EP44 Alex Kopacz Part 2 - Olympic Bobsleigh

This is the Empowered athlete podcast, episode 44. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Empowered Athlete podcast and we are proud to present you with part two of our deep dive interview with Olympic champion Alex Kopec, the bobsleigh brakeman, the two man bobsleigh gold medalist from Pyeongchang. And he will tell us just how important a hundredth of a second can be in life. But before we dive into part two of this interview, just a quick reminder that we want, we need your feedback. So please email me at PD PowerConditioning with your thoughts, comments, questions, queries, anything relating to this podcast. And also a quick reminder that June is our 1230 challenge month of junk free. As in junk free June. So take time every single day in June to remove a couple of items from your home, recycle them, throw them out, sell them, get them out. And each week tidy a space in your home, a room, your office, the garage. You will not believe how good it feels. Get to it. Get in the group. The link is in the show notes for the 12:30 challenge going on all of 2019. Let's get to Alex.

And then, and then you just, you see it like the teams that keep winning while they're cheating. Like the Germans have research strength from BMW, literally working on one of their sleds. They have a sport from University of Goodness fes. I can't remember what it stands for, but the point is it's, it's dedicated to sports in Germany. So they have a branch that does the kayaks, the rowboats, one that does the bobsled. They had like a budget of like in the ballpark of 5 million euros to change any element on the sled that Pilot X wanted.

Yeah.

Like you think they don't have a library of information from the 60s. Of course they do.

Yeah.

They're not guessing anymore. They're just simply trying to get it right, you know, instead of having to.

Start from scratch every quad.

Yeah.

You know why? That's insanity.

Yeah.

So how do you think that you got. Because you know you're at this place now where you've achieved the pinnacle of your sport.

Yep.

You know what, what were the factors that got you there?

Coach number one, first and foremost, I had a man. So. So Olaf Hempel, I ended up, he was the first coach to respond to me via email with a two week suggestion. I knew nothing about this man. It was a military email address. And I'm like, okay, I haven't heard who he is. My one coach supported him. Stephan Bosch. He's like this Is the guy ignore all the others. And while I was in Germany, he could potentially, literally meet with me and we could make this work. So he lived in a city called Sonthofen, and there's a military base there called the Hunter Division, I guess the Jaeger. So I had to take a train from school three and a half hours down south of Germany. And then on the weekends, we'd be at this military base for two sessions a day from Friday to Sunday. And then Sunday evening I would take the train back. And then again, I'd do the whole school thing from whenever, till. Till, you know, like five in the evening. Then training on my own. And then, you know, it just. It was a lot of work. A lot of work. But this guy was so much like me. It was. It was kind of. It was crazy how it started off with super professional. It's going to cost you. This, I'll be this. You do these things and we move on. And then he started to see how badly I wanted it. Then he started to see that. That no matter what he put at me, I would do it or I would try to do it. No matter the pain, no matter the. And then he started to realize that, oh, no, this guy is completely driven. I need to be monitoring how hard I push him. And then he started inviting me into his home, met his wife, his kids. I'm at their baptisms. And then the next summer, they're like, alex, why don't you live with us? They had a free room. And then from that day forward, it was two sessions a day, one on one, and we talked about everything. He was probably one of the best, if not best ever brakeman that ever graced that sport. He was a black sheep like I was. He did things that were different, that were outside the box. He had studied the University of Cologne, as I had mentioned. He was looking at what people are doing in Switzerland for strength training in general. Different ideas. This concept of a micro program, the thing that you can work on every day outside of training times. Little things like the foot must be strong. You can't have any give in the heel when you're sprinting. When you.

Those are the things that.

Eliminating the energy leaks, eliminating any energy.

That's right, that's right, that's right, sure. But he would take it down to basics. He would say, like, literally, the basics would be like, alex, we can teach you to run by watching video over and over again, watching every foot position, toe angle, everything. Or I can break you down with a hammer and make you Run hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of meters. And I started realizing that he had. He had two things locked down. One, he had used old school, new school. We were using, like old Soviet lifting methods as far as tracking the progression. Things that no one had even really heard of. When I, you know, come back to Canada and just kind of start chatting about, like, how to do a strength training program, it was set up in a way that I got stronger every week. But if you just looked at how you're hitting every set, you'd say, like, well, it's not really any progression. But no, truly, you start kind of breaking through these ceilings rather, you know, consistently. And then there's like, how we worked on the running and then how we worked on the pushing. Because his sport was bobsled, we were accessing tracks. In the summertime. I was in Austria at a push track that's like squirreled away up into the mountain. You have to follow this goat path. And again, it was. The Austrians had built it for a certain Olympics. So they had a mirror. I can't remember which start, probably eagle start. And you had to know a guy to know a guy to get there. And Olaf knew all the guys. We're in Sterzing in Italy. We had a weekend where we go. There's an old push track there that was built in the 80s or 90s or no, 80s, mid-80s. And we got to know the hotel manager who was jazzed that a Canadian was in northern Italy using this push track and Berchesgarden and Koenigsegg. So towards Munich in Germany, another push track there, military base, through the connections. And I started to get to know a lot of the German athletes and they were just happy to have me around just to hang out with, let alone allow me to have a place to take train. So by the time I got back to Canada. Exactly, exactly. Absolutely. So by the time I get back to Canada, I've already had over 200 reps pushing a sled. And so basically, to give perspective, in any given training session, the Canadians do no more than four pushes a session. So you push in the ice house. Three sessions a week, maybe two. I left them all in the dust. It was a matter of when, not if I was going to be the best that they had seen.

Is that like a crazy tough pill for, you know, some of your, either Canadian peers or coaches to swallow, to kind of realize absolutely. Clearly, you know, we're not getting the job done?

Yeah, my first. My first summer back with Olaf representing.

Canada because we're not getting the job done at home.

Yeah. First summer back, whispers that this guy's doping. That's why he's in Germany.

Isn't that fantastic?

I mean, there's, there's, there's two steps to it. There was one where I'm like, oh, they think I'm that much better. Yeah. But then there's, but then there's the irritation where they couldn't see. Like every time they were doing lifting sessions, I had a friend of mine. So this was going back to Nick. Nick's like, alex, I don't think any of these guys could have survived. But you, you did with Olaf. Because he watched where I came from. He watched how I'd be lifting and be like, alex, you're lifting again. Like, you shouldn't be lifting so much. You're going to burn out. And it's like my coach talked about making this backpack, a backpack big enough so that throughout the season you just reach back in and grab what you need in like a joking eating capacity, and you've got the energy and capacity to keep doing the sport. Because he wanted me good for every race. Not for testing camp. Everyone's peaking for testing camp. I'd walk in relatively over trained. I would wipe the ground with these guys, mop it all up, and then I'd be ready to kill the first race, the second race, the third race, the fourth race. And still, in spite of all that, I had to perform like there's a gun to my head because they were waiting for the chosen one to take the spot and go to Holy Grail and get the gold medal. I wasn't supposed to be the guy.

