#29 - Apolo Anton Ohno: 8-time Olympic medalist – extreme training, discipline, pursuing perfection, and responding to adversity

Foreign. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia. The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful, top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics@peteratti md.com. Hey everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of the Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia. My guest this week is my friend Apollo Ohno. For those of you who might not recognize Apollo, which I would guess is not many of you, Apollo Anton ono is an eight time medalist in the Winter Olympics across three Games 2002, 2006, 2010 in short track speed skating, which is one the most intense, crazy sports to watch. We're going to have lots of videos of it in the show notes and if that weren't enough, he also went on to win Dancing with the Stars, which sadly we don't get into in this episode, though I wish we did because we were talking about it over dinner. And it's simply another manifestation of the type of drive and determination that he brought to his sport. He brought to that show as well. He has a really unique upbringing. He was raised by a single dad, and his father, who was an immigrant, played just an unbelievable role in his life through the good times and the bad. Which I know might sound like a bit of a cliche, but the level and the detail at which we go into it in this podcast I think is quite inspiring. There's no question that at least in my mind, that had Apollo been raised by somebody other than his father, it's very hard to imagine he would have achieved the success that he has achieved. His father's role in his life has just been unbelievable, and I think that's a common theme we see in the people who are the greatest. One of the things that I didn't really fully appreciate prior to this podcast was how this entire nation of South Korea basically grew to hate him in ways that are almost impossible to describe. Following a very controversial race in 2002. We go into that in great detail. So I'm not going to go into the whys and the what's now, but the story is incredible, both how he got to that point of being so despised by an entire nation. And also how he basically went into the belly of the lion to confront this head on. And ultimately, the finish to that story is as remarkable as how he got there. Apollo has been known, even inside the circles of Olympic athletes, as having kind of a surreal approach to training. And we're going to link to some videos, including one that is my absolute favorite with some of his training routines. But his discipline, his work ethic are legendary. Once that switch was clicked, you know, he spent the early part of his career basically riding on talent and then just realized, nope, I'm gonna go all in on this. I never wanna finish a single race and have a single regret. His determination, character, response to adversity, I mean, they really. They're certainly inspirational to me. And frankly, I think this is. Of all the podcasts I've ever recorded, if I was gonna say to my kids, I want you to listen to one, this is the one I want them to. Of all the podcasts I've done so far, because this, to me, is really about grit. And I feel very strongly that that's arguably one of the, if not the most important, one of the most important things we want to be able to instill in our children is a sense of grit. So hopefully this will serve to give my kids a lesson on that and potentially for yours as well. The parallels between Apollo's life and Rocky Balboa are just amazing to me, and I can't resist being making those comparisons a few times. And notwithstanding the fact that his name is also Apollo, and of course, Apollo Creed, though spelt with two Ls, is the fictional character that is one of the most important antagonists of Rocky Balboa. That's not lost on me. But if I were to sum up one Rocky ism that sort of explains Apollo's life, it's the one where Rocky Balboa, in the sixth installment of that movie series, is explaining to his son that it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit, keep moving forward. And obviously, I love that as a metaphor for life, but I think it's illustrated here. Paula's just a great storyteller and he's a beautiful speaker. And I think that's reflected in the fact that this interview goes on for almost four hours. It would have easily gone on for six or seven had we not already made commitments to do other things that evening. So I hope you find this interview half as interesting as I did. I think the show notes will have some really Great, great stuff in them. And there's gonna be links to some really cool videos that we allude to, including not just races, but some of the other stuff that goes above and beyond that. Lastly, just a couple things on some housekeeping. Every Sunday I send out a weekly email that has been getting great feedback from the people who subscribe to it. So if you don't subscribe to that, please do. If you end up thinking it sucks, you can always unsubscribe from it. Secondly, we've got a team of both Bob Kaplan and Travis Denson who do an incredible job putting together show notes. Again, the feedback we get is there is no podcast out there that puts together show notes the way we do. It's basically a full time job for one person, a part time job for another person. And I believe that that shows in the volume of stuff that we're putting out there. So if you're enjoying the podcast, at least take a look at the show notes because you'll probably find something else that you might have missed or that becomes more clear. Lastly, if you are enjoying this, please head over to Apple Podcast reviews, give us a review. If it's favorable, great. If it's not, please at least be constructive in your criticism so that we can figure out how to make this show even better without further delay. Here is my guest today, Apollo Ohm. Hey, Apollo, thanks for coming down, man.

Thanks for having me.

Kind of funny that we're doing this now as opposed to what we were supposed to do.

The original plan. The original plan, though, as I mentioned, is very memorable and I'll never forget it. The fact that, you know, we have a nice dinner, we're chatting, we're getting the rhythm. Okay, Just follow me. We're going to shoot this place. It's right on the water. We're in Malibu. It's perfect. It's very quiet. Guys, we have a problem. I don't have keys.

I locked myself out. Yeah, the only saving grace is it could have been a lot worse if I'd killed myself or broken a bone hopping that fence to crawl around the back of the house to try to get in. That would have been.

No, you seem pretty athletic. So I was like, oh, he's okay. If you were struggling over the first fence, I was like, okay, maybe I should give him a hand. But, oh, he's got it. He's pretty good.

Well, you held the light for me. It was awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Now, on lighting and grip.

I'm the main act here. I do the fence hopping I do the wall scaling, but, yeah, I need.

To get rid of that Elmo guy. His lighting skills are just below average, bottom of the rung.

So, by the way, like all guests who come to my house, yet they have to drink Topo Chico. Is that your first Topo Chico?

It was my first. It was nice. I love the glass bottle. I love the fact that you love it and you're so passionate when you give it to me. It's like you're giving me keys to the house for the weekend. It's like, tell me how it is after you're finished.

Well, I like the fact that only halfway through the first bottle, you asked for a second, so you've got that other one.

It's nice. Yeah. It's a strangely addictive quality.

Yeah. When I first got into it, it was out of control. I was like, why am I drinking six of these a day? It became an expensive habit because they're hard to find. Well, man, there is so much I want to talk about, and I think we'll hopefully be able to get to much of it, though probably not all of it, just by the nature of the depth we'll probably go into on some stuff, but let's. For lack of a better plan or strategy, let's just go back to the beginning. So. Sure. You grew up in the Pacific Northwest?

Yeah, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I was a very high energy kid. One who was mischievous because I think just had tons of energy. My father was working most of the time to provide so that, you know, we didn't struggle too much more than we already did, which I didn't know at the time.

And your dad grew up in Japan, came to the US at. Do you remember how old he was?

He said he's about 17 and a half years old. When he came from Japan to. I think he landed actually in Oregon originally. And he just started his life. He didn't speak a word of English. He didn't really know anything about the American culture other than what was kind of fed to him when he was in Japan. The only focal point he said that he had was that he just needed to get outside of the protocol, like, lifestyle that was existing within the Japanese culture. And I think that to him meant going to the place that was a complete 180 and that was the United States.

So he left on his own at 17 and a half.

He left on his own against my grandmother and grandfather's wishes who. Which, you know, they wanted him to go to school, study, eventually work for a University and just kind of follow the same path that most I think Japanese follow. Right. This is what you're supposed to do, this is what you will do and this is what your life is going to be on a day to day basis. And something inside my dad just said, I, I don't want that, I don't want that type of future. And he came and he risked a lot, right. He didn't have any money, he just had, I think he had a camera in which he sold upon his arrival and that's what he used to begin his life. So I mean, I can't even imagine how difficult that must have been coming to the US not speaking a word of English in a time where Japanese were not exactly the most accepted people in our country and then trying. And he used to tell me like, he was like, he was like, oh, I was, you know, I was a, I was a bartender. I was like, how could you be possibly be a bartender if you don't speak English? And my dad's like really short too, so I can only imagine what that looks like. And also the grief that he probably got from all the people who are ordering drinks that he would probably mess up. So he said that he like slammed his head against the, you know, the door like many, many, many times to try to figure it out. And he did.

Yeah, it's not exactly a forgiving crowd, right? Like six drinks in, when someone gets their drinks screwed up, they're less likely to be empathetic to the guy struggling.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was really challenging, but. And then my dad, like, weirdly he said that he was studying, I think he was studying accounting. And then someone asked, or he was walking by, like one of the classes was hosting like a haircutting competition. And that's when my dad said, oh, that looks interesting, I could use some extra money, let me try that. So he entered the competition essentially like gotten like third place or something like randomly, and then began his career to pursue being a hairstylist, which is really, really, if you knew my dad, it makes sense now. But even when I hear the story, it's just nothing adds up. And he begins his life and he actually was and started a pretty interesting career as a hairstylist and more than a barber, I guess you could say, and was starting to travel the world, had some success. And he said that everything was changed obviously when I was born. And upon my arrival, both my father and my mom, I think they were obviously going through some conflicted times and so they divorced my Father took full custody of me and he didn't know how to raise a child. His only.

How old was your dad? Do you remember when you were born?

I don't know because my dad's telling me he's been 35 since I was born. So this is. Yeah. Which is kind of funny.

That's a great anti aging strategy.

Yeah, yeah. And he looks great too. He looks not his age at all. So he. Again, you know, my dad, his only context for raising a son was the fact that people would come into a salon and that was his basis for conversation, like as your barber or your hairstylist, like that's your kind of personal psychologist if you've been seeing this person for like 10 plus years. So as he's going through this process of raising me, he's basically getting all these women who come into his salon, like free parental guidance advice on a daily basis. And I think he started taking it.

Because that is kind of unusual when a couple splits that the father would take sole control. Do you know much about that in terms of. Has your dad talked to you about. Cause I remember, you know, I know you've told me before that you don't really have contact with your mom. I mean you, in fact, you've never had contact with your mom since she left, Right?

Correct. Essentially what my dad says is he is, I was the better suited to take care of you. And I also felt even though I knew nothing about raising you, I would do and I had the ability to do what it takes to raise you properly. At least that's what I thought. At least provide some form of kind of security blanket for my one and only child. And that's exactly what he did. And so it is interesting, you know, I never met my mom. Even when I have a conversation like with my girlfriend, she's like, haven't you ever wanted to just meet her? And it's really strange when I say it, but I never think about it. Right. So I grew up in a single parent household. Everyone in my neighborhood pretty much was single parent household in some capacity or they were raised by their grandmother, grandfather. I didn't grow up in a bad neighborhood by any means, but that just was very normal where I grew up. And so to me, I never thought about it. Right. And I never understood what that was like having two parents. And I didn't, I didn't know. And so my dad did an excellent job obviously raising me, but there was never an inclination or a want to actually meet her. And I think as I get older There is more questions of, I'd like to know from her perspective what happened. And, you know, I think we all have those kind of interesting thoughts and moments where we want to just. Just divulge and just say, like, man, like, I'd like to know my other half.

Right.

My mom was adopted, which I found out much later. So her background and ethnicity is also somewhat mysterious, which is why my kind of fascination with trying to understand my own genealogy and background and historical context.

Have you been able to dig into that through? Because the problem was, if you're using stuff like ancestry, you have to sort of have enough information to put in the system. Yep.

Yeah, exactly. This was maybe in 2006 or something. I think it was maybe 2005. NBC was doing a show called who do youo Think youk Are? It might've been 2003. I don't remember. But I remember during that time, essentially what they would do is they would ask for your permission. They would then find out every single thing there is to know about one side of your family. So you say, okay, I want to know more about my father. I want to know my mom. And so I was really interested in my Japanese heritage. And so I had asked them to start really diving deep on my. My father's side. And then they, you know, they had traveled to Japan. They started talking to people in Japan. And for people who don't know, Japan is such a small but highly protective society, especially when it comes to personal records. And they essentially got. They got zero information, and for whatever reason, so they were like, we know that you have probably some, like, samurai blood from this Yasunaga clan in your grandmother's side of the family, but that's really all we can get out of this thing.

Wow.

So I was, like, kind of disappointed. But to go back, my relationship with my. With my mom was. There was none.

For all you know, you could have half siblings. Of course, your mom was presumably quite young when your parents split. She could have very easily remarried. And.

Yeah, and she still keeps in contact. I think it's been many years, but she was, at least until my very first Olympic Games, in contact with my father and essentially said and called him after she had heard that I had won my first Olympic gold medal. I'm very proud of him. I've been following him. She lives in the Pacific Northwest region, so she obviously saw my face on newspapers and on television leading up to the Olympic Games. So I think she felt very proud. But she did mention one thing to her dad. She's like, I just, I feel this point in the life, in both of our lives. I don't want to disrupt his path and maybe when he's ready he'll seek me out or something of that nature. And so that's kind of always been in the back of my head. I also have this like weird protective side of me because I have so much love and respect for my father in everything that he did. I don't want him to feel like he was less than if I go out and reach for my mom. Right? No.

Does it make sense you would?

No, I don't think so. But that was inside me for a long time. And so when you're raised single parent household, I think you're skewed in multiple ways and they create little small micro traumas psychologically that maybe you don't recognize when you're younger or you're missing some elements which makes you more dependent. Maybe you're more alpha, maybe you're less. I don't know what that is. But for sure it's definitely. I was not the most equilibrium based athlete in the world and I think a lot of athletes are like that, right? I think there's always something that happens early stage. And for me it was always like my father would always teach me that you can always be better, you can always be better, you can always be better. There's always another level to go to. Perfection is seemingly unattainable, but that's your goal and you don't stop until you get there. And that was like so drilled into me psychologically from a young age. And it was never like, no, it wasn't like super Tiger dad. Although thinking back he was very, he did push me extensively. I didn't get that feeling when I was a kid, but it definitely taught me a lot about like my ultimate goal is to probably make him happy and have respect for what I'm doing. And also I want to achieve that perfection and I never did. I have had races where I would call it the perfect race. But now when I look back like, ah, it was far from it, right. But I think that psychology was. It started from my father and watching him in his work ethic and you know, I was always athletic as a kid growing up in Seattle and I had been, you know, I was a swimmer and I did track and field and I wanted to play football, he said no. I wanted to box, he said no. I saw this crazy sport of short track speed skating and I was actually at the time I was swimming a lot and my father wanted Me to go to Stanford or Michigan full ride. That was his goal. Right? And we were getting these weird like conversational actual snow snail mail letters. I remember back then basically telling my father, if your son continues on this path of excellence in swimming, we would love to have a conversation about having him become accepted into this school. This was from Stanford. I forgot what year it was.

What was your stroke?

It was breaststroke and backstroke were my two, so I was 50 and 100 meter breaststroke.

Do you remember what your best hundred year breaststroke was?

I don't remember but I do remember my 50 meter backstroke. I broke like some 20 year state record at one time. And I remember because the guy who record who I broke at the time, he was still like, he was semi coaching and my coach at the time, Bill Christensen brought me up there and he's like, oh, you know, this is the kid who broke your 20 year record. And the guy's like wow, you know, I have no idea what he.

Well, what's interesting is, you know, usually backstrokers don't make good breaststrokers and vice versa because backstroke and freestyle are long axis strokes, breaststroke and fly are short axis strokes. In your case though, I can see there's an interesting thing which is your legs are so freakishly strong and those are the two leg driven sports. So those are both what we would call rear wheel drive sports versus front wheel drive strokes. So it's interesting to think that you would be perfectly suited to do that, which means you would have been probably a really good imer as well.

Yeah, I was decent my 100 meter im. I don't remember any of my times. Look, we're talking like when I was 12, 13 years old, right?

Yeah, a lot can happen between that and college. But still, I mean there was something there. I want to go back to something you said a moment ago, right. Which was at a very young age, your dad sort of instilled in you this. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I don't think you said it as the need to be perfect, but a quest for perfection. You know, I talk about this a lot with my daughter, which is this idea of mastery, which is this process of trying to master something that you'll never actually master because that's technically not feasible is the beauty. Like that's the thing. And you know, books that have been written about, it's usually written about athletes but I think it can apply to musicians or any number of other fields. They talk about the common bond that seems inherent to many of these people who have achieved greatness like you have. Is this love of practice, did you sense that early on? Did you enjoy the practice or were you more task or goal oriented as far as the outcome?

Early in my career, I would say that I wasn't, I didn't enjoy the process as much. It was based on sheer talent. And this is, I'm talking from the age of 14 until I was probably about 17.

And you started skating at what, 13?

I started skating. I actually started really, really skating at 12. I started really training at the age of 14.

So you started swimming, what like as a 5, 6 year old?

About 8. Swam locally and you know, local competitions and state competitions. And then when I saw the sport, short track speed skating in 1992 and again in 1994, that's when I said, wow, this, I'm, this is an amazing sport. I used to inline and quad skate like on the side at the nearby local skating rink. I feel like I could do that. That seems pretty easy. It also looks ridiculous, right? These guys are wearing these. When you're like 11, 12 years old and you see these guys skate, it looks fake. And then when my father drove me north to Vancouver, bc, I saw it live because the Canadians, they obviously love winter sports. I was like, this is the most incredible sport I've ever seen in my life. It doesn't make sense how these human beings can be leaning over these impossible angles on a blade that's 1 millimeter thick. And they're wearing outfits that resemble Superman without the cape. Like literally that's what they're doing and they just have helmets on. I was like, this is perfect. Like I have to do this sport right?

Superman without the cape. Now that I think about it, there's.

You know, flying around this.

I was going to say, like, why don't they just have the capes on? It would be so much cooler.

Yeah, that'd be cool actually.

Well, I want to come back to the evolution, but let's pause for a moment and have you explain the difference between short track, long track, inline, all of these different types of skating.

Sure. So inline skating is predominantly done outdoors and they skate and they have competitions all around the world. Now they have velodrome like competitions, but it's in. So if you ever seen a velodrome track for track cycling, inside of that is a warm up area. That's where inline speed skating competitions are being held in places like Bogota, Colombia, which is, by the way, Columbia is huge into inline skating. I don't know why or how, but it's Been huge there. And so I grewing up in the Pacific Northwest and having rain be a very big part of our culture, I did indoor skating. So think of your imaginary roller rink, and you have four pylons, one for each corner, and you basically skate around.

And you're on, like, a rollerblade, but it's got how many wheels per the blade?

I started out in quad skates, so two in the front, two in the back, and then it's just basically just speed skating. So, like, if you've ever been in a roller rink, growing up as an American, and it says, okay, it's time for speed skating, and everyone goes out there and they play a song, and we just skate around really fast and they finish right. Like, that's literally how I learned. And then someone in the local roller rink was like, hey, you should try out for our club. And I was like, okay, that looks. That seems fun. And my dad at that point was like, anything I can do to create more fatigue in this child I'm in. I just want to get him exhausted.

Because your dad is working nonstop.

He's working all day long. He comes home, he's exhausted, and I'm like, this kid who's just completely berserk, out of control. Like, I just. I never get tired. I could just run and run, run, run. Just insatiable appetite for everything.

Were you getting into trouble at all?

Absolutely. Absolutely. It was very mischievous, and environment has a lot to do with that. But for whatever reason I was, I excelled pretty early in some gifted programs when I was a child. And my dad was very much a proponent of pushing education and cramming it down my throat and being like, look, take this test until you pass it. Basically.

How did your dad have the time to even oversee how you were doing in school and overseeing your, you know, looking over your shoulder while you're trying to get your homework done? Like, how. How did you ever reflect back on what that even meant?

I mean, I don't think he really could. Right. I think he did what he. What he could. I mean, most of my childhood was spent. My father was not there during the day, so I would go to go to school on my own. I would come back on my own. And then until he came home and I come back from school at 3pm or something like that, until 7, 8pm, sometimes 9, 10pm he's not there, and I'm alone in the house. I had to cook for myself.

And you're myself, and you're eight, nine years old.

Yeah, very, very young. So at a very early age, I was very independent on just relying on myself to kind of succeed. I didn't think anything of it at the time. Like I was latchkey kid, right? I had no idea. My dad hates that word, saying, I'm like dad. That's pretty much what it was. You know, there's no way I can remember many, many nights it was like dark outside and I'm like, where's my. You know, like, this is weird. But that's, that was the reality. And thinking back, like my dad, he put aside every single want he had in his life. Everything. And it was all about me. And for that, like, I feel obviously eternally grateful. But also I learned so much from such a selfless man. I get it. Like I'm his son, I'm the only son. I'm everything he has, everything he wants to do, he wants to see me succeed. I didn't recognize it when I was that young. I do now. So every waking moment was like, how do I create more experiences for this child? How do I take my son to. We don't have a lot of money, so how do I take him to nature and experience things that are free? Right. How do we go out and we can draw, we can create something in the sand. I can go and appreciate the ocean if that takes us a drive. I mean, we used to drive to all competitions. Like we would drive from Seattle to Prince George, Canada. That's a far drive in the middle of winter to go skate one day competition against Canadian kids who. I don't know, I'm the only American there. And my dad is like basically driving for two days straight with no sleep just so I can have that experience. When you're that young, you don't recognize.

How much of a sacrifice.

It's incredible, right? And then like I think about now, I can't even do that now, like. And I'm. I feel like vibrant and peaking at this 36 year age. Right. So I just have a tremendous amount of respect for my dad in terms of his dedication, sacrifice, just because he just wanted the best and he didn't know like what was good, what was bad. He just tried to do everything.

So going back to the skating, so that's what inline is. And then talk about the different disciplines of skating on ice.

Yeah. So you've got, there's short track speed skating and then there's long track speed skating.

And long track is the one that's been around forever. Like that's when we go back and see the Olympics. 50 years ago.

Correct.

That was long track.

Correct. So long track speed skating is what most people think of as predominantly being on an outdoor ice surface. That's a 400 meter oval. So imagine you just throw, had a track and field track, and you basically just, you just. It froze over during the winter and you poured ice, and that's your. And you use a Zamboni. That's your track. Long track speed skating has the 500 meters, it has the 1000 meters, the 1500 meter, the 5000 and the 10,000.

It sort of parallels running. Yes, in distances.

Yes. But you also, in long track speed skating, it's all about time. So you've got your own lane. No one interferes with you. You know, you can have some moments where your pair, which you're skating with is, you know, he's in front of you. You can basically get a little bit of draft on the back end of a straightaway, but for the most part it's. It's you against the clock and there's no hiding. Right. You can't. Like, as soon as you stop skating, you kind of immediately start to slow down, with the exception of like some gliding, but the most part, like time trialing, just like being on a bike, there's no hiding, there's no cheating. And when I first started, I actually started out how I started out doing long track as a proponent, because that's what everyone does in Calgary and in other parts of Butte, Montana, I would skate. So that's long track speed skating. The skate itself used to be a fixed boot and a fixed blade. Meaning there's. Imagine a shoe. And then on your heel and then again on your.

Under the ball, your foot are these.

Two cups that basically just, they just lock into the bottom of the shoe. And then on the bottom, that is the skate.

And how long is the blade?

The blade's about 17 to 18 inches long. Again, it's only about a millimeter thick, a little bit thinner than a short track blade. The actual bend and rocker of the skate is different.

But it's a relatively flat blade, correct?

It's very flat.

I used to play hockey growing up, but I was a goalie. And goalies have a much longer, flatter skate than the skaters. The skaters have a very rounded blade. And so when you're a goalie, you have all of this equipment on, so you're relatively slow. But in a straightaway, a goalie, even with all his equipment, can generally skate pretty fast, even relative to the regular skater. Just because you have more blade on the ice. So I'm assuming. I don't know how many inches it is, but it's obviously much shorter than what you're describing. So when you have, what, 17, 18 inches of surface on that ice, that's a ton of contact, right?

