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Business of Endurance
Previously called Tribeathlon, The Business of Endurance is a podcast aimed at connecting endurance sport with personal and business advancement.
Hosted by Charlie Reading and Claire Fudge, the show provides a comprehensive approach to success, drawing inspiration from athletes, coaches, and motivational figures in the endurance sport domain.
With a diverse range of subjects being covered – from fitness strategies to business advice and life lessons – the discussions are designed to inspire not only athletes or entrepreneurs, but anyone pursuing growth in their personal or professional life. 40-minutes every Wednesday is all that's required to gain insights into how the tenets of endurance sport can shepherd success in business and personal development.
Business of Endurance
What Happens When You Bet on Yourself? The Mindset of a Champion with Chris McCormack
Welcome to the final episode of season 9 of The Business of Endurance, and what an episode it is.
Today, we have the incredible Chris McCormack - Ironman World Champion, founder of Super League Triathlon, and one of the most successful and respected figures in endurance sports.
In this conversation, Chris opens up about his remarkable journey: from leaving a career in business to move to France and pursue triathlon, to becoming one of the sport's greatest athletes.
He shares the highs and lows of his career, including the pivotal moments that shaped his mindset and the mental resilience required to overcome failure.
But it’s not just about his athletic achievements. Chris reveals how he transitioned from athlete to entrepreneur, using the same principles that made him successful in sport to disrupt the triathlon industry with Super League.
Along the way, he delves into the power of goal-setting, the importance of physical fitness in business, and how his experiences have shaped the legacy he’s building today.
This episode is a masterclass in perseverance, adaptability, and creating lasting impact. Whether you’re an athlete, entrepreneur, or someone looking for inspiration, you won’t want to miss this one.
Highlights:
- Mind Over Muscle: Developing mental resilience to overcome fear, setbacks, and imposter syndrome.
- Legacy & Lessons: Why backing yourself, stating your goals, and taking chances matters - in sport and business.
- From Business to Sport: Leaving a corporate career to chase a triathlon dream in France.
- Accidental Triathlete: How naïve confidence and saying “yes” to opportunities launched Macca’s pro career.
- Breakthrough Moments: From sleeping rough in France to winning his second-ever World Cup race.
- Kona Obsession: Turning repeated failures into two Ironman World Championship victories.
- Smack Talk Strategy: Using psychology and presence to make rivals second-guess themselves.
- Embracing the Suck: Training to master the “pain cave” and win the battle inside your own head.
- Old Bull Wisdom: The power of patience, calculated risk, and learning from early career mistakes.
- From Athlete to Entrepreneur: Applying sporting grit to disrupt triathlon with Supertri.
Links:
Connect with Chris through Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maccanow/
Connect with Chris through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-mccormack-macca/
Connect with Chris through his website: https://macca.com/
Please Subscribe to Business of Endurance on Apple Podcasts, leave a comment, and give us a 5-Star review.
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
I mean, look, if this doesn't go your way, you're done. And so there was a lot of pressure on me. I believe I remember looking at myself in the mirror race morning saying, if you don't win this race, your career's done. Like a lot of the sponsors were there and I won it. I didn't want to go down as the best guy to never win in Kona, and that's what I used to tell myself, and so the relief of that I'm getting the monkey off my back was I don't remember the last mile of that race.
Charlie Reading:Welcome to the final episode of season nine of the Business of Endurance podcast, and what an episode it is. Today we have the incredible Chris McCormack Macca, as he's known to people who know and love him, the two-time Ironman, world champion, founder of Super League Triathlon, or Super Tri as it now is, and one of the most successful and respected figures in endurance sport. In this conversation, maka opens up about his remarkable journey from leaving a career in business to move to France and pursue triathlon to becoming one of the sport's greatest athletes ever. He shares the highs and lows of his careers, including the pivotal moments that shaped his mindset and the mental resilience required to overcome failure. But it's not just about his athletic achievements either. Chris reveals how he transitioned from athlete to entrepreneur, using the same principles that made him successful in sport to disrupt the triathlon industry with Supertri. Along the way, he delves into the power of goal setting, the importance of physical fitness in business and how his experiences have shaped the legacy he's building today. This episode is a masterclass in perseverance, adaptability and creating lasting impact. So, whether you're an athlete, entrepreneur or someone just looking for some inspiration, you don't want to miss this one.