I can't tell you how many conversations I've had around these athletes. Let's say it's a really long season and a volleyball pro season, hockey season, whatever. This athlete has to be able to get through this whole season. Like, stop treating it like you're gonna peak for each game. You're gonna peak for this, you're gonna peak for that.

The tapering, the ten day taper, the six day taper, the three day taper. Oh my God. Just enough. Just train and just. You only have what, two peaks in a year if you're lucky, One true.

Peak, any given athlete, an entire year, you were lucky. And it would be a very specific type of sport if they're ever going to be able to peak three times. Most amazing athletes are going to peak twice. Usually once or twice. And that is why you're going to see, you're going to see the The Olympic qualifiers have the world record.

I was just going to say that.

Exactly.

You see it in track.

It's a perfect example. And so just like that. Well, there's, there's one peak gone. See you later. Like.

Performance standpoint is anti climatic to worlds where everyone is peaking to hopefully make the Olympics.

Totally.

That's the perfect example.

And, and in our sport, like the trial is literally the physical testing that we do to pick the team. Now who ends up actually going to the Olympics has to be determined throughout the season. Canada one generally goes, Canada two generally goes because the big nations are allowed to auto qualify two sleds. If, because usually we're, we're so ranked high, it's, it's fine. Candidate 3 has to fight for it. But that testing dictates what sled you with as well as the politicking. The summer before.

Yeah, yeah.

So the summer before actually, the year before I actually had a really big injury that took me out of the first half of that season, almost the first three quarters. That's the addictive tear. And imagine like, imagine the relief on some of these other guys that I was off the board. Right. So getting back, that was really hard. That was hard on me for a lot of reasons because I felt abandoned, alone, betrayed. Like you think you develop a lot of friendships and you realize when you're just not there, you're not there. Like you're out. So coming back was hard because you have to fight. You fight against the mythos that you know, you're injury prone and healing. Everybody's good again. And every time it wasn't like the way that they predicted it was going to go. It was because you underperformed, you're not good enough. It's like, well, man, when are you guys going to give me a break here? So I sidetracked myself. Okay, so you have the physical testing. So because everyone's getting panicked, everyone's doing whatever they can to be peaked and primed for physical testing. And we're. That's it. Like I said, gone when peek out the window, toast. And you're trying to somehow be good enough to then qualify.

Oh, this is a culture, like to train your technique testing. The athlete is programmed to train for testing because they know that if they don't show the numbers that that's going to be the perfect excuse for them to be cut.

Absolutely.

But it doesn't work the reverse. Like we said before, they might have shown good numbers, but then they still don't make it.

And you know what's the funniest. So in the sport of bobsled and again, maybe you see this in volleyball. I don't know how you guys get compared against individuals. I feel like that's really tough on a team like that. But in bobsled you have four people and they do something that they call push off. So they'll take, let's say the pinkies against pointer finger on this hand, pinky right hand, pointer finger, left hand. These are the two athletes you're comparing. Run one, you have a certain set of ice conditions, certain temperature and everyone's fresh. It's the first run. They then go, okay, we had let's say 4.9 seconds with these four guys. Pointers out, piggies in 4.91. Next run, the ice is different. These boys aren't as fresh. Maybe they don't like the pinky as much as the pointer. How can you guarantee these guys are going as hard as possible or as hard as before? You have four people in effectively an eight variable scenario. And that's not even factoring in the weather. And then guess what, this guy is now off the sled for the next race. And if you're off the sled the next race, you might stay off the sled for the next three races, four races the the rest of the season. So when they say this is going to be not a push off scenario, this is just, let's say it's like a two men, right? Two man day. You have one pilot, one brakeman and sometimes two brakeman will take the, you know, rep one rep, two on day one or both reps, depending on who wants to write. As soon as someone gets a rep, one guy sees the other guy's having a coffee or pre workout and the other is going, oh, this is like I need to be as ready as this guy is. On the off chance that, or even if no one takes anything, on the off chance the other one might. You see, guys are stimming up, ready for the first run. Because I'll be damned if this is the rep that gets me kicked off of the sled four or out of the two man race or whatever. The guys that are the top top are the ones that can chill. They're not losing their spot on the four man may not lose a two men. Sometimes it's important, sometimes it's not. But there's just, there's just certain scenarios where no matter what, you have guys literally trying to give their all and you're just running out of bullets, you're running out of Peaks cortisol through the roof and the paranoia and. Yeah. And then you're like literally started like, did my other guys like, oh, if a guy stumbles and that wasn't the guy being tested? Well, that's. It doesn't matter. It happened, it happened. The number's your number. Like you have to make a decision, right. And then you're living with each other day in, day out for like almost eight months a year. Like it gets crazy. Something my coach brought forward. I know it's a very chance to meet someone like Folker Nolte who does the coaching for rowing in town. Very interesting man. But something that he uses, or rowers use is seating. You could take the stress of people trying or not trying or trying to make their teams work and not the other teams work by saying, each one of you through each round of competition will keep your score. You are the slowest, you get the max points or the least amount of points and so on. And by four rounds you can go, ah, okay, we have the least number of points or most. These four clearly are best and they shall be the best together because they're all individually. By pushing in, teams have shown that they're the best individuals. But why bother Try it, right? Why would we bother to do that?

Better systems that work across other sports, you know, you mentioned Volker. It's growing. People around here will know that. Yeah, but, but looking at what works across sports to learn, you know, it's like, it's like a city looking at another city's infrastructure to see how might we build in order to get better. What are they doing, how can we do better? What they're doing really works well.

And then ignoring the city planner.

So tell us when things really came.

Together, then let's, well, like officially come together. So I'd say the World cup season. Yeah, so that, that's right. That's right, yeah.

Tell us about your driver in the World Cup.