A ton of contact. But it's only in between the two cups at any moment. And even shorter, actually, of the time in which you're. Your blade is touching the ice. We can get into those kind of details indifferently, but that's long track speed skating. They then evolved to a clap skate, which means that the rear heel of the blade was hinged.

Detaches. Yeah.

And it detaches so that when you push, the blade actually still stays on the ice as opposed as the heel comes off. So you get like a 5 to 15% additional advantage every single time you push. And I was. I watched that phenomenon. Come on.

How much of an impact did that have on times?

It changed everything. It changed who was good, it changed who wasn't good. It changed which countries were really strong for a period of time because people couldn't understand how to skate in a clap skate mechanism because the technique is so much different. And it really became a lot to do with the type of equipment that you had and your ability as an athlete to transfer your power through the clap skate mechanism. You could be the world's greatest on a fixed skate mechanism. Go to the clap skate and not even make the top 20. So it was a really difficult learning curve for a lot of athletes, and a lot of people started just to just basically give up, and they just dropped out.

What year did that transition take place?

This was 1995, when we really started to see it. 95, 96, and 97 was when. That was the peak years of the claps gate.

What drove that technological change? Was there some whispering that, oh, this is politically motivated to change the power structure within the sport? Because which countries prior to the 90s were the most dominant in long track?

Well, I would say with the exception of the Americans. Right. It's always been the Europeans were always the best, a couple of Japanese, but for the most part, it was always the Europeans, meaning the Netherlands, some of the Germans and some of the Russians.

Though Eric Haydn in 1980. Has anyone ever matched that feat?

No one has ever matched that feat. I don't think everyone ever will match that feat.

And that feat again was. He won five golds.

He won the 500, the thousand. He won all the distances in one Olympic Games, which is. It would be like Usain.

Yeah, there's no way to explain that. I mean, the closest thing to that, that I would see in recent years times as Katie ledecky winning the 200, the 400, the 800 in the Olympics. If there were a 1500, which there is in the Worlds, but not in the Olympics, don't get me started on that, she would have won that as well. But you're right. I mean, it's sort of like Prefontaine at one point holding the American record in everything from I think, the 1500 to the 10K. Then of course, to win the gold in all of those is.

Erik was a specimen. He was a very special genetic human being and is. Aside from that, his work ethic was astronomically high and he was a complete. This guy was a savage when it came to training. He would bury, and still does, by the way, bury most people on a bike. And he doesn't train anymore. He's just. His ability to tolerate pain and threshold and lactic acid is like when I. It's like when you watch a racehorse and that racehorse is obviously in pain but doesn't slow down. It's very similar. And when I was growing up, Eric Haydn was the king. And to be honest with you, to me he's still the king. And I tell him he's still the king because what he did was so ridiculously difficult. And my sport of short track speed skating, by the way, is very different than long track.

Yeah, I want to come to that. But before we leave, Eric Hayden, I mean, one, I know we've talked a little bit about some of his training. I want to hear more about that later on. But. But my one connection to him is of course he went to med school at Stanford, which is where I went. And when I was in med school, I used to ride my bike a lot. And there's this very famous hill near Stanford called Old La Honda, which is sort of the benchmark hill for cyclists. And anyone listening to this who rides a bicycle in the Bay Area knows Old La Honda and not only knows it, knows their time up it because that is the metric that is the equalizer. It's about three and a half, 3.6 miles. It's got a number of switchbacks. It's relatively steep. I feel like it's almost 7% grade on average. And I believe the benchmark time is about 20 minutes. So if you're below 20 minutes, you're allowed to call yourself a cyclist. If it takes more than 20 minutes, you ride a bike. So it took me a while to break 20 minutes. My roommate in medical school, his name's Matt McCormick, he was about 17 minutes, 20 seconds, which was exceptional. He was certainly the fastest of any of the people that, you know, I knew on a bike. Eric Haydn apparently was about 14 and a half minutes up old La Honda, which was and remains to my knowledge the record up that hill. And I used to. I had a model that I built that would calculate how many watts you needed to average to go up that hill. And I forgot. I don't think I've ever plugged Eric's time into it, but it wouldn't surprise me if that were a 600 watt effort given his body weight.

He's a big guy. Eric Hayden was a very big and heavy, obviously quad dominant athlete.

So I mean, I should go back and do that. But I think for someone, Eric's weight to have gone up that in 14 and a half minutes, it's hard for me to imagine he could have done that at less than 600 watts, which anybody who's ever stepped foot on any sort of ergometer knows that like anybody can hold 600 watts for 10 seconds. Most people can't do it for a minute. Very few people can hold 600 watts for a minute to hold it for 14 and a half minutes.

So much power.

And then of course he became a professional cyclist. Right.

And I think he rode in a couple of tours.

Yeah, yeah, I think he rode for 7, 11. And he's an orthopedic surgeon now and I've never met him or know him at all. But it's hard for people who don't follow that sport, myself included, to really reflect on what it would mean to be the best in the world at such a broad range of distances, because those are physiologically completely different events. I mean, the 500 and the 10,000 have nothing in common really. No, they're completely different energy systems.

They're different technique, different energy systems, different.

I didn't even realize that. So of course that makes sense. Different technique. Right. It's the difference between someone running 200 meters versus someone running 5K.

There's different equipment involved. I mean it's, there's so many things that are so. And in the 80s, I think sports science was, especially in speed skating was never huge part of what we did, like track and field and like cycling, which are in my opinion at the absolute pinnacle of pushing that, that red line. Right. Of utilizing science and what we understand of the sport. Speed skating is a very unconventional, it's a uncomfortable position to be in. It's not natural to speed skate, being in that position, especially as a long track speed skater. So, you know, to train for that, what is and still is really, really excruciating. And there is no balance. Right. We only turn left. So, you know, there's lots of imbalances aside from physical being and. But Eric was a huge part of that motivation to train like an animal, as was Lance and a lot of the other guys who at least I looked up to as being superhuman, not only for their accomplishments, but the way that they mentally attacked pain and training. Because that's where you win your actual wars in the training. When you get to the competition, you can't do anything. So if you didn't show up ready, you can't hide that in my sport.

You can only lose it by showing up in the wrong headspace. But the right headspace won't win it if you haven't done the work.

Your likelihood of doing very well is dramatically, much higher if you prepare. And I think that goes with pretty much anything. So I was really interested in that psychology of what makes up someone like that. So I, you know, with Eric Haydn and many other athletes who trained under the same tutelage of his original coaches. And I believe her name was Diane Holem. She was based in Milwaukee in the Madison region of the Midwest. And her training methods were very unconventional and they were obscene and they probably would be deemed very, you know, almost punishable.

They're on par with waterboarding today. It's like, yeah, like not allowed to do that training. Yeah.

Like, hey, Eric, here's what we're going to do since you're, you know. And by the way, like, we had 100 athletes to start. Only 12 remain. That's our team now. We start training together. So you can imagine.

Because the other 88 got broken.

Yeah. Broken very early or they just didn't have the, you know, the ability to recover based on pure genetics at this time. And that's how we trained back then. And watching and hearing these stories about Eric going up the Lake Placid ski hill with a large rope tied around him and that is tied to a tractor trailer truck tire. Right. And he's just doing hill sprints up and down for like three hours. And he just, he was, he just did crazy stuff like Rocky style training and that mentality. Like, I mean, for me as an athlete, sports science is amazing and I wish I concentrated more on it, but that psychology was what I was actually really, really, really interested in. That's what I loved. I loved to do stuff that people thought was completely obscene and crazy. And, you know, like, for me, like, I would say 80% of my career, all my races were won. Ever before I got to the start line. The other competitors were racing for second, and they just. They just knew that I was, like, just completely off my rocker. I was not in the same headspace as them. I was different. I didn't talk to anybody. I was. And I wanted to create that kind of bubble. Right. And I got that from these kind of legends who I looked up to.

There's a video that we'll definitely make sure we link to this. I have a feeling this podcast will have more links to videos than most of ours. But there's a video that I remember seeing. It was like, probably six, seven minutes long, and it had some snippets or highlights of some of your training. And I actually was discussing it with Lance Armstrong once. We were having dinner and I was like, dude, you got to see this video of what Apollo was doing. And you were doing, I think, single leg lateral jumps up two steps at a time.

Yeah, yeah. Most likely.

I mean, Jesus Christ. I feel like I've done some crazy things in my day. I just don't think I have the explosiveness. Single leg, that's the thing. Most people don't appreciate how much of a reduction you have in power when you go from two to one leg. It's not half the power. You're losing way more than half when you take that second leg away and then adding to it that you're doing it laterally. And I remember in the video it says, yeah, this is basically a 48 minute set.

Yeah, that was probably following like an ice session.

Yes, it was like a two and.

A half hour ice session. We would do those.

I mean, how often does someone get injured doing that? Because the thing that struck me is like, look, you can be the best stud in the world, you can have the toughest head in the world, but at some level, your ankle's gonna catch on that stair and you're gonna fall over laterally. Like, you're always just one millimeter away from breaking your ankle. You're looking at me like, no, that would never happen.

Yeah, never thought about that. Never saw it, never thought about it. Definitely the risk is there. But then, I mean, then again, you know, in short track speed skating, I mean, we skate together every day, sometimes twice a day for four to six hours a day, and we're inches from each other, and that blade is literally this close to my face. Now if this blade gets this close to my face, it's gonna slice it.

Just for reference. That's like, that's 12 inches from your face is where you're putting that blade.

I mean, every day, every crossover, every lap.

Is that why you have such a smooth shave?

The sport was very dangerous and I used to do really dumb stuff like we would have. At one point in the isu, the International Skating Union implemented a rule that had to have. You had to have a neck guard to protect your neck. And all major arteries on the body needed to be covered with a cut proof material, like Kevlar. And so everyone was wearing these cut proof material inside of the skin suit. So it was basically sewn into the skin suit, the racing suit. And I hated the feeling of the Kevlar because it didn't stretch. I used to cut mine out. So I would raise. It's completely legal, right. But I used to cut mine out and I used to race. We call it racing naked.

Right.

So you'd race naked. So if I fall with another skater, the likelihood of me getting cut is like 80% and you're done. Like that's one time you're done. But you know, when you're young and you're dumb. I did many, many dumb things like that. But now they actually check before you get on the ice, you know, they see if you've altered the skin suit.

So what year was short track a demonstration Sport? Was it 92?

88 in Calgary.

88, okay. And so what was the impetus for creating this new sport?

You know, I'm not sure because the sport actually has been around for a long time and people used to do short track speed skating, outdoor in New York City, I think in the 60s.

I see. So it was just one of those things where the sport had been around forever and it was like, now we're just gonna bring it to the Olympic level.

Yeah, and it was. You go from long track speed skating, which is all about time. It's imagine like you're watching a track and field race, but no one can ever go outside their lane. You know, we see that in 100 meters, but imagine like a mile, you can't move. This is the lane you're given and there's only two people on the track at a time. And everyone just basically just does time trials. So that was like not that interesting to me. And also I just like the fact of racing was so much more. It was just more intimate. Right. And it was psychologically a huge part of what I wanted to race against other athletes and outsmart or out strategize them. And I like that moment of risk. And so short track speed skating is very different than long track speed skating. So you go from a 400 meter oval outdoor to. And long track is also indoor, but to a Olympic size hockey rink. And the track is 111 meters around.

At the inside, at the tightest perimeter.

Right. That's the actual track size. And you've got, instead of just two people on the track at a time going for, against the clock, you've got five to six, sometimes seven to eight skaters on the start line at once, all racing and jockeying for position and drafting each other and passing on the inside and outside and grabbing each other, bumping, making mistakes and, you know, leaning over these angles. Because it's such a tightly held oval inside, our skates are set up differently. We don't have a clap skate. It's a fixed skateboard. We tried using clap skates in 1997 and 1998, but it just, it was. The sport is too dynamic and there's too much weight transfer from the, from the ball of the foot to the heel of the foot, where, you know, sometimes I would lean so far forward on the ball of my foot, when I'm coming out of a corner, my heel would lift off using a clap skate. And so it was just very, very dangerous. You couldn't, you couldn't use that. Now, I mean, sword rock speed skating is one that the blades are so offset. So imagine this is my, my skate. Instead of having the blade right in the middle, the blade is actually way over here on the, on the left.

Side on both, because you're always going.

Left, because you're, you're always going left. And you're leaning over so much at these angles that you need to have that additional offset to make sure that you can, you know, still have enough pressure on that leg and also be able to maneuver properly. So.

Wow. I never even realized that in watching that, that your blades were not symmetric on the bottom of the boot. So they're not even straight.

They're actually even sometimes tilted, depending on what you like as a skater and your technique.

And you as a skater have some say in that degree of tilt.

You have all the say. So your control over your equipment is the one thing that is a huge part of short track speed skating. That if you don't short track speed skate, which I'm assuming no one listening to the podcast does, it's such a huge part of the sport, it would be the Difference between me feeling like I could never lose and me feeling like I'm not going to make it into the quarterfinal. Like, if my equipment feels that far off, it just feels. You just feel like you lost all your power. Maybe I can use another example. So imagine you're a boxer, and you've got boxing gloves that weigh, you know, two pounds each. And then imagine the next time you put the boxing gloves on. They're now £10 each. That's. That's what it feels like. How much different it feels like as an athlete when your equipment isn't. Is not dialed in or. And then small things like the ice temperature, the grip of the ice, meaning, like your perfect body weight and the amount of power that you typically generate in the corner.

And they wet the ice, don't they, to give you guys more grip?

Yes.

The angles you're at are ridiculous.

We pour actually hot water in the corners of both sides of the track. And we actually. We're actually skating on top of the water. We're actually not digging the ice, if you slow down.

So what's giving you the grip? If you're not digging into the ice.

You technically are, but most of the time you're on top of the water. So the grip is a combination of both. The. The way that our blades are set up, there's such a hardcore bend in the blade that when you lean over on that 1.1 millimeter piece of metal, the blade will flex to a certain degree and some of that bend comes out, and what's remaining is still a curve that allows you to hook yourself around that corner.

Ah, I see. Wow. So if you laid that blade in its maximally flexed position on a flat surface from end to end, could you put, like a dime underneath it? Does it have that much bend or curvature in it?

Not a dime, but you can see it. So, like, if I had my blade here, I should have brought my skate. And I didn't put any pressure on the blade and I just laid it down.

Yeah.

The only ends of the blade will be touching the middle part in between the two cups, which I mentioned, which was the ball and the heel. That whole area doesn't touch the eyes until I put a lot of pressure, and then the ends no longer touch and the middle touches. So it's a. We bend our own skates. We rocker our own skates. It's very, you know, it's very technical. We use a radius machine which measures 1/1,000th of a hair in between these two areas, which is about, I think, it's about like four and a half inches across the blade, and we mark it.

And so you're born in what, 80?

82.

82. So when you're 10 years old, this is a demonstration sport in the Olympics. So by the time you're 13, it's about ready to become a full fledged Olympic sport. And it's sort of. It's in the crosshairs now for you, which is. It's a sport that you're passionate about. Your dad's like, fine, let's let him do this, because it's better than him getting a concussion every day. When you started, I'm just guessing you were quite naturally talented to begin with because you alluded to it earlier that you didn't really start training until you were 14. So there was this year when you were just getting by on talent.

Yeah, actually further than that. So, you know, from 12 till 14, my father took me around to small local speed skating competitions, and I was winning most of them, even the ones internationally, which I say internationally meaning just going to Canada. And I wasn't getting any competition in the States. I was getting all of my challenge from racing against other athletes inside Canada. And I had beaten pretty much anyone west of Toronto. And now it was a time where the only remaining place for me to compete in Canada was Montreal, because that's where the real skaters came out of.

I see. So it's the. It's. It was Montreal, not Vancouver, that had the epicenter of skating.

Yes. And like Fredericton and a few other places, Quebec, in Quebec City, was a big producer of great Canadian short track speed skaters.

There's something about Quebec. Growing up, I was really serious in martial arts and boxing and yeah, like, the national championships were always in Quebec or Ottawa, like someplace close to Quebec. And the nationals was the only time you would face these guys. And they were like a different breed, man.

They're different breed.

They were really, really tough dudes.

Yeah, they're tough guys. Yeah. And I had a lot of respect for them. The Canadians, to me, were always very, very strong in the sport, and they still are today. You know, short track speed skating is not like cycling, where you've got all these different athletes from all these different countries all over the world. At the time, there was only a few really, really strong countries in short track speed skating. The US Was not one of them, by the way.

So after. So in 92, in the demonstration year, that's sort of the moment when it. I guess, presumably after 92, people say, well, okay, we're Going to take this sport seriously. Now the countries are deciding how much do we want to invest in this in terms of our athletic programs? Did the United States at that moment, did they do well enough in the Demonstration Games to decide? Let's put some resources into this.

We did okay. We weren't, definitely weren't dominant and we weren't on the podium. I mean, on the women's side, Kathy Turner had won a gold in 92 and again in 94. Other than that, there was no real funding mechanism. We were there, but, you know, at the time, people were training in the up, they were training in Marquette, Michigan.

Now were you thinking. Because now by the time you get into the sport, it's 94, which means there was another Olympic year. Because that was the 94 was the year summer and winter offset, if I recall. Right. That was the whole Nancy Kerrigan, Tanya Harding year, wasn't it? If I. That makes me feel old because I remember that like it was yesterday. Were you thinking, I want to go to the Olympics, or were you just thinking, no, I just want to keep, you know, sort of beating whoever I'm skating against and I'm going to still be a swimmer.

I knew that I didn't want to swim.

I see. Okay.

Yeah, it was around that, around that time.

So you're kissing Stanford and Michigan goodbye.

I knew at that time that those were not in my path. Looking back, very interesting. And I'm pretty sure I would have not gotten a full ride to Stanford if I had pursued. And maybe I would have, but, you know, obviously I didn't. So, you know, at the age of 14, I was winning quite a bit of competitions locally in. Domestically in the United States. And I was essentially being scouted by a few of these Junior Development Program coaches who at the time the Junior Development Program was In Lake Placid, New York, the same place where the 1980 Olympic Games were, where Haydn won his, you know, amazing five medals and the Miracle on Ice from the US Beat the. The Soviets in the semifinal. They went on and won the gold. But that's where I was going to have to move to. And these coaches, Patrick went on at the time, came to my father and said, we, we actually have a lot of interest in bringing your son early. You have to be 15 years old to be admitted into this program. I was only 14.

And was this a summer only program or was this an academy where you'd actually go to school? School there.

It's a real academy like you. You actually literally move there, you go to school There and you train to be. Hopefully the next stage would then go to the national team and train to go be a part of the Olympic program.

Okay.

I didn't know what any of this stuff meant.

Right. I mean, so they approached your dad.

They approached my father, they approached me. I wouldn't even know what that. I was like, okay, that sounds not fun. You know, on the other side of the country, like, I want to stay in Seattle. We've got, you know, very few sunshine days a year. It's the summertime. Like, I don't want to go there. This was 1997, the summer of 1996. And they essentially said, you know, we want Apollo to come. And what do you think? And my father was like, absolutely, I gotta get this kid focused on something. You know, I kind of alluded before that I was pretty mischievous as a kid. I had difficulty concentrating and staying on task to one specific thing.

Are you one of those kids that today would automatically get this label of attention deficit?

For sure. I'm sure I would have been loaded up on.

Had you been riddle in all day long.

Adderall, all day kinds of stuff.

Right.

So. Which my dad was always. He wouldn't care if I even got that diagnostic. He would never allow that for some reason. My dad's been like 20 years ahead of the game in terms of nutrition. I don't know where he learns this stuff, but anyway, different topic.

Well, he's got good lineage, right. I mean, if you, you know, just, just follow the Okinawa and you're pretty much going to be okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Centaurians. My father then approached me and I remember this very clearly. He's like, look, you've got this incredible opportunity to train in Lake Placid, New York. You potentially could go on to be a part of the Olympic team, which would mean that you would make the 1998 Olympic team in Nagano, Japan, and compete. Your grandfather's still alive. I'm from Japan. This is your heritage. This is an incredible opportunity.

Wait, was that a real possibility that. Because you would have only been 16, right?

I would have only been 15.

Fifteen for those Olympic Games, Correct. I mean, for a men's sport to go to The Olympics at 15 is almost unheard of. It's not unheard of for women, but for men, that's really. That's amazing that they thought that that was a chance, right?

Yeah. So that was the end game.

Like, Michael Phelps went to his first Olympics at 15. What most people don't realize is he was fifth in the 200 fly was the only event he went for which was still unbelievable. It's hard to believe that a 15 year old boy could have gone to the Olympics and placed fifth in the world at arguably the second most grueling race in swimming, if not the most grueling race in swimming. He went on to break his first world record before his 16th birthday, if my memory serves me correctly, making him the youngest male athlete to ever have a world record in a time sport.

Yep. Michael's not human. I've known Michael for years. He's not human, doesn't matter what he says, and he trains like a monster, but he also is just not, he is put on earth to be in that water. I think he told me one time, he goes, I'm more comfortable in the water than I am in my bed. It's more comfortable for me to be. I guess there's like a sense of weightlessness, right?

Yeah, but that's amazing. Well, actually, you and Michael have something in common, which is you are both the most decorated Olympians in the United States in the Summer and Winter Games. Michael of course, also being the most decorated Olympian ever. But I don't think any US Olympian is more decorated in the Winter Games than you are they.

It's arguable and subjective, right. I, I, I had an amazing career and I was very blessed to be won that many medals. But I also had the opportunity to win a lot of medals too. Right? So like I, I grew up in the Olympic Training center with these wrestlers. They only have a chance to win one medal, right?

Yeah. No, certain sports are amenable to winning more medals.

That title has been, has been kind of tasked over and over again and I smile when I hear it because it's, it's amazing.

Right?

But I still look at Eric Hyde and Bonnie Blair and they're very good friends of mine and I still consider them to be like, you know, really on top of the podium.

So, okay, so it's summer of 96. You're basically being brought in 18 months before what could be your first Olympics.

Correct. So it is the summer of 96, opportunity to move to be part of the Junior Development Program. My father says, you gotta do this. I'm at a mischievous age. I didn't recognize my own talent. He says yes, I say no. He says red, I say black. Like, like I'm always the complete opposite of what my father is saying. And so, you know, he essentially packs my bags, tries to explain to me the incredible importance of what I'm about to Embark upon and then drives me to SeaTac Airport, drops me off, waves goodbye, and then I wave goodbye. I had a plan in my head already what I was going to do next. And I walked right to the payphone, which we used payphones back then in 96.

Put a quarter in it.

Yeah, exactly. And I called my friend and I said, I'm supposed to. To go to New York today, but I'm not. Come pick me up from the airport. And then for the next, like, I would say eight days, I was bouncing around from, like, almost like 11 days, actually bouncing around from house to house, all while my father believes that I'm still in Lake Placid. But I'm so angry. I'd never called him, and he hadn't got a call from the.

What did the coaches do when you didn't show up?

So the coaches called him eventually. I think this is probably like on day six, six or something like that, right? And they're like, hey, Mr. Ono, you know, very curious. The offer is still wide open. We just never heard from you or, you know, do you have plans on still attending? And my dad's like, oh, my God, you lost my son. And, you know, all these things. And he figures out somehow which house I was at, picks me up. He's. He's very angry, obviously, because essentially I was running away as a kid, and, you know, my dad has got this, like, sense of wisdom, and he's noticing these, like, small little habits that I had been doing as a child that he really, really try to train out of me. And he thought that by placing me in this kind of single discipline sport of going in circles would do a lot psychologically from a beneficial perspective. I didn't know anything about that time. All I knew is I didn't want to go there.

