Speaker 1: We just jumped straight into it. You should go to
Speaker 1: the music over the vacation that's Quidney. Where do you
Speaker 1: get your height from? I think it's an allegiand background?
Speaker 1: Where do you get your black of months? This is
Speaker 1: what it all began, the cauldron. Yeah, big Teddy Rhiner
Speaker 1: with this on night one. We've seen a bit of Teddy.
Speaker 2: Was in the judo blow every time you turn it
Speaker 2: on and you what you want to watch the basketball?
Speaker 1: The Boomers. It's always like so someone said, it's not
Speaker 1: actually a flame. Yeah, so you notice not much heat
Speaker 1: coming up this thing.
Speaker 3: This is the Eco Friendly Games, carbon footprint, etcetera. That's
Speaker 3: moater missed being lit up by a yellow light. So
Speaker 3: it looks like the famous looks pretty real. But at
Speaker 3: night they fill this thing the helium.
Speaker 1: I love the Planet's mus the next floit. But anyway,
Speaker 1: now listen to people.
Speaker 2: If you're listening on already are and you want this
Speaker 2: to make perfect sense, go to Fox Sports.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports.
Speaker 2: Let's go somewhere else, So to live built around the
Speaker 2: twelfth century, turn into a museum seventeen ninety three.
Speaker 1: And there it is like the last pyramid. It's very specific.
Speaker 1: Nine that was done. How do you learn all those facts?
Speaker 1: How do I learn that? At least told me. I'll
Speaker 1: give you some facts as well.
Speaker 3: You might remember early two thousand Tom Hanks was involved
Speaker 3: in a great heightst here the Unfortunately a security guard
Speaker 3: died that night.
Speaker 4: Maybe the Da Vinci Code was a movie, not a documentary.
Speaker 1: Highlights of the trip.
Speaker 3: Look, Maddie, I've loved the sport, the golden girls in
Speaker 3: the pool. But what I've been really surprised by and
Speaker 3: impressed by is how passionate the French fans are and
Speaker 3: how patriotic they are every event you go to when
Speaker 3: there's a French athlete involved, singing the anthem, singing the crowd.
Speaker 3: We saw the French swimmers the other day up on
Speaker 3: stage shirtless in front of thousands of people. I've really
Speaker 3: enjoyed that aspect of a home games for these French athletes.
Speaker 1: They celebrate their athletes. I reckon we used to in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. I remember World Series cricket. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: have you liked about the games?
Speaker 2: Firstly, one of these I really I was blown away
Speaker 2: by is the frenchman Leon Machon. Yeah that right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's just he's phenomenal. Do you reckon he's a chance
Speaker 2: of Bertie Phelps's record one day.
Speaker 1: He's on track. He's on track.
Speaker 3: I mean he won four individual goals here no relays
Speaker 3: for Big Leon, so he didn't get to pump up
Speaker 3: his medals with those. But at his rate of improvement,
Speaker 3: I don't see why you couldn't go five or six.
Speaker 2: Come Los Angeles. It's been a great Olympics. As far
Speaker 2: as I reckon events, action performances. There's been a lot
Speaker 2: of criticism about the village and whatnot the future of
Speaker 2: the Olympics. Missile, what do you reckon make?
Speaker 3: I think the concept of an Olympic village is no
Speaker 3: longer feasible for these countries. You imagine the cost to
Speaker 3: build the accommodation, the food hall, the lighting, electure, all
Speaker 3: of that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's too much.
Speaker 3: I think if I was Brisbane and I'm looking at
Speaker 3: hosting this home Games, I'd be looking at pushing events
Speaker 3: to other cities and hosting those athletes in those cities.
Speaker 1: For example, why couldn't we do the.
Speaker 3: Athletics at the MCG and have the athletes from America
Speaker 3: or from Athletics down in Melbourne. Yeah, the other one Mattie.
Speaker 3: So they say this village is no good, right.