Well, I'd say like at some point as Lake Placid is where it really kind of really kicked off, I had a massive advantage on the other Canadian athletes on the stone start. It was like a top three start in Placid. I think the first race, it was a back to back two man race because the snow was so bad or no, the ice was so weak that the four men's would probably get. The ice would shred the ice and anyways they were like, we're gonna do two two man races here and we'll do two four man races next stop. So the first day was like a Saturday and then the next was a Sunday where it's a Friday, Saturday. It's usually how they do it. End of the weeks I'm with Chris and Chris and I came fourth and they're like, all right, Crips and, and the other brakeman came, I don't know, fifth, sixth, something like that. They were there, they were behind us. Now imagine if Alex was with the other guy with Crips, that they would have meddled for sure. Or camera. You think I'd have all these like absolutely just ingrained in my brain. But the point was they said, chris, you're done. Because Chris and I had, had won like all this four man trials again, the Canadians against the Canadians, right? And the two men, and, and we were just like gonna be the team together. And I was like so, so jazzed to be with Chris again because it was just like, you know, like we have such a connection, like a friendship developed over the years. So anyways, they put me with Crips and then Crips and I metal and they're like, okay, point proven, I guess. And it was the same differential, like start time difference. No matter what that was Chris or with Crips, I was just proven clearly by two back to back races that I was the dominant brakeman and that was it. And that was, that was apparently the predetermination that I was going to be the number one brakeman on the team.

And Justin's the best pilot.

Yes. And he had been proving that over the years. But that was their best investment going into the season. Right. And so, so then Chris got less and less opportunities. His four man team was taken from him and given to Crips and, and then ultimately we built this super crew. And in four man we were always like a hundredth off the record or setting a new one or we would just tie it or. It was such a fun and frustrating season. But overall the results in four man, we were sometimes short of the mark, sometimes on the mark. But in two man, Justin and I were always like in like a top three scenario, we were meddling all the time that we were paired together. And I think the biggest breakthrough that really put it down is so again, keep in mind they're trying to give each other breaks, right? But when the number one guy, or is he the number one guy is against the number two guy, is he number two or number one? Well, which one do we like better? Well, which one has the experience, which one has the legend? You don't know if you're being given the next race a break because they think you're tired. You vocalize you're good. You vocalize that your coach has said you should do these three races. And they go, thanks, that's great. Let us know if you need anything else. And then they take your plan, scrap that, and then give the other guy the races. Why, why wouldn't you start to think, are they just trying to give this guy as many opportunities as possible to take the spot back?

Yeah, sounds like it.

Yeah.

And that's. You know what I mean? If it sounds like a duck, quacks like, you know, I mean, looks like a duck, it's probably a duck. So this was. This was something I started to see and I got really frustrated because it didn't matter how many times I had either the fastest start of the race with. With whoever pilot was paired, and generally it was with Crips or even top three. It was clearly faster than the other guys. It wasn't even, like a question. So Christmas rolls around and hang on.

Are the pilots not noticing this?

Well, maybe they are. They aren't. It's, you know, there's also the superstition. You know, he's riding high, riding low. Maybe he's jumping in and the sled's going sideways. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's, there's a lot to it. You know what I mean? There's a ton to it. And you have. You have coaches that either have a prejudice already and are influencing the pilots, or the pilots have other alliances and friendships over years of being with each other. Like, how can you fight that with the sheer fact that you have a better result? Just take it for what it is. Sometimes that's harder to come to terms with than not. But in the end, I think it just became obvious and everyone's kind of new and it was accepted eventually, but where I finally made it happen. And actually, by the way, Olaf does this thing at the end of every year where he actually compiles, like, a bit of a stat sheet. And he's just like, when Kopach is on the team, there's, you know, X percent improvement on results every time you're there. The Canadians have this many better opportunities and stuff. So I thought that was really interesting that him being proud as a coach where he could, like, because you would be like, oh, you're just saying that because you're my dad kind of thing, you know, like, you're supposed to say that, but he would actually, like, say, like, no, here's how I came about this and here's why we know. Here's why I can say this confidently. So Christmas rolls around, everyone's trying to go home. We had a race in, I think it was in Eagles. We were in Europe before the Altenburg race. Altenberg was after Christmas. My coach is like, he likes to plan the whole season well in advance. And he was so frustrated because he's like, we don't know what the Canadian's gonna do. We hope that this is what's happened, but we've been seeing that even though there's a plan, something will change. So we had a hell of a time trying to do the programming for the whole year because he had no idea what races I'd do or wouldn't do. Trying bc. Yes, you got it. And so if you compete here, we're doing this.

If you don't, we're doing this.

Yeah. And so Christmas is coming and again I. Absolutely, absolutely. But it robs you of your, your potential, your max potential. And that's the biggest frustration for both of us.

It was based on what information that you could actually know. I mean, there's situation situations where you don't qualify for whatever.

Yeah. Well, for us in European volleyball, you've got weekly matches all year, then you've got league cup matches where you may be playing, you may go all the way, you may not.

Yeah.

Then you've got European cup matches where, same thing, you may only make it to the first round, you may go all the way. And so you're required.

Absolutely.

To have absolutely four or five plans based on when. Okay.

Yeah. If you make the next round or.

The to peaks, deciding, okay, if we're going to the final, the European cup, we're going all the chips in to win that and we'll try to hang on. Yeah, for the playoffs, but chances are we're going to be physically toast and we're throwing that away.

But whoever's better trained by that.

That's right. That's right.

We'll.

We'll get the chance.

But that juggling.

Yeah, absolutely. So I and my training partner, Joey, I didn't really talk much about him, but he was a massive help throughout all this. Basically, we had agreed that whatever it was going to cost, I was going to stay in Europe over Christmas. Everyone else went home to their family and friends and I had been basically completely awol, even in the scope of my relationship. Girlfriend was able to visit me in Germany for like a week, period. But it just, it's weird. It's awkward. It's not fun free. Because every minute we're together I'm like, I don't know, maybe this is good for rest. Is it not good for rest? We're doing a little sightseeing. You know, there's all sorts of little things where. And even on her end, I'm sure it was stressful because it's like, you know, like, am I in his way right now? Am I not in his way? Like the jet lag. It's only a week. Like, you know, so there's. But anyways, the time sacrifice was in the finances. It was. If I'm in a hole, I'm in a hole and I'm gonna keep going. I stayed over Christmas and I trained hard, had nine days of training and the whale officer looked like, like, why would anyone go home for Christmas? You lose two days of training there and back. At least that's four days gone. Out of nine possible. Then you have five days. By the time you get back in the swing of things, you start, stop travel, start, stop, compete. We train right through it.

Depending on how much time you have at that point, that exponentially changes your training outcome because of how much training you've missed.

Absolutely. Race happens. Start record. We won the race start record. Haven't been touched in 14 years. Do you know what has the four man start record still? My coach and his four man crew back in the day.

Isn't that amazing?

So at that track, until it gets broken.

Me too.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

And that's when I knew that day that I was the best. Best breakman in the world. And everyone else knew it. And I finally proved it to my own team.

So thanks to Canada.

Yeah, for sure. Not.

So let's get into the excitement now. You're right there.

Yeah.