Why do you think you didn't want to go? I mean, you had been successful. Do you think on some level you were afraid of going and finding out you might not be as good as you thought you could be?

I don't even think it was. I don't even think I got that deep. I think it was just. I just didn't. I literally didn't want to go. I wanted to hang out with my friends in the Seattle area, and it was that simple and also stupid that I was going to be throwing away potentially, because I could have very easily just said, no, I'm not going to do this thing and done it again. Right. And just never went to New York. And then we would never be sitting here talking about this so credit getting my father, who the second time he comes and takes me to the airport, gets on the plane.

And with the second time meaning it's still the summer of 96, it's just like a couple weeks later, two weeks later. So first of all, I mean, that's pretty interesting that the coaches there didn't say, well, forget this kid. Like he just failed the test, right? Like the test was, do you have the mental fortitude to even show up?

On day one, the coaches were like, we have to have this kid.

Oh, wow. Okay.

This kid is, he is going to make us speed skating. Like amazing. Those are not my words. These are things that they're trying to tell my dad, which he tried to kind of tell me to me. But you know, when you're 14 and you don't agree with anything your father says, it doesn't make any sense. And so again this.

So this time he accompanies you there.

Oh, he makes sure. So he flies to Albany, New York. We take the drive to Lake Placid. He gets out of the car, he shakes Patrick Wendland's hand, says good luck, and he walks, turns around and goes home, you know, and Patrick Wendland's like, oh shit. Like I got this Calvin and Hobbes character in my life. I don't need this kind of heat. But Patrick actually turned out to be an incredible coach and mentor and got that first night that was just so awkward and weird. I mean you're. I mean, I'm a 14 year old kid. I'm living now in a dormitory. I've got roommates from parts of the country I don't, I've never heard of or recognized.

And they're all short track skaters or it's short long skates.

There's both, there's both in the, in the Junior Olympic program in the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center. You've got luge, you've got bobsled, you've got cross country, you've got the ski jumping guys, you've got long and short track speed skating and you've got all the biathletes and you've got everyone there from the winter regions because Lake Placid is very cold in the winter. And so I'm a complete fish out of water. I look different, I talk different, I wear different types of clothes, I listen to different types of music. I can't relate to anybody. And I feel I hated it there the first seven days. I remember this very viscerally. I really, really every day would Call my dad. Like, I hate it. This place is not for me. And my dad's like, just, you gotta give it 30 days. You have to be there for a month. Just give it time, Give it time.

And prior to going, had you done much in the way of off ice training? Like, you know, you and I have talked and we're going to talk later today about some of your legendary workouts in the weight room. Had you discovered that yet or were you mostly an on ice guy and not doing a lot of dry land?

I mean, my dad would take me when I was a quad, an inline skater. My dad would wake me up really, really early in the morning before he went to work, and he would make me go to the park and skate. So the tiger dad, or whatever you want to call it, that was very much. And I hated it, by the way. It was horrible. I hated it so much, I told my dad, I want to quit one time because he was like, oh, you want to quit? Okay, tell me that you really, really want to quit. For him, it was never about me actually becoming the best. I don't think that actually was ever part of his goal and life plan. His plan was to instill these mental strengths within me that never allowed me to quit what I was doing, to develop the capacity to understand what it was like to truly leave no stones unturned during the preparation. And it's a very Japanese in his way, right? Like, okay, you want to do this one thing, then everything you do is dedicated towards being incredible. And you know, think about this. The Japanese sushi masters, right? They have seven years before they're ever allowed to touch the fish. They're just making rice every day. Dude, I would blow my brains out. Month two. Like, I could not deal with that, right? You're telling me I'm an amazing sushi. Like, what happens if you're just really, really good and you're talented? Nope. You can't break the rules. It's gonna take you seven years of touching this rice and making it perfect before you're allowed to touch the fish. So like that kind of mentality of this ever going method of trying to become perfect. And my dad left Japan, so he didn't want to do that, but I think he couldn't help himself. That's just a part of.

Well, I mean, my guess is he realized that maybe at its most extreme end, it wasn't what was right for him. But I suspect he realized that there were elements of that that were beautiful, that were important and that he was succeeding As a result of. I suspect he wanted you to have some elements of that discipline and that, again, passion might be overly simplistic, but the ability to stay on that thread and master something. Which is interesting, right? Because, look, like all parents, he wanted the best for you. At this point, you're 14 even. Maybe he couldn't have imagined you'd go on to be what you did. But it was like, look, this kid's gonna go to college, and whatever he's learning here, this grit will translate over to that next phase of his life.

And maybe he didn't really know and had a master plan. I think he did, and I think he'll tell you that he did. But it wasn't exactly graphed out like he. You know, this is the recipe for having success and being a successful father, which I consider my father to be. But it was. It was. It was tough, right? I mean, you imagine I'm really, really, really young and I'm being forced at waking up at like, 6 or 5 in the morning to go skate outside in a. Oh, that's right.

You're. If I'm doing the math right, you're 14. You're a year younger than the normal entry to this program, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That started. And when we. When I arrived in Lake Placid and I was going through the process of understanding, like, if I even like the sport, like, I'm probably, like, on week number two or three, I started recognizing, wow, this is. I feel a lot of freedom here. My dad's not here. The only kind of authority figure I have is my coach, who is really, really easy. But also I respect, because he's figured out a way to talk to me in a way that speaks to me.

Is he kind of your first real coach?

He's my first real coach.

So all of the previous year and a half or two years, you were. It's my dad who obviously, you know, despite his greatness, doesn't really know much about speed skating.

He knows nothing about speed skating.

So you're sort of like, you're just going out to the track and just. You don't have a strategy. You're just trying to win. Yeah.

I mean, every time I would skate back then, it was sheerly based on talent, nothing more. I didn't train.

In other words, off the line, you're going for broke every time. You're not trying to be tactical and outsmart somebody. Necessarily.

Basically, yeah. And, you know, arguably, I was just better than most of those kids. They didn't. In my eyes, they didn't know how to speed skate very well.

So now you got this coach, and presumably he's looking at you being like, we got to break some habits here.

Yeah. So we do the body composition test first. And I'm like, obviously the highest. My nickname was Chunky as a kid, and, you know, I was eating everything in sight. We had cafeteria.

Just. Let's put this in perspective. There is no way you were a Chunky.

I was junky.

What was your. What was your body fat on that first test?

I don't remember the body fat, but it was the highest. And there was some chubby kids in my. In our program. There were some chubby kids. I mean, look, I'm 14 years old, though. I don't know how. How lean there I was going to be coming out there looking like, you know, shredded. But I was the highest by far.

Did you always kind of have that physique of just having enormous. Yeah. Enormous quads. Enormous quads.

Not enormous, but I was just a thicker kid. And partially because I just was eating everything and I was going through puberty and. And everything was tasty and I would just eat it. I had no understanding any capacity of nutrition and what it meant.

Which is so funny knowing you now. Right. Like, you're so dialed on everything.

Yeah. Try to be much more specific in terms of how you live your life. And anyway. But back then. And also didn't really matter. Thinking back. So I get these tests back, and I'm deeply embarrassed to be the most chubby kid out there. And I. I remember the coach telling me one time, like, what do you want to do? Like, what are your goals for this year? And I was like, goals? What does that even. What do you mean, my goals for this year? I couldn't even think about the next six months, let alone the world team trials in eight months from now. Like, I had no idea what that meant. And then. So I started to understand that I actually liked speed skating. I liked being out there on the ice. I liked the feeling. And I remember one time I. Because I was so embarrassed by that first.

By the way, going back to just one sort of technical issue about the. The sport. Short track has how many distances? It's the 500, the thousand.

500,000 and 1500 meters.

1500.

And then we have a relay.

And across those three distances, had you exhibited proficiency equally or were you more geared towards one or the other at that age?

I was stronger in the 1500 meters.

Okay.

I was more. I would say we would call it an endurance athlete. So two and a half minutes on the ice at a time, separated by 20 minute breaks. And then, you know, you race basically every 20 minutes.

Jesus. That is Phelpsian.

Yeah, it's like that's.

There were races, I think, in the Olympics where Michael would have, what, 17 minutes between a heat and a final or something, which it just seems impossible to imagine.

Yeah, your recovery has to be very, very high. And that's why most athletes in short track speed skating, even to this day, they train for all the distances. They train for the 500, which is the pure sprint, 40 seconds. They train for the 1500 meters, which is two and a half minutes. And they even train for the 3000 meters, which is only held at the world championships, which is like, you know, four and a half minutes. So going back to my story, I was so embarrassed by this body composition test that I sat down with Patrick Wentons and I asked him, is it possible that I can become too good too early? And he's looking at me. I remember looking at me like, what the hell is this kid talking about? No, that's why you're here, right? And he's like, no. And I was like, what happens if you burn out? He's like, you only burn out if you don't like the sport anymore. If we train you to too hard, like, and it's not going to be the latter. So as long as you continuously like this, you're going to be. You're going to do great. You just, you got to focus. And that began my kind of understanding of if I really concentrate on this and I really care about the outcome, I was able to achieve really, really interesting results. And I went to the junior trials, which means you make the junior world team. And I was supposed to make that team and I didn't. I got third.

So it's like swimming where the top two make it correct. Okay.

And I remember going back home and being so pissed that I didn't make that team, that I just started actually really attacking the weight room.

Was that kind of your first big loss? Was that the first time you were surprised at an outcome?

It was the first time that in short track speed skating that I was supposed to make a team, but I didn't. And I just remember that feeling was just. It was so, like, itchy. It's like the itch that you can't scratch and it's there every day, every second of the hour.

Do you remember that race? What happened?

You race at multitude of different distances, but it just, it was a combination of. I Wasn't good enough and I wasn't racing properly. I shouldn't have made that team.

So you sort of reached your limit of natural talent at that age.

Yep. That was the time where if I wanted to make significant changes, I'd have to really concentrate both technically and also on the physiology of training to be a short track athlete. And I started attacking the weight room and that was the only way that I knew how to exert like this. You know, I'm, this, I'm going through puberty as a kid, I've got all this testosterone. I'm, I'm genetically gifted for the sport. I just have to put it to work. And so that was the one major difference is I just remember just basically putting more plates on the squat rack at the age of 14. And it was very easy. And I noticed like, I remember like a week would go by and my like strength would increase by like 30%. Like it was like just compounding.

Boom, boom.

Every single week I was just getting stronger and stronger, stronger. And when I arrived in the world team trials in 96 to make the 1997 World Team, I ended up actually winning the competition, which in for, you know, the viewers who don't understand, that's like I was 14 years old racing against guys who were grown men.

So this isn't Junior World, this is to make the team to go to the worlds, to represent the U.S. this is. And again, for most people who don't follow Olympic sports outside of Olympic years, you know, you sort of have an Olympics three out of four years because you've got Olympics or Worlds, you actually.

Compete every single year. Yeah, exactly. So you, you, we've got World Cups, we've got World Championships, and that's what we're doing, you know, every single, we're not working at like Home Depot and just like having fun.

So you made the team for this is 97 go to the world. So this is the team this is now means you're an odds on favorite to go to the Olympics in 98?

Absolutely. I mean I, I dominated those trials.

What did you do at the worlds that year?

I think I got 19th in the world, I think. And I remember that I had never skated against the Chinese or the Korean. I only skated against Canadians and Americans at the time.

So you hadn't even skated against Europeans?

I skated against no one other than those two countries. And you know, when you talk about Canadians, I probably skated against really only like 10 guys from Canada who were semi competitive with me. So When I went to the World Championships, the first thing I noticed was the track pattern in which these athletes were skating were so vastly different. And that's when this light bulb came on my head and I was like, oh, God, My, my God, the US Is so far behind. We are skating the wrong way. Everyone is basically, when they exit the corner, they're hugging the, you know, the blocks and they're basically creating the smallest distance possible to protect their inside lane and position. And I was way out by the boards.

So you're taking a faster turn but going a greater distance.

Right. You're basically creating more pressure on your legs, but you're being more protected. So it's also, I just noticed the strategy was so much more important in international competitions. And I felt like we were skating two different races. And, you know, I performed, you know, pretty poorly because it's my first world Championships. But that's when I saw like, this is the big leagues. These are the guys who are really training to win medals. These are the Koreans, these are the Chinese, these are the Canadians. This is the real national teams. These, this is all they care about. This is all they do on a day to day basis. And it was a huge difference between racing domestically at the world trials level in the US versus international once you actually go. And that's when I was like, wow, I have to if I want to remain competitive. Like, it felt so. I felt so far away at that time.

Were you discouraged? I mean, it sounds like a silly question to be 19th, but did you actually expect to go there and win or did you expect to do better than 19?

No, I didn't have any expectations, to be honest with you. I didn't know what to expect. What I did understand was, you know, Again, this is 97, so this is pre Olympic year, which means we were having the world Championships in Nagano, Japan, because they usually want to have a test event to make sure the venue works properly. So can you imagine all of the Japanese that are there? Right. My father's there, my, my grandparents are there. I mean, it's a full arena with 20,000 people in that arena. I'm 14 years old. I've never skated in front of more than like a thousand people in my life, let alone this many people. And I just remember the roar was so deafening and I just was like, man, this is, this is, this feeling is so addictive. And looking at like all the other athletes and their like colorful skin suits and the Koreans and they skated so differently than we did. The Chinese had their own style of skating. The Canadians, the Italians. And I was like, man, this is, like, this is crazy. Like, this is. I can't believe it. I'm here. And I finished that competition. I very much realized and recognized that the Koreans, in my view, were significantly better than everyone else. Technically. The way they raced, the way that they carried themselves on and off the ice was very, very unique at the time. And, you know, I came home from those world championships with an incredible experience. I mean, mentally and psychologically. And then unfortunately, instead of spending. This is now 97 this summer. So I'm going into trials for the.

Olympics are going to be in February of 98.

The trials are in December.

Okay.

I come home in March of 97.

So you've got basically eight months till the trials.

So I've got three and a half to four months until I go back into, into the national team program. Now, before I was in the junior team program training Lake Placid, we now I would be relocated to Colorado Springs, the official Olympic training center of the United States. And this is where all of the guys who I just beaten, you know, a month before, this is where everyone's going to be housed and trained. 80% of the guys, some guys had their own personal coaches in Saratoga Springs and other areas. But most of the team was training in one location. And, you know, if you have 12 people there, only five are selected to the team. One is an alternate four skate the relay. The top two from each distance skate individually at the games with an opportunity to win a medal. None of this makes any sense to me still. Okay. Even though I had just won and even though I had done very, very well, I come back from that competition and I go back to Seattle. And instead of training, my food choices were like basically taco bell pizza and 00 athletic activity. I'm talking why. I don't think that I truly understood the importance of the office training mechanism and off season training. I thought this was the break that you're supposed to take. And my dad's like, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be working out. I was like, whatever. I just, you know, tell him I did. I just, I didn't. And I fell back into the same negative habit of hanging out with the same kind of crowd and individuals who. That's what my dad wanted me to get away from. And now what I was doing, I'm getting older, I'm more crafty. I'm, you know, I've got experiences under my belt and I'm just doing it on my own. And finally when I get back to Colorado Springs, you know, I.

And you head back at the end of the summer or the beginning of the summer.

Now this is the end of the summer.

End of the summer. 98. So you're like four months from trials.

More like maybe like five and a half months from trials. And so now I'm in a position where I've gained like all this. I think I gained like 20 pounds or something crazy from when they saw me the last time. Time you can imagine, I'm still going through puberty, I'm still kind of maturing, zero training, eating complete garbage food. And my physique totally changed. Like I just show up with like basically these two spare tires around my, my body, you know, and they're like. And I remember hearing when we're doing body composition, we all to take our shirts off and do the do this test. I remember some of the other athletes going, holy shit. Like, what the hell's that kid been doing? You know, everyone's been busting their ass in the off season because they all recognize the importance. And I just remember being Colorado Springs and it was a different environment. I didn't have Patrick Wetland as my head coach. I had a different coach at the.

Time because Patrick stayed with the junior team.

No, Patrick was the assistant coach now to the national team. He had zero power or say in any of the training. Just the way the structure was working at the time. And I wasn't mentally committed to the sport at that time. And that's not a good thing. Right. So here I am now training with the national team. Huge importance. Everyone's trying hard, everyone's committing everything they're doing and I'm just going through the motions during that year.

Do you have a sense with the benefit of hindsight as to what, what else might have been going on in your head at that time? Because you've now tasted success, right? And not only have you tasted success, you've tasted success on the back of huge effort. Yeah, right. You had already discovered the weight room, you had discovered your capacity for work, which like Phelps and like Haydn and like all these other great athletes. It's really the capacity for training that seems to differentiate them. You figured out, you had that, you figured out your superpower and then you decided, yeah, I'm not going to do it.

It's like this self sabotage. I think that early in my career and I actually, I struggle with this later on in my career too as an athlete where it's going so well. It's almost too perfect. It's too easy. Let me throw. Let me throw a little monkey wrench in here. And really, let's see if I don't train and if I can really make the team again, because let's see if I'm really that good.

Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying.

So psychologically, I had a pattern, I think, of doing that.

What's the minimum effective dose of training I can get to still? Yeah.

Let me basically screw off and almost throw this opportunity totally away and see if I can still come back and get it and remind me, because I'll come back to that. And the way that I raced for many, many years also is exactly like that. Let me wait until the very, very last lap to make a move. I don't. That's very dangerous, like you're talking about. It has to be perfect.

You can't. Yeah, the margin's gone. Yeah.

So you're playing with fire at that point. Right. And I remember one time skating a race, great Canadian speed skater Marc Gagnon, he watched me do this. Like, I waited till the last half lap, that I passed all four skaters on the outside. And he's like, oh, you're playing with fire, man. You're gonna get burned one day. You know, I remember that, like, in my head, because I did, and it. And it did burn me. So, anyway, so, I mean, just to go back to your question. Yeah, that's what happened. I mean, I've been blessed enough. I was blessed to have a really unique gift to athletics and specifically in short track speed skating. And I was really squandering. It was so easy. It was too easy. I couldn't recognize that you've got this talent. You really also have to really, really dedicate yourself. And don't throw away this incredible opportunity because there's a thousand guys in line who have half the talent but would do 10 times more work just to be a fraction of what you could possibly become. I didn't recognize it. It was just so stupid. And I kick myself now thinking about that. But that's what happened. So the whole year, that year in Colorado Springs, I went just going through the motions, very defiant against my coach. Didn't really want to be there.

So when you entered the trials In December of 98, did you think you were going to make the team?

No, I didn't.

Given your lackluster performance, I wrote it off.

I was like, I don't even want to make the team. I don't want to be here.

You were completely self Sabotaged.

At this point, I am so far departed. I have the same mentality as I did before I went to Lake Pulassi. And so when I go to these trials and we do a time trial in the beginning, let's say there's, let's say there's a hundred people show up for the trials. You do a nine lap time trial. And from those results, only 16 are now racing. And that's the bracket. Sixteen people now is making up your preliminary quarter heat, semifinal. I finished.

Don't say 17th.

I finished 16th in the track.

And you made it.

No, no, I didn't make the team.

I made the cut to go.

Yeah, but I got last. So basically I should have got 17. That means I wouldn't have to skate the whole competition, Right? Right. I ended up skating the whole competition.

So you now earn the right to.

I earn the right to try to compete. And we still have videotaped of this, like every race. I'm just crossing the line with like my head facing the ice and looking down and just completely defeated as, you know, a 15 year old. And so my father, this to me is a really important part of my life. My father sees this and he had been spending all his time in Seattle, right? So my father sees this. He then takes me from Boston at the time. So it takes me back to Seattle after the meet.

You've lost. You didn't make the trial.

I mean, everyone was just. I hear the quiet conversations. Oh, my God, this kid is just, you know, he's another.

He's throwing it away.

He threw it away. He had so much talent. Oh, my God. My dad's embarrassed, right? He's like, oh, my God. Like this, you know, what the hell happened? Like, you were number one less than a year ago. You were supposed to go and be a medalist. My dad already bought tickets for the Olympic Games. Like he'd already set aside time to spend that there. So now we're in, we're in a spot where my dad is like, look, you have to make a decision. Do you want to continue in this path of Olympic, you know, pursuit, or do you want to do something else? And I was like, I don't, I don't know what I want to do. He goes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You don't know what you want to do. So he takes me to this place where we used to go to and have vacations, which is three and a half hours southwest of Seattle area called Moclips beach. Which is. Sounds nice, but it's like rains like, you know, 300 days a year. And it's like very dark and it's beautiful now. But he drops me off and he says, you're going to stay here until you figure out what you want to do with your life.

What do you mean, stay there?

You're going to stay here in this cabin, literally rented a cabin, and you're going to stay here until you're ready. The real answer with what you're going to do, and I don't care what the answer is, but you have to come to a real decision and commit yourself, and that's what you're going to do. And he leaves.

This is like the best parenting story in the history of parenting.

I'm a bad kid, right? Tough love is the only way to do this. And he drops me off and he says, this is what you got to do. And I have food and I didn't have. There's no video games, no tv.

Exactly. You don't have a cell phone and iPad to screw around.

No Instagram. There's no. There's nothing. It's just me in nature. And I have, like, workout gear. I have a stationary bike. Like, I have my old bike. And I set up a little spinner in the back, and that's it. And like a pen and pad to write, to make notes and journal. And every day I'm.

And you're 15.

15. And. And you know, again, if you go back, like, I grew up kind of taking care of myself, so it's not a big deal to me. But I mean, thinking back, I'm like, oh, my God, that's a pretty serious.

What do you think? Have you ever talked to your dad about what was going through his mind on the three and a half hour drive back to Seattle when he dropped you off?

He was terrified and scared and afraid he's making the wrong decision. Is he a bad parent? Is this too much? Am I gonna be able to handle it? And I think my dad is like, this is. Nothing else is working. No one can get to this kid. He's got all the green lights in his life and he's throwing him away. Like, this is it. This is the last straw. This is the last effort with the. Except I didn't have, you know, Jocko willink down the street to, like, basically say, you know, like, to really drill home the importance of what it needs to be done.

I can call Jocko right now if.

You want, and I would love it.

I would have invited him over for dinner tonight. I Never even thought of it.

So just thinking back, I was so fractured mentally.

Did that first night in that cabin hurt more than that first night your dad yanked you back to Lake Placid? No. Those would be two tough nights, right?

It was different because this time, when I left the Olympic trials in 98, I actually knew that I could have made the team. And here's the sick part. I think that if I trained just for one month before, I probably would have been top three and I would have made the team had I just put like a fraction of effort and I didn't want to do it. I know for sure. I wanted to taste such devastating defeat when I'm supposed to win something. I think I was addicted to that self sabotage of, okay, I'm at the real bottom now. What do I got to do? And so I spent nine days in this cabin alone, writing down, making a journal. I still have the notes, actually. I'm writing down my thoughts and, and praying and trying to just determine like, why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Give me a sign. I was like mindlessly going out on these runs. 45 minutes, an hour, half an hour. And it's raining every single day, by the way, because this is December and it's cold and like there's no by the way. There's no one there. This is like the place where they send people who are part of like the witness protection programs. Like there's literally, there's like a. There's a Native American reservation 15 miles up the road. And other than that, there's like, there's literally no one else to out hang at these cabins.

