 2: my family went back when when I was competing and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, I was too busy to go. And
Speaker 2: they quite enjoyed it. It was really nice. They had
Speaker 2: all the family around and people there's like, you know,
Speaker 2: they just as they have each other, and they have
Speaker 2: family around in music and their that's their culture like
Speaker 2: music and dancing and and combining everyone around that that
Speaker 2: to them is all it's all lead and and yeah,
Speaker 2: when I was at school. I think that time was there,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't there for long enough unfortunately, and it's
Speaker 2: nothing consistent.
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of a terrible shame when you think
Speaker 1: when when when I hear people like you told me
Speaker 1: that about place like Sudan and or cut too, the
Speaker 1: being is it the capital, the capital capital of Sudan.
Speaker 2: Capital of Sudan and Jubbo's the capital of South.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to mindset and not having distractions,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to cover this off. But like
Speaker 1: when they they allegedly took the positive test for you
Speaker 1: from you, but just take me through how it works.
Speaker 1: So you have to do yourine test. Just what's the deal,
Speaker 1: what's the process? Yeah, we have to we have to
Speaker 1: do urine tests and after every event or just the
Speaker 1: random it's random. And they can also come to your
Speaker 1: house and do do random random testing and you select
Speaker 1: an hour.
Speaker 2: And my it's generally in the morning because so then
Speaker 2: it's a urine test and it's urineal blood. They can
Speaker 2: do both.
Speaker 1: They can ask for blood too.
Speaker 2: They can ask a blood the majority of times is
Speaker 2: urine own blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'rein in blood. So and you give an a
Speaker 1: sample B sampler say something that you give sample, it's
Speaker 1: just the same sample. It's just right. They just put
Speaker 1: in a different ut B and an A. Yeah yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so when I mean, you know, I followed followed it,
Speaker 1: and it was a bit of a shock to everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, like what is if you had taken something
Speaker 1: and that, what is what would be then the net
Speaker 1: effect of it, like physically in a in a biochemical
Speaker 1: way or a biological way. What would something like that
Speaker 1: do for you? Or an eight hundred meters right now?
Speaker 2: I guess I suppose you get fitter, quicker.
Speaker 1: But what to do to your blood or whatever something muscle?
Speaker 1: What to do? It's just what's it supposed to do?
Speaker 1: Like it is it supposed to make a big have
Speaker 1: a bigger your lungs B Now, I thing it increases
Speaker 1: your red blood cells, which makes you more red blood,
Speaker 1: which carries more oxygen, which is endurance in endurance, more
Speaker 1: for endurance. Yeah yeah. So and when you how'd you feel? Like,
Speaker 1: how'd you know about it? Like what happens?
Speaker 2: They come to tell you, Like they come to your
Speaker 2: house and tell.
Speaker 1: You, so we got this result. Yeah, they physically come
Speaker 1: to your house. They have physically come to your house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then what happens, and then you can kind
Speaker 2: of ask for your B sample yea, and which I did,
Speaker 2: and then you kind of on the waiting process until
Speaker 2: that B sample comes and which you know, you learn
Speaker 2: a lot when you go through something like that, you
Speaker 2: learn a lot. And then and you learned that like
Speaker 2: at that time, you think you're like doing because the
Speaker 2: B sample, I mean it's the same sample. It never
Speaker 2: comes different. Yeah, Like why would it come different if
Speaker 2: it's once positive? The other one should be positive.
Speaker 1: So it's taken on the same day, same day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you still he's still selected.
Speaker 2: At the time, I didn't even know if there was
Speaker 2: a point because they always come the same, but somehow
Speaker 2: they came different. I was like, well, that's an error
Speaker 2: on your site.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, yeah, So why don't they test the B
Speaker 1: sample straight away? What's the point of Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really good question. Then while they go, oh, should hang
Speaker 1: on this one has given us an normally we're not
Speaker 1: going to answer, and we just test the B sample first, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the ones they're different. They should do that.
Speaker 2: But at that stage I don't think anyone's really trying
Speaker 2: to do you any fevors.
Speaker 1: Right, why why? I mean it seems like that.