Olympics on the horizon.

Yeah.

You're performing incredibly.

Yeah.

So you guys, in that World cup season, you can't get a win.

Yeah.

Because there's a German pair and the driver, the pilots. Friedrich.

That's right. And just killer. I mean. Yeah.

And I looked at his results from last 2018, 2019 season. He's first almost every single.

That's right. He won overall in two man and overall in four man. That's a feat. Yeah. Like, I mean, amazing. Absolutely. He's one of the best ever. Ever.

But you guys.

Yeah.

In that part of the season.

Yeah.

One, two.

Yeah.

One, two, one, three.

That's right. That's right.

And you guys actually take the World cup title.

That's right. Yeah. So especially in that Last race in Koenigse.

Building up to the Olympics. What was.

Well, I mean, like, what was your thought?

What was your thought process? Were you thinking that? Were you thinking, I'm going to be a goal medalist?

No, not at all. Not at all.

What was your goal?

I was like, it would be great to be in the, in the podium spot. In any podium spot. It would be great. That was, that was my goal. Because we've seen the track already by the Olympic season the year before. They do like a test event. Yeah, you raced it and, and the Germans placed better than we did. You know, like we, we didn't have a podium finish, to my knowledge, the year before. Right. And same with Forman. And so it's like you're going into a race where you already know that the competition is better there. So I kind of had a relatively tempered view of what was going to happen. I knew we were doing amazingly going up to this. Everyone says that when you get the Olympics, things start to change, right? The rumor of material doping, I mean, like runners getting treated differently, whatever, whatever. This kind of changes results and stuff. But the reality being driving a track is driving a track, the ice will be different. You know, there's a lot that changes. And especially going in with the expectation that, I mean, we won the World cup, who knows what's gonna happen? You get the Olympic Games because at the end of the day, it's one race. I mean, it's a two day event with four runs, but. But it's one race. And in many ways, like it's an outlier as opposed to being best the whole year. So being my first experience, like, I was confident, I was confident as hell that I was ready and I was going to find even another gear. And Justin has just been constantly performing time and time again. Just cool as ice, always ready to go and just consistent with the runs. Right. Which is the beauty of a sport like that. It's the one who's consistent that wins because it is a sport of attrition. You have. Yeah, you have heat one, heat two. Whoever I was with with two men, and I love talking about two men because that's where you show off that you are the good athlete. Right. The start times would never deviate more than a hundredth from 1 run, 1 run, 2, or they'd be identical. And with him, a deviation of up to a tenth is excellent for a pilot because ice conditions change. You know what I mean? Like, there's 1.5 kilometers of track to navigate. So we didn't need the fastest run, fastest start every heat. Many cases that was exactly what had happened. But a lot of people would lose their composure in between. Somehow they'd have a record run and then like a fifth rank run, run two. Okay, well, you know, it sucks. That's great. You're on one with Sweet. But that's the race is over now, so.

Yeah.

But the funny thing is, I guess from the athletic side of it, I didn't even know that I'd be paired with Justin the Olympics. Not until we finished our holding camp in Calgary and we're going to Korea.

Because they don't inform you. Like wouldn't that be the obvious choice?

There was, there was so much, much rumors and whispering and actually the other guy is going to be with him and you're probably going to be prepared with. And you have these guys who are potentially going to be two man athletes. And while we heard that this, this track guy who was on the team knew that maybe he's going to be, you know, doing two men because they think that it might be a good choice. And it's just like no one said to my face, alex, that's you. Not until, not until later in that two week period. Because there was actually a moment, I don't know how many people would actually admit to this. There, there was a moment where one athlete was actually not supposed to do a two man race at the Olympics. And in training in the two weeks leading up to the Olympic Games, we should be like coasting.

Yeah.

Ready outperforms Justin and I in an ice house push. And I'm not really trying because I'm just doing technique, focus, go outperform us. Which then made them question their number three choice. And he got bumped because of that. And that's a situation where everyone was so on edge. How hard do we go? Like, should we, are we competing against each other? Are we not competing against each other? Well, maybe we should on the off chance that they are and I'm not.

And then.

It'S, and it started to, it started to kind of break down. We had so many sessions that were planned and then went into the second week, they canceled a couple and this and that. And then all of a sudden, bang, we're in Korea. And then at that point, in many ways, like it's a bit of a free for all because like everyone has to manage their own energy system. Right? So it's like it's my first time, like what do I think I should do? Well, many ways I just end up doing exactly what I've been training to do. But the food, the cold, how far am I walking per day to get my food or not get my food? What are the training sessions like? And even like the day before the two man race or the day before the day off. Justin and I crashed in our last run or first run and the second one was clean. But the point was it happened. We were just like, well, we just gotta keep going. We crash right at the end too. So it's kind of like it was like a weird situation. But a moment like that can throw someone's composure off. You know, like you don't want to end on a bad note like that. But anyway, like, obviously it was what it was. And one thing I guess I need to mention for other athletes, throughout this entire season, I was on a tremendous amount of painkillers. I had the savage tendinopathy in both my quad tendons. That has been there for years but just got worse because there's never really time to take it time off because if I'm not present, blah, blah, blah. Lose my spots. My low back was terrible. I had stenosis flare up in my C4, C5. My left arm was useless to me. Three months of the summer leading into the season, tear by bicep tendon, both sides. Tears in my, in my lower back. You know, this is just what's. Yeah, absolutely.

Because everybody's picture. Because what they see is so different from the norm.

Oh yeah.

In being a high performance athlete, they can't imagine, you know, well, if they move like that or they look like that, they can't imagine that they're in pain or that there's injuries or whatever. And there's. At that level, there are always injuries.

Like. Absolutely.

You know, you're eating Voltaren for years and how many surgeries and how many.

Oh, yeah.

And I can't. It's. Every athlete at that level is in some bizarre level of suffering.

Yeah.

And, and they've gotten so accustomed to it.

If we were a horse, they just put us down.

Bingo. It's a bizarre level of suffering. And if they, if they've become so accustomed to it that there's no real, there's no real concept of anything different. You know, I have to get through this. I have to get through this. I have to get through this. Well, how do I do that? Whatever it takes. And that. Well, what's legal? Well, I can take these.

Exactly.

This is how we're going to patch this up for now because there's no stopping and resting at this point. Your resting is simply enough recovery to get to the next thing. So it's, yeah, it's so just for.

The people listening, I guess I was taking about 400 milligrams of Celebrex a day. I had Diclofenac 10% cream with like a lidocaine mix with. There's a couple other things like DMSO to help draw it deep into the skin. And then I was taking, on top of all that, six Tylenol arthritis on race days just to get me through the race.

That's hardcore toxic.