So it's you and like someone from the Gambino crime family and witness protection.

As a 15 year old, it's not fun. I mean, now I would like love to spend time there alone. In solitary.

Yeah, I was gonna say give me the address. I need to go.

It's incredible. I mean, it's. It's a place where I go when I need to make really, really what I consider to be important decisions where I want to make a shift.

You still go?

I haven't been in a couple years, but I'm. I'm planning on taking actually my girlfriend pretty soon. It's a beautiful place. Is, there's nature is, I think, really, it's always been a very important part of my life. I think my dad did that when I was very young.

You know where the exact cabin was?

I know the exact cabin. I know the exact place. They rebuilt it.

Right.

So it's much nice. Someone bought the, it was called the Iron Springs Resort at the time. And back then it was iron.

And springs generally don't go side by side. Right, right.

It wasn't nice. And definitely they should have left off the word resort for sure. At the time it felt like Iron Springs jail, you know, penitentiary. Every road is basically like a one way road and you're surrounded by these beautiful trees. But again, I'm just running every day and mindless. I'm just trying to figure it out. Fifteen years old, I'm at the fork in the road. What do I want to do? Do I want to please my dad? Does my dad want me to speed skate? Does he want me to do this? And then finally I was like, you know what? Like, I think I want to speed skate. I think I want to actually truly dedicate myself to do this. And also I was pretty bitter that I didn't make the team, which doesn't make any sense. Right.

Because I did it myself, threw it away. Yeah.

But I was also like, I hated the feeling of that, of like the opportunity was there and I didn't take it.

Were you still in touch with your friends that you had grown up with that obviously for the year and a half prior you'd been somewhat detached from. Because you're now living this separate life training. But what did your friends think of this opportunity? I mean, did a lot of them say they didn't know, they didn't understand what you were going through?

No, I didn't really talk about it. They didn't really understand. And it was very much in my own head.

And.

It was when I made the decision to continue one more time and really, really give short track speeds, getting a try is that changed my whole life.

Well, I mean, what do you think happened in that nine days that made you, because you had to leave there, go back home, watch the Olympics six weeks later, basically watch three other skaters in your flag in your colors and thought, you know, I really could have been one of those guys and then decide, I mean, not that you would have known it at the time, but this would go on to occupy your life for the next 12 years. Right?

Yeah. So I remember calling my father and saying, I made a decision, I want to come back to Seattle. And he didn't ask me what the decision was, by the way. He just came and picked me up and drove me back. And during that three and a half hour drive, I explained him what I want to do. And he's. I can feel that he's like, okay, let's see. And so I go back to Lake Placid to train under a different coach.

You wait till the Olympics are over.

No, no, no, no. This is, this is still during the Olympics. I go, I go there right away. Because after the Olympics, there's a World Team Trials, which the format's messed up, but. So after the Olympics, the World Team Trials, now I have the opportunity of. Of making the World Team, which at this time, you know, after the Olympics, no one's training. No one cares about the, the World Team. And I remember just kind of training really hard and studying, and I get sixth at those World Team Trials. So I was a double alternate, which means I would skate no distances at all, but I would basically just carry the bags for everybody. And if two guys got hurt, then I had a chance at getting in. So I went to those World Championships and I just had a different view. Something had switched in my mind and I started taking notes and I made promises to myself, like real legitimate promises that I could never get out of. When I get home, I'm not calling anybody. No one's even going to know that I'm back home in Seattle and my off season or the time spent after this, the next four and a half months is going to be completely dedicated towards just being a monster. And so set up the stationary bike in the basement, had a small 7 inch or 9 inch Sony Triniton TV, VCR. And I just watched skating tapes every single day, trained twice a day alone until I arrived back in Colorado Springs as a part of the national team program. And I was significantly more fit and stronger than anyone else and developed such a strong aerobic base that I was burying everyone on my team. Even though I was still ranked number six, I was by far number one.

And so the next big test for you would have been the 99 worlds? Yep. Which was where that year?

Sofia, Bulgaria. The real test was actually that year. 98. I won my first World cup medal. I ended up winning a gold in the thousand meters against the reigning thousand meter Olympic champion, Kim Dong Song and Fabio Carta, who was like, many times you should have been world champion. And I won. I came out of nowhere. That became my real first taste of winning on the world circuit. And again, this is post Olympic year, so it's not that important. Like, people don't really care. No one in the US Is even watching this stuff really cared to me. It also was a time where I got in. I started to work with a sports psychologist. And that was the big, big Difference.

In terms of performance, what did he or she teach you? Or what was the most important insight that you got early on from that experience?

So this. This guy named David Creswell, who was pretty young at the time, I think he was actually still studying. He was going to.

How did you meet him?

He was brought in as an intern to basically look over a lot of the younger athletes. And he also was doing a sports psychology kind of residency program at the Olympic Training Center. And so he was so pro about, you know, all these different things. And he started asking me, we would play badminton, like, for fun. I would make mistakes, like over and over again. And he would notice that I was kind of getting down on myself. And he would ask me these, like, little questions like, oh, what happened there with that shot? You know, And I. This guy was so young, I was like, I can't respect this guy. And I just. I didn't recognize the time that he was basically trying to figure out how I ticked, like, what made me angry. And the inconsistencies that would happen on the court were a direct representation of actually what was happening in sport. And so that was my first real foray into understanding. And so we did everything from like, you know, meditation exercises to breathing exercises, to writing down positive self. You know, the basics, right? Positive self talk, manifesting what you want. And then he began my real, true process of visualization. And then I ended up winning the 99 Junior Worlds that time in Montreal, which was a huge win.

You were still eligible to compete at Junior World?

I was still eligible. 16. And it was hugely beneficial. The mental component of the sport was always, to me, the most fascinating and the most underutilized in every aspect and to my detriment later on in my career too, because I did things that completely are very destructive when you think about it in terms of sports science and the training that we did. But to me, I didn't care. I wanted the edge of being able to say, I'm going to wear this 45 pound weight vest. I'm going to go up this Manitou incline five times back to back and do skating jumps every 25 steps on one leg and then switch to the left and then do them alternating, boom, boom, boom, and just do that back to back until basically I throw up. Now, there's no physiological benefit you're getting after like the first set, right? But the psychological advantage that you would create is just this mental hardness that no one else would do. And I loved it. The harder it snowed outside, the less people that are Outside, I want to be out there with the weight vest doing something dumb. Training, that to me was the epitome of what was a driving force later on in my career. And I craved it time and time again.

You mentioned it earlier, and I know you've talked about it in the past, that you always looked at boxers as role models, even though you didn't end up boxing. And it's funny because that's very much a boxer's mentality, right? I mean, I think with every sport, so much of it is going on between the ears, especially a sport when it's against another individual, which is not the takeaway from a team sport. But when you lose in tennis, there's no subtlety about who won and who lost, right? But this idea of how the training feeds the beast. Growing up, I felt. It's so funny. I mean, on a much smaller level, I remember I used to run at 4:30 every morning. So all of high school, I would run at 4:30, and it had to be somewhere between 5 and 13 miles was the distance. And growing up in Toronto, it was so cold in the winter that the colder it was and the darker it was, the happier I felt. Because I remember thinking, the guy I'm gonna fight is not up at this moment. There is no way he is in a warm bed. And just that fact, absent any physiologic benefit, became the thing that you needed to hang onto. And again, I don't know how many skaters thought that way, but you clearly were training like a fighter and living.

In the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center. We were all rooming with different short track athletes. And then there was one time in which instead of rooming with a short track athlete, they had asked me if I wanted to room with a wrestler. And everyone at the time was like, no, the wrestlers are dirty. These guys always get staph infections. They're like, just nasty. They're crazy. And I was like, sure, I don't mind. Like, I'll room with the wrestler. And that was my first entrance into the mind of a fighter. And I loved it because I'm like, look, I wear spandex for a living. In skate and circles, it's not the most manly thing known to, you know, on this planet, but I wanted it to be more than.

It's not as primal. I mean, you could argue wrestling or are about as primal as any sport gets, right?

You're fighting against another human being. Basically, in my own right, I was fighting in my own ways, right? And there's many correlations. There. But I love the psychology of those wrestlers that I would see and I would go in the sauna post weight training workout and I would. I was the only non wrestler in the sauna every time they were in there ever. And I just remember like talking to these guys and hearing them talk to each other and watching them cut weight and been like, like these guys are not human. They are doing everything against what I was told from a sports science perspective and they still are winning. Like that mental toughness and fortitude, that's what I craved, was that old school rocky mentality and that hardenedness that is created that I loved. And I thought that was the only way that I could beat the Koreans. That was the only. Because I didn't skate as beautiful as they did. Even to this day, I still love the it. Right. I still like that mentality. And it was a huge part of my career was, was developing that mental fortitude and that strength and that consistency of being so obsessive and replaced my self sabotage stuff with the self sabotage came in the form of like, let's just do some workout. That makes no sense.

Yeah, you went, the pendulum swung so far. You stopped self sabotaging and incompetence and in effort and you started to overdo it. And again, even just some of the videos I've watched, I'm like, oh my God. I watch it now as an old guy who's only thinking about how to avoid injury. And I'm like, oh my God. All the ways you could have just destroyed your body with those things.

Yeah, we used to do some really just ridiculous, ridiculous training. But again, you're young, your body's resilient, you're gifted, you're doing what you love. You're in an arena where that's the only thing that matters. Nothing else exists outside of this realm of short track speed skating. It's the most important thing in the world. Nothing else is here. It was beautiful and I loved it.

So 2002 is the big test. Now, you've had four years to get on the horse. You've won some meets, some important meets. But for most Olympic athletes, the world only considers the Olympics. They don't care about winning the worlds, even though the competition is just as stiff at the worlds. So going into the trials in late 01, were you nervous? What was your confidence level going into make the 2002 team?

I wasn't nervous at all. I was ready and I skated incredibly fast there. I did a time trial. It was like 123.8 was my time trial time.

Wait, wait, that's your 1500 time.

That was my thousand meter time trial time. And at the time, no one was skating under 125 in the world. So when the world heard that I had skated this lap time, they knew that I was ready. And you know, the Koreans, the first time they had to worry about an American skater who was in their race, it was the first time a Canadian had to worry about me was, you know, kind of through 1998, 99.

So it's interesting, the time trial is kind of a nice normalizing metric because it strips out the technique, the strategy, the. Where this person is. So just because you have the fastest time trial doesn't at all mean you could win. You may still get. You may have a dumb race, you may not be able to maneuver and sort of physically get in and around other skaters, but it's certainly a beautiful metric.

It's a brahma.

Yeah, yeah. It's sort of like in cycling, it's your FTP. Yep. Your functional threshold power.

And it shows like, oh, this guy is in incredible shape, by the way.

What. What is your lactate? At the end of a thousand meter time trial, how high would your lactate get?

I don't even remember. My lactate was low.

You're like Lance Armstrong in that regard where Lance is lactate. After the typical set that they would do, which would be a 1km uphill sprint, and they would do lactate checks at the end of these. I mean, his lactate levels were just half of everybody else's.

Yeah, I was very. I was low. So a lot of the sprinters had super high lactate levels. Like they were like in the 20s or something crazy. And I was like always like nine or something weird. I forget the actual numbers. But we would do 6 by 1000 meters.

With what rest?

I want to say the rest was two minutes.

So it's two minute rest or on an interval that gave you about 2 minute rest from however you go do.

9 laps again fast.

Jesus. Yeah.

We hated doing lactate testing, but that was. That was.

Oh, so they would prick you each time. Each time. Yeah, yeah. So that generates your lactate performance curve. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yep.

And mine was pretty steady. Like, I would maintain like my lap time. And also my speed was around the same, even in the set. 4, 5, 6.

Wow.

In speed skating, a lot of it's got to do with technique.

So. Yeah. Although it's so funny, like, I don't know what they're doing these days in Sports science, because I don't really pay much attention, but I wonder if they're doing muscle biopsies on people and looking at lactate clearance and stuff like that. No, because. No, no. No one's offering up a little vastus lateralis biopsy.

And maybe they are in cycling, but I can tell you from just listening to your podcast, 99.999% of all athletes in the US who are Olympic level have no idea what they're doing when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to training. They're just doing what kind of they're told. And I say that with all due respect. Right. But that's just the way it's all.

That much more impressive that they can do so much and it's changing slowly.

But since I retired in 2010 and being so obsessed with, like, looking back on my career and wondering how different I would have done it now versus then and just understanding how the human body works and all the different efficiencies that. Or deficiencies or overtraining and recovery. And there was so much, I think, specifically for short track speed skating because we were so predominantly dominated by the Korean culture and skating. They never used sports science. They did everything by eye. Very old school. Right.

They were just technically the most proficient.

And the most beautiful biomechanics were. And if you did study their training and you did study the way that they skated, it all made sense. But they, again, they didn't.

You.

They didn't have a sports science team there. Measuring lactate. When I went to my first Olympic Games in 2002, like, the rumor to the Korean team was that I had, like, some unknown military, NASA grade technology that I was using because I couldn't figure it out.

Right.

Because I didn't skate.

That night was O2. Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City.

Okay.

Yeah. Post 9 11. It was incredible experience. It was incredible being 19 years old.

Your first medal, was it a gold or a silver?

My first medal was a silver.

Was it the thousand?

It was a thousand meters. Oh, my God.

Which is. That's the funniest race of them all. I didn't know that was your first Olympic final. Can we talk about how funny the race isn't funny, but the video we're gonna link to is exceptional. Right?

It's perfect. It's actually perfect. I'm so happy that I can laugh at it now.

I feel like, so honored that I could have shown you that video because you hadn't seen that video. I never saw that video until I showed it to You?

No, but it's so perfect on so many levels.

You know, it's like watching your face watch it for the first time. I can't believe I couldn't have had that on film. There was just genuine joy. Like you couldn't stop laughing at that. Which is. I'm sure that would have not been that funny at the time. So let's tell people about that race. Right. So you're pretty favored going into this race. It's you. There's a Chinese skater.

Yeah. To give you context, I was in the COVID of Sports Illustrated and I think that the article was about. This was February of the Games.

It's pretty amazing to put a speed skater on the COVID of Sports Illustrated.

It was ridiculous. And you know, sponsored by Nike. And I was going to these games and they said, like, Apollo has the chance to win four medals, four golds going to these games. And everyone in short track speeds games like, that's not gonna happen. No one's that dominant. Our sports too volatile and variable. It's just impossible.

Yeah. Which is true. Right. I mean, this is a much hard not to take anything away from long track. But in long track, you only have to worry about yourself. It's you against a clock. As you said in short track, anything can go wrong.

Yeah.

Almost without exception. Seems to go wrong.

It always goes wrong. Yeah. Whatever plan you had never goes.

Exactly. My favorite Mike Tyson line. Right. And I don't even know if Tyson actually said it, but it's like everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

It's exactly what happens too.

Yeah.

Everyone's technique is beautiful until you start to get tired.

Yeah. Or until some guy jumps right in front of you and like grabs you.

Or pushes you or you get bumped or someone time trials it from the start. Now your whole plan from the beginning is completely out the door because you're not prepared for that. So here we are, a thousand meters. I'm in the final. I've got one of the best Canadian skaters, Matthieu Turkat. I've got a Chinese legend, Li Xia Jun. I've got this young kid, Ahn hyun Su, who's 16 years old. He looks like Harry Potter with glasses. Literally. That's our nickname for him is Harry Potter, who skates so technically beautiful that. I'll get back to that later if we're still talking about it. And then we've got Steven Bradbury, the Australian. And by the way, let's tell us after. So the race begins.

I have my strategy, but Bradbury had called you before. Right. Didn't Bradbury have some connection to the company?

Two days before the semifinal? And he says, hey, man. Hey, mate. The time Stephen Bradbury was working for the skate manufacturer that made my skate in, I think they were in Brisbane. He says, like, hey, I know you're probably gonna get on the podium. Would you mind giving a shout out for the boot company, rbc Revolutionary Boot Company. I'm like, oh, Stephen, no problem, buddy. You know, no problem. Hey, it's good to see you, you know? And he was like, oh, so he's like the typical Australian. I loved him, but I never thought this guy would make it past the preliminary round. I didn't know, actually. I don't even think. Thinking about it, I didn't even know he was skating in the Olympics. Like, that's how much non. Like, he wasn't even there in my mind. He was just another person who happened to be on the ice. Like, he could have been replacing the blocks on the ice. Right. He wasn't even a competitor.

Yeah. You're thinking, wait, why are you wearing spandex? Just to replace the blocks. Like you could do that in much looser fitting clothing.

Yeah, I mean, I say that, like, jokingly. And then the day of the races, he, like, this miraculous thing happens where two people get disqualified and fall down. He makes it into the semifinal, and then he makes it into the final. Like, he doesn't make it. He makes it because people fall down and get disqualified. And now he is, like, sitting here in this. In this final with like, any, by the way, the Canadian, the Chinese, the Korean, and me.

Any one of us, any one of you can win gold.

Any one of us can win gold. I feel very, very confident in my ability to win gold. And I had a very specific strategy. Two and a half laps to go. I start my. My outside pass. I blast off. One lap to go. I notice that the Chinese skater is starting to set up a pass or at least put himself in the position to pass me. And I didn't want that to have happened. So I started skating very defensively and protecting my outside and inside position, thus slowing us down. We fight. The Chinese skater falls down, about a half lap to go. I swing a little bit wide. The Korean skater tries to go on the inside of me. He falls down into me. I fall down, and we all take out the last guy, who's Matthew Turcotte, who's in third place, the Canadian. The Canadian Chinese goes down, the Korean takes me, and then we all take out the Canadian. So everyone falls down in the same corner, which to this day has never happened.

Which is the last corner.

The last corner. I can see the finish line. I'm in first place, by the way, So I feel like I'm gonna win. And I remember thinking in my head, I'm gonna win. I remember thinking that. And then literally, as soon as I snapped my fingers, it was like the karmic reaction.

You're spinning out of, like you're down and spinning.

I'm spinning. I hit the wall. I don't even know what happens. I later find out that, like, my right skate, through my back hitting the boards, my right skate comes inward and actually stabs my left leg. And that's where I have a small cut on that left leg. I get up, I throw my skates across the line. And what I didn't know at the time, that Steven Bradbury, who was like, over a half a lap behind when we all fell down, it only takes about 8 seconds to get around the track, comes around, and he finishes first, and I end up finishing second.

And the video, which, I mean, we're gonna link to the video of the race, because I remember the first thing I thought when I saw that was I was actually impressed that you had the presence of mind to get up and get across the line. Because it looked. And I'm not a skater, so I can't speak to it, but just as an observer, it looked so disorienting when you went down. It was that I was like, geez, I wouldn't even think to do anything other than just stand up. Like, I wouldn't. And it's not like it wouldn't take me two seconds to realize to get across the line. But you didn't have two seconds. It had to be like a brainstem activity. There could be no cerebral involvement. It had to be pure brainstem of. I'm down, I'm spinning, I'm cut. Get across the line. And you did what none of the other skaters were able to do. You were the first one in that whole melee to get across the line. But of course, Stephen got across first, giving you the silver medal.

Yeah, and I ended up winning the silver. And it was.

It was a really good shout out for the boot company because first and second guy both got. Were wearing the same boot.

That's right. That's right. And Steven, I remember, he just kind of goes across the line, raises one arm, barely.

He's standing straight upright across the line. I can't believe it. It's the least, like, Impressive.

Stephen Bradbury cannot believe what just happened. And no Australian was watching the women Winter Olympics, by the way. So all of a sudden, they got to probably send someone there from their media team. They're like, oh, my God, you know, you got to get off the surfing track and get over on the right.

Right, right.

So he. Stephen wins. I ended up actually winning silver. Very disoriented, had no idea what just happened, and got a cut in the process. And it was the most important race of my entire Olympic career. Because at the time, look, I very much wanted to win. Not only that, it was so important for me. I felt like I should have won. And I think that's natural for me to say that.

Right.

I really felt like I should have won, and I felt like Steven should not have won. I didn't know, actually that he won at that time. I couldn't believe what just happened. And I was trying to figure out in my head and process it.

So. Meaning after you've crossed the line, it's still not entirely clear that he's won, even though you've seen him also skate across the line, sort of bolt upright. But you haven't figured this out?

Yeah. I mean, I knew that someone crossed a line, and it was probably Steven. But more importantly, I was figuring out, like, what just happened.

Right. Is there a rule that says, like, you can't come from 200ft behind when. Yeah, yeah. What's going on?

It was more like. I was more thinking, like, that last half lap, like, what happened? And then I noticed that, like, I got this itchy feeling on my left leg.

Oh, you don't even realize you've cut yourself.

I had no idea at the point. At that point, until I went into the locker room and took my skin suit off, and they had a chance of, like, oh, my gosh. Like, that was a crazy, crazy race. And I remember coming out and someone asking me, paula, what does it feel like to lose the gold?

That was the first question.

It was the first question. Michael was like, I didn't. I didn't lose the gold. I won. I won the silver, you know, and that. That answer wasn't entirely me. There was a guy, Brent Hamilow, who was our sports physician at the time, came in the locker room because he had to look at my cup before we went back out there to go receive our medals. And he was like, hey, man, I know you wanted to win, but that was incredible. Like, you have to be so proud of yourself for having that ability to cross the line. It was so Instinctive, right? It would be an idiot to claim that I had that plan and it was all my grandmaster idea to do that, but it wasn't. I just, I felt like I had to finish the race.

Dude, it's another boxing analogy, right? We can't get away from the fact that your name is Apollo. Okay? And in the second, Rocky. When Rocky and Apollo fight, they both go down. This is a very rare occurrence in boxing that both fighters go down and if they both can't get up, it's a draw. But if one of them can get up and the other guy can't, he's the winner. And obviously everybody knows how that goes. Rocky amazingly managed to get up while Apollo couldn't. So this time Apollo actually got up first.

Yep, got up first. But I finished second. And it was my first Olympic Games. I felt like I had been through a lot psychologically, even though.

Did you have to race again that night?

Two days later?

Okay.

Oh, this is something I should tell you. Before I went out there, I had to get stitched up quickly. Guess who my surgeon was?

Eric Heiden.

Come on. Yes. Eric Hayden. So Eric Haydn stitches me up. And I was like looking at him, he's like, hey, man, that was amazing. Like, that was so incredible. And all I want to tell him was like, Eric, I'm just trying to be like you. I'm just trying to win every distance, right? Because like, you know, like I still, even though it was pretty impossible, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to win all. I wanted to sweep just like Eric Haydn did. And I feel like I had the ability to, if everything went in my direction and this was the first blemish. But it was pretty cool to be able to be stitched up by kind of like your idol and then have that conversation and then have him say like, hey, look, your Olympics aren't over yet. Like, you're just getting started. So get back into the game, remain your focus and forget about this race as much as you can and prepare for the next one. When I went out there, happy as hell, 19 year old kid from Seattle could have thrown it all away. And here I was competing in my first Olympic Games post 9 11, hearing thousands of Americans screaming, USA chanting my name. I would never replace that with anything ever in my life. It was so. It was just, it was awesome. I mean, every. And I felt so proud to be able to win a medal for the US and win a medal for my family and for my team and for my country.

It was how long after the race, did you get to talk to your dad immediately?

Because NBC grabbed him and they want him right down by the ice.

And right away, what was his reaction?

He was just proud.