Charlie Reading:So let's dive into the conversation with Chris McCormack, or, as we affectionately know him, macca Gerard. When we look at the back end of this podcast, then we see something really interesting. We see that 57% of the people that regularly listen to it haven't hit the subscribe button. So could I ask you a quick favour before we dive into today's episode? If you're enjoying Claire and I bringing you amazing guests, not asking you for patronage fees and not jamming the podcast full of adverts, then the best way you can help us continue to do that and make it even better is to hit that subscribe button. And here's my promise to you when you subscribe we'll make it our mission, along with the team that supports us, to continue to improve this podcast every week. So thank you so much for your support and for being a part of the Business of Endurance community.
Charlie Reading:Let's dive in. So, maka, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast, really really looking forward to chatting to you today, and I want to kick off right at the start of your triathlon career, because I think there's a lot of lessons that people in business can take from your start and your arrival in the world of triathlon, because you left the world of business to to go out on a limb and go to France and and pursue a triathlon career. So for those that don't know how your journey started, would you mind, by starting off by sharing you know what it, what it felt like to go through that and make that decision. And what were those early days in France really like? What was it like when you were trying to make out in the world of triathlon?
Chris McCormack:Well, it was a long time ago, I can give you that. And triathlon is a relatively new sport. So to give it some more context to that, it was my family were very education driven and my dad really only saw sport as an opportunity to get university paid for. So he was very encouraging of sport because he realized I could get college paid for without him having to flip the bill at the end. But it was always you're finishing high school, you're going to college. You do the typical route that most people take. And during high school I was very good at athletics. I was a good runner. I had aspirations of being like Sebastian Coe, who was my idol. I watched him at the 84 Olympics as a 10-year-old and thought I want to be an Olympic miler. And triathlon hadn't really come to this country. It came in the mid-'80s, early-'80s, but we started seeing triathlon in the mid-'80s. I was in my early teens at high school. I graduated in 1990, high school to go to college in 91.
Chris McCormack:And the opportunity to do a triathlon was presented to me at university. I was 18 years of age and that came about. I had my running scholarship at university, I was part of the run team and I was working at a restaurant here making $70 a week, part-time, which, and I saw a swimming, biking, running event at a beach not too far that paid $500 to win and I remember thinking $500, like wow, that'd be like amazing to win $500. And I said, look, I can run. I grew up on the beaches. I've always surfed. My brothers and I wanted to be pro surfers as kids, so we grew up swimming and surfing our whole lives and I arrived to college so like it can't be that hard. This was really that raw and I give people that I talk to people now when you think about what probably hydrox or something is. Now we've seen that same evolution in a sport, how it went from a nothing to a big thing.
Chris McCormack:At that time, when I was doing triathlon here, it was a, it was a mickey mouse sport. It was this sort of hybrid of sports that people found cool and and it really come on like a bit of a hurricane here and I did this race. I won four hundred dollars and I was hooked like a second in the race was like, oh man, I've got to find myself some more of these things. My father heard that I was doing it and was more worried about me losing my running scholarship at university. So he was in the early days very anti this triathlon thing and so I did a couple of these races and was ID'd by the triathlon federation here, triathlon association here, and I got selected for a junior world's team. That was in the Manchester World Championships in 1993, and they paid the whole bill to go, which in athletics they didn't do that down here. When you made an athletics team and had to go overseas, you had a chicken raffle and you raised as much money as you could to go to a thing where this new triathlon sport seemed to have money. It was cool and it was sponsored by the chocolate company Cadbury. And they asked me if I would like to represent Australia at the World Junior Championships in Manchester, fully paid for I'm like two weeks holiday, like I mean this would be amazing, yeah darn. So I went over with the team.