Speaker 2: But also to catch out I also think because if
Speaker 2: if the A sample is it's positive, they just think
Speaker 2: the B sample is going to be positive too because
Speaker 2: it's the same sample. Yeah, but I also think they
Speaker 2: should test it straight away. Should test it straight away?
Speaker 2: Such a big, big accusation, totally, you should. You should
Speaker 2: do all the work.
Speaker 1: The gravity of the accusation is so great, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: they should before they made the accusation and then they
Speaker 1: commenced the whole process of the gravity that they should
Speaker 1: test the BE sample straight away. And hang on, let's
Speaker 1: just go, let's just talk to Peter B. Because there's
Speaker 1: normally between the two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think if you had the time to
Speaker 2: come to my house, you've obviously had the time to
Speaker 2: test to BE sample before coming. Yeah, coming as well,
Speaker 2: like if you're going to come accuse me of something
Speaker 2: like that, and which which is hard, right, I think
Speaker 2: if you're not at the right mindset, it could destroy you.
Speaker 2: So if you're coming to do that, you better be sure.
Speaker 2: Like you there's some things you just can't be incompetent,
Speaker 2: and that's one of them, because you're putting someone else's life.
Speaker 1: And who was which organization do it is? Who's doing
Speaker 1: the test I actually don't know who does the testing.
Speaker 2: I think the testings are done by I think Sports
Speaker 2: Integrity maybe and in the lab and then they're taken
Speaker 2: out to Germany and whatnot, and that's where the results.
Speaker 1: It was just before anything that was important for you.
Speaker 1: It was this previ Yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Was actually pretty important Australia the year that was pretty important.
Speaker 2: That is pretty important. I was actually looking forward to
Speaker 2: go to it.
Speaker 1: And how close was it to the event.
Speaker 2: I think it was just two days before before it
Speaker 2: was leaked and publicly was so.
Speaker 1: But what is the obligation of the testing authority to
Speaker 1: publish it? It shouldn't have been published. Well then how
Speaker 1: did you get out?
Speaker 2: No one, no one claims to ever know it was
Speaker 2: leaked somewhere. Do you get a call by a media
Speaker 2: Uh no, I actually didn't. I got called by my
Speaker 2: my agent and he said that it's been leaked?
Speaker 1: Is it? In other words, the newspaper as going to print it,
Speaker 1: or a radio stage or television stage you're going to
Speaker 1: talk about it? And he printed out so quick? And
Speaker 1: what was your response?
Speaker 2: How did you feel at that stage, I actually didn't
Speaker 2: know how to feel right because I just didn't know
Speaker 2: how to feel.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was kind of at home and and like, I
Speaker 2: think the first thing I actually thought about it was
Speaker 2: my family. I was like, man, that's that's tough. That's stuff,
Speaker 2: that's stuff for them. Yeah, And because with such education,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just not you and your own now,
Speaker 2: it's like everyone else's put into question, like your family,
Speaker 2: your character, your coach, your staff, team. So I just
Speaker 2: thought about all those people. I think I was the
Speaker 2: last person I thought about, which I think was tough.
Speaker 2: I should have thought about myself as well.
Speaker 1: You've got to be a bit selfish. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it becomes reputation. Did you reach out to anybody? Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I reached out well because I knew. I knew
Speaker 2: I needed results before I was. I was waiting for
Speaker 2: the be sample, so I knew. So I actually reached
Speaker 2: out to I reached out to my older brother, which
Speaker 2: because I didn't know how to communicate that to my parents, right,
Speaker 2: So I said, if it ever gets leaked, like I
Speaker 2: needed you to explain it to them and that there
Speaker 2: should be they'll be okay. And then obviously my coach.
Speaker 2: I reached out to my coach, let him know straight away. Um,
Speaker 2: and and that's it. And my manager like, no one
Speaker 2: else really.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? Then? Just stay home?
Speaker 2: I mean I don't know, you literally just just stay
Speaker 2: home and you're just waiting.
Speaker 1: Keep your head down, keep your head down.