Speaker 1: This is a crook village. I've been to worse. I've
Speaker 1: been to worse.
Speaker 3: So I was in Deli at the commath Games twenty
Speaker 3: ten and had a problem with spider monkeys. For those
Speaker 3: who don't know what a spider monkey is, it's a
Speaker 3: little monkey about the size of your hand.
Speaker 1: They're running through the rooms stealing food. A definitive which hands.
Speaker 2: The spider monkeys and they're.
Speaker 3: Running through the room stealing food, getting the food all. So,
Speaker 3: how do we fix the problem with the spider monkeys.
Speaker 3: What they did was the military came through the village
Speaker 3: on leeds, these big baboons with the bare eyes, about
Speaker 3: the size of a labrador. They're walking these big balloons,
Speaker 3: big things running through the village and all the spider
Speaker 3: monkeys are dispersing into the jungle around us. That's how
Speaker 3: they fixed the problem of little monkeys. Are the bigger monkeys?
Speaker 3: So I mean, were there some distractions in this village?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 3: Idea of no? Have we seen worst villages? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Here we have question there.
Speaker 2: Like komal Games, I'll got all respect in the world
Speaker 2: for the athletes, but the concept.
Speaker 1: Now the Commonwealth Games.
Speaker 2: I remember not only two missile Brisbane got the Comonwealth
Speaker 2: Games and it was.
Speaker 1: It was huge. Yeah, where are the common Games?
Speaker 3: That we may see with Melbourne pulling out of this
Speaker 3: next game, we may see the end of the Commonwealth
Speaker 3: Games as we know it.
Speaker 1: Maybe again that they.
Speaker 3: Split up the sports into a Commonwealth Game, swimming in
Speaker 3: in one country at Konwalth Games, athletics and another and
Speaker 3: it becomes another major meat for those sports. But again
Speaker 3: as a concept with a village with all new facilities,
Speaker 3: we're just seeing as these games go with the increased
Speaker 3: cost of labor and goods and all of that, but
Speaker 3: the budgets just blow out so much. It's such a
Speaker 3: strain on the host nation that like Melbourne, they don't
Speaker 3: want to they don't want to do it.
Speaker 1: Can we me? We do? I need? This is a
Speaker 1: girl I watched it to meet. Okay, assister Lisa the
Speaker 1: saying when they did the triathlon here a number of
Speaker 1: a number of.
Speaker 2: The athletes caught, Yeah, caught e Coli developed Carla poisoning and.
Speaker 3: The coested Nicola. Yeah, one point five billion dollars they
Speaker 3: spend in the same man he trying to clean it up.
Speaker 3: The ten k open water Swim is on tomorrow, and
Speaker 3: as you can see, they reckon. The triathletes said they
Speaker 3: couldn't see their hand in front of their face as
Speaker 3: they swam. So in terms of directions for where you're headed,
Speaker 3: in terms of seeing other athletes, in terms of having
Speaker 3: any grasp of how far you've swim or where you're going,
Speaker 3: few challenges for these poor open water swimmers. I'll tell
Speaker 3: you what, you'd be hard up finding an amount of
Speaker 3: money to get me in that thing missing.
Speaker 2: They're going down and they're turning back around, might swimming
Speaker 2: against the flow. It's as you can see, this current
Speaker 2: which is constant, it's flowing.
Speaker 3: Down river is quite strong and you're seeing right now.
Speaker 3: If you have a look, mate, you look at it.
Speaker 3: The debris, leaves, rubbish one point five billion.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know where that went.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: She spent twenty b and different and and this is
Speaker 1: like feeling we're not making this up.