Was he worried about your leg? I mean, what else was going on in his mind?

He was worried about my leg. He was right by the ringside and he's. My father's looking in. I see my dad right away. He's just very proud, you know. And that, to me, it felt very, very good. And I remember standing on the podium, even though not hearing my, you know, my own national anthem being played, just feeling amazing. And actually thinking back, if there was any person in that race who I would want to win the gold versus me, it would probably would have been Steven Bradbury. And just because that guy, and people don't know this, he had been through hell. Like a skate blade had gone through that guy's leg at one point. Like he had almost died many times on the ice, like pools and pools of blood. He had come back from devastating injuries, broke his back, like weird, crazy stuff. And through it all, he stuck with the stuff sport. And he was the last man standing. He wasn't the best speed skater. He wasn't the most technically gifted. Physically, he was a monster. But he wasn't supposed to win that race. But because he didn't give up, he ended up winning that race when everyone else was better than him. Everyone else was there, and it was pretty remarkable.

Matt Target, who's a swimmer, an Australian swimmer, he's been to, I think, three Olympics. He's a good friend of mine. And I actually sent him the video that. That we're going to also link to, because that's the one that we were talking about earlier, which is the. There's a. There's an Australian guy who does a commentary and voiceover, dubs the video. And it's really funny. His point being is, like, if you just stay out of people's way, you can still win. Right?

Right.

And he met. I think he said to me that in Australia, there's still an expression around his name, like, you can pull a Bradbury, right? Yeah.

You win the lottery. Oh, you just pulled a Bradbury. Oh, my God. You know, you just. You jumped out of a plane, your parachute didn't. Didn't open, and then somehow someone else grabbed you, did a Bradbury. Like, just freak golden horseshoe luck. By the way, Stephen Bradbury retired that night after he won the gold.

He knew right away. Yeah, he's like, this is the pinnacle of.

This is the Pinnacle I am now on, and I have an Australian stamp with my face on it. This doesn't get better than this for me. Australia's first Winter Olympic gold medal.

So you had to go on and continue through these games. So how did the rest of those games go?

My next race was the 1500 meters, in which I was battling against my rival at the time, which was two guys, Marc Gagnon from Canada, and also Kim Dong Song from South Korea, who was the reigning Olympic champion in that distance. And Kim Dong Song had this very specific strategy which he had been testing on me throughout the entire year, and that was he was going to lead the race with about seven laps to go and just do a negative split. So every lap, get a little bit faster, a little bit faster, a little bit faster, and skate very defensive. And my strategy was known all over the world that I always waited until.

The last two laps because your explosiveness, you just. Basically, based on your lactate tolerance and your explosiveness, you're gonna out muscle somebody.

I had another gear that other people didn't have. And I think that the training that we did at that time directly just is a massive attribute to exploding when there was a lap or two laps to go, as long as I could have that reserve.

But you needed the lane. You had to be able to. Technically, you had to have the ice to do that. Right.

There's got to be space. And so in short track speed skating, if I'm passing a skater in front of me and we have some sort of a conflict or collision, I get disqualified. At the time. That's what the rules were. So you had to pass the other skater who was in front of you completely cleanly with no contact.

That puts a huge onus on the guy passing because he's got to take a huge distance.

Well, they changed the rules after this, after this Olympics. But at the time, that's what the rules were. And so it was very important to pass completely cleanly with no contact in any capacity. And I remember everyone knew that my inside passing lane was the best in the world.

How many kilometers an hour are you guys going? About 40.

We're going, like, around 35 plus miles an hour.

Yeah, yeah. So you're going about 50 kilometers an hour. Yeah, there is. At that speed, aerodynamics is everything. Like, there's an enormous draft advantage if you can slingshot around someone. Right.

And I could skate behind someone all day long and break world records because I was so comfortable.

Right.

Anyone who could. But I wasn't very good at leading for whatever Reason my technical ability would change and my track pattern would change.

Which is so interesting given that you still broke. You still had that time trial world record like going under 125, because that's. There's no one blocking the wind for you there.

Right. But later on in my career, that became less and less of a big attribute of mine. So I was less and less a good time trialer and more and more of a good, good racer, so to speak. About a lap and a half to go in the 1500 meters, I'm in. I'm actually in fifth place. I pass three skaters on the inside to pass into second place. Now there's a lap remaining. It's me and Kim Dong Song. I know that there's only one. I'm actually doing this probably a lap too late. I probably should have done this earlier, but I didn't. Waited a little bit too long looking back, and I tried one, one last pass on him on the inside. I recognized right away that he had known that I was gonna be passing on the inside. So he had protected that inside lane position. And he really, really came over to protect that position as much as possible. And I wanted to make sure there was no contact in incapacity. So I put my arms up to show the referee who was in the corner. Look, there's no contact. I'm not pushing him. There's nothing going on. And I slipped back into second. Finish the race. He ends up getting disqualified. Even though he finishes the race and wins. He had been parading around his South Korean flag and celebrating in victory. My coaches knew that there was going to be a call being made and.

Why was he disqualified?

So he. At the time, there was something called cross tracking. So even though you're not. You're supposed to. If you come out of the corner, you're supposed to maintain your.

Maintain your lane, effectively your lane, right? If you come out of the corner and there's technically an inside lane, you can't immediately cut it off, right?

It's like blocking. And so he was disqualified. I was awarded the gold. And thus began this crazy relationship with the country of South Korea that I would have never been able to even explain.

So you get a silver when you should have had a gold. You get a gold that you feel. Is this really a silver?

Yeah. It wasn't a clean win, right? That's very clear. But I was awarded it. And at the end of the day, a win is a win. And so I celebrated it as such.

So this time you get to hear your national Anthem.

For the first time, I hear my national anthem. What is that like, for the first time? It's incredible. It's everything you can think it to be.

We sit there. I remember watching that on tv. I remember where I was watching that on tv. And it's like, I don't know you. But it's still emotional for us to watch this, right? And to sort of. I think we put ourselves in the shoes of, like, these kids, right? And we think like, wow, I can't imagine the sacrifice they just went through. The difference between winning and losing seems to be almost random. Stochastic, if you will. But you did it. Wow. I can't believe it. You're standing there and, I mean, I think that's why we just love the Olympics. Even sports that we don't necessarily pay attention to outside of the Olympics. Right.

I think that the fascination is, like, we know these athletes aren't doing it for money because there is no money in the Olympic space with the exception of the 0.001%. And you know how much they dedicate, you know, that 4 and 8 and 12 years of their life is dedicated to. Towards this one moment. And there's a sense of purity associated with that, that they really, truly do it because they love the sport. They want to go to the Olympic Games, and they want to be the best against the world's best. And I think we can appreciate that now.

You won two more medals in 02, didn't you?

No, I just won those two medals.

You did. Okay. So you didn't win on the relay that year?

No, one of the guys fell on the relay. I feel like we would have won gold, actually, had he not fallen, which.

Has got to be tough. I mean, you always feel bad. I follow swimming much more close, obviously, in any other sport, but it's always just the saddest thing for me when I see a guy on the swim, on the four by whatever this thing is. And when that one person has a bad leg, you feel worse for them than you feel for the other swimmers who swam their best. Because it's just hard. And I always sort of think it's beautiful when people console the one guy who has the bad race or the one girl who has the bad race. Yeah.

In short track speed skating, it's such a variable. We grow up with that mentality. We call it. That's short track.

That's your equivalent of shit happens. Right?

Exactly.

That's short track.

That's short track. Like, look, man, like, you plan everything. You are the Best. You've been undefeated for years. You get to the Olympic Games, boom, you fall down. Shit. That's short track. Like, that's the sport that you signed up for. And if you can't subscribe to that mentality, you chose the wrong sport. But short track to me is very much like life, very much like life. Right. You can do everything right. And for whatever reason, something out of your control gets thrown in your way and you have to take it as such and learn from it, obviously, and come back stronger and better. But for the most part, I think that's what it is.

But you became one of the really few athletes that rose above the sport, at least from a commercial standpoint. I mean, there are obviously a handful of Olympic athletes that we can all name that end up on the. Were you on the COVID of a Wheaties box?

I was on the COVID of a Wheedie.

That's like about as American as it is. It might not be necessarily the most lucrative commercial opportunity, but it is certainly the most distinguished. Right. I mean, to be on the Wheaties box is sort of.

It's always a dream.

Yeah. So I'm not going to ask you to sort of explain why you think you rose to that level. How much of it do you think had to do with just what you did on the ice versus something about you that sort of captivated people's interest that goes beyond just the performance? Obviously you're a good looking guy, you're articulate. Your story is incredibly interesting, as evidenced by the fact that we could sit here and talk about this for six days. And you also seemed very comfortable in that role too. You get the sense some athletes are really uncomfortable with that. They're appreciative of it and it's this great opportunity to remunerate some of their success. But you seemed totally natural in that role. Right?

I think, yeah, look, I was, was extremely blessed to be able to be one of the few athletes that both NBC chose and wanted to feature as a star athlete. And my story, for whatever reason, and I think, look, immigrant father comes to the US doesn't have anything, tries to raise this kid. This kid is bad, finds his life through sport, turns it around, understands the power that he has throughout the sport. And then against all odds, I was able to deliver in some capacity. And I didn't deliver a gold in that first race. It was a silver.

Well, it was a scrappy silver. I mean, I think that's. In some ways I think people much prefer, like if you had gone out, you know, I don't know what the expression is in speed Kating, but if you'd gone wire to wire, right, if you'd time trialed that event and won by five lengths or, you know, by five, you know, body lengths or whatever, it's like, okay, wow, he's dominant. But to fall, cut your leg, barely know which way is up and down, and manage to really take the group of four that you're racing against and be the first one across the line. That's a heartfelt silver that I think most people probably find more appealing and actually probably creates a better substrate for the way we like to use sport as metaphor for life.

I think that's exactly. I couldn't have articulated it better. I think that we, you know, Americans, look, we love dominance, we love to win, but we also like to see a story that somewhat mirrors what we can relate to. And it wasn't perfect in any way, but I think at the end I was. I also didn't want to cross a line. And even though I was upset I didn't win gold, I didn't want to show that. I didn't want to be like, hey, I should have won gold. That guy, that Australian guy shouldn't have been in the final. He's not a good skater. I didn't want to have or be near that type of a mentality. Instead, I had an opportunity, I think, to be really, really appreciative and have gratitude for the chance to even be there, number one. Even though I was supposed to win the race, but take it from that perspective. And then, just like I won my first Olympic medal, you know, like that. That's. Look, this is how the race played out. Not to plan, not exactly how I would have written it, but this is how it went. And I'd been through a lot personally to get to that point. And I really, really wanted people to see that. I was proud to win that silver. I was proud to win a bronze. I was proud to be there and compete. That was really important for me to people to recognize and see that. I didn't take it lightly. I didn't take it for granted like I'd done in the past. And it was something that I was humbled by. And I mean, look, I got to the start line in that race and people were chanting my name, like in the arena. I mean, I'm 19 years old. That. That is not normal of any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah, I gotta imagine that's different even from the world's. Like, that's a totally different Experience. Right.

It feels so different. There's an hour camera in my face, every second, every inch that I move around, and there's immense pressure. I hear people in the audience who, I don't know, Apollo, bring home the gold. You know, like. And I can feel, like, the actual, genuine authenticity that exists within saying, bring home. People really, really wanted me to win.

Well, yeah, and you've alluded to it already, but this was only, what, four months after 9, 11. This was still a very unified country in a way that I don't know, that we've experienced since.

Yeah. I'm walking in the opening ceremonies in Salt Lake City from our staging area to inside. At the time, it was called the Delta Center. That's where the opening ceremonies were. And I remember seeing on all of the rooftops and in the trees, all of the American servicemen, snipers.

Wow.

They're sitting there, and I remember looking up and seeing them. And then. Because they know it's us, right? Because they've. They've got their. Their binoculars on the goggles, and they wave, and I'm like, this is much bigger than me, my representation of what I do. My silly sport of short track speed skating, my insignificance of going in circles in this world. And I'm 19, so I can't really understand it to that degree, but the feeling is there that what I do here is far more important than the results that I give. Obviously, I want to win. I want to bring home the color gold, because that is what we signify with being successful. But at the end of the day, I wanted the representation of who I was on the ice at that period of time to reflect. I think what we would be proud of, and that would make my father proud. And I knew if that happened, that I could be proud, that our country would be proud. Aside from all the other conflict and things that we disagree with, that was a really important part. Right. Of what I was doing. And it's a tremendous amount of pressure, too, that you don't recognize. No one can prepare you for the Olympic Games. I used to do visualization and hear and have previous tapes recorded, and then, like, try to visualize. Close my eyes and visualize a race that I wanted to have happen while the crowd is in my ears. But when I went out there for my first race, I couldn't. Nothing could prepare for me for that. My heart rate jumped from, like, whatever, being, like, 50 to, like, 160, like, like, literally within seconds. And I was like, oh, my God, like, I'm starting this Nine lap race now at threshold versus this is not supposed to work, you know, like I'm not prepared for that.

Those six by 1000s are paying off now.

Yeah, it's also a very addictive feeling.

So what's the letdown like after the.

Two weeks after the Games are over? Yeah, well, depends on how you do.

So you've done well. You've obviously got a great commercial career ahead of you, but you still have four years until you're going to be back on that stage again. You'll go to the Worlds again, you'll do World cup, but you're not going to feel that electricity for four more years, right?

Correct. And nothing replaces the Olympic Games. There's no competition on the planet. So post Games I go on the media whirlwind tour for basically six to eight months. I do every single interview and conversation and sponsorships and commercial advertising stuff because that's the only way you as an Olympic athlete can generate any source of revenue. You're not really paid to win gold medals. You're not paid to be a part of the team team. You're just there.

And so what percentage of Olympians, United States Olympians can secure enough sponsorship that that can become a sole source of income to sustain them through another Olympic run, I. E. They do not need to go out and get another job.

Maybe less than a percent.

Wow.

For sure. Less than a percent. Because even if you win a gold, it doesn't necessarily guarantee you to have a good generating of income. If for whatever reason you weren't featured or NBC didn't see you or sponsorships aren't interested, you just, you're a guy with a gold medal. And I know a few who've won gold who have the most normal jobs that we normally would see. Like, wow, that guy won gold. And why is he working here doing this like day to day activity, like this, manual labor. But that's just the reality of what happened. So I was blessed. I didn't have to do that. I got great sponsorship opportunities and I took the sport of short track speed skating, which was relatively completely unknown to, to most Americans. And the first time they ever saw it was that thousand meters in which I fell down. And people were like, oh my God, this is the craziest sport I've ever seen in my life.

And if they were, it's like roller derby.

Yeah, that's what people say. Nascar on ice we call it.

Right.

And it's crazy, it's fun, it's fast, it's explosive. There's strategy it's unpredictable, there's crashes, it's aggressive. The only thing you know, if they just allowed you to punch each other, it would be like the next American. Like checkbox. They should be able to carry knives too.

You should at least be able to clothesline somebody, right?

Yeah, that would be. We'd get some different looking athletes on the ice, that's for sure.

There's so many other things I want to talk about and I realize we're getting looks out there because they want us to go out for dinner. So let's talk about 06 and 10. So one of the things you've told me before that I was blown away by was the difference in your body weight between 2002, 2006 and 2010. Most athletes who go from being 19 to 23 to 27 are putting on more muscle, are getting bigger and bigger. You're maintaining muscle and getting leaner and leaner and leaner. Remind me again the difference between your fighting weight in those three Olympics.

Sure. So in 2002, the training focus was power, ballistic strength and speed. Those are the important factors in that time period.

Do you remember how many watts you could generate for a minute on a bike? On an erg.

I don't remember. I have to ask Dr. Randy Wilbur, who's. I think he's still at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. Head of the.

Dude, you gotta like get all that data and send it to me. Like, I want so badly to see your LPCs and your wattages and stuff like that. I bet it was just sick.

It was good. You know, I don't know if it was like astronomically high. Like, like I hear these other stories of other athletes who were short track speed skaters to be just freak in, in every genetic response. But my ability was, I recovered really quickly. That was the one component I remember doing a test in. I remember doing all these different sports science tests and I remember these, these doctors basically saying, like, you need to live at altitude. Like your body responds extremely well the higher you go. For whatever reason, your body just produces a ridiculous amount of red blood cells. You come down and. And you love it. So. And your ability to recover high or low is different.

Yeah, the first time I trained at altitude, I got to go and swim in Colorado. I was like, I'm not swimming, I'm not doing the same stroke. Like nothing feels the same up here. I couldn't believe it.

Yeah, I think Colorado's like 6,400ft. I think you're at the elevation and back then we Lived high and we slept high.

So I think today isn't the conventional wisdom, you want to live high, train low, doesn't that produce the best outcome?

Yeah, that's correct.

So you're better off actually having a tent and training at sea level. Yeah, yeah.

And then, like, there's some arguments against the entire tent related. What type of stress that places on the human body and is that. Is it natural form of stress and do you get the proper response? There's some arguments back and forth that Dr. Rennie Wilbur was like, no, I think the actual natural environment far exceeds.

I'm sure it does something that you can.

He tried to explain to me. Obviously I didn't understand, but.

So in 2002, you're weighing what?

So 2002, I weighed approximately 164 to 167. So call it 165. Right. That was my fighting weight, and I could leg press around 1400, 1450, 1500 pounds, like on it. I'm just giving you just context.

It was a small car.

Yeah. My back squat was never really that high. I think a lot of it the had to do with just the way that I hinged. I was very good hunched over in that position. I could generate a lot of power when my back was rounded.

You don't want to be squatting in that position.

Yeah, it's complete opposite.

But you were still probably, what, squatting? I think you said you were probably in the mid-300s for 12 reps. Yeah.

About 350, 360, 575.

Pretty relative. That's probably a max of 500 at a body weight of 160 is no slouch.

Yeah. I mean, my vertical was really high.

Yeah. I was going to say, what was your vertical?

Almost like 36.

Jesus. Do you know what your single leg vertical was?

No, I don't remember that. Again, this is all stuff that I wish that we had documented because we trained so hard.

I'm convinced, by the way, the single leg vertical is probably the best predictor of speed.

Yeah, I think so. And your ability to generate force into the ground.

Yeah.

I'd like to see the difference between doing like a single jump and doing a series of two or three and seeing that reaction time and generating a power over all these cool tools and ideas that I wish we had implemented. We probably had the ability. We just didn't implement them properly back then.

So in 06, what did you weigh?

06, I weighed about 155 pounds, but I could still leg press the same amount of weight So I was significantly leaner in 06. Significantly leaner.

So long gone is the chubby boy.

Yeah, gone. We have new coaches. I now have a Chinese coach going to those Games.

These were in Italy this year, wasn't it?

Yes, Torino, Italy. And I performed very well in those Games. I ended up winning a gold in the 500 meters. I won wire to wire, controlled the race, did very well. Wasn't the best skater out there, for sure. But strategically, I. It was my day.

Did you also get a relay medal that year?

Yes, we did. We got a bronze.

And then what did you weigh in 2010?

And in 2010, my goal was to be under 150. And I hadn't been under 150 since I was 14 years old.

Right.

When I was 14, I was like, 135, 137. And then I ballooned back up, obviously. So my goal was to be under 150. I ended up competing at, like, between 142 and 146. So I would say, like, on average, it's about 143, 145 pounds.

And how much strength did you give up to get there?

It was weird because I could leg press the same amount of weight. I could leg press nearly 2000 pounds at that weight. Like 1900, something like that. Right. The difference was my pure ballistic power was drastically different. I stopped doing all Olympic lifts.

So were you doing a lot of plyometrics?

A lot of weighted plyometrics. But again, I cut most of that weight that year, like that Olympic season. So you can imagine, like, the first half of the year was spent just cutting this weight. So essentially, living in a catabolic environment all the time, to eat excess muscle mass from your upper body traps arms. You know, I mean, I. I had no. I seen that picture. My arms were so skinny back then. It was very similar to what you'd see in someone who's climbing in a 20. France.

Yeah. I remember Lance saying that during the Tour years, he wouldn't do one push up or swim one lap in the spring. And going into it, because it's like you had to be able to waste as much muscle as possible from the upper body.

You want complete atrophy from the hips up. And there's a crazy stories that we hear that these cyclists would basically put themselves in a slant in the summers during their training. Right. Does it lose all this weight and the reason why? And people are like, why the hell would you want that body type?

Those people that ask that question have never ridden A bike up a hill. That's all I'm going to say.

Every pound counts.

Every fraction. It is. I mean, cycling in many ways is such a beautiful sport because there are few sports that can be reduced to such formulaic outcomes. And when you can take functional threshold power divided by mass in kilos and get a number in watts per kilo, that essentially predicts who's going to win the race up a hill, that's pretty amazing. And speed skating, it's harder because, one, I don't know what the metric is of power, but two, absolute power to translate to a bike is much easier. Like you're transmitting from the leg to the pedal, to the crank, to the wheel. But in skating, there's more to it, Right. It's not entirely clear what the relationship is between the £2,000 that you can leg press versus how many of those pounds in watts are hitting the ice. Right.

There probably is not a correlation or.

It'S probably loose correlation, but.

Yeah, yeah, but everyone's different because if you can't put the power, if you.

Don'T have a technique, it's irrelevant.

Yeah. So like, like a bike, the technique is pretty simple. You know, it's a push and pull at the basic level. Right. But in speed skating, there's seven parts to one push. Literally, there's seven parts to one push that you have to drill in your head to make it automatic and normal. And you're never on just one plane of balance on that piece of blade. Like, you're in the heel, now you're in the middle, now you're back towards the heel. And then you finish at the ball or towards the toe. And it's different depending on the speed, what you're doing, the track pattern. There's so many elements that are always changing. For example, the Koreans, they don't lift weights, right. That became my obsession. This started in 2007 because you went.

To Korea, didn't you? I went to Korea before 2010, in.

2007, because I was so obsessed and fascinated with how they continue continuously kept producing incredible athletes that I was competitive against. And they just stated, so beautiful.

Now, you were at this point pretty much a God to them, and they were gods to you. Did they welcome you with open arms?

They did, actually. They invited me and partially because I think they just wanted to study me. They just wanted to see, like, what made me tick, how strong is my ability to train, can I handle their type of training, atmosphere and environment. And I was fascinated to go into the belly of the beast. Like I was. I wanted to go into that lion's den and understand what makes them tick. And my dad was completely against it, but I was like, this is something I have to do. And eventually he was like, this is something you have to do.

Why was your dad against it?

So after the 2002 Olympic Games, there was. After that race where I was awarded the gold and the Korean Skate Awards was Disqualified, there was 16,000 emails sent in the form of death threats to the United States Olympic Committee because of that race. To me, it was pretty crazy. So it was again, it was a time where my relationship with Korea changed overnight. We ended up not going to Korea for two years for competitions because we were unsure of the environment.

When you say we, you mean you and your dad or the US Team?

No, me and the US Team. None of us went. I mean, my face was on a toilet paper. Inside the country, like, I was the second most hated person, aside from Osama bin Laden, inside that country.

Literally unbelievable.

It was unbelievable. We can talk about this other thing, like, for two hours. I have a thousand stories in relation to that. And, like, when I actually decided to go against everyone's wishes, I was like, I can't just keep running from this problem. I gotta go the number one. They haven't heard me tell my story. Like, they hate me for reasons that are unexplainable. And also, they're not really that fair because they don't know me. I'm not a referee. I didn't make the judging call. I am an athlete. I am a sportsman. I compete like anyone else does under the same rules and capacities, and I walk away regardless of outcomes.