Speaker 2: But at that stage I was like, I was like,
Speaker 2: surely they made a mistake.
Speaker 1: This is crazy.
Speaker 2: And I was still going to go to Australia the
Speaker 2: Year Awards. And then after that, after that leak, it
Speaker 2: was like, now like what do you do?
Speaker 1: So what does Australian your awards organizations do that so
Speaker 1: you can't come? No?
Speaker 2: Actually, you know what, They're actually really good, actually really
Speaker 2: good about it. They said, look, i'm I'm I've got
Speaker 2: a call. And I thought it was pretty it was
Speaker 2: pretty good of them. And they said, look, I like,
Speaker 2: we know what's going on, and we'd love to still
Speaker 2: have you if you want to come, but just to
Speaker 2: let you know, we've we've had the most media request
Speaker 2: to be here.
Speaker 1: Be everywhere.
Speaker 2: They'd be everywhere, and you'll end up and that's your
Speaker 2: decision to make. You're just still a night, yeah, and
Speaker 2: you still the night. And I said and that's exactly
Speaker 2: that was My decision was based on that. I said,
Speaker 2: I I did not want to steal that night for
Speaker 2: anyone I'm not coming.
Speaker 1: I mean for a young man relative, a young man
Speaker 1: at that stage as well. You know, you leave a
Speaker 1: war torn or a civil war torn Sedan, you go
Speaker 1: to live in Egypt, you end up into warmbar, then
Speaker 1: you go to Perth and you go through this whole
Speaker 1: process and you know you're representing your country, get nominated
Speaker 1: to be Australian the.
Speaker 2: Year, which is pretty cool because you aren't even Australian
Speaker 2: like twenty years.
Speaker 1: Totally. It's like it's there is magnificent sort of momentum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for you and your family and everybody else, your whole community.
Speaker 1: It's really good energy, right totally, and then you just
Speaker 1: get whack. Yeah, like you've gone from the pandaluse to
Speaker 1: the proverbial in minutes minutes. Yeah, how do you pick
Speaker 1: yourself up?
Speaker 2: Like I think people with people played a big part.
Speaker 2: And as like we spoke before that, the identity out
Speaker 2: of sport is really important and I've always worked on that.
Speaker 2: Like again, your faith plays a big part, and you
Speaker 2: just like you just you just want peace you're like
Speaker 2: you just you just leave the rest to guard. Right,
Speaker 2: you can do all you can do, and at that point,
Speaker 2: there's nothing you could actually do. Yeah, there's nothing you
Speaker 2: could do, Like what was there to do other than
Speaker 2: control your own your own mindset and your your own happiness.
Speaker 2: And that's not what's saying that you don't go through it.
Speaker 2: You go through this rollercoaster of emotions, like you feel
Speaker 2: like the whole world's against you. You feel betrayed, and
Speaker 2: like that feeling betrayal is is tough because because like
Speaker 2: I've I've done nothing, I've done nothing wrong, like this
Speaker 2: is this is one, it is not fair. Two, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to run, like that's all I've ever
Speaker 2: tried to do. And and then the worst part is
Speaker 2: is like, well, who's bringing these allegations against you? Like
Speaker 2: then you start to look for the blame and then
Speaker 2: and then you look for the blame and that's and
Speaker 2: that's when you lose probably the most sleep, because you
Speaker 2: can never truly know who it is who leaked it,
Speaker 2: what was the intentions behind it?
Speaker 1: You just never know and why would they be bothered
Speaker 1: doing it? Why? Why? Why upset? Like why me? Right?
Speaker 2: I think that's where you lose the most piece. I
Speaker 2: think that's still where I lose the most speech trying
Speaker 2: to think about it, because you just don't have answers.
Speaker 2: You want answers if if you're done wrong, at least
Speaker 2: give me answers. Right, Yeah, but there's no But there's
Speaker 2: no answers.
Speaker 1: Do you have suspicions?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, I have my suspicions. I think I definitely
Speaker 2: have my suspicions. And but the best thing about it,
Speaker 2: I think the public was actually really good. That was
Speaker 2: pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Like how did you gauge that?