Speaker 2: There's a story about an overseas athlete that has been
Speaker 2: microdocing on E coli to prepare himself for swimming in
Speaker 2: this event. It's pretty extreme, isn't it. That's a new
Speaker 2: meaning to the phrase each shit and die. You won't
Speaker 2: be that, you know, miss while they say these days
Speaker 2: a people that have short the kids have short attention spans,
Speaker 2: and you wonder, you know, as time goes by, whether
Speaker 2: that's just part of the human conditions. She's let me
Speaker 2: be like Notre Dame here and some of these stunning,
Speaker 2: stunning buildings around the world, like you talk about patients, some.
Speaker 1: Of two one hundred and fifty years to build.
Speaker 3: See the one in Barcelona is still going. It's a
Speaker 3: greater familiar. I think it's not predicted for another up
Speaker 3: one hundred years. What about So I watched this movie
Speaker 3: there's actually a blake that lived up here and Ring
Speaker 3: the Belly had.
Speaker 1: A terrible affliction me sort of mate once again. Movie
Speaker 1: not documentary. I don't know if it was based off
Speaker 1: somewhere one of the best days I had.
Speaker 2: I just stumbled upon you because you just find yourself
Speaker 2: just doing loops of the same your area, doun the
Speaker 2: media center, going to swimming out, the hotel went for
Speaker 2: a walkout, and I was heading the media center and
Speaker 2: stuff that just typed in ruge.
Speaker 1: And head to that that that precinct mart pretty good.
Speaker 2: It wrong anyway, Bar area. Anyway, I headed that area.
Speaker 2: Now I didn't know, but at the time the cycling
Speaker 2: was on. Now that area is just so beautiful. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's like what you what you thought Paris was
Speaker 2: when you were a kid. With the cycling, it was
Speaker 2: just it was insane. I've got it on my phone.
Speaker 2: I don't we can whack it on the whack it
Speaker 2: on the podcast because there's all these rules about Olympics
Speaker 2: or there was no cycling at the time, but the
Speaker 2: crowd was singing.
Speaker 1: Once again.
Speaker 2: It was the evidence of that French French spirit and
Speaker 2: the pride in their country.
Speaker 3: I think that would be the lasting memory of me
Speaker 3: for this Olympics would be that French patriotism, the fans
Speaker 3: everywhere we've gone and we've seen people in the blue,
Speaker 3: white and red. We've heard the national anthem. That's another
Speaker 3: big one for me. National anthems and this Olympics. So
Speaker 3: he sat that swimming and heard the full range of anthems.
Speaker 3: I think France takes number one spot. I think so
Speaker 3: it's very y good New Zealand national anthems. Cracker, I
Speaker 3: love the New Zealand national anthem. What about as look
Speaker 3: at it to be controversial.
Speaker 1: Little testing.
Speaker 2: Yesterday I went to the Speedo sponsor of it and
Speaker 2: interviewed some of our golden girls. Yeah, truly funny, like
Speaker 2: the vastly different personalities. Like Arianne Timmus was, you could
Speaker 2: see she was a bit of a scully way hit,
Speaker 2: a bit of sparking spark about her and not that
Speaker 2: the other girls did.
Speaker 1: But like Molly was more reserved. You can see those
Speaker 1: a bit there.
Speaker 2: But shit, they had Emma who was really really really
Speaker 2: she was really reserved, held a lot back.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was really It's.
Speaker 3: Interesting, and that's something that you know that sponsors and
Speaker 3: corporate people sit down and look at you see Arion
Speaker 3: and a lot of ads, billboards doing things on TV
Speaker 3: because she has that personality. And that's one thing I
Speaker 3: always talked to you is about sometimes I have this
Speaker 3: real combative relationship with the media. They don't want to
Speaker 3: do interviews, they don't want to be but it's part
Speaker 3: and parcel of being an athlete. If you want to
Speaker 3: be an athlete, if you want to be the face
Speaker 3: of the Los Angeles Games in four years time you
Speaker 3: go to talk, you're going to show some personality.
Speaker 1: You've got to get out and about so.
Speaker 3: People get invested in you and your story and then
Speaker 3: want to be part of your Olympic journeys.