And there was, there was so much, there was so much mental health issues throughout the bobsleigh career and obviously got worse throughout the Olympic season. But leading in the summer, leading in, I was having panic attacks, like full on anxiety attacks where I felt like I couldn't breathe because the pain was so bad. And then the fear of that stopping the whole process was just absolutely crippling at times. So truly, when you'd asked me, like, what was it that got me through it? It was my coach. It was my coach. It was the things he did, the way he had gone through it, the fact that he, he had injuries, it dogged him. The fact that he was always looking for a way to help us get through to the next checkpoint. You know, like we would drive all over the country to him to meet up with his old friends, physios, osteos, you know, like, anything to figure out, okay, well, this is flaring up again. Why? Where's it coming from? Is it a dysfunction from the spine? Is it, you know, and just chipping away at things like this and having really good doctors look at scans and being like seeing something that in hindsight is so obvious that I'm not a doctor, but I would like, some of these are such smoking guns, in my opinion. He would just go, oh, no, I think that's the issue there. And so like with stenosis, for example, people like, oh, maybe your rotator cuff's pinching nerves, some kind of inhibition. You have a guy who's snatching 140 kilos, who can't all of a sudden pick up five pounds. What do you mean it's a rotator cuff issue? Cortisone shot, next day, full power like that took three months to unravel. Yeah, it's stuff like that.

That's, you know, it's the right people. And the other thing you're describing with your coach too is though, and tell me, tell me if this is where you're, what you're alluding to. He was probably one of the only people, if not the only person who truly understood what you going through.

Absolutely.

So you felt like you had somebody who believed in you but also had your back.

Absolutely.

And that combination is something that if an athlete doesn't have somebody like that, whether it's a coach, whether it's a partner or a spouse, whether it's a teammate, somebody like that, there's no way they could survive those parameters, those situations.

Situations you'd buckle much sooner. Absolutely. Absolutely.

That one person, just one person who knows you can and then you somehow find the way because you wouldn't have known you could absolutely everything you felt.

And you guys will notice on any of the pictures, I have this very particular old looking bandana and that was his bandana that he wore both the like throughout his competitive years and for both gold medals. And he gave it to me as a good luck token. And I wore that every race for three years. And then of course at the Olympics, without a doubt, I wore it. Little things like that, little things like leading up to going to the Olympics, speaking to myself and of course my training partner Joey, were like, you've earned my respect. You've put in the work. You can call me any hour, anytime. I will pick up the phone if you just want to just talk about the food, about the weather, I will answer. Things like that, where that shows such a depth of love for the athlete. And even just throughout the relationship with myself and Olaf, I never wanted to disappoint him. Any training session, like, it had nothing to do with like, yeah, sure, I had days where I was just mad at myself for not hitting the targets. But the first thing that I would feel is shame that I had disappointed him somehow. He never once did he say he was disappointed. He'd look at me like, alex, there's another day. You did enough. You're ahead of your targets from last year. Look at the bigger picture. I look at him being like, I wanted to show you that I could. I wanted to show you that I could, I could out surpass your expectations of me. That evokes something really, really deep. And if I think having opportunity to coach someone else, how can I recreate that? How can I get the athlete to want, or an employee like you named the scenario to want to not disappoint me, to want to impress me time and time again. Like, honestly, not from fear, but out of this childlike well, need.

Clearly he's a man of integrity.

Absolutely.

And his word.

Absolutely.

But also driven by standards and when you first started talking about him, you mentioned that he gave you two weeks and it sounds like it was a test drive somewhat.

It was, yeah.

Here's something.

If you like it, great. If you don't, you know. Yeah. And.

Your response. Response woke him up a bit.

Did not.

Woke him up.

No, no, no, no, no, no. But, but actually, actually it was his second wind into the sport of bobsle. He had cut it out of his life.

It inspired him. You inspired him.

You showed him something in those two weeks that was good for him and good for you. And that's where it sounds like this really incredible relationship.

Symbiotic relations the same time. It's one of those things. And I think you realize how special it was in that you may never recreate that in your lifetime.

No, it's true. Because it's a rare, rare thing to.

Have happen and it doesn't always happen with family members. It doesn't necessarily happen in coaching relationships or employer relationships, but it is one of those things that is so rare that you may not see it again, but to have experienced it and that closeness and that understanding, it's like sometimes finding the best teammate or you know, if you think of a partner in certain sports like figure skating or whatever, when you read each other, it's, it's an amazing thing. So, you know, you, you must have such an appreciation because it certainly didn't come from the normal process that you would have gone through in your bobsled. It came from you seeking something out and maybe you were meant to find him. Who knows?

Absolutely. But he'll be visiting in June, so I can't wait to show him around. Him and his wife. Yeah, it'll be great. Yeah, well, yeah, all the, the days that they're here. Why not? Absolutely. Yeah. He's a wonderful man. They're both, they're both amazing people.

Just on a. Unusual question here, just for people that understand you out of this whole process. You know, you win an Olympic medal, you win the Olympics, you're in debt.

Yeah, I was for sure. Like there was. I mean, carding alone is not enough to cut it. And so there really comes a point where like there were minutes where. Or moments where I had to buy a last minute flight to get back for the right time for a certain camp car rentals. Sparing no Spence on food and supplements is like a standard, like a necessity. Not compromising on how much physiotherapy I could get or couldn't get. Obviously to this point it's a different scenario. Because then the gold medal opens up doors in ways that I never even thought was like a reality. But, but prior it was trying to be comfortable with the stress of oh my God, how much is this next thing going to cost me?

But there's a big likelihood that maybe you didn't even.

Absolutely. And then you just be high and dry.

Exactly.

For sure. For sure.

It's such a long shot to have had the outcome that you've had. You know, you're so committed to the process and yeah, that would be an amazing outcome. But it's such a, such a long shot to have that outcome.

Absolutely.

You know, you look at, say you didn't have that outcome and it wasn't the medal. You're looking at a massive, I don't know, maybe not massive, but an amount of debt.

Sure.

That, you know, from an outsider looking in, they would expect that an athlete that's made it to the Olympics, that they've been taken care of somehow. Like that's, that's the perception from the outside is that they've been taken care of somehow along the way. Because why wouldn't Canada do that? Especially for a winter sport? It's Canada. Right. And I just wanted to draw attention to that so that people understand that it's not, it's not at all that it seems.