Speaker 2: I think one from from the love and support you
Speaker 2: get through messages on social media and stuff. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: social media, like you expect you expect, you expect your
Speaker 2: family to be with you, which is which is which
Speaker 2: is great. But then you also you don't expect you
Speaker 2: like when you go through something like that, you think,
Speaker 2: oh man, now they might turn against you, but no
Speaker 2: one really did. Like of course you have those keyboard
Speaker 2: warries and whatnot, but they were always there even when
Speaker 2: I was doing great. It's like, oh, you're not Australian,
Speaker 2: You're not that. So that was always there, Like you
Speaker 2: kin'd of get used to that, but I think it
Speaker 2: would have heard quite a lot if I'm majority of the
Speaker 2: public can't turn against you, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: And what was the process? Do you have a right
Speaker 1: of appeal or something? How do you get the B sample?
Speaker 1: Do you have to get a caught to get him
Speaker 1: to look at it all? Hasn't? No?
Speaker 2: You just you just select that you wanted you want to,
Speaker 2: I guess retested and you have to pay for all
Speaker 2: that stuff and they're kind of retested for you. And
Speaker 2: and again I think it was leaked. I had a
Speaker 2: friend that called me and said your B sample was
Speaker 2: it wasn't the same as your A before I was
Speaker 2: notified by the authoritist himself, so it was leaked somewhere
Speaker 2: else before before I was told first.
Speaker 1: Whats of level of relief did you feel when the
Speaker 1: sample it was?
Speaker 2: My manager called me and he had the most relief
Speaker 2: and he was like and he was kind of like
Speaker 2: it was kind of quiet because I didn't have the
Speaker 2: same sensits of relief because I was like, man, this
Speaker 2: ship should have never happened, Like like what do you
Speaker 2: want me to celebrate? Like this is this is crazy?
Speaker 2: Like I had to even go through that. I think
Speaker 2: the red leief I kind of had again thinking of
Speaker 2: other people as like, oh, well, like my family was
Speaker 2: really happy, everything was really happy. But but for me,
Speaker 2: I was like, man, this is this is still crazy
Speaker 2: right like this it doesn't change much, doesn't change the
Speaker 2: accusation doesn't change a lot. So there wasn't much of
Speaker 2: a leief. There was still disappointment and anger for that
Speaker 2: whole period, and I did not feel in a relief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the outcome didn't change what happened. The result
Speaker 1: did not change what happened to when it happened. And
Speaker 1: by the way, you can't change that. You can't. So
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that? I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you reconcile and you know, get back to where you
Speaker 1: were talking about very much earlier about being at peace.
Speaker 2: You can definitely go back at peace, but you can't go.
Speaker 1: Back to where you were before. Do you need to?
Speaker 2: I don't think you need to. It just becomes part
Speaker 2: of your story. Yeah, And the easiest way is accepted
Speaker 2: that it happened and try to move on. But with
Speaker 2: that said, it's pretty hard to accept something like that.
Speaker 2: And I thought I could do it pretty quickly because
Speaker 2: like as an athlete, you build resilience, and you build that,
Speaker 2: but like I build resilience based on like things that
Speaker 2: you you knew would happen, like injury, not making teams,
Speaker 2: things you expect, things you expect like something like that.
Speaker 2: Is it's pretty hard. It's pretty hard to get get through.
Speaker 2: And you realize like it's going to take time, and
Speaker 2: time is only only think that's going to heal it,
Speaker 2: but time and extra work. You've got to see people,
Speaker 2: you've got to talk through it and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: which I didn't want to do. I had no interest
Speaker 2: in doing it at all.