Speaker 1: Like the Lives of the Life.
Speaker 2: Character is coming back into Australia's disappeared for a long
Speaker 2: time because otherways critical of media managers. They should facilitate
Speaker 2: between the athlete or the teams and the media, but.
Speaker 1: They start to become obstructurists.
Speaker 2: Don't do this, don't do that, don't say that, say this,
Speaker 2: you leave like you get guys in the someone get
Speaker 2: in a bit of trouble that you're branded Smith right.
Speaker 1: Branded sometimes serves things to get in a little bit
Speaker 1: of trouble.
Speaker 2: But I'll take that because not even set the time
Speaker 2: where you say it gives you a chuckle, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's endearing.
Speaker 1: It isn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I was a manager right now, another young
Speaker 3: athlete is coming through as say swimmer. They say half
Speaker 3: a dozen journalists in swimming that cover the sport regularly.
Speaker 3: I'd say I'm going to book a dinner, nice spot
Speaker 3: at the restaurant in Sydney. I'm going to invite all
Speaker 3: six journoys and my athlete introduce them away from the pool,
Speaker 3: away from the spotlight. So this is so and so
Speaker 3: this is our background, this is a bit of a story,
Speaker 3: and then they're invested in your story personally, and then
Speaker 3: they're working with you to the rest of your career
Speaker 3: rather than against.
Speaker 1: Good like that.
Speaker 2: Right, there's two a gold, Silver and Bryans on the
Speaker 2: journals over here, because honestly they have they aracters. I
Speaker 2: know the League journators really well, but I've seen another
Speaker 2: like a little bit more of them here. Personality will
Speaker 2: make it's been awesome. My my bronze there you go. There,
Speaker 2: My bronze goes to Crash Cratic. Yeah, like Crash is
Speaker 2: just that I've never seen a blake with just such
Speaker 2: raw enthusias. So one day I walked in there one
Speaker 2: day in the med is and it's the only time
Speaker 2: I've seen him defeated. He was like sitting like that
Speaker 2: and you are all right, Crash, he said, Maddie.
Speaker 1: I've hit the wall. I'm exhausted, but it's exhilarating. My
Speaker 1: Silver goes to Rudy.
Speaker 2: Had a great day of Roland Garras were breedy, terrific, terrific, fella.
Speaker 2: I've never seen a bloke eat like you must have
Speaker 2: a tapeworm size with fist in his guts.
Speaker 1: Gold medal, gold medal. It is mister larger than Germany.
Speaker 4: Peter Madell such a newfound respect for these journeys, and
Speaker 4: Pee Bedell his enthusiasm and hunger to get a story,
Speaker 4: which he eventually did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got it, the ninety two million story.
Speaker 2: Credible. Yeah, we've got a bloke you taking a photo.
Speaker 2: He's just disappeared because they ten bucks ten ere.
Speaker 1: You know the op year here. So how have you
Speaker 1: found friends? We just you do it right here in
Speaker 1: turn at Singapore. Now, I really like it. I like
Speaker 1: the You hear all the.
Speaker 2: Stories about French people being rude, difficult. I've found it
Speaker 2: completely the opposite. Found I found the people really really good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've made I've loved Olympe.
Speaker 1: This is more like it. Yeah, I want to ask him, Maggie, firstly,
Speaker 1: what do you have you found? Yeah, saying Matte.
Speaker 3: Obviously you hear a lot of commentary from other people
Speaker 3: saying the French are rude and all that sort of jazz.
Speaker 3: But I feel like they've embraced this Olympic Games like
Speaker 3: more so than I ever imagined, and the hospitality has.
Speaker 1: Been Nurso it's really good.
Speaker 2: One of one of the highlights that I've had, James,
Speaker 2: is sitting in the stands and you not just doing
Speaker 2: your predictions right because.
Speaker 1: Anyone can predict it, even though you've got them all right.