Chris McCormack:I raced in Manchester and was, I think, my fifth or sixth triathlon and I finished fourth in this Junior Worlds. I nearly or sixth triathlon and and I finished fourth in this junior world, so nearly won it. Spencer Smith won the professional race that day and a guy called Olivia Hushmed from Switzerland won the men's race in the junior men's race. But a lot of the guys that are, that did amazing things in the sport were in that junior Norman Stadler, who I ultimately raced in the future, lydia Mars so many of the guys. When I look back at that list I love the late, incredible athletes. We all did this junior worlds race and I was from there. I was. It was the old day so there was no cell phones and I remember getting picked off, picked up by a French club who approached me and said would you like to come and race in France? The world championships were in August of 93.
Chris McCormack:University in Australia is February. It's a calendar year, february to October. So I was in the middle of my university degree. My father had only accepted me going across if I went for the two weeks only and came back and finished college and I got offered a trip to go to France and race for a team in Tricastan, in the Drome region of France, which became Assisten, which was the great team that the great Simon Lessing, a great triathlete from England, raced for. And I was like I've never been to France. That would be amazing and you're going to pay for everything. No worries, I'm going to extend my holiday. It was more about experiencing things. I didn't really that, I didn't take it seriously, but I was like, okay, this is a free holiday, I'll take it. And to cut a long story short, I did another eight weeks in France.
Chris McCormack:They offered me a contract the following year to come back and race as a professional and they offered me 30,000 back then. It was 120,000 french francs, which the exchange rate was 30,000 australian dollars, which I always thought I'll never work again. You know, I mean this is. I went home and I told my father I wanted to drop out of university and he said absolutely not. You know, you forget this pipe dream of being a. What is this sport? Triathlon? It's Mickey Mouse sport. It means nothing. No, get back to university. And so I had to turn down the offer and I went back to university, reluctantly, did the good boy thing, finished university but dropped out of the sport, raced locally in Australia, just picking up money.
Chris McCormack:But I was seeing a lot of the Australian guys that were going to Europe were coming back and I was beating them here in Australia just because I had such a big run At the time I was the Australian champion at cross-country running. So you know, over 5 and 10K. I had a 28-minute 10K PB, so I was a lot faster than these guys running triathlon. I wasn't much of a swimmer it was probably the weakest part, but I could swim, which was a rarity. And then cable television came to Australia. We're starting to see events from all over the world. Before that it was just the government channels on TV. But when this cable TV started coming to Australia, we started seeing triathlon a lot more on television here and I was seeing a lot of the guys I'd known over the few years racing in Europe and I wanted to go over there. I wanted to get there and I'd taken a job at Bankers Trust, which was, yeah, my dad was ecstatic. My mother and father couldn't have been happier. You know, his one son tipped off the other two to go and I was miserable.
Chris McCormack:I was an accountant. I studied commerce, accounting. I'd catch the train to work, like most people from where I lived. It was and I tell a true story. I remember sitting next to a guy at work about six or seven weeks into my job. His name was Brian. He had a picture of his family on his little booth and I remember looking across, thinking I'm 21 years of age, 22 nearly and in 18 years I go from this seat to that seat. That's what my life looks like, you know, like I'm going to have kids and I remember just being depressed is the wrong word, but I remember thinking there's got to be more to it. I've been the perfect son. You know what I mean. I really have and I experienced a taste of Europe and coming from Australia it was you guys are European, so it's just very common to you.