Speaker 1: You just sort of take a view. Fuck them all
Speaker 1: the time, yeah all the time. It probably doesn't solve
Speaker 1: any of that, does it. No, it actually just hurts
Speaker 1: you more. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to sort of talk
Speaker 1: it through. And at the end of the day, Richard
Speaker 1: Brandswan told me this, you said, Mark, you said, we'll
Speaker 1: worry about our own brand the people. If one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the people know who you are for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: good or bad, and only fifty percent of the people
Speaker 1: like you, then you've done well. That doesn't matter about
Speaker 1: the other fifty percent. That's pretty cool. So eventually this,
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred percent of the strains know who
Speaker 1: Peter Bowl is. If only fifty percent like you and
Speaker 1: fifty percent don't like you, and usually the ones that
Speaker 1: don't like you will tell you. The other fifty percent
Speaker 1: that don't tell you is because they do like you,
Speaker 1: and they they mostly people don't come out and say
Speaker 1: I like you. If they don't like it, they'll definitely
Speaker 1: tell you. That's sort of actually one measure of success
Speaker 1: from his point of view in terms of braining personal braining.
Speaker 1: Really cool. Yeah, And I'd say that's probably I mean,
Speaker 1: the research my team has done on you, that's sort
Speaker 1: of where you are. I mean, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: fifty future, but there's a lot of people some people
Speaker 1: come and say stuff about you whatever, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who actually back you, and they back
Speaker 1: you in and you know, that's that's a pretty good outcome.
Speaker 1: You know, you're only still young. You're thirty years old
Speaker 1: now and you're thirty yeah, yeah, so like you've lived
Speaker 1: three lives already. Yeah for thirty year old, and you've
Speaker 1: got a long way to go too. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I want I talk to about speaking about
Speaker 1: that is what most people don't realize is that you
Speaker 1: have at least one university degree. And I don't know
Speaker 1: how the hell you managed to do that and what
Speaker 1: period of your life did you do This is a
Speaker 1: degree in project management or construction management.
Speaker 2: Construction, Yeah, but how did you do that?
Speaker 1: And why do you do that? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've always been I've always been interested in in like
Speaker 2: being a student, because that's that's what my that's that's
Speaker 2: my parents' aspiration.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like coming here, it's every ming, everyone, every mingrant,
Speaker 1: first first generation you you going to go to university,
Speaker 1: get some some qualification.
Speaker 2: Like you just you just got to work and make
Speaker 2: a better life for yourself. And I'm really interested in
Speaker 2: like real estates and property, right, So I've always been
Speaker 2: into that. My brother was My brother was a builder,
Speaker 2: so and then I was kind of got more interested
Speaker 2: in that because again, like desperations is always to build
Speaker 2: a house for yourself, buy your own house and all
Speaker 2: those things. So I was like, why not study that?
Speaker 2: But then interestingly enough, when when I was studying and
Speaker 2: I worked, when I came to Melbourne and I worked
Speaker 2: for engineering firm for for about a year. It was
Speaker 2: really cool just learning about different projects and what's going on,
Speaker 2: and I de started to take athletics more seriously. I
Speaker 2: actually got more interested in business. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: like I think I think business is where I think.
Speaker 1: I might belong. I enjoy that a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I still enjoy property, but not as much as I
Speaker 2: would want to work in the construction space, Like i'd
Speaker 2: do more real estate things like property development and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But outside of that, like I'll enjoy the business. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed the speaking and going out. So I'm in Sydney.
Speaker 2: I'm in Sydney this week to do to do a conference,
Speaker 2: and I was like, man, I love that, love sharing
Speaker 2: going out, sharing my story and impacting one hundred hundreds
Speaker 2: of people.
Speaker 1: And do you try to show how your story can
Speaker 1: actually all the lessons from your story can be of
Speaker 1: assistance to people in the business world, Like you see
Speaker 1: you're talking to business people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yeah, so you or my stories, I guess
Speaker 2: the most commons like the resilience part of the thing.
Speaker 2: That's that's before their accusations, like that's just one of it,
Speaker 2: like before that, like finding your place and everything kind
Speaker 2: of spoke about here being a good leaders is really
Speaker 2: important because you're putting this position as a leader and
Speaker 2: you never signed up for it when I when I
Speaker 2: I did well in Tokyos, like everyone kind of looking
Speaker 2: up to you for leadership is like.
Speaker 1: Tokyo's when you were your fourth when I came forth?
Speaker 1: Is that the fastest eight times you've ever run?
Speaker 2: No, I ran faster?