And the funniest thing is the most support I got was actually in Europe. I'd have strangers come up to me seeing me at the same track because there was a cat like in Mannheim, there's this TSV. It's like a nationwide training facility thing. Right. So public can use it. Some, some athletes use it. And there's a little cafe beside this 100 meter, 120 meter stretch. And some people would see me there regularly and would approach me and say like, oh, what do you do? And then by the next time they see me again, they say like, do you need anything? I'd be in town, you know, trying because I wasn't very comfortable with asking for help, but tried anyways and just met with, we don't do that kind of thing. Oh, that's not, you know, like the same answers I had when I was doing university level sports where I could understand why I'm getting no because I'm no one. And to be like, no, like I legitimately need this for an Olympic goal. And being met with no's. No, that's their, they're allowed to say that. But when you see how drastically different support is in places where I'm a stranger to this country and I have people who don't even know the first thing about me other than my sport that are just pitching me a hundred euros or you know, maybe I can buy a meal or maybe I can pay for a couple days of your rent or, you know.

Yeah. Like I have a feeling it comes from the perception that every, every person I talk to.

Sorry. Just, just to be fair, I found a lot of help through therapists.

Yes.

Chiros, physios, massage therapists. Depending on the relationship that we had built, some of them would just treat.

For free tour detriment financially.

Yeah.

Has always, always grouped Sport Canada athletes into training groups because Hockey Canada is going to pay $50 for a session.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to straight coach whose rate is $50 an hour. They don't have any expertise.

No.

So no. And that's the best. I just referenced that number because that's Hockey Canada.

Yep. Yep.

You know, just like you're saying the service providers.

Yep.

End up believing in the goal and sponsoring and helping in order to.

Because I knew they, I knew they didn't have the money and, and at the same time I wasn't being paid by the sport body so I putting in extra time because I knew how much they needed and whatnot. But that's, that's what I'm saying. Comparable to the therapist, many of them would understand what the needs were and what was actually being funded. And that's what I was getting to, is that ultimately anybody that I talk to who's interested in learning more about the athletes because they look upon them with awe but they don't really understand the behind the scenes stuff. Anytime I would tell them, I said, well, you know, you think they're like an NHL hockey player. It's not that at all. You don't understand that they, they're scratching to get by and they live below the poverty line and that's just the reality of Canadian sport. And they don't get that. And yeah, there's things like own the podium and other funding. Athletes can and things like that. But there's such a buffer between that money and the athlete that it's not often being directly. The athlete doesn't have a stage steady stream of confidence in what they're going to get and it's, it's piecemealed out or there's a buffer and it goes to maybe service providers or other people instead of the athlete directly. And you know, I don't know what the solution is. Like I hate to be the person who's squeaky wheel complaining about it without offering a solution.

Sure, sure.

I mean I've done my own version of, of solutions from my field of things. However, there are bigger picture solutions. Whether it's modeled after other countries, whether it's, you know, supported by a country.

Where I think it is.

Well, we were chatting before we pressed record here and Alex, you mentioned of giving the power back to the athletes.

Looking, looking to a model being in Germany as long as I'd been understanding the way that they support. It's not even just Germany. A lot of European countries, even the states have a program for something like this. They tuck away a lot of the funding for athletes through police emergency services. The military primary responsibility of the athlete and or the soldier in this scenario is 11 months of the year is dedicated to the sport. One month of the year will be programming to, to educate themselves or to further their training or to whatever they're paid. Wages of military personnel at some appropriate scale. They have on every military base an amazing facility to work out at because they've been established for decades because the soldiers benefit from it. And you have, you have medical right there, you have food right there. You could sleep in the barracks if you should. So choose.

That's interesting. And that cross culture exposure helps each other. It's a win win.

There's almost 800 athletes being supported through such a system in Germany. Are they going and killing people overseas? No.

A lot of European countries have that as a mandatory part. Their country where say an 18 year old has to go on military training and then whether they serve or not.

And not. And not every athlete, even on the German bobsleigh teams, for example, not every athlete is in the military or in the police force or firefighter or some emergency services. Some of them are, let's call it private athletes that are with a track club or whatever and are with them. So the they have a choice. They could go the army route or they could not. But ultimately it's such a win win situation for the nation because you have, I mean let me just call it subsidized. It'll still cost what it costs, but a subsidized version for high performance that can be controlled nationally where you have athlete pools of soldiers from all sorts of bases and you have a humanizing aspect from the military to the civilian population. There's sport heroes as well as national defense as well as, you know, your friendly police officer. So in many ways one hand washes the other. You have more draw into these protective jobs as well as support for athletes in a private capacity where they don't have to fight each other for where the funding is coming from because they're being paid as professionals anyways now. And for that to be an option would at least alleviate some of the athletes that are being left to the sides that could have been the next champion because of funds, because they didn't jump through the hoops that the NSO needed for them to get the carding that they may or may not were gonna get. Take it. Keep that carding. I got enough to get by. I'm gonna still train hard and I'm gonna earn a place at the table eventually through my performance. And I think it would also eliminate people having to move to different cities to train at facilities. I met Military Base X. I got a track. I got this, I got that.

Yeah.

Why. Why do I need to fly over there, find a place to rent out at a way more expensive rate than in my own city with my own support system, you name it. Now, some people want to do that and there is some benefit to it. I'm not going to say it's a completely wasted opportunity, but like, even on our bobsleigh team, a lot of athletes were from Ontario. Specifically. Specifically. And for us, it's the inconvenience of moving to Calgary, you know, to. To. To maybe get the same training quality or worse, because it's in a scenario that is uncomfortable, foreign or the same medical stuff. It doesn't matter. It's not your optimal case. You're away from your family, friends, your girlfriends, your dog, I don't know, whatever, like. And the ones that live in Calgary are from Calgary. Well, it's great, you know, benefit. You know, it's good. But. Right. Yeah.

The keyword you mentioned there is choice.

Yeah.

That gives the athlete.

There's one way.

Yeah. Yeah. So.

So not to pick apart all the negatives that come along with sport, but like to celebrate what you've experienced.

Absolutely.

Was. Did you. I mean, you.

Can you describe.

Yeah. Tell us about this.

We know that there's four races.

Yeah.

Or, sorry, four heats.

Basically. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And what position were you in after three?

We were in the number one position. It was ours to lose. Shock. Nothing.

No pressure.

Nothing but shock when we. When we finally won.

So that means the one you're running last.

That's right. We're going last. And so while I chat. I'll just throw up. I have this playlist that I have the same songs every race.

Have you read that? You have the same playlist for Entire season.

Yeah.

Do you still listen to it or do you sometimes Immediately Nostalgic takes me right back. Primal memory.

Definitely. There's moments where either I'm working out or whatever, but the one tune that I listened to in between every heat was this one. I'll just skip it ahead a little bit so everyone will know. So Beethoven 7 symphony, second movement. And then I would kind of throw it down into one of my other favorite metal songs, like, right before the run.