Chris McCormack:But coming from Australia I wanted to see more and and I decided I'm going to quit my job. I lasted six months in my job, quit my job, sold everything I had, didn't have the courage to quit my job. I lasted six months in my job, quit my job, sold everything I had, didn't have the courage to tell my father that I'd quit my job. But I thought if I sell everything I had, book my ticket, just got up to France, I'd be discovered as this new super hope and everyone would remember me from a few years before as this junior superstar. And I had it all planned out in my head. I ultimately told my father two weeks after I quit my job. He was a little disappointed.
Chris McCormack:But I tell a funny story because I used to my father used to pick me up twice a week on his way to work because I wasn't living at home, and just so we could catch up and we'd go in. So for the two weeks I quit my job, I actually my father picked me up and took me to a job I no longer had and then I'd catch the train. I'd catch the train back home, train all day, then catch the train back into the city for him to pick me up on the way home, and so I had to lie to him for a couple of weeks until I plucked up the courage to say Mum, dad, I've quit my job, I've sold everything I have and I'm going to go to Europe. I want to be a professional triathlete and you know, I've been told I'm pretty good at this. You know good at this. You know I've been winning these races here in Australia and I got fourth in that junior worlds thing and and I haven't really focused very hard on it and it sounds really raw, but that's pretty much what it was back then.
Chris McCormack:And I got to Europe and I vividly remember catching the plane from Sydney to Singapore and Singapore to Paris. And it wasn't until I got to Singapore that I realized I had no plan, when I actually my whole headspace was about getting out of Australia. I hadn't really thought through what happens. When I got there, you know, like it was just like let's get out and become a professional. And when I got there I I remember a couple of years earlier I'd raced a race in Ombra, in in the, in the Alps of France, near, near, near Gap, and I thought, well, that was a great place. It looked beautiful when I was there, maybe I could go down there and train and maybe there's some races. And back then there was triathlon magazines I used to buy and used to look at all the events at the back and go okay.
Chris McCormack:So I caught a train down to Umbra and I got out at the town of Gap and I ended up going to the office, to tourism you remember them back then just trying to find a place to live. And you know I had $3,000 Australian dollars to my name, like name, like I mean nothing and I just thought I was just gonna, you know, naively race my way around and and people are going to find me, and I did end up doing a race in Orange and won a few francs. But I just had nothing and no idea. I ended up living in the back of this guy's house, that I rented a little room off from the office to tourism and just trained every day and and was just picking off races, catching trains to races and picking up, and it didn't really go as I had envisaged in my head. I thought, you know, I'd been there five weeks. I'd race literally Saturday and Sunday, any opportunity I could get to get money because I needed it, and catching these night trains so I could save a night's accommodation.
Chris McCormack:And you know, I came back one day to the place, the property and the gentleman I was renting it off, a guy called Philip, who became quite a nice, quite an influential person in my life, just by chance, and he, uh, I, saw a race in in Paris and it was a world cup event and and at that time the world championships was 1996, the world championships that year in Cleveland, ohio. So the Australian team had opted not to send their athletes to the which was now the World Triathlon Series, but back then it was a World Cup Series that opted not to send the Australians to that race in Paris and, by chance, I saw it and I saw the prize money. I had no idea about World Cup, nothing. And I had Philip ring the organisers and they said, oh, you need to ring your federation in order to be put into this event. So, to cut a long story short, I ran the federation. They're like who are you? Oh, yeah, you're that guy. Yeah, no worries. And there's no one going go and do this race. Whatever, we don't care. All the good guys are in training camp in boulder, colorado, preparing for cleveland world championships. So I did the race in paris it was the third race of the world cup series that year and I finished fifth at an amazing race in this world cup and I remember winning two thousand five hundred dollars going whoa us dollars, by the way which was like I was mad. I was back in the green. I remember thinking I've got it's just as much money. I've been here five weeks and I'm in front of what I was when I came here. Well, that was sort of what my motivating factor was.