Speaker 2: Is just the technicalities. You're insights, so like little just
Speaker 2: a little subtle things. So who was your coach?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So when I was eighteen, I came down to Sydney.
Speaker 3: I was trying to decide where to go with swimming
Speaker 3: with life, and I met a bloke, Grant Best at
Speaker 3: mccuarie University in Sydney, and he sat down with me
Speaker 3: and my parents and he said, if you come down
Speaker 3: and swim with me, I'll have you at the Olympic
Speaker 3: Games in two years time in London.
Speaker 1: Wow, what did you think? Then?
Speaker 3: I was an emmoed blame straight away and thought that's
Speaker 3: what I'm doing. Mom and dad were kind of shocked
Speaker 3: by because no one had ever said anything like that
Speaker 3: to me before. People in put mcquarie away said, you know,
Speaker 3: you never made the Olympics. It's just a dream. It's
Speaker 3: it's a pipe dream, it will never happened. Suddenly there's
Speaker 3: this coach sitting in front of me saying I'll have
Speaker 3: you at the Olympic Games in two years time. And
Speaker 3: that was the sort of belief that I needed from
Speaker 3: somebody else. I had self belief, but nobody else had
Speaker 3: ever told me that I could be that good. And
Speaker 3: so I made the decision, I'm going to move down.
Speaker 3: I'm going to swim with brand best and he, because
Speaker 3: I was so young, he became like a father.
Speaker 1: Figure to me at that point in my life.
Speaker 3: Taught me about the sport, but also, you know, taught
Speaker 3: me a lot of lessons about becoming a man and
Speaker 3: making that transition from you know, being seventeen eighteen to
Speaker 3: teen in my twenties.
Speaker 2: You were saying before that things got to change about swimming,
Speaker 2: and you spoke about the technicalities like the start, the dive, the.
Speaker 1: Turns, all that sort of stuff. Like So let's say.
Speaker 2: Let's say it's like, you know, you do a day
Speaker 2: and it's five hours of swimming. What percentage is on
Speaker 2: technicality and what is on physicality?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so historically in Australia you're looking at ninety five
Speaker 3: to seven percent physicality.
Speaker 1: Where a country steeped in tradition in distance swimming. You
Speaker 1: think about all that great and was over the years.
Speaker 3: They often come from that sort of fifteen four hundred
Speaker 3: through to fifteen hundred meter mark your hackets, Si Perkins,
Speaker 3: you thought, Sir Murray Roses, if you go back around
Speaker 3: John Conrad's if you go back with it again. Now
Speaker 3: you seeing the emergence of sprinting in Australia. At this
Speaker 3: Olympic Games, we got our first ever medal in fifty
Speaker 3: three style. People might be surprised to hear that, but
Speaker 3: Kem McAvoy not only was our first gold medals, he's
Speaker 3: our first medalist at Olympic Games in fifty three style.
Speaker 3: And that just shows the focus starting to slowly change
Speaker 3: to the sprinting, which means we need to be more technical,
Speaker 3: women need to spend more time on those skills. Right.
Speaker 1: What about you?
Speaker 3: Who is your big influence as a coach and taught
Speaker 3: you the game?
Speaker 2: I mean, look, rugbyl league's a fair way removed from
Speaker 2: the Olympic sports, but the principals are all the same
Speaker 2: and the principles I think you're professional sport. If you
Speaker 2: want to make it is you've got to get a
Speaker 2: great base for football or swimming, education or what you're in.
Speaker 1: Andrew and I very lucky.
Speaker 2: We had an old guy who was a goat farmer,
Speaker 2: but he sort of bumped at different clubs and sat
Speaker 2: as as system coach. A really great coaches and so
Speaker 2: we would sit sometimes for hours upon end and he
Speaker 2: would show us great players little things, subtleties.
Speaker 1: That made them great.