And the purpose there to.

To completely disassociate myself from the competition, to put myself in a place where I can save every ounce of energy, keep my adrenaline as low as possible. My coach used to sleep in between heats, just check out for 20, 30 minutes, wake up, obviously, like carbs in.

The middle in an optimal state.

Yeah. Just. You have to. At that point, it's like there is. It's such a do or die moment where it doesn't matter how much it hurts, how much it doesn't hurt. We needed every hundredth, literally. And that last heat, we were a hundredth faster. 4, 9, 3, 4, 9, 3, 4, 9, 3, 4, 9. And that's just based on the start time alone. And so when a person. When I've spoken to people about this, when you blink, this is about a tenth of a second. That's the duration. One tenth of an eye blink was the difference between that gold medal and a silver medal.

It was five hundredths between you and the bronze.

Yeah. Think. What could you have done to screw that up? You know, it's such a. It's such an insignificantly small margin that over four heats or like, roughly five kilometers of ice to tie to the. To tie to the hundredth of a second, people like, oh, would you really want to know who really, really won? It's like, well, I mean, yes or no are the two answers. And if yes and you're not the one that won, well, that would kind of cripple you. But if no, there's still beauty in the fact that you tide over four heats, five kilometers of ice. And the last time a tie had happened in the sea sport was 20 years ago between a Canadian team and an Italian team. That is so rare in and of itself that it's to be celebrated.

And there's a magic to it.

And with a team as strong as that German duo, there's honor in tying with a team like that, you know? Absolutely. Yeah.

You have the World cup champions against the favorites.

Yeah. Yeah.

And what kind of exchange did you have with them?

It was Extremely. It was brotherly. It was very warm. It was them welcoming us by cheering in the, in the track, right? And we were confused because when you get down and you see the, the clock is. The first thing you see is you're coming up the outrun and it's your final time and then your rank and then the ranks, number one. So obviously we're just like, that's it, we won. We just won. And then seeing them cheering, we're like, oh, they're pretty happy for second place. That's strange. You know, we'll take it. But that's strange. But there's a comment that Thorsten said is that, you know, we're brothers forever. We won, you know, like as a group kind of. It's just. It's such a weird space to be in because you're so exhausted. It's midnight, the lights, the. The cheering, the. The realization. It's like you're not really there. Like stunning, you know. And then, you know, I see my parents are inconsolable and just, just. It's. It's so much, it's just so much happening at once. And then, and then, and then we were swamped with like the interviews and stuff and we didn't even get back to bed at 3 till like 3:30. And even then like, you're still like, oh my God, holy shit, we just fucking won the Olympics. It's so hard to. Yeah, it's so strange that after so much effort, so much time, and even in my regards, four years is one quad. That is not a lot of time to go from nothing to champion. The way my coach looks at it, he's like, alex, in a thousand days this was the project that you completed. And I like to refer things back to like my engineering roots and you know, so if you're ever in an interview, Alex, you can tell them you got a thousand day project, you know, but.

That'S a great way to look at it though, because people don't. When you think in terms of quads and you think in terms of planning for quads and then your annual plans and your mesocycles and your microcycles and all of that, there's so much that goes into all of that that you know what you are describing and what you might look toward for your future in those massive projects, you know how to break it down and you know how the suffering might go to get through the hard parts, but how it leads to the next thing. But it's such a massive undertaking when you're looking at two quads in order to get to that. That final outcome. And it's. It ends up feeling, in a way, so long, but almost like a blink of an eye at the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah, just there it is. It's all gone.

And it really. It really feels as jarring as that. Like the following month, it's just like. And now what?

Nothing. And this is the thing. This is the thing that Paul's dealt with and so, so many other high performers is that there is nothing that will compare to what you have experienced. There is nothing that will compare. So how do you find the zest and the joy and the brightness in life when you've experienced a pinnacle of what you could have ever imagined with help?

And by the time you reach for it, I mean, I'm not gonna say it's like, oh, no, it's too late. But if you just started doing it right away, the whole process is a little bit quicker and less painless. But it takes a person a little while to even realize that. Like, oh, maybe I actually need help. Maybe this isn't normal. Chatting with other people to actually understand how normal it is. That's even something that helps out. But for sure, it's very. It's a very weird moment. So right after I spent about a month in Whistler. Cause girlfriend was finishing up her contract there. And there was a day where, I mean, we did skiing and skiing gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush. I'd never been at the Whistler Mountains before. So we went bungee jumping the first time ever. And that was a moment where I realized that maybe I have a bit of a problem as far as, like the rest of my life. I felt so alive and I was so happy for the rest of that day after that jump where it just clicked. It's the adrenaline that I was craving and missing and. And I mean, that is the. That's the root of the competition, right? Like, it's the pain, it's the. It's the buzz. That fear, that nervousness, that kind of. That. It's really hard to describe because the difference between that. That nerve, that ready nervous fear is like the line is just. Is there a line? Or is it the way you look at it? Because, like, the body sensation is about the same, but it's how you choose to take those steps to get past it, that's what kind of really changes. But it doesn't take away the sensation. You just kind of go back into this routine. Like the way I use the music, it's the Same songs, the same process. It's another race. It's another race. But that's, I think, the biggest problem of the transition. You go from such an exciting, not only lifestyle, but experience, and then you're kind of like left to deal with the mundane reality of everyday life. And then you feel like you could never find something as exciting again until you do in a different capacity. But it takes a little effort on the athlete's part to rework that. And it made me kind of think, I mean, maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but I think conceptually it's pretty close. When soldiers come back from long tours, you detach from regular life. You come back from a bobsleigh tour, you've been away from regular society for so long, it's kind of strange dealing with regular people again.

People don't understand what you've experienced in life. I mean, it's very hard to find someone who can relate to what you've.

Experienced and enter in like, the more traumatizing the events and of course the more detached you are from regular civilization. But I understand it a lot more than I think I ever could have. And thankfully I can say that, you know, I'm just like getting, getting over it and stuff. Like, yeah, there's, there's, there's a way out. But it doesn't surprise me as much as it would have anymore.

What helps you the most?

Trying to maintain a schedule of any, of any capacity. I thought I'd just go like completely loosey goosey for a couple months and just do whatever I wanted. And then what I ended up doing after two weeks is I started working at the Whistler bobsleigh track, scraping ice. I applied for a job. I didn't know what else to do. I had to do something and feel like, just relax, just relax. I'm like, I can't.

What's next? Are you retired?