Chris McCormack:And and again by chance, I met les mcdonald. He was the, the president of the time of the world. Triathlon was called the International Triathlon Union back then. But what is now World Triathlon? And he asked he said who are you? You know where did you come from, who are you? And I told him look, a few years ago I got fourth in the junior worlds but my father made me go to college and I'm over here and I want to be a professional athlete. And you know, thank you for letting me race. And he said would you consider racing next week in Drummondville in Canada? We're sponsored by Lufthansa. We'll fly you across to Drummondville. And I said oh look, I didn't know who he was. I said look, you've got to ring your federation to get into these races. I didn't realize he was the president of the whole thing. And he said look, I'll speak to your federation. I'll wildcard you a spot in Drummondville if you want to come over.
Chris McCormack:And my first thought was I'd said to myself on the plane no matter what opportunity comes, just go with it. Don't like, just don't. I have a tendency to overthink things at times. I said just be loose and free and go with it. If it doesn't last and we come back after two years, make the experience one of those things you'll talk about to your kids, you know. And so I said, sure, I've never been to Canada, sign me up, I'll come to Drummondville. So he organized it all.
Chris McCormack:I flew across to Montreal Drummondville's, a little town just out of Montreal for the fourth round of the World Cup Series and I remember all the Australian team was already there because they'd been in North America training. And I remember them all looking at me like how did you get into this race, like you're a bit of an imposter, like you're supposed to go for this Australian system, and how the hell did you get a start in this series? And they sort of were a bit standoffish and I ended up going on and winning the second World Cup race I ever did. I won the event $10,000. It was like the most money I'd ever seen in my life. And I was the second, did it with a big run and that sort of launched my career and at that point the australians had to take me seriously because I'd won a world cup. I was now ranked in the top 10 and and so fundamentally I say I'm an accidental hero of the sport by, I think, the naivety being so green and raw. Because I I say to my kids now you know, when you don't fear anything, you say green, you don't, and you're so raw and you don't know what things look like on the other side. You have no fear. You take many chances that I probably wouldn't take. I look at and think to myself now oh my gosh, like my daughter's. My oldest daughter is the same age I was when I went. I couldn't imagine her going there on her own and not speaking to the parents for so long. But that's how I sort of launched into the career, my career, and I ended up meeting a lot of influential people. On that season I did qualify for my first Australian team.
Chris McCormack:I finished, I think, 12th in my first world championships as a professional, came back to Australia, I met the Australian world champion at the time. It was a gentleman called Miles Stewart. He saw my talent as a runner. I think he realised I could probably help him in his running to improve his running. So he brought me into his training camp on the Gold Coast.
Chris McCormack:When I came back here in November I finished that season ranked number nine in the world and then I just had the most dynamite when I got a coach who actually I had some structure in my training. I wasn't just going to the pool and swimming hundreds and and stuff and riding as far as I could ride until I was exhausted and I knew my running structure and I really replicated my running programs from my old run coaches into swimming and and cycling. If people saw what I was doing they'd be like you're far out, like it's. It was ridiculous. You know I do hill repeats on my bike, like there was sort of some method to the madness, but it really was structureless and and when I fit in it, when I finally came home to fit in with a professional coach who really showed me how to train and what to do and really just sharp like polished the diamond, I had an incredible season.
Chris McCormack:I ended up winning everything in Australia won the national championships, qualified for the, the Formula One series here, which was huge, and I started taking on the best of Australians talent Greg Welsh, miles Stewart, brad Bevan, who were the I mean the best in the world at that time household names in this country at that time, and it was on the eve of the Sydney Olympic Games, there was a lot of discussion about how that point, triathlon had been accepted into the Sydney Olympic Games and was going to be the event.
Chris McCormack:And suddenly I'm a player in this sport and the 97 season I ended up, you know, kicking off by winning the first two rounds of the World Cup was world number one. You know, kicking off by winning the first two rounds of the World Cup was world number one and by the end of the year I was the world champion. I won the world championships at home in Australia, in front of my father and mother, crossed the line. I beat Simon Lessing, who was like, honestly, my idol, and to beat him in Australia, and I remember crossing the line, it was live on Australian television.