Right.

And it was a changing time. So the Koreans were always number one. I was the only threat at the time to them and their legacy. And it was a huge, huge part of my fascination with actually saying, you know what, I got to go there. Even though they're going to study me, I have to go and understand. It's like someone going to train with Usain Bolt in Jamaica for, like, three months and seeing what is he doing? Is he doing some exercise? What are they eating? What is their sleeping habits? What is their recovery? How do they get massaged? Right. What kind of all these elements?

And you already knew that they weren't doing the type of off ice work that you were. What surprised you the most about what they did on ice?

The two things that I recognized right away was their efficiency in training. There was no talking when you're on the ice. There was all business. When you showed up at the ice rink at 4 in the morning, 4:30 in the morning, there was already probably 30 skaters there who are 8 to 12 years old, who have been practicing technical drills before you even got there. So their commitment to perfection in terms of technique is drilled in at a very young age. So their efficiency ratio, they don't have to be as strong as me in the weight room because they're so much more efficient. That's what it came down to.

This, by the way, has another beautiful parallel to swimming, right? I mean, unlike cycling, in swimming the relationship between the power you can actually generate and how you can transmit it to the water is elusive. And I don't know if the guy who wins the race is necessarily the strongest on land. It really doesn't matter. It's so much more about avoiding drag and efficiently putting your muscle into the go. So in that sense it's much more like skating where there are certain swimmers who have some of the most unimpressive physiques. I mean, Phelps has such an impressive physique to begin with. It's sort of the best of both worlds. But there are some really ridiculously scrawny looking, pathetic swimmers who like biscuit chested dudes that can't like literally can't do anything. But when they get in the water, they sure as hell can do something.

Sure. It's very much the same way with speed skating. And I saw that and the first thing I recognized was their ability to copy each other was unlike anything I'd ever seen. When you go watch a US Short track speed skating practice, everyone skates entirely different. You can pick out who's who. When you watch a Korean speed skating practice, they were all the same, they all look the same. You get a couple of guys that stand out, but for the most part, and it's beautiful to watch, they're very quiet, they don't make a lot of noise when they go around the corner. They're extremely efficient. And I remember the first day that I showed up, we broke like five world records in that practice. And two of the girls who were leading by the way in the, in the 3,000 meter, we did five times 3,000 meters, five times 27 laps. Two of the girls I never ended up seeing for the next couple of years, they never made the team. And they were the ones who were leading this from start till finish breaking the world records. So they just have a mass talent pool of skaters that they can just pick and choose from. And just like the old school Eric Haydn era of like survival of the fittest. We're going to pick out the pure genetic monsters who not only technically are the most efficient, but also can handle the greatest amount of volume and load and training. They are going to rise to the top. And usually the South Korean skaters are only last one or two Olympics at the absolute most before they're just gone. And they just like literally overnight, they.

Just, they get replaced by the next cog in the machine.

They can't make the team.

Wow. Yeah.

So my whole goal for showing up in Vancouver was in 2002, I was dominant. 2006, I had won a gold, probably could not have replicated that. And in 2007, I was losing my dominance in the sport significantly. And people were scathing skating so fast.

And there was that mostly just apparent to you or do you. Because usually the athlete's the first to figure that out. Yeah. Or was it also visible to those around you?

I think people started to notice that I was no longer this undefeatable, unrecognizable, unknown mystery athlete from the U.S. everyone knew my strategy, Everyone knew my natural gait and rhythm of skating. And it was like do or die. I wasn't dominant and I wasn't winning. I was winning, but I wasn't winning with the same fashion. I was where people were like, oh, my God, that guy just smashed the pack.

So was there a period then between 07 and 10 when you were even wondering if you would come back?

It was not wondering if I was gonna come back because I'd already committed. It was more, how do I actually get to the games and have a chance at meddling? That was the conversation, like, how can I win against this next generation of South Korean athletes that I've never faced before who are so fast and so good?

How old are they? You're now 25, right? Right, 26. Yeah.

They're 18, 19, 20. That was usually the range, which is.

Interesting because if you really think about it, for a male speed based sport, you should still be able to peak in your mid-20s. Yep.

For whatever reason, it was always a young man sport. Short track speed skating, I think a lot of it's got to do with flexibility and the way in which you move. And maybe there's no correlation in the capacity, but that's just what it was in 2002. A lot of the heavier guys had to retire before 2006. They couldn't meet the cut, the. The spirit. The sport had changed from 2006, 2010. A whole next generation of guys retired because again, they couldn't meet the cut, the way that we trained, the focal points, what was important during training, the elements that made you a fast speed skater are all changed. And we had a big coaching turnover. So we went from a Chinese coach. I had a. Originally, I had a Canadian coach, American coach, to then a Chinese coach, to then two Korean coaches who threw everything out the window when it came to sports science and said, we are going to take you, Apollo, and change the way that you technically skate. And physiologically, my goal was to show up as a different type of an athlete that they would never prepare for. So I want to change my natural gait and rhythm.

I can't help but bring the Rocky metaphor back. This is when Rocky comes back to Fight Club because he gets killed by Clubber fighting Rocky style.

Correct.

And then Apollo comes back to train him. I'm grinning as I say this, because I realize it sounds so stupid, but it's really the example, right? It's like, you can't come back and fight Clubber the same way. You gotta lose, like, 15 pounds and you actually have to box instead of slug.

Correct. If I want to be competitive, if I took the same strategy of success from 2006 and 2010, I won't make the semifinal. That's apparent. And so that meant I had to make drastic success.

And you realized this by 07? By 07, I had three years to change everything.

After I had gone to Korea and skated and recognized and knew what I was really up against and saw this next generation of South Korean athletes who were training there, that would be the ones that I would compete against and also recognize. Also, when I stepped on the ice in 2010 and look in the coaches box and see that I would have skated against 80% of the coaches because they all had retired and became coaches of those national teams who were then coaching their athletes to beat me, they know me better than anybody. They'd seen me for 15 years. That point. Right.

Technically.

So the goal was to show up as someone who they couldn't prepare for. Different strategy, different mentality, different training, different. And that meant drastic decisions and changes. And so I hired a strength and conditioning coach who lived with me at my house in Salt Lake City, Utah, to watch and monitor every single thing that I ate, every single extra training regime that we did. And I was the guy that I was never like, you never had to push me to train more. It was like, okay, we need to.

Figure out how to rest a bit.

Yeah, like, let's. Let's figure out how to do Some things a little bit better, better here. And so it became a huge emphasis on recovery, a massive emphasis on nutrition, which is recovery. And just making sure that everything that I was doing was correlating with my end result, which was being, let's be this light, let's maintain this strength. And I know if I can at least do those two things, I've got the unique technical ability to at least get myself to the podium. And it was a struggle because I love to eat, I love food, I'm always hungry. And at 153, there's not a lot of weight to lose. My skin was very thin around my legs. It was all muscles. So I had to go catabolic. I had to lose excess muscle mass that wasn't being specifically derived from the sport and perhaps was being generated from the weight training that we were doing. Whether it was deadlifts, whether it was pulls, whether. I mean, there was no more. I mean, in 1999, we were still doing bench press. Right. As a part of our weight training program. That's got. That makes no sense in terms of.

Even those cleans, really. I mean, you could argue there was obviously an explosion, explosive benefits, two and.

A half to three pounds there. Probably an upper body mass. Right. That you just don't necessarily need. Now the benefit from those is incredible. And looking back, I probably should have incorporated some specific type of Olympic or deadlift like activity, but I was so hyper focused and obsessed with losing weight. I remember writing down on these little post it notes and putting them all throughout my house, the weight. And then like, Jesus. And then like, zero regrets. Like, make sure you get to the Olympic Games with zero regrets. Regardless of your outcome there, you have to arrive, leaving absolutely no stones unturned in your preparation.

You wrote a book by this title years later.

Yeah. That was just because that was, that was your mantra. My mentality. And I was doing like dumb workouts. I had two training sessions with the Olympic team and then we would do an additional one or two on top of that every day of the week with the exception of Saturday and Sunday, which was pure recovery. Saturday morning we would skate. Saturday afternoon it was recovery Sunday. All day was recovery. But the rest of the time I was doing these crazy sprints and intervals on a treadmill that my, my strength and conditioning coach could monitor and watch my gait. We were trying to change the way that I naturally ran. So we increased the, the cadence. And I wanted to be a higher cadence athlete who had very high cadence versus the previous Apollo, which, which was all Power slow. And it was very hard. It's nearly impossible to change. But that was the goal point.

Which is interesting to come back to a cycling analogy here, Right. Which is today we see cyclists riding at a much higher cadence and a lower torque to generate comparable power. Shifting the load to the cardiovascular system from the muscular system.

Yep. And all comes down to efficiency. Right. Generate the least amount of lactic acid and increase the amount of speed and repetitions that you are crossing over in the corner without. The more static you are on one leg, the more strength and lactic acid you essentially are producing. So if you can decrease the amount of time you are on each leg, the less likelihood you are to get tired as long as you're naturally able to do that. So, I mean, it was a real struggle. Like, I cracked on that treadmill. I cracked in the weight room all of the time. And I questioned my path on that process, because you can imagine, right, I'm a guy here who. Who. I have a recipe for success. I know what works.

And now you're gonna abandon it.

Not only do I abandon it, I go the complete opposite direction and I change everything and everything that I know about, what made me me, in hopes that I would do this gamble and show up to the Olympic Games and be the best I've ever been and completely unpredictable to the other athletes. And it remarkably worked out. But there was a lot of questions questioning in my head. And I remember many, many nights I'd lay in bed starving, so incredibly hungry because I just. I for sure wasn't getting enough calories in my body. Absolutely. And just, like, wondering, like, is this the right path towards success? Is this going to work? Because the last thing I want to do is get to the Games and be like, that was a bad decision.

Right. And that's painful for so many reasons, not the least of which being you have just spent four years, years before you got that feedback. Right. It's one thing to say, you know, I'm going to try this new way of washing my car today and see if it produces streaks or no streaks. And then you do it, and it produces streaks. And you're like, well, okay, that was 30 minutes I wasted. But, like, this is four years to figure out that the new washing technique streaks the car.

Yeah. And for the first four and a half months, like, I just wasn't skating very well. I was tired. I was fatigued all the time. Other athletes on my team were better and skating faster than I was. I was doing workouts that I probably shouldn't have been doing at that latent stage.

And the chatter is basically, he's sticking around for one too many Olympics. Yeah.

And he's, like, lost his mind. Like, he's like, what is he doing? Like, look how much weight he's losing on, like, a monthly basis. But again, goes back to that psychological advantage of, this is what it took. And this is the place that I was in. And to me, having that edge of going to a place where no one else went to. And also, it was very personal. Right. Going to a place where you never knew was possible, it's incredibly powerful. You have a sense of inner strength when you get to those Olympic Games. And I hadn't raced a single race, but I was smiling before that even happened. I felt so weightless, not only because I'd lost £20 over my career, but because I just. I really felt prepared. Could I have done it differently? Absolutely. Could I have gone back and implemented sports science and other elements that we now know would have dramatically increased my performance ratio? Yes. But the process of going through that and hardening my mentality and going through those dark times where you're questioning yourself, being in a sauna alone every day, sweating and meditating and visualizing to be your absolute greatest potential, thinking about not an almond more or an almond less that goes into your body, like, on a daily basis, like, that obsession is fatiguing, but also really beautiful thinking back, and I miss it immensely. But it was a huge burden and weightlessness and victory, personal victory that took a whole team to get me to that point. When I arrived in Vancouver and had an incredible Olympic Games, didn't actually end up winning a gold in those Games, but still feeling like I won and having the most consistent Olympics I ever had in my life.

And that transition from 07, 08, 09, as you're completely changing your style, completely changing your body, changing the way you train, adjusting to a sport that is still basically probably a profound evolution, more so than a sport that's been around for hundreds of years or at least been an Olympic sport for a hundred years. It's still in that growth curve of figuring out the balance between technical versus strength versus power. What was it like to go back to Korea in. Was it in 07?

You went back to live in Korea was in 07.

And I know we sort of talked about this before, but you had kind of an interesting homecoming back to Korea post 02. Right, right. Which was in 04. We kind of glossed over that a little bit, but for two years, you didn't go back. Right?

Yeah. So after the 2002 Olympic Games when I had won that gold medal in the 1500 meters and the South Korean was disqualified, thus began this really interesting relationship with the country of South Korea. I mean, I had mentioned that I was the second most hated person in South Korea. First was Osama bin laden. We received 15,000, 16,000 death threats via email which crashed the United States Olympic Committee servers during the Olympic Games. So instantaneously we knew that that country was very unhappy with what had just happened. And it was a subjective call, not made by me, but made by a referee who was the corner judge who decided to stink, that there was a cross tracking penalty and I was awarded. Could have went either way if you replayed the race again with different judges. So fast forward to the 2002 World Cup, Soccer World cup, and it was Korea versus United States. A Korean athlete scores the first goal, rips off his jersey. Underneath the jersey painted on his back is my last name. O h, n o o, no. And they essentially do a replay of that race on the soccer field and pretend and they throw the arms up and everything, basically showcasing that they think that that was a misstep in the judging call and should not have been awarded the gold. So they were really infatuated with that result. It was also a time in which I think anti American sentiment within the country was at its probably peak. And a lot of people were kind of pointing fingers about things that were happening inside the country that involved Americans and could have been penalized, should have been penalized for their actions in the country. And they weren't and they were let off. And so they thought that this was not okay. And outside these decisions in courtroom areas that these things were happening, people were chanting my name as if I had anything to do with any of those incidents in any capacity. So again, it was a really sensitive time. And it escalated even further because these death threats continued on throughout the year. So much so that like my face was on toilet paper inside Korea where they were selling this. And you can imagine, like, that's a crazy thing to have happen. I had a lot of friends who were in service who were in the country, and they were like, dude, you are not liked in this country. Like, do not come here. It's not okay. Like, people, they don't even watch speed skating, they don't know the sport. They don't know you. They just know they're supposed to hate you. And so this spread, this nationalism inside South Korea was always strong. And they're very Patriotic people and very passionate. And they just. They got behind this thing that I was not the good guy. And we compete every single year in these World Cups, right? So from 2002 to 2004, we had probably three World Cups that were supposed to be in Seoul. All three, we opted out not to go. Now, those are important World Cups. Those give you the world ranking in order to get best seated for your World championship. So it had to be pretty devastating for us to not go. And we just didn't know what the threat was going to be. We didn't know if it was going to be real.

We weren't.

We weren't certain of. All it takes is one crazy person to make a, you know, an action and something could happen. And my father definitely didn't want me to go. I'm the only son. He felt that the threat was real and it just wasn't worth it. It's only sport, right? Why would you put yourself in danger and at risk? And to me, I just. I felt. I was really hurt, I think, emotionally, because I grew up around the Korean culture. Like, I was obsessed with the Korean skaters. I had Korean coaches, you know, I looked up to them. I had Korean friends growing up in Federal A, Washington and Seattle, Washington, and I ate the food. I understood it. And so I just felt like it was very unwarranted because they never heard my side of the story, and they didn't know me as a person. But instead, I was judged by a preconceived notion or speculation that wasn't accurate. And so getting that across a huge language barrier is impossible. So my only thought was, well, in 2004, I have to go there. And so finally we made the decision as a team to go to Seoul to compete. And upon arrival, you know, we were told that the risk is still there, there's going to be bodyguards. But I had no idea what to expect. I'd never been in this position before. And upon arrival in Incheon International Airport, there was an empty baggage claim, meaning they cleared out the baggage claim, the area that we arrived at. And it was like 100 to 200, maybe 300 plus security guards and police who were standing shoulder to shoulder to block out the Korean media, in which there was like hundreds of people there and fans trying to take pictures and get interviews. Because it was a. You know, it's like my first time coming back. So I'm like the second most hated person in the world. Now I'm back to compete on their home soil, in their view, to see who the best of the best is so like, this is their rematch, right? It's not the Olympics, but this is their rematch. This is their opportunity to prove for once and for all that it was a complete fluke that I won during those games and it was the bad call.

And the skater that you defeated in 02, was he still skating?

He retired.

So this wasn't even really about you and him anymore. This is about you and a country.

It was about me in a country about me versus South Korea, which is just really insane. Yeah, for many different levels. But looking back, it made me a lot stronger mentally and it made me train like a complete monster every waking moment. I was driven a lot by my pure fear that the guys on the other side of the world were better, more prepared, younger, more talented, genetically gifted bodies suited for the sport of short track speed skating. And that how can I beat them? The only way I knew was just to be tougher, right? Mentally, be able to withstand pain thresholds that they wouldn't even dare step into. That's just my mentality. It's the only way that I could make up for my lack of, you know, whatever God given talents and abilities that I did or didn't have. And so when I arrived in South Korea, and I don't tell this story often because it never came up, but the week prior, we were actually in China for another World Cup. And usually whenever we go to China for the World Cups, they're held in like Harbin, Changchun, like these northeastern regions of the country that are very cold. Back then they just were not nice to visit. Skyscrapers are being built everywhere. Like, it's just not a pleasant place to be in during that kind of infrastructure booming period. And you usually always got sick at some point, like the Chinese food was just not clean, or what if we just didn't have the bacteria to fight? And so, you know, me being a guy who would like, eat street food sometimes when I go over there, that was no longer an option. And all of my team got sick during that first week. And so we traveled the next week to South Korea. And typically when you go to a World cup, you arrive on a Monday, compete on a Friday. So you spend Monday through Thursday adjusting to the climate, getting used to the ice conditions, understanding the environment, and essentially just preparing yourself for the competition. And so I was the only guy on my team who didn't get sick in China. But upon that plane ride from China to South Korea, my stomach was starting to feel a little funky. Talk about bad timing, right I'm going to the heart of the lion's den to be at my best. This race and this competition is a World Cup. It means nothing overall that year. It's 2004. People don't care. No one's paying attention. It's so intrinsically important for me to perform well at that competition. Nothing else matters that year because of all of us, all these things that are encompassing. And so I arrive on Monday. On Tuesday I have like really bad food poisoning from China. And it goes into Wednesday, it goes into Thursday. And at this point I'm like down 10 pounds.

And what's normal for the type of training you would do on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? I mean, this is like kind of like a dual meet in swimming, right? Where it's like you're not shaved, you're not tapered, you're just sort of going through the motions. It's like it's basically a meet that's a practice. Would you guys be treating these meets that way?

More than a practice, but for sure not as important as a World Championships and definitely not showing.

You would ideally train pretty hard the Wednesday, Thursday. Yeah.

So we arrive on Monday, we'll go for a run with the team, do some skating drills and exercises. Tuesday we have a harder high intensity. We'll do like five times, seven laps intervals.

Right.

With like four to six minutes rest in between. Pretty high intensity, 80 to 90% threshold. And then in the afternoon we'll do some form of a plyometric jump training. And all this is by the way, like fractions of what we would normally do in terms of training. So this to us is a complete rest.

Right? Right. But you're not even able to do this based on the food poisoning or you are sort of still going through the motions of these practices.

I'm kind of going through the motions. And by Thursday it's pretty apparent that I'm full blown, like extremely dehydrated and starting to question whether I should eat, even compete in the competition.

Which is like an impossible choice to face because no one's going to buy the story that you didn't compete because you lost 10 pounds due to food poisoning.

Yeah, the story's gonna be, oh, you wimped out, you know that you didn't win effectively.

Yeah. You're hosed. And then you show up and compete 10 pounds dehydrated, there's no win, it's lose, lose.

And my father was actually there too, in South Korea. Cause he got really scared of my well being and I was just assigned Two bodyguards to follow me around the whole competition and the entire time. And I remember walking in on Friday, the first day of competition, and getting on the ice and hearing all of the Korean fans literally booing and just being like, you know, I don't know what they're saying in Korean, but I'm sure something like, you know, it's probably not nice. It's not nice. You know, definitely take me out of the game. And, you know, I performed okay, actually the first day I did. Not bad. And there's something about. And I'd love to. To really understand the science behind this, because I've had this repetition time and time again. Whenever I got sick in my sport, I always performed pretty well for whatever reason, even through time trials.

Do you think it just has to do with the forced rest that comes before it?

Maybe Forced rest, Maybe the white blood cell count is a component. I mean, who knows what's really there? Maybe the immune system is working overtime. I don't know. But I mean, I'm exhausted. I physically feel terrible, but for some reason my output is still very, very, very high. This time was different because I'm pretty lean already. You drop all that water? I was drinking water. It was coming right out 10 minutes later. Like, literally, it was just severe, nasty food poisoning that lasted about three and a half days. And so, you know, I get through the first day, I get through Saturday, the 500 meters, I was pretty much useless in the sprints for whatever reason. Just had no strength, you know, in between races. On Sunday, which is the thousand thousand meters and the 3,000 meters, I'm, like, lying on the floor, you know, like, just trying to rest. And I ended up actually somehow just doing very well at that competition. Ended up winning the thousand meter, winning the 3,000 meter.

So that meant this is Saturday, Sunday.

This is Sunday. So on Sunday is the big day, which means you skip a thousand meter and then the 3000 meter super final and then the relay all on the same day. That's how the World cup schedule usually works. It doesn't work that way in the Olympics, but it's very, very different. And so I skated very well, and I ended up winning the competition on the home soil.

So how do the fans react to this?

Well, you know, when I first got on on Friday, they were all booing. And by the time I left, I would say 80% of them actually were clapping and they were cheering. And someone had leaked to the media that I was really sick during that time. And I think that had a component of that people. People understood that I actually was performing at subpar, optimal levels, and I still was able to somehow pull it off. And. And it was really mentally excruciating because I very much wanted to win, but not because I wanted to beat them, but because I just. I wanted to prove, like, to me, it was. It was like, look, I'm legitimate. Like, I am a competitive athlete who on any given Sunday can win, may not win every 10 times, but I'll win at least one of those 10 times. Right. And I wanted to showcase that and just kind of searching and, you know, reaching for respect, because I didn't get that when I first arrived. Like, it was like, basically, you know, the thought process was you did not deserve to win and you cheated to win, and I didn't feel like I did. And so the only way to retract those statements from those people who were making them was to try to go there and win wholeheartedly, openly. And I did in that manner. And so that was the first change in our relationship in terms of being the most hated, to having respect for me as an athlete and as a sportsman, to actually like, going to the airport and then people having, like, fan club signs.

And this happened within the same trip.

This happened the same meaning.

You described your arrival, but by the time you departed, the same Korean fans were cheering for you.

The same Korean fans were cheering for me in the airport. Yep. With signs. And I remember the. The head of KSU at the time, Mr. Chang, came up to me. He's like, I don't know what you did or how you did it, but you're leaving here in a much better place than you did when you arrived, which is awesome, you know, because that was the actual goal. My goal was not to defeat really them, but to just show them that I'm.

Just to earn their respect.

Yep, that's. That's what it came down to. And I did it in a convincing fashion. So it was. It was awesome.

So between 04 and 07, you've obviously gone back to the Olympics. You've demonstrated that this isn't some fluke. You've earned their respect. And now in 07, you're going to. To actually train with them as you try to come back and make the Olympic team in 2010. Yep.

So again, I kind of. I go back into the. The belly of the beast. I go back to the place where no other.

And they're embracing you now, but they're also.