Speaker 1: What did you running? Toyo forty four one? See, I
Speaker 1: don't even know it was forty four something. It's forty
Speaker 1: four to one, I think? Yeah? And what you've run?
Speaker 1: What a second? Quicker? Around one four zero? So so
Speaker 1: like you know a few tens of a second faster,
Speaker 1: but that's actually quite a long that's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of distance at the page you're running. So you and
Speaker 1: then and then and then from there when you went
Speaker 1: to Paris. Between Tokyo and Paris you had the drama.
Speaker 1: Did that affect your preparation?
Speaker 2: Do you think between absolutely? With the whole scandal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like.
Speaker 2: I've already didn't have as much passion as I spoke
Speaker 2: before as everyone else. It was just easier to pull
Speaker 2: away from it completely. It was like this thing that
Speaker 2: brought you so much joy and now is bringing you
Speaker 2: so much pain, Like why am I spending my time here,
Speaker 2: it's just a no brain and like spend less time here.
Speaker 2: So there was lack of training, lack of interest, and
Speaker 2: I just just didn't want to be around there, right
Speaker 2: h And and at that top stage, you can't be
Speaker 2: taking a month off, two weeks off, no matter what
Speaker 2: mental state you're in. Right, It's it's good for your
Speaker 2: mental health, but it's definitely not great for athletics to
Speaker 2: take time off. Yeah, he's going to one is going
Speaker 2: to give. And I just started to work on my
Speaker 2: health more than done my athletics and it just showed
Speaker 2: in Paris. But but I'm grateful that idea that way,
Speaker 2: because I think I think my my mental health was
Speaker 2: more important at that stage.
Speaker 1: And how important is it for you to turn up
Speaker 1: in Paris? Like and I don't mean that in a
Speaker 1: bad way, but like, yeah, actually get there and compete
Speaker 1: more for Peter yeah, you know, and also what we
Speaker 1: think of Peter Bowl as Australians as opposed to sort
Speaker 1: of saying look, i know I'm not ready. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to run a one forty four flat. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm still going to turn up because you know, you're
Speaker 1: probably were the quickest noneunless you're still the quickest in
Speaker 1: Australia anyway in terms of the national at a national level.
Speaker 1: So you know you're the dude who's going to get
Speaker 1: has the right to go, but you know you're not
Speaker 1: going to run the same time because you're just not
Speaker 1: you don't know, but like they're in terms of probability, logistically,
Speaker 1: you know it's less likely of being successful and it
Speaker 1: then it would have been if you hadn't gone through
Speaker 1: this drama. How important is it for you to actually
Speaker 1: turn up? It was?
Speaker 2: It was pretty important And I figured out pretty late
Speaker 2: because I think only a month before that, I decided
Speaker 2: like to stop training. I was like, I don't really
Speaker 2: want to go there totally. I just still want.
Speaker 1: To be there. Was like stuff like you know, I've.
Speaker 2: Always I've always rocked up into a championship, like training
Speaker 2: the best I could and wanting to be there. It's
Speaker 2: like when you don't want to be there, it's it's
Speaker 2: not fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think just a month before that, I took
Speaker 2: some time off.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to really go there.
Speaker 2: I went back, I was actually in America, went back
Speaker 2: home and I said, nah, I'll message my coach and
Speaker 2: manager I said, look, I'm going to make a decision
Speaker 2: whether I want to be there or not, and then
Speaker 2: once you get back home and you work through it,
Speaker 2: it's like maybe it's bigger than that. It's like it's
Speaker 2: like my third Olympics and I've worked pretty hard on that,
Speaker 2: and I think the idea of not being there and
Speaker 2: after that love it in the future is like, you're
Speaker 2: not a three time Olympian. I was like, oh man,
Speaker 2: I kind of need to be there for myself.
Speaker 1: I think you needed to be there for us too,
Speaker 1: and I need to be there. Yeah. I think we
Speaker 1: want you to be there. That supported me, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that Australians who follow you and
Speaker 1: follow that particular event, I needed to see you there.