Speaker 2: He was the guy you know when you see the
Speaker 2: block formations now sweet. He came up with that Newcastle
Speaker 2: the first team to do it ninety two and at
Speaker 2: the time people going, oh, this is like Newcastle made
Speaker 2: the Samis that year, but it was really criticized, going oh,
Speaker 2: this is crap.
Speaker 1: Everyone plays that late all this time later.
Speaker 2: But that football education he gave us, Like Maggie, it
Speaker 2: nearly drove me insane. Like as I was a young guy,
Speaker 2: I was like, I just want to get there and play.
Speaker 2: And in a lot of ways he'd pull you back
Speaker 2: to make you better in the long run. And eventually
Speaker 2: once it kicks in, you have that insight like you did,
Speaker 2: where you sit there and you're going, Maddie, this is
Speaker 2: what is about to happen.
Speaker 1: It's intrigued me.
Speaker 2: When I spoke to you, and I spoke to Don Fraser,
Speaker 2: and I just say to you when did Arian win that?
Speaker 2: And both you would say, right, you know at this
Speaker 2: point is both you had the same insight they turned
Speaker 2: at this certain section of the race.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things found a little bit
Speaker 1: hard in retirement.
Speaker 3: So you've been able to pass on that knowledge and
Speaker 3: that information. You know, you've mentored Cooper Krong, Billy Slater,
Speaker 3: some of the great halves and playmakers in our game.
Speaker 3: Swimming has this disconnect with its with its athletes when
Speaker 3: you retire. There's no real outlet for that, and that's
Speaker 3: something I've found frustrating at times. You spend a whole
Speaker 3: career building up all this knowledge about the sport that
Speaker 3: you really want to pass on to that next generation.
Speaker 3: But as you will have seen, most of those coaches
Speaker 3: on the swim team now weren't ex swimmers, and there's
Speaker 3: no real avenue or mentorship or ways for younger athletes
Speaker 3: to get that knowledge from some of us in years
Speaker 3: gone by.
Speaker 2: Is that funny, Like it's so prestigious the Olympics, you know,
Speaker 2: in swimming and athletics, but then there's a void. I
Speaker 2: get you, and I suppose a lot of the time
Speaker 2: and you see the professional floor were sent at swimming why.
Speaker 2: A lot of swimmers have that difficult, the transitioning next
Speaker 2: pub a lot of the problematic. Yeah, there's one more
Speaker 2: place you wanted to show me. I think it's somewhere
Speaker 2: you've been sneaking off to a bit during the week.
Speaker 1: So now listen, we're going to get something clear. Straight away.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the moon rouge, right, And I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was like the can Can dancers.
Speaker 1: And I said to my.
Speaker 2: Wife, Trish, I said the Trish, I think myself, Miss
Speaker 2: Island and Rose.
Speaker 1: We're going to go and I'm going to get rouge.
Speaker 1: She goes, you know, the best bare breast there.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that You're not going, so I'm not going.
Speaker 1: We're looking at the outside there. We won't go into Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, bag you. I miss our trip has reached
Speaker 1: this conclusion. Mate. I've had a Ball's been a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I've got it. I fly back to Australia
Speaker 1: to join the NRL season again. I miss it.
Speaker 2: I miss This is the Olympic spirits. It's like everyone's
Speaker 2: happy in a great mood. Everyone gets so long, there's
Speaker 2: a little love.
Speaker 1: It makes me sick. I'm gonna get back to the hype.
Speaker 1: Oh I love it man.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do a good another way here. Then I'm
Speaker 3: off to Croatia. So really I'll see you them. What
Speaker 3: three weeks time? Chance a good night?
Speaker 1: N't want to do you like? How to sup? That
Speaker 1: could be weird. I let's just let's let's do it.
Speaker 1: I've got the place for you. You've got our Irish pop.
Speaker 1: I'll share your guinness. Put hands on your chest and
Speaker 1: your legs and your ass at. Get back.
Speaker 3: H