At the time, the South Korean short track team was very, very fenced off from the rest of the world in terms of their training methods. That was their secret sauce. Right. We don't understand why they're so good. How do they get that technique? How do they. They. They don't lift weights, we hear. But they're so good. We watch them during training and it looks like they're over training.

What do their bodies look like?

I mean, designed for short track.

If you could be God and you could make a perfect short track skater, tell me what their body looks like.

So you take your pelvis, tilt it forward. So the complete opposite of what you do in a squat. Do the complete opposite. Tilt your pelvis forward.

Okay.

And so your lower back is now rounded. Have a shorter torso, longer legs, thinner in frame naturally, and basically zero upper body weight, because then you can strengthen your lower body very easily.

That sounds like a cyclist. Yeah. That's the tilt you put into a cyclist's thoracolumbar spine. No upper body, all lower body.

That's how you design it. And very in strength to weight ratio. That's strange. Yeah, that's the perfect speed skate. And there's a few that exist. I actually wasn't one of them. My proportions are actually. My legs are a little bit too short. My torso is a little bit too long.

And you're pretty muscular all around. Like, you don't have sort of that emaciated upper body.

No, I didn't naturally. But the South Korean athletes, men and women, had this naturally. And so when I watched them skate, I recognized right away. I was like, these guys aren't thinking about their technique when they're going through the corner. It's natural. Like they're just skating. It's like walking. You don't think about left, right, left, right. You just walk. When you go for a jog, the same thing. You're not thinking about which foot is in front of the other. That's what it's like when you don't understand speed skating is. You're thinking, let me tilt my left hip in, let me put my right shoulder down, maybe make sure that my shoulders and my hips are level with the ice. No matter what angle I'm skating at. Make sure my nose, knees and toes are in line at all times and all periods. Like, I'm thinking about these things every corner. Because it's not natural, really even.

I mean, I remember you once telling me a few. The funniest thing about how you would drive to the rink in that position.

Yeah, he's obsessed.

I mean, of course we can't do it on the podcast because we don't. We don't have the visual, but, like, the. The image of you tilting yourself over the steering wheel, driving that way to mimic the corner. It never became autonomic. You never got to the point where you could make that turn and perfectly line up without a single thought.

I trained myself to do it automatically, but I don't think it was a natural feeling for me. It took years and hours and hours of obsessive driving with, like, all the weight on my right hip, with my left hip. You know, like, imagine driving and you put all the weight on your right leg, and your left leg is not even touching the ground. Okay. And your left hip is actually raised a little bit, and your left hand is on the steering wheel and your right shoulder is down. Like, that's an uncomfortable position to be in every single day. 2 and from the ice rink. And I did it because I wanted. I just wanted to feel natural. I wanted to skate as natural as I saw the other skaters skating.

I love this kind of stuff. I mean, that's what I sort of enjoy about having a discussion like this is. I think so many people, if they're sort of watching you on TV or they're watching Phelps or they're watching Lance Armstrong or they're watching, you know, pick whatever great athlete. I think people just assume, like, it just came so easy to them, and they. But I don't think they realize that the best of the best have this ability to force themselves to do this type of work, which is not to say that there isn't a natural talent. I think the best of the best combine natural talent with sort of whatever. But you don't even have the same sort of physical dimension advantage that some of your peers would have. But it's this complete obsession. It's this, like, who would even think I'm gonna use the extra hour a day I'm driving to train speed skating?

Yeah. It's all I cared about. It's all I thought was important. It's all that mattered in my life. And when you prioritize that as being the sole significant piece of your life, from waking moment till you close your eyes, and hopefully when you're sleeping, you're thinking about it too, it changes your perspective on how you live your life and what actually you do on a daily basis to impact you.

I mean, I want to come back to finish your career, but I can't help but at the moment, ask a question that I'm afraid I'll forget to ask. If we Go back to the Olympics, which is now that you're not a professional athlete, do you still have that level of focus or is that something that is very difficult to maintain for a prolonged period of time? In other words, do you now relish the fact that you didn't have to think about what we had for dinner, you could eat as much as you wanted and you can now sit here comfortably and you're going to drive home tonight and you're not going to have to contort yourself into some crazy position. I mean, what's the new guidance system you've applied to the missile that is your life?

I definitely have the same, I think, quirks that I did from sport that are transferring over to my life. I now recognize them. When I was training as an athlete, I didn't recognize them. I didn't know what they were. I just thought that that's what I did. This is the things that me driving in that way to the ice rink was normal. That's not normal. That's not even normal for an athlete. It's really not by borderline unhealthy psychologically to be that obsessed at that level all the time. There wasn't one day I went to the ice rink, I didn't wake up and didn't want to be there because I was. It wasn't a choice. There was no do I want to go? Do I not? That wasn't even a conversation. So now concentrating the different projects that I have and, and delving into areas where I don't have the experience, I don't have the time spent and education, it really helps because I completely immerse and I. I spend hours and hours and hours on certain elements. Is it in the same intensity? Probably not. It's difficult to relate that in the same way. But for sure, the traits and attributes that I developed as a short track athlete, for absolutely sure, they are beneficial attributes to apply towards specific parts of life. And also just the fact of feeling like when you look at life, no matter how bad shit gets, you can always come back. No matter how sick, no matter how tired I am, like I was able to compete, right? I was able to train now in doing business or relationships, taking the same kind of mentality of saying, like, I've done things physiologically I never thought was possible. I broke through barriers mentally that I think were really powerful. And how do you apply those with an open mind and with a way that's a different perspective on life. I'm much softer as a person now than I was back then. I was so rigid in every element you can imagine, and tight, actually, with my time, with the way that I viewed, I think, the world, with the way I viewed my teammates. It made me probably unpleasant to be around on the ice most of the time, because I just didn't. I wasn't there to make friends.

Did you have significant relationships with. With, you know, a girlfriend or something during that period of your life?

Kind of off and on. But none that really were. No. Nothing that I would really say, like, this was, you know, not like what you.

Not like what you enjoy today. No.

Totally different. But my view is different. My life really kind of began after I retired from the sport. I learned so much through it, but I really recognized that my life began when I decided to not come back to the sport. And it was really beautiful to be able to do that.

Why is it that many athletes can't articulate what you just said? On two levels? The first being, I'm amazed at the number of athletes that I meet who, once they're done with their sport, they can't seem to apply that greatness to the next chapter. In other words, they've clearly worked hard. They've clearly learned to do something well even when no one's looking, because that's basically what most of practice is. But they really struggle to make that leap. And then secondly, for many athletes, sadly, once the lights are gone, once nobody knows your name, there seems to be this depression that sets in. And maybe depression might be too far on the pendulum, but there's this sense of their purpose is over. Right. They don't think about what that next chapter looks like. Did you struggle with any of those things at all? And are we just seeing you now on the other side of that, where it's. It looks like everything's worked out? I mean, was there ever a challenge where you thought, oh, my God, I don't ever get to carry a flag. I don't ever get to put a medal on my neck. I don't ever get to be on TV for being the best athlete or something. I mean, was that a transition?

It was an incredibly difficult transition, and one that I don't talk about that much, but I don't care who you are. And I heard a podcast, I want to say, like, a couple years ago, which I really resonated with it, and it was talking about seals coming home from war and feeling so out of place in normal society that they can't wait to go back. Not that they love war. They hate war. They don't like what it is.

But they probably love the purpose, the camaraderie and the purpose, and they feel.

Like this is what they're supposed to do. There's a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. Like you said, in the Olympic space, you have one single focus for a long time, 4, 8, 12 years. Nothing in your life matters more than that sport. And everything you do is generated to be important in that sport. And if you win, you're celebrated, which makes it even more dangerous because now there's a level of expectation that you are going to carry this flag further. And like you said, there's a ton of attributes you create as an athlete that are incredible life lessons that you learn through sport. They're amazing. The problem is, when you retire from an athlete, you've now dedicated most of your adult life towards this one specific task that has absolutely zero relevancy to life. I went in circles in spandex for most of my adult life. Well, most of my younger adult life, right. And now I'm retired. I didn't intern. I wasn't working at like Goldman Sachs as a finance guy. I don't have experience working as a job. And now I'm thrust in the spotlight to go and basically act and interact in normal society. If you didn't make money or you didn't win medals, then what do you do? Like you basically you sacrifice like the first 12 years of your life that you normally, from the age of 18 to 28, those are so incredibly important to gain expertise and experience and social skills and personal development and try anything that you want and fail at them and it's still okay and get back up. You didn't have that opportunity. You're now starting out as an 18 year old, but you're now 28 years old.

Right?

And so that's the challenge is from a competitive perspective, when you've got a corporate entity looking at hiring or perhaps you want to get a new job, like, hey, that's great, you're an Olympic athlete. I know you probably work hard. I know that you probably spent a lot of time doing this, this and this, but you've got zero work experience, you didn't finish college. You don't have any idea what it takes to be here. Like, maybe I'll take a risk on you, maybe I won't. It's a difficult position to be in. But on top of all of that stuff, you have to look at the actual psychological issues that exist. And that's where it really, really gets dark. I'm not excluded from that. I was so fearful in 2008 that when I retired in 2010, I wouldn't find my place. I wouldn't find my running start. I didn't want to go from 2010, retire 2014 or 2013, say, I'm coming out of retirement. I want to go for another Games. I never wanted that to be me. I said, as soon as I retired, I really, really want to walk away because I'm doing something else and I want to win at something else. That's completely unrelated to speed skating. It's unrelated to the Olympic space. So it's almost like a chip on your shoulder. Not everyone is like that, but that was my perspective. And, you know, a lot of athletes when they retire, like, literally, like at the snap of a finger when they come home from the Olympic Games, there's no coach, there's no training program, there's no cafeteria, there's no. There's no more structure and schedule that has been kind of given to you in a way that's pretty easy to follow. You just. You wake up, you go to the ice rink, you train, you come home, you eat, you focus on skating tapes, sharpen your skates, go back to the ice rink, train again, et cetera, et cetera. It's very mundane, but specific, but pretty easy to follow. It's simple. I say not easy. It's simple.

That's a great point. Right? There's a big differentiation between simple and easy. There's nothing easy about it, but there's a beauty to being able to focus on. On one thing at the exclusion of pretty much everything else.

Yeah. And now you wake up and, man, what do I do? Like, how important is money? How important is having a family? How important are relationships? How important is personal self development? How important is my nutrition? Do I even understand nutrition? Everyone? My nutritionist gave me the food to eat. Do I go for runs? Do I work out? Like, So I see a lot of.

Athletes go effort around preparing athletes for that transition in retirement.

There used to be. I don't know what it's like now. I think there's probably more of an emphasis now. But they always. Look, people always tell you, look, your Olympic career will end at some point, and you have to be prepared for the transition. We used to do these things called USOC summits, in which two years before the Olympics, you would go to a winter destination. For example, we would go to. We would go to Park City, and then all of the Olympic hopefuls and existing Olympic athletes in the past two or three generations would come. Eric Hayden would be there. Bonnie Blair would be there, Dan Jansen would be there, Michelle Kwan. These people would be there. And you basically would talk about what it takes to train for the next two years and then what to do before, during, and after the Olympics. The issue is no one really takes it seriously because you have this invincibility complex that, you know what? I'm not going to get hurt. Sure. Like, I'm just. I'm just going to keep skating until I die. And I was naive enough, remember, I made some bad decisions as an athlete. You know, I told you pretty early, I was asked at the age of 17 at one of these summits two years before the Games, and said, like, what do you want to be remembered for? And I wrote down, like, I want to be the most decorated winter Olympic athlete of all time. The greatest speed skater to have ever lived in. Short track speed skater. And they put that in the Steiner Ice arena in Utah. I forgot about this, but the things that I learned there were so important. But people could tell me all the time. And someone asked me, like, what do you want to do when you retire? I was like, what do you mean, when I retire? Like, I was built for this sport. I'm supposed to be here to motivate other human beings throughout my actions on the ice. It's very naive to say, and for some reason, I just thought that it was okay to live that life. It was like, I didn't have a parachute. I lived that way in speed skating. On one side, it's beautiful because there is no plan B. And when there's no plan B, you really commit to plan A. You better make sure that plan A is going to be executable.

That's the burning of the ships, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You burn the ships so you can't leave the island. But again, there's still something here. There's a difference, right, between people who seem to get more out of the sport. It's almost like they're actively versus passively participating in the process. Right? You can very passively participate, I think, suspect, where you follow the lessons and you go through the motions of doing everything you need to do for the sport versus I think, a more active way of doing that. And I say active in an emotional way, not a physical way. Obviously, both examples are physically active. But to be emotionally active through that process, I suspect you are, whether consciously or subconsciously, assimilating the knowledge, the skill, the failure, the discipline into what could be the next chapter. So let's go back and finish. How does the story end? It's 08. It's 09. So 09 is really the last major competition before the Olympics, right? It's the world.

It's the World championships. They're being held in Beijing and I'm competing. And there's one other US Short Trek athlete who was my junior. He started speed skating because he, he watched me in 2002. Now we're competing on the same team. He's from the same area I grew up in. I used to be his idol. And I always, I always used to look at this kid and be like, this kid's a lot better than he actually realizes. Once he realizes how good he is, he's potentially going to be world champion or Olympic gold medalist. And in and throughout this process at the World Championships, I just performed suboptimally. I wasn't a major contender. I wasn't a top tier guy to win. I wasn't on top of the podium. I think I got like fifth at the world.

At the world in 09.

Yep. I gotta go back and check, but it was the first time I watched from the, you know, after the competition, we have a banquet. All the athletes are there, everyone's getting awarded. You go in the podium, getting your checks. And it was the first time in a long time that I wasn't, didn't have the spotlight. I wasn't the guy that people were talking, man, that race, oh, that pass. Oh, my God, so powerful. Like, it was not about me. And I was like, oh, man, this is, this is weird. Is this what it's supposed to be? Like, do I just start to dissipate and just kind of wither away? And I used to be good and I'm still respected, but just don't have what it takes anymore to be competitive. And I'm kind of losing that edge. And I can't keep up with the evolution of what's happening in short track because the body types are changing and the training is changing, the athletes are changing. And so I left there really, really, really worried and upset. And also hearing that chatter again about, I don't think Apollo is going to be actually on the podium in 2010, which is a big different conversation. You know, I've been at that level for 10 years now, at the top, top, top of my game in the year 2000, 2001 season. I won every single race that season. And both the Korean athlete who I had that tussle with and that Marc Gagnon character from Quebec both came up to me during that race and was like, you are the greatest athlete to compete in short track speed skating. Like, two champions that I look up to and analyze said that to me to now being at a point where no one was.

You're not even on the podium.

I'm not even on the podium. But not only that, people aren't even taking my lap times during practice anymore. Wow. So, like, this is psychologically damaging because from a confidence perspective, you race differently. And I started to recognize that other athletes aren't respecting me on the ice the same way they used to. I used to be able to actually have an off day, but if I just kind of attempted a pass at someone, they just let me in because there was so much respect for what I had done in the sport before that no longer existed. People skated as if I was just like a random skater.

Yeah. So this huge psychological advantage you brought to the start line was gone.

Was gone. And so it really made me dive deep and say, okay, like, look, this is my last chance at really trying to show up differently. And I think that, you know, my Korean coaches have kind of been telling me, they're like, look, the Korean coaches themselves, they know you so well. They studied you from 2002 until today. You're the only thing that mattered to them. So, like, they. They watched every single race you've ever skated time and time again. And they have pawns in their skating rinks to basically mimic your skating, just like a boxing, like your sparring.

Sparring partner.

They have guys who try to mimic the way that you skate in that style so they can practice against you every single day. I didn't have. We didn't have that. We didn't think about it like that. They were. They were different level. And so I went back to my house in. In Utah, and I said, man, I'm going to go back to kind of where I developed my strength. And I said, I'm going to go spend a summer in Colorado Springs alone. I drove there.

Was there some part that thought maybe I should just retire? Because it's one thing to go through what you went through. It would be entirely another thing to fail on the Olympic stage.

Yeah, I didn't want to give up, that's for sure. I still believed.

This is interesting. I mean, let's explore that for a moment. Because I got to be honest with you, man, I don't know that I would have had the intestinal fortitude to continue if I really felt like I'm on the decline. And every day I'm Getting a little less good, and everybody around me is getting a little bit better. I don't know, maybe that's why I'm not Olympic champion. Like, I mean, that's. That's kind of a remarkable inner confidence. And did you explicitly or implicitly tie that back to some of these other difficult things you'd been through, including getting thrown out in the woods when you were in the summer of 98 and things like that?

I did. But, you know, again, you're like, did.

You talk about this with your dad? I mean, who would.

I did. I did, extensively. He was my confidant. And there's three people in my life who am I confident? It was my dad, one of my best friends, Ian Baranski, who was basically living in my house in Utah as, like, a training partner, and then John Schaefer, the guy who I brought in to live and train me during that period of time. Those are the three people who I really, really had conversations with. John is the most optimistic, positive person on the planet. Like, there's nothing, he believes, that can't be accomplished through strength and focus. And so his thought was, oh, it doesn't matter. You're going to come back, you're going to crush everybody, you're going to smash everybody, you're going to skate lap times that don't exist. You know, my dad's more realist. Ian is a very, very, very strong, different view. He's much more of a realist. And, you know, he saw what was.

The view between the three of them.

My dad didn't really have an opinion, right? He's more just like, look, I support what you have to do to make sure you. You really go through the drawing board and develop a plan. And I was a different person then. So my dad was. I think he was happy to see me, but he also recognized that it was not going to be easy. John at the time was like, well, you know, I think this is still possible. You can still win every single distance in the world, and you won't lose an Olympic year. You know, that's his attitude, which I needed to have that around because I'm not naturally that type of a person.

And then Ian was meaning you naturally don't have that much confidence.

I have confidence, but it's different. Like, I definitely. It's not like I walk in and say, I can't lose. There was times, right, when my equipment was on point. Like, earlier in my career, I was like, I could fall down. I could still win this race. Like, no one's Going to beat me. I'm just that much better than everybody else. But at this point, you know, I was battling some small injuries and some equipment issues, and nothing was quite right. So I never felt like I was 100%, like, maybe 80% of the time. So the one person I felt like really knew me was my friend, Ian Baranski. Now, to give you kind of some backstory. As a short track Olympic athlete, you never show your cards, even to your teammates, because eventually you race against them in the Olympic trials, right? So you kind of show that you always hold something back. And so I was really, really good at that. So people didn't really know, like, what was going on internally. They just thought that I was, like, this stoic, never show pain, incredibly focused, super hungry, quiet, kind of crazy guy who just comes to the rink with an insatiable appetite for pain and training every day, like, with, like, a complete robot. Like, that's. That's who Apollo is. And that's what I wanted the people to believe, right? The reality was, and who I would. I needed somebody to kind of confide in, which was Ian, my close friend. And, you know, Ian was my first roommate when I was traveling on all these years, like, when I was 12 and 13 years old. So he knew me from when I started till to this point. And he basically was like, look, you are not the same athlete you used to be. Like, you're actually. Even though you have the same recipe for success, you're just not the same. You're older man. Like, your body's stiffer, you don't skate the same, you don't look the same, your equipment's a little bit different. The other athletes are changing, the sport is changing. And, you know, he's just keeping it real, right? Someone has to. And so I kind of went back, and I'm like, man, like, how do I. In my view, like, all these years spent training still only matters on this one day in the Olympics. Like, none of this stuff matters. My previous wins, in my own head, my previous wins don't matter. I keep my medals inside my sock drawer in my house. I never bring them out. I don't want to think about that I won. I want to think about I'm the underdog every day. So I said, I got to make some huge, huge changes. And so I. A week after the World Championships, I'm back in Salt Lake City. And normally you take, like, a decompression period and you really, really think about things. And I was going to stay there for about a Month and then potentially go somewhere else to train. I just packed my bags, like, one day and I just left. And I drove all the way to Colorado Springs, checked myself into the Colorado Springs Olympic Training center, and began training. So the Olympic team moved from Colorado Springs to Salt Lake City in 2007 to train. So the speed skaters were no longer in Colorado Springs Training Center. So when I arrived back there in 2009, I was the only. Only guy there. Everyone else was off training in. In. In Utah or wherever else. And I brought my bike, and I basically set up a little training plan I just trained solo for.

And this is like February, March of 09.

Yeah, this is like February, March, April, May. I think I first saw the team again, like, the end of May. And I spent that entire time in, like, essentially complete solitude, just training by myself. And I just, you know. You know, I just like anything else. Like, you analyze the situation. What are the goals, what are you trying to do, what type of training you need? And mine wasn't based solely on sports science because I didn't seek that route. I probably should have, but I didn't seek that route. I just said, okay, gotta improve cadence, gotta lower the body weight, maintain strength, but really have to just get an incredible aerobic base shape like you've never been before. And that's gonna carry you throughout the rest of the year so that you won't have issues with burnout or, you know, with any overtraining.

And do you develop that aerobic base on the bike, bike or on the track more?

Well, we don't skate in the summer that much. We don't skate till the end of May. So that period off.

So it's on a bike.

It's on a bike. It's on inline skates, it's running, it's with treadmill, it's with StairMaster. But it's really spent a lot of time for me. I use the Manitou Incline in Colorado Springs, which is like the scar on the road. It's one mile of cog railroad steps that go up. And that was my. That was my sanctuary. Like, I lived on that thing so many times a week. I used to go up it with weight fast and jumps. And, you know, you can't beat that thing. It's just one of those elements where you just get a little bit faster at it and you get easier to compensate, but you hurt just the same no matter how fast or slow you go.

And so what's the fastest time you could make it up?

That mine was like 1736 or 17, 38, which is fast.

And obviously lots of athletes do this, right? It's not just the skaters.

Yeah, a lot of athletes. I would say the average time is probably 22, 24 between there and that.

17 and a half minutes was not with the 40 pound weight vest, I assume.

No, no, no, it was clean. I needed to go back to that space again of like this is where I started.

How much of that training do you think was for your brain versus your body?

90%, 95%. I was probably doing everything wrong, to be completely honest with you. There's no reason why I should be going for a three hour bike ride. My races last no more than two and a half minutes and of those two and a half minutes, I'm probably only really skating for a minute and a half. Three and a half hour bike rides going up and down like the canyons, they're important. Maybe you go a couple of those rides, but you don't need that. I should be doing specified interval training according to the time that's under duration and you can extend that. But I shouldn't be spinning my wheels for hours at a time. But what did I gain? A mental perspective and a honed focus and a resiliency. And the feeling that I was reinventing myself was really important to me psychologically. So I would walk on the ice differently, I would walk into the ice rink differently. I would project a different type of energy upon my oppone opponents and other skaters and my confidence level would be higher. So that's what I went after. And it wasn't until I came back to Salt Lake City and invited John Schaefer back into my home until he said, look, no more of these two hour runs. What are you doing? This is so 1960. You're wasting your time and you're actually training the sprint out of your body, which is your biggest strength. And then I kind of explained to him my goals and we began that journey towards shedding all that weight. And it was excruciating. And so how the story ends is arrive in Vancouver BC 2010, and going.

Into the Olympic trials, had you gotten back in enough shape that most people felt like you'd make the team?

Yeah, everyone knew I'd make the team. It wouldn't be as dominant as it normally would be, but for sure I'd make the team.

So that's a big improvement over where you were at the Worlds earlier in the year.

Yeah, I think so. It definitely came a long way and technically I'd improved a lot. And people had seen some, some big changes in my body.

And going into Vancouver, you've already figured out, like, this is your last Olympics.