Still working through rehab. Got some professional opportunities career wise to really kind of get back into engineering, public speaking. I'm going to get as much out of that as I can because any person that I can affect with a story, then great, it's a benefit. But in general, I think I have a fairly open view as to what comes next. My priority as far as my body is to try to get back to a relatively pain free state. I mean, I tried to just train, you know, just go to the gym, body build, whatever. Like there's still too much pain. There was too much pain and just a series of like back injections now just to kind of pinpoint. Where's the bulk of my pain coming from? It's amazing how much less pain I have after, like, one round. Of course, cortisone, you know, you're just like, oh, my gosh. Like, it can feel decent. I know. It'll be a band aid I'll probably have for the rest of my life, but so be it. As long as I have a way to deal with it. Great.

Things will change, though.

Yeah.

The body does amazing things.

But it's getting out of that chronic state. Right. And you've had your injuries. It's like there's a bit of a loop you get trapped in. And it's almost like something like just a little breeze can trigger that chronic loop of pain all over again. Because how is it that I could go through that much pain squatting as much as I was squatting to now? Trying to just maintain a hundred kilo squat and still having my back absolutely, like, seized in pain and my knees killing me. And, you know, it's like. No, it's the trauma of the whole situation that needs to get dealt with. Exactly.

Years and years. Years of damage and stress and that's.

What it takes, literally. It'll take time and effort, personally.

Since 2010.

Yeah.

And I smile every morning when I squat right down to my knees on the floor. Don't feel a thing.

Yeah. Nice.

Get the leash on the dog in the morning.

That's nice. Yeah.

And, yeah, it was.

Takes time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Even making.

Yeah.

I'm never gonna do that move.

Yeah. Yeah.

To get something out of the bottom of the fridge.

But, yeah.

Year after year. And I get that.

Yeah. Of course. I mean, like, you know. Absolutely. But even the understanding. Yeah. Would be huge. Yeah.

Most magical thing is that lifting of the mental grind.

Yeah.

Because there's always that mental grind of to get through something. You've got to dig and have that slowly pull away. Which it will.

I'm sure it'll be liberating. And it'll come because, like, it's like I've lost the luster to work out just for the sake of working out.

And it's something that's so helpful when it comes to just that physical output and the mental state to be able to have training as an outlet. But when you need to recover and you need to rest and you don't know how to do that, that's a whole other mental battle.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, shall we wrap up here? Is there anything you want people to know that's kind of unique to you? That maybe most people don't.

Hmm. Well, I guess the last thing people would expect is I love music. I love music to the point of playing piano, violin, trumpet, guitar. And I love nothing more than having jams with my family or just anyone and people just throwing out random songs and having a couple people that are capable of playing as a group and just figuring out a song so that everyone can kind of participate and sing along, stuff like that. I love that. It's a lot of fun to that. I almost find it more fun than competing because it's like. It's a pure form of like this creative joy. You're not trying to best someone. You're trying to make the song work with everyone together as possible. And that. And when it works, it's extremely rewarding.

Which is such a good lesson for competitive types.

Yeah.

To go into a different realm.

You mentioned cheat days.

Yep.

So obviously you've been a physical specimen your entire life. What does a cheat day consist of?

Well, when I fall off the wagon, it could be like pizza, like lots of ice cream chips. Like it's. It's just this. It's such a hard. It just depends on the day, you know, like my kryptonite. If. Because I mentioned chips are these Loads of all dress. The brand is called loads of. I could probably just eat a bag on my own and want more. And it's Loblaws. What's Loblaws brand? Is that President's Choice? Yeah. Yeah. So anywhere. President's Choice, man. Addicting. Absolute crack for me. Unbelievable. Yeah, it's. It's funny when you have such a hyper discipline, it's almost easier to. Well, maybe just in my case anyways, to lose that discipline because it's just like I'm done trying so hard. Like that's something that kind of creeps in. You're like, you know what. What's the. What's the difference if this week I. Whatever. You know, yeah, it becomes a big problem and then 30 pounds later. But no, I obviously, like, it has to be like severely kept in check. The older you get, the less you can get away with things like that. But so true.

You've obviously created an incredible legacy already. And your story is so profound and how you've gotten to where you have. What would you. If you were long gone from now, what would you like to have as your legacy?

Well, I mean, the biggest thing is the ideology behind a phrase Sikh parvus magna greatness from small beginnings. Whether you get that idea from video games, movies, or whatever, it's something that's possible in a way that it won't just reveal itself to you in a way that you want it to. It just kind of. You'll get an opportunity. You won't know when, you won't know how, and you'll only have a moment to decide. And that decision might literally change. It'll obviously change the rest of your life. But it might. It might shock you how far a decision like that can go. I mean, another corny line is from Lord of the Rings. It's a curious thing walking out your door, Mr. Frodo. You just might not know where your feet end up taking you. I'm sure I'm paraphrasing, but that. That's literally what it comes down to. It's not. It's not the bravery of, I'm going to go win a gold medal. It's too big. You can't. I'm gonna put my career on hold and try this sport that's intimidating. There's a lot of risk involved. But the definition of how long you try that sport can change. Can be a week, can turn into a month, can turn into a year, can turn into a. I think I can make the Olympics. Can turn into maybe I can win a medal pretty damn quick. And I think you can apply something like that to anything. It could be a job that you always wanted to do, but you've been stuck in a 9 to 5 that you're just grinding away at because you have to pay your bills and it pays enough and whatever. And the one thing that's intimidating is to leave that comfort zone and try something else. So is there anything particularly unique in what I've just said? I don't think so, but maybe if people try to reevaluate what that bravery means, it's not going for this big, shocking change. It's going for a small change that's sustainable and that encourages you to try more changes. I mean, from where I was in high school to where I am now, I was so black and white, this Spartan ideal. Like, now I. I'm so adventurous that when I'm not, it doesn't feel right. You know, the fact that I ended up going to different countries, trying to learn different languages, meeting different people, that was the part that kind of shocked me, how not only exciting it was, but fulfilling it felt. And these are things I would have never had an opportunity to try had I just played it safe and stayed at home.

It sounds like you've transformed, and there's many people who either don't take or discover that opportunity.

Absolutely.

Well, I think that's an awesome message to finish on, especially given your comment a couple hours ago about Instagram. Kids seeing someone in a sport doing something that they can't currently do, take that next step.

That's the see where it goes.

That's the action that they've gotta.

Yeah.

Make and have in their head and that's where things can change.

Absolutely not.

Looking at that perfect image on online.

Yeah.

It's a great goal, but you can't make that leap. You've got to make that first step.

No.

And see where it takes you.

Absolutely.

Well, we're so grateful to have you on.

Thanks. It was a lot of fun. That was great chatting with you guys.

We're excited that you're here in London because we'll be able to see more of you.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah. No pleasures mine.

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