Speaker 1: We didn't necessarily expect you. We'd hope you might do
Speaker 1: one forty four flatter or even something less, but I
Speaker 1: don't think we had that expectation because I think most
Speaker 1: people that know anthing about sport know that your preparation
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been proper. Yeah, from you know, from Tokyo
Speaker 1: to Paris. Yeah, it's just not possible because of the intervention.
Speaker 1: But we still wanted to see you as our best
Speaker 1: runner in that event there, and.
Speaker 2: I've got so many messages it was incredible, like so
Speaker 2: many people were like, we can't wait to watch you
Speaker 2: you compete, and even after I was like, oh, like,
Speaker 2: I mean, you gave it your best and keep your
Speaker 2: head up and all that stuff. So it's like that
Speaker 2: fifty percent that you're talking about. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: some people probably weren't happy that I was there either,
Speaker 2: But but that's fine, Like, I mean, you've you've got
Speaker 2: to kind of you've got to can't accept that.
Speaker 1: It's also may fuck the begrudges, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave it on that. I actually been getting criticized
Speaker 1: lady for screening a bit too much, but a few
Speaker 1: people pull me up about it. But and I just say, well,
Speaker 1: bad fucking luck. That's my podcast. I do what I want,
Speaker 1: That's why I do it, So I can't say what
Speaker 1: I want but now. But but I believe that stop them.
Speaker 1: You know, there will be people who don't won't don't
Speaker 1: believe in you, and but it's got probably something more
Speaker 1: to do with them than it's got to do with
Speaker 1: you and h And I just think it was wonderful
Speaker 1: that you you did you did go there and you
Speaker 1: did do your best, but your best is only going
Speaker 1: to be as good as your prep and that takes
Speaker 1: it right back to where we started from in preparation.
Speaker 1: And you know, but at the same time, you you
Speaker 1: were prepared to take that risk yourself, because that's a risk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you know that you're not going to perform your best, yeah,
Speaker 1: you still perform.
Speaker 2: It's a massive risk because also, like we spoke about,
Speaker 2: like I've obviously prioritized my mental health, that's a massive
Speaker 2: risk because that can come back down and will at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 1: You could And how do you feel after it? So
Speaker 1: now in this post Paris, I mean yeah, you feel like, hey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel pretty good. Obviously don't feel good about
Speaker 2: the performance, like absolutely not, Like I'm that's that's not
Speaker 2: the stand that I want to be competing at. What
Speaker 2: I feel good about is like I think working out
Speaker 2: the courage to get to that start line. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: and that's a complete Like the story is completely shifted,
Speaker 2: the goals completely shifted, divisions completely shifted.
Speaker 1: Like four years ago when.
Speaker 2: I finished fourth, was like the goal is like now
Speaker 2: the race to try and do one better to medal,
Speaker 2: if not try and metal the next Olympics, and through
Speaker 2: the interruption is like, man, let's let's just try to
Speaker 2: get better.
Speaker 1: That's our expectations to some extent, like and and sometimes
Speaker 1: we have to say, as in Jewels, I just could
Speaker 1: do my best. And that tastes right back to what
Speaker 1: you said about Australians. I just want you to out
Speaker 1: of a crack, just have a crack, do your best.
Speaker 1: But I actually think that is probably the case for
Speaker 1: most Australians in terms of what they expected from you.
Speaker 1: They expect you to have a crack, have a crack, right,
Speaker 1: you are our best at that at that event. So
Speaker 1: you know, like you went and had a crack, you
Speaker 1: did your best. And I think most people and the
Speaker 1: purpose of these having you, for example, on the show today,
Speaker 1: from my point of view anyway, selfishly is to say
Speaker 1: to Australians, this is the dude who did have a
Speaker 1: crack and did do his best under the circumstances, which
Speaker 1: like I didn't really understand all the circumstances. I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew one of the circumstances, but that generally how
Speaker 1: you how you think, and how you how you roll,
Speaker 1: and the objective you show like this actually is a Parlia.