Internally, I didn't tell anybody, but internally.

I've always wondered what it felt like for multiple Olympians. Like, you know, when Phelps rolled into Rio, how bittersweet it is in a way, because they, I don't know, like, do they appreciate it more then or the first time? Because you'd think, well, the first taste of this is the greatest. But. But perhaps in some. I'll give you another example that's totally unrelated. Like, I have three kids, right, and you've met them all. And I remember when the first one's born, I'm thinking, this is the greatest thing in the world. And now our third one, you kind of know it's your last one. In some ways, I think I'm actually enjoying it even more. Like, changing the diaper is like, you know what? There's going to be a day when I don't get to do this anymore. And so did you have that sort of feeling when you walked into the opening ceremony? One you're being probably looked at now as a leader of the team, right? You're certainly one of the leaders of the team, just from a maturity standpoint and experience standpoint. And you also know inside, like, hey, I don't get to put this uniform on and walk into this opening ceremony again. This is really the last hurrah for this chapter of my life.

It's an absolute greater sense of appreciation for what you're doing and also that you know that this is it. And I'm older, more mature. I can appreciate the process that I've been through. I've got scars, I've got wins and losses. Mentally, you've gone through a lot. You spend a lot of time alone, so you've battled your own internal insecurities and demons and self doubts. And now you're at a place where you feel like you've. You've experienced a lot. So to me, the last Games was the best for sure. When the first Olympics was incredible. Never take it away, but I was so young, difficult to absorb that type of information at that rate of speed which you've never had access to before. 2006, different environment, different games, been through it one time, understand it. I know how to do this. I know how to handle the pressure. I know what the sounds are like. Go through the process. The last one, you go, walk into the arena, you hear the sounds and it sounds awesome. Just. You have a greater sense of Appreciation. And also, you're just really focused on just trying to be your absolute best. So it's not like you're there to. To experience the moment because you just don't have time to.

Right.

You're there for a specific task and a goal, and unfortunately, that detracts away from your time to be present and experience the Olympic Games for what we see them as. It's amazing production of the world coming together to compete. We go there and it's just like, I'm. Ice rink, Olympic village. Ice rink, Olympic Village. Ice rink, Olympic Village. Rest, recovery, massage, sharpen skates, game time. That's a recipe right there.

Yeah. In many ways, you do, as a spectator, even feel bad for the favorites because it's a totally different experience. In swimming, for example, like, usually the meet kicks off with the 400 IM. And so if you're a favorite to win the 400 IM, I'm not even sure if you're showing up to the opening ceremonies.

You're not. You're absolutely not.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, whereas if you're not a favorite, if you're, like, not even going to make it out of the first heat, you're going to go to the opening ceremonies because that is part of, like, that is the experience. Right.

You're probably going to go to opening sandwiches. You're probably going to have a drink.

Yeah. So it's important to keep in mind the sacrifice that has to be made if you really want to win. Using that very specific example.

It's a moment in time. Right. So as much as you want to have fun and go talk to their athletes and mingle with the different cultures and community you've trained your entire life for these two weeks, and you are not going to allow one slip up to detract away from that in these two weeks. And it's funny, because when you're four years away from a game, it's like, when it's 2006, oh, man, I'm four years away. This is going to take forever. You know, this is. And I know a heroine says, it's going to be here before I know it. And then two weeks during those Games, you're like, man, I wish I had another year of training. You're not saying that in 2006. You know, you're wishing like, the games were in a year or two. And so it's a different perspective. But I arrived and I hit my goal set in terms of my weight, my. My cadence. And the first check mark for me was when I got on the ice in Vancouver and the Chinese coaches are there, the Canadian coaches are there, the Russian coaches are there, all the coaches from the different teams are there. And they're videotaping our practice as they are everyone else's practice, because it's the first look at seeing what shape you're in. Did you change anything since the last World Cup? Is your body weight different? Are your equipment different? What are you doing differently? And the first thing that we heard via the chatter that was going on was like, we don't even recognize Apollo.

This guy we trained to beat, he didn't show up. We got a new guy, a new.

Guy, new guy with a new cadence, a new rhythm, a new style of training, a new style of racing, a new tech. Everything was different. That's exactly what we wanted to do and had an incredible team to help support that. Not only my strength coach, Josh, but the rest of the Olympic team and my teammates, too, are a huge part of that. Right. Because we train every single day together. And it's a really, really powerful feeling to be able to show up and like, to me, that was the win. Actually, it was before I ever raced. I was like, man, like, I went through this. I took a huge gamble and I wasn't sure if it was going to work. I think it did. I feel like it did. Everyone else is saying, like, it. My coaches are beyond happy and they can't believe what we just accomplished. And I haven't raced the race yet. That's a very powerful feeling to go into your first race with. And then from there it's like, look, I've done the work. There's nothing more I could have done. I wouldn't change anything. And it's time to just focus on strategy and compete. And then I end up winning another three medal at those games and retiring with eight medals.

Were you sad or happy at the closing ceremonies? Was that.

It was both. I was both sad and happy. I couldn't believe that my life had turned into this direction. I couldn't believe that I'd spent this much time dedicated towards a sport. I couldn't believe the, the amount of press and interest that we were getting from a crazy sport like short track speed skating and just feeling grateful and then also kind of promising myself that, like, hey, like any opportunity that comes your way, you are going to say yes no matter what for the next year. And then thus began, when I walked off the plane from Vancouver, I, like, wasn't in one place for more than two or three days, just bouncing around from speaking engagement to appearance to, to meeting to sponsor related stuff. And it was incredible.

Who were your sponsors by the end of the 2010 Olympics, who were your main sponsors?

I had Alaska Airlines, we had Omega.

Subway was still.

Subway was, yes, that year Coca Cola was a sponsor. There's a few others, but those are the major sponsors.

And when did you announce your retirement?

I announced my retirement in 2012 publicly. But I knew, I knew in 2009 this was my last Games. It was just one of those things where I, I was happy and I was, I really wanted to complete the game. Like I always talk about that, right? But like, I never wanted to come back. I never wanted to finish my career feeling like I was missing something. Like I want, like I had an itch. I wanted, I didn't want to be going down the line working on some new app and be like, man, I think I'm going to come up out of retirement. And I had that feeling watching Phelps in 2012 during the London Olympics.

You had that feeling for him or yourself?

For myself. To Wonderland. Like, man, I'm still in great shape. I still feel really healthy. I know a lot more about myself, nutrition, technique, training than I ever did. I'm pretty sure I can make this team and I'm pretty sure I can be competitive in the Sochi Olympics in two years. And then so instead of that, I had that conversation with myself internally while doing commentary in NBC Olympic Games, while interviewing Phelps at his first press conference and talking to him about the pressures of being so successful, having. Does he maintain, you know, like his sense of.

In 2012 was a very difficult Olympics for Michael. I mean, I don't know him of course, but I just, I know enough about swimming to be able to watch and read between the lines.

But he went through, he was going through a lot.

There's only two events he entered in the Olympics where he didn't win a medal. The first was that fifth place finish in the 200 fly as a 15 year old boy in 2000 in Sydney. But what a lot of people forget is he finished fourth in the 400 IM, his signature event in London. And that's a race that, if I recall, I mean, at the time Lochte was probably the best 400 IMer in the world, but Michael had done really well in the trials and basically touched out another swimmer that most people thought was going to get that spot but then kind of faded at the back of the 400 IM.

Didn't look like himself.

No, didn't at all. And I'VE always thought it was sort of inside baseball minutiae. If I were to say, like, as a swim fan, what were the greatest Phelps performances of all time? I'll tell you what is number one. His anchoring the 4x100 relay right after his abysmal performance. And I use abysmal in quotes, but for Phelps, his abysmal performance in the 400 IM. And I remember watching that race thinking, oh, my God, this could shatter his confidence for the rest of the meet. And then he shows up in the next race, the 4 by 100 free relay, and crushes the anchor, crushes the leadoff leg. There's a backstory to what happened in the anchor of that. And they didn't end up winning the gold, but that was one of his most remarkable performances. But overall, that Olympics was sort of sad for me to watch Phelps because I felt like, God, like, he's not the same swimmer he was. He got touched in the 200 fly and all these other things. So what was that like for you? Both talking to him about it, but also just now thinking, wait a minute, should I be doing this again? You're going through this process of what you didn't want to do.

I didn't want to do that. And I was having that conversation. And I had some friends who, they always thought that I retired too early. They were like, man, you still got another four years because you were what.

29 at this point?

28. Yeah, 28. I was young. By the way, looking at Michael and seeing him, by the way, in that race, directed anger and rage is very powerful. And Michael swims very well when he's angry. Very well. And he needs to.

You saw that between the 400 IM.

And the 4x1, because I was very similar. I needed to have, like, if I was winning too often, like, I needed to throw in a little self sabotage, little monkey wrench in there to lose a race and then get that feeling of. Get that feeling of losing and be like, oh, I do. I forgot what that tasted like. I think Michael won so easy for so long, you know, like, it's difficult to push yourself when no one else is. It's only you out there. And you can win if you're 70% right? So. And he's so incredibly talented. It's that. That's what I saw. And maybe that's wrong, but that's my view. And so when I was watching that and I said, you know, I'm not going to make a decision here. So I came back home, I went to that same place, Mo Clips in Iron Springs Resort. And I said, I'm going to really think about this and make a real decision on whether I want to do. And I said, you know what? I'm not going to go back. I'm going to continue on this path of trying to become an entrepreneur and trying to learn and explore and grow as a human. And that's what I'm going to commit to. And I'm not going to listen to this short sighted wants of wanting to relive in those Olympic moments again. Because I think a lot of that's what it comes from is like, you know, I'm two years out from the Games, although I'm there, I'm on the other side of the lens for the first time ever. And it's a different feeling. And I want to be the guy on the start line in that fourth and fifth lane getting ready to go. I want to be one of the favorites to win this race and I want that pressure. I want that moment of, okay, the curtain's open and it's do or die. Like you either perform or you don't. The paper is never going to lie at the end of the day. And you don't get that anymore. You do if you have a different perspective in terms of business and opportunities. But as an athlete it feels different. Doesn't matter how, which way you chop it up. So I'm glad I made the right decision. I decided not to go back to the sport and I was going to pursue different opportunities and different, different things in my life. And that was the decision I made and I'm still happy about doing that.

God, it's such an amazing journey because, you know, I've known quite a bit about you before we spoke today, but I didn't realize, I think all of the internal struggle, I think it's just so easy to kind of look at athletes and look at the ones who have done so well and assume that it was always clear in their mind that they were going to win and they just executed. And you don't realize the best athletes are still humans, which means they still come with all the doubts that the rest of us have and the self loathing and the shame or the, in some ways perhaps even perverse incentives. I can't help but hear your story and wonder how much of this was sort of you needing to prove yourself to someone, to something. From the moment we talked about your mom not being there, I've always wondered, is there something about you wanting to demonstrate to her, hey, I'm worth it. I was an amazing kid. And that may be too obvious a statement, right? Maybe that never even factored into any of this stuff subconsciously. But you were a very driven kid from the beginning. I describe these are like missiles without guidance systems. Those are still good things to have. Like, it's great to be a missile that just needs a guidance system.

Right?

When you think now, I mean, where do you want to be in 10 years? Obviously it's going to be mostly business related. I think it, you know, we were talking about it over dinner. Like it's not like you necessarily want to go back to coaching skating or something, which is unfortunate because I think in many ways you could bring so much to that sport. If you unfortunate for the sport, not for you, that you could bring so much knowledge. As you've said, like your knowledge of nutrition and training and specificity today is so much beyond what you had at the time. But let's just pause it for a moment that you're not going to become the head coach of the US Speed skating team. Where do you want to be in 10 years?

10 years? I want to be, I think, first and foremost, healthy. I want to have increased my personal relationships with my close family and friends, made new ones along the way, increase the amount of experiences that we've shared together. Business. I think that I'll always have an urge to be involved in different projects and different ideas and whether they succeed or fail, I want to win. But I don't think it's necessarily that's the real importance is that I go through those processes and hopefully I learn and apply those lessons at the next business opportunity or the next venture or path that I'm doing. And I think, at least my father told me at one point, he's like, you know, Apollo, in your mid-30s, into your early 40s, you will become significantly more self reflective and inquisitive of many questions. My father's a very curious person, as am I. And so like these questions come up in my life that I never asked when I was an athlete. Like, what is really important? What do I really care about? We were talking about like watches and these, these things that have like limitless acquisition opportunity. Where do some of these things really play a role in my life in the long term and what do I really need that really makes me happy? And you know, I feel really blessed to have had both incredible wins in my life, both on the field of play and off the field of play. And also I'm really blessed and have gratitude for the incredible stupid mistakes that I've been made and losses that I've created both on and off the field of play, either through business and relationships and the way that I acted or whatever. I am human like anyone else. I've developed superhuman like attributes associated with this sport. As with anyone would who dedicated a lifetime of achievement towards something, maybe they wouldn't be Olympic champion, maybe, but they would be very, very good at that thing. And I think that I've just, I've realized that, that the things that make me really happy, it's a pretty small list. And I feel really, really grateful and happy to have recognized that at the age of 36. And I want to continue that and I want to continue to explore, I want to continue to learn and hopefully I can give back and teach the next generation of kids and people whether they want to be an athlete or not. I believe that everyone should be playing sports in some capacity.

I.

Regardless of your output or your skill set, I think there's amazing life lessons that are learned about how to win, how to lose. And just like I went through about committing and dedicating and sacrificing and going through the physical pains that you have to go through. I think there's really, really powerful things. Even if you just suck and you're the last guy picked, it doesn't really matter. There's things that you learn through that process. I think they're difficult to teach if you don't have the physical component that's associated. And so I think about that often as I, you know, every year that goes by. I'm eight years retired now from the sport of short track speed skating. I have no desire to go back. I love going to every Olympic Games and commentating. I feel at my element. It's a, it's a homecoming and reunion for me to see all my old friends and associates and I keep tabs in the race and sometimes I watch speed skating tapes until 4:30 in the morning and realize like, dude, this doesn't matter anymore, like put on it away, you know, and then also just, just trying to find out and understand more about myself. And I think that's really interesting. And so, you know, I've gained a lot from just spending time and learning from people who, who I don't consider to be, if you ask me, younger, when I was younger, experts in their field. But now I've had a much more open mind. I've learned a lot from you. I've learned a lot from a lot of the people that you, you are friends with a lot of different podcasts. And the, you know, the advent of technology and access to information is so incredible. You know, when I went in my first Olympic Games, we didn't have Instagram. Like people were barely using their phones in the same degree that we were doing today. So, like your access to the Internet was just to Google a couple of ideas, but that's really the bare, bare minimum if you're creating content. You were one of the very few. Right. And so I just, I think it's really interesting. And I've been traveling around the world.

Yeah, your travel schedule is worse than mine. And I, I tend to lament my travel schedule, but yours is. I mean, you're really never in the same place for more than two or three weeks, right?

Yeah, this is probably the longest I've been in one place in the US in actually in years. So I'm actually really enjoying it. I've been spending a lot of my time, about 80% of my time in Asia, and my routine is pretty aggressive. I've always had a fascination with Asia in general. Both the food, the culture, the people, the diversity, the growth, the opportunities that exist there.

But you still don't speak Japanese fluently.

I know I don't speak Japanese fluently. I speak more Korean than I do Japanese. And I think this is a byproduct of me being.

I just have to introduce you to Tim Ferriss because he will be able to teach you Japanese in a shorter period of time than I'm convinced anybody could teach you.

That's right. That's right. That's his amazing ability to deconstruct world class people.

Japanese was the first language he learned outside of English because he went and spent a year in Japan when he was in high school. And I remember one night over dinner, he just explained to me how he learned the language. Because if someone says to me, look, I went to live in France for a year and I learned French, I'm like, okay, well, I get that. That strikes me as achievable. Oh, I get to spend a year in Mexico and I learned Spanish. Okay, I get that. I can relate to that. But you take a white kid out of Long island and send him to Japan for a year and he comes back speaking obviously with an accent, but very fluent Japanese. That's incredible. And he, you know, he can really articulate that process. So I don't know, we might have to, we have to make that happen. Yeah, it sure would make your dad pretty happy, right?

It would make him very happy. My dad still counts in his head in Japanese. So as much as he wants to be full on American, as he is American, but you know, he still can't shake that man.

I know they're waiting for us inside, so I guess we should continue this discussion off the mic. But I want to thank you so much for everything, for coming down and also just for being so generous with your insights as well. I know we've. I'm guessing that a lot of what we talked about today you've talked about a thousand times before and it's sort of like, God, do I have to tell that story all over again? But I think we've also talked about a bunch of things that certainly I've never heard before. And maybe that means that for others, there's also more of a collection of stuff here. Last question I have for you, though is thinking about your race and career. You talked a lot at the outset about your father instilling this belief in you that there should always be this pursuit of perfection, even if you never get there. Is there a race when you look back at your career, that was the narrowest gap between what you perceived to be the perfect race and your actual outcome. Not necessarily the place you stood on the podium, but just in terms of your execution.

Yeah, there's one race that I publicly talk about as being the quasi perfect race, and it was the 500 meters in Torino, Italy. I was not favored to win that race. I hadn't won that race all year long. I hadn't won a gold yet in those Olympics. It was clear that the South Korean team was just better at those games. And I was in the final and I had incredible athletes to skate against. And I knew my only option was to basically, we call it jamming the pack, where you slow down so that people can't get their momentum to pass you. Right. So if you can imagine driving a Honda on a freeway and a Ferrari is behind you, imagine the Honda. Wherever the Ferrari goes, the Honda is in that lane. So it doesn't matter how fast the Ferrari is, he can't pass because he's blocked by that car. That was the strategy that I used in that race. I wasn't the fastest, I wasn't the best, I wasn't the most likely to win. And I was able to pull off a wire to wire win. So that was publicly. That was one of the races that I think that was the most perfect for me because everything was on the line. I wanted to win. Everyone had kind of given up on my team. They Thought that I wasn't going to win that race. My sports psychologist at the time basically said, Apollo, this is your second Olympic Games. Amazing what you've gone through. Crazy that you came back and you won another couple of medals. You should be really proud of yourself. And I took that as like, are you giving up on me, man? There's only one more race left. And so it was personally very, very powerful and visceral. And then I've had a couple of other races where just execution wise, it was so perfect. Just the pass, being in that flow state, everything felt very automatic and easy. It slowed down. The minute and a half long race felt like five minutes. I felt like I produced zero lactic acid in my body and it felt like I just was simply significantly faster than everybody else. I felt like Neo from the Matrix. And I don't say that with any exaggeration. It just felt so incredibly easy to maneuver and dance on my skates and pass that. I was like the puppet master. And those are the feelings that I think we all of us are addicted to. Whether you're a writer, whether you're a doctor, whether you are a singer, you have that one glimpse of being in a true state of flow. And it's so difficult to replicate. And you spend years, years searching for that one time. And you do everything possible. You go back and you track. What did I eat that day? Well, I had three grapes in the morning. Well, you know what's going to happen for the next two years? I got three grapes and they're all green for the rest of my life. Right. You just try to replicate because you don't know what changed. And I'm not sure we can, we can really identify what that is. But those moments are the ones that I crave. And I get into those moments no longer in sports. Sometimes I get it to where I'm in the gym, when I'm alone, that's my sanctuary. But in conversation, like our conversation, three and a half hours went by earlier and I had no idea because I was so transported into that moment. And to me that feels perfect because you're present, you're here. The quality of time is being spent. And hopefully people at home didn't fall asleep listening to my crazy speed skating stories.

I'm sure they didn't. I'm going to get you into race car driving because that is another example of where this flow thing happens. So your lap time on the track is like you'll, you'll focus on that. I mean, in many ways, to me, driving A race car is basically just a bunch of time trials. And I know it sounds like a cliche, but my absolute fastest laps in any car, on any lap, never feel that fast. Yes, that is the most amazing feeling. Usually when I set a lap record, which is just meaning my lap record, like, I'm never going to be the guy that sets the actual lap record, but my lap records are always after the fact. I just notice it. I'm like, wait, holy, you took like 5, 10 off your fastest time ever. And that felt effortless. That really is a beautiful feeling, isn't it?

It's an amazing feeling.

And you're right, it is so addictive. And I think that's part of why competitive sports have been displaced by things that I do. Not necessarily competitively, but just competitive with myself, like archery and race car driving and these things. Because you're waiting for that day when it's like, oh, my God, you did 12 out of 12 shots, all bullseye. How did that happen?

That's why people run. Some people do Ironman and some people do triathlons. That's why people do everything. And I'm convinced that you have to care enough about the outcome for you to get in that state. There has to be some form of consequence, maybe not physical, maybe not danger, but psychologically to impact you, to almost force yourself into that realm. That's why I think athletes always, time and time, get into that flow state more than anyone else, as with the military and people who are in the service because they're in real, true flow state, because they will die if they're not. But I think that there's a lot to be said there. And I think that we as human beings take that for granted. I think athletes a lot of times take that for granted in trying to achieve that flow state, of maintaining that mental consistency. And that's what I was seeking for all those years. That's why I read all those books about sports psychology and the brain and human behavior and trying to understand myself and others. And it's a beautiful thing.

Yeah. So where can people find you on social media?

Social. I'm Apolloono on Twitter. My Instagram is, you know, there for pictures, but I'm not as active as I'd like to be, and it's something that I would like to restart.

And what's your handle on Instagram? Is it the same?

It's the same at Apollo Ono.

Any books that you recommend that you've. I know you've written a couple. Any of those that you think people ought to follow up on, based on what we've talked about today where. Because I know you have one called no Regrets, which basically describes kind of this, this ethos going into the 2010 Games. Right? Yeah.

I mean my book of it was called Zero Regrets. I wrote that right after the Olympic Games. I had an amazing experience.

Zero Regrets, yes. No Regrets.

But it's kind of like a snippet into my life. And also you got to remember I was in that mind frame of really just post Olympic Games without all these other experiences involved to be able to really think back objectively and think and remember and really understand what was happening at the time. But that was, you know, one of the books that I had written with a ghostwriter. When I say I had written, I didn't actually write write the book. I wish I was a great writer and had that talent. My writing skills are subpar. But I really enjoy reading and I really enjoy learning. And so I've, I mean look, I've invested. I've spent time into businesses and deals and things that would are so far away from sports that would really blow people's minds and cause I just fascinated. Right. I'm a curious learner and it's been amazing opening the next chapter of the life and seeing where life takes me.

Well, it's amazing to know that, you know, your athletic career spanned what, 12 years basically your professional career, your career as a father, whatever else you go on to do is going to span multiples of that. So in many ways the best is yet to come, right?

I believe so.

I hope that's true for all of us.

I think so.

All right, man. Thanks again. It's been awesome.

Thank you. Thanks Peter.

You can find all of this information and more@peterattiamd.com podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings and links related to this episode. You can also find my blog and the Nerd safari@peterattiamd.com what's a nerd Safari, you ask? Just click on the link at the top of the site to learn more. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my subjectively non lame once a week email where I'll update you on what I've been up to, the most interesting papers I've read, and all things related to longevity, science, performance, sleep, etc. On social media. Also, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, all with the ID Peteratti md. But usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions and comments. Now for the obligatory Disclaimer this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice and note no doctor patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the material link to the podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they have, and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures, the companies I invest in and or advise, please visit Peteratti md.com forward/about.