Charlie Reading:Did your dad forgive you at that point?
Chris McCormack:I said to my father right then. And there, dad, this is what I do. You know what? Do you think? There's 100,000 people on the course. It was incredible, one of the greatest days of my life. And he said, son, I've never been more proud of you in my life and that was sort of the relief of that.
Chris McCormack:I'd made the right choice, I'd not let my parents down, which was a subconscious. You know I sound like a sissy kid, but I never. I think any boy wants to do the right, but my parents were amazing people and I never wanted to do the wrong thing by letting them down. And I think I carried that weight on my shoulders for two years and that really kept me motivated and pushed. But that's how I ended up becoming an accidental triathlete, an accidental professional triathlete. Yes, my father ended up forgiving me. He still. He used to call me the blessed son, the guy, the kid who's never worked a day in his life. He worked six months of his life. My son, you know like that was his. That's what he always used to say to me. But no, definitely very proud. And that sort of launched my career.
Chris McCormack:I fell in love with the sport and, just like everything. I'm very obsessive. So once I, once I got a system in place, I knew what I was doing. I started really reading and getting obsessed with with the training, with my philosophies and understanding the psychology of what made people good and bad in the sport.
Chris McCormack:Because I think the physical component of triathlon is talked about a lot, but for me I always was always second guessing, because when you feel like you're an imposter in a sport and you put people up on pedestals and you make that transition from being a talent or a junior prospect into a world champion, you're not told how to behave, you don't know what that is. You always see these world champions or Olympic champions as enigmas and suddenly people are coming up to you you're that guy. You don't know how to act. Am I supposed to be cool? It's quite a weird phase. So I never felt like I fit that mould correctly and so I tended to retreat. But I definitely realized that that mind and that imposter syndrome that every athlete has as a roller can be used in a positive or negative way, and I think I really focused on that in my entire career being very, very strong mentally and how I went about my craft was much more of a cerebral approach as opposed to a purely physical one.
Claire Fudge:I'm sorry I talked too long.
Claire Fudge:No, not at all. I think it's amazing. Some of the things you say actually about the advantages back then were you didn't have mobile phones. You just went and did it. You were young and just thought what the hell I'm going to go and do it and these opportunities, that doors were opened and you just said yes and just amazing to hear kind of from where you were to, obviously, where you got to in your sport. Obviously, there's been an announcement recently about Kona all the girls and boys all coming back together to the island, which is absolutely amazing. But I want to talk to you about Kona and your experiences and your two wins in Kona. Want to talk to you about Kona and your experiences and your two wins in Kona. Was one of those wins for you more special or the most special to you, and what? What in particular did that race mean to you? What did you take from, from winning it?
Chris McCormack:well, that race became my obsession, my life. I you know, I think you know, coming out of that World Series racing, what had happened I was world number one going into the Sydney Olympics and on the eve of the Olympic Games, my mother passed away breast cancer and the Australian team opted to not put me on the start line for that race, which broke my heart, because I promised her on her deathbed that I would represent at the Olympic Games. And I was devastated, devastated, beyond devastated. I almost retired from the sport. I felt like a failure of a son and and I ended up in my two greatest short course careers, short course seasons in 2001 and 2002. I dominated, was world number one again in 2001, dominated. The season 2002. I had an incredible season again, commonwealth games in manchester. But I'd opted the federation was trying to get me to come back to race the Olympic Games again for Athens. I'd done the test event with them. We tested on the course and they said you can win Athens, which Hamish Carter went on to win. Hamish was an athlete. We used to have head-to-head races all the time and I didn't want to put my life into the, be it naively. I didn't want to put my life into the, and be it naively, it's. I didn't want to put my life into the hands of selectors.