Speaker 1: That out to anyone who might want to listen to this,
Speaker 1: and they'll be there will be, There'll be two thre
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people will listen to this, and which is
Speaker 1: our normal cadence. So and I think that's important, and
Speaker 1: that's why I think shows like this are important. And
Speaker 1: that's why it takes a lot of courage for you
Speaker 1: to come on to the show and tell your story
Speaker 1: so close to you know, Paris, it's only three four
Speaker 1: weeks ago, you know. I think people appreciate that in
Speaker 1: this country. Maybe America is a bit different. It might be,
Speaker 1: but there might be harder markers there, you know there
Speaker 1: because as you said earlier, Americans want you to win different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're totally different. And then when you sign up for
Speaker 1: an America, you sign up for that. If you didn't
Speaker 1: sign up in Australia, that's not what we ask you
Speaker 1: to sign up for. And I think Australians just like
Speaker 1: to see someone who can actually roll through the drama.
Speaker 1: And as you said, like that's real resilience, intellectual resilience,
Speaker 1: mental resilience. I think like standing up, standing up on
Speaker 1: the starting blocks would have you called the starting line.
Speaker 1: There must have been a moment. You must have thought yourself,
Speaker 1: here I am, Yeah, you know, before the which lane
Speaker 1: will we win? I was seven, it had to be
Speaker 1: crossover seven? Is on which seven? Seven? Like the two
Speaker 1: hundred you have to cross cross in? Yeah, you must
Speaker 1: been thinking yourself, Wow, what are four years I've had
Speaker 1: since Tokyo. It is like those thoughts go through your mind,
Speaker 1: where you were you at peace in it? At them
Speaker 1: in the moment.
Speaker 2: I was actually at peace in the moment. And again
Speaker 2: I think if I had the right preparation, it would
Speaker 2: have been a great Olympic Games because to be at
Speaker 2: peace on the track is it's always been my goal
Speaker 2: and how compete to the best of my ability and
Speaker 2: without the interruption. Sometimes I've rocked up to the truck
Speaker 2: without having that piece, so it's like, you know the difference, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know the difference. And it was like, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: healed and we're back, just not under the right circumstances,
Speaker 2: not on the right conditioning, but in the right mindset.
Speaker 1: Do you I think you will leave this part of
Speaker 1: your life with any regrets?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I think definitely, yes, Yes, I
Speaker 2: think I'll definitely have a lot of regrets in the sport,
Speaker 2: probably not competing as much as are I should have,
Speaker 2: and not taking advantage of the opportunities in the sport
Speaker 2: because but I'd also leave pretty happy of the life
Speaker 2: that I built outside of it, and in the opportunities
Speaker 2: that I've received I received through it, and also also
Speaker 2: the person that I've built through it. That's really important
Speaker 2: and that I could never take any regret from.
Speaker 1: But to be honest, here, it's for thirty years. It's
Speaker 1: a fabulous story, like actually a wonderful story, And the
Speaker 1: way you just summarize it, then that's pretty cool. You've
Speaker 1: got a backstory which in thirty years time, when you're sixty,
Speaker 1: you'll be you'll think to yourself, Wow, what an opportunity
Speaker 1: for me to experience all those things. I don't mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the allegations, but the experience of the allegation
Speaker 1: and being able to deal with it yourself and get
Speaker 1: through it and still stand at the starting line and
Speaker 1: the third Olympics and still doing your very best and
Speaker 1: maintaining your integrity and your family's integrity, and being able
Speaker 1: to get up and talk about it and accepting what's
Speaker 1: happened and not letting it knock you down. That's an
Speaker 1: amazing story. That's just amazing. And the fact you're sitting
Speaker 1: here so calm and giving us in that same lane,
Speaker 1: you've kept us in the same lane. No, it's about peace,
Speaker 1: your own peace, your own peace of mind, which most
Speaker 1: people never achieve it. I'm sixty eight. I'm still chasing
Speaker 1: peace mind, you know. And people say, oh, you've done
Speaker 1: all these things for me, but I still don't have
Speaker 1: peace of mind. I'm still chasing it. I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to achieve it. And here you are, thirty, you can
Speaker 1: still talk about it at the highest level, by the way,
Speaker 1: Olympic Games, so make congratulations, well done, Thank you,