Chris McCormack:After I felt so short-changed in Sydney and I remember the high performance director of triathlon Australia said look, we've done all this testing on you, chris. You're a power athlete, what are you going to do? And back then you could only do world cup or WTS. There was no 70.3, there was a couple of half Ironmans around the world. But there was Ironman and ITU. They were the two sports and Ironman athletes were completely different athletes to the ITU athletes. They didn't even really connect like they do now. People used to transition up, but it was very rare. I think only Mark Allen and Greg Welsh and McKeeley had done it later, but not many had transitioned from representing both sports. And the high-performance director said we've got all the testing data on you. Where are you going to go If you don't do the Olympics in Athens? What are you going to do Ironman? And he laughed. I said yeah, well, as a matter of fact, I'm going to do Ironman and in fact I'm doing Ironman Australia to qualify for the 2002 Ironman World Championships. And they just thought I was a joke in 2002. So that was done and then I came back prepared. I won ironman australia on debut, which was very rare back then I beat peter reed who was the world champion and it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
Chris McCormack:My whole mindset about ironman and I tell this story a lot because to see how naive we are, because now everything's so dialed in and technical and you have glucose monitors and power meters and right my was. I used to race some of these Ironman guys in America, in Chicago, non-drafting races in Chicago, and and you know, over an Olympic distance which is a quarter of the distance, say, of an Ironman, I'd beat Peter Reid, the world Ironman champion, by like six minutes. Be like, well, if I can beat him by six minutes in that, then it must be 24 minutes in an Ironman, like it's four times the distance. I'd just be you. It was just so naive. And I remember. And then when I did my first half Ironman in Wildflower I broke the world record and that was sort of the unofficial world championships back in those days was the Wildflower Triathlon, the half Ironman I'd won, that broken the course record. So I thought, oh, and then I won my first Ironman on debut, being the most difficult race I'd ever done was very, very hard and I just thought I was going to roll into.
Chris McCormack:My plan was I'll roll into Kona in 2002. I'll win it on debut. Everyone will love me. Then I'll come back and win Athens because I'll have enough money and sponsors that I'll never have to rely on the Federation again and they'll have to deal with me. Well, it didn't really go down that way and a lot of people that know my story I got, if you watch the 2002 coverage, I cringe when I watch it because a lot of people say it's cockiness.
Chris McCormack:But when you listen to this interview, I promise you it was sheer naivety. And when I hadn't lost a race in three years, I'd done an Ironman and won it on debut. I won a half Ironman. Why wouldn't? I think I was going to win kona like so when they asked me the questions and that's why my book is called I'm here to win the remember doing the interview in kona and a lot of the ironman athletes were very humble to the sense that that asked the question how do you think you go? And I said I'll just see how the day unfolds. I just take it one step at a time it was very, very politically correct answers.
Chris McCormack:And when they I sat down they were like oh, how do you think you're going? I said what? I didn't come here for a holiday, I'm gonna, I'm gonna win, like I mean, and they're like I met the camera guy looking out from his camera like that, going, wow, like this kid, who is this kid? And they're like, what makes you think that? I said, well, I haven't lost a race in three years. I did an ironman six months ago and I beat the guy who won this race last year. Like I didn't see him all day, I had swam in our bike about running. Like I mean, you know, I didn't come here for all, I'm here to win me and that's and. And a lot of the guys were like, wow, this is a cocky kid. And and I just had always had that mindset I just want to win the race.
Chris McCormack:And I did that first race. I had a 13 minute lead off the bike myself, thomas hell, regal, who had won the race and was an idol of mine, jürgen Zach. We pumped everyone and I ran out of town, high-fived my father who came over to watch and said bank the check, dad, $100,000. Like, this was a mile into the run, they were paying $100,000 to win it and I had a 13-minute lead. Thinking and I'm a runner, you know like but I tell you this story because in an olympic distance race I used to take one gel in the ironman. I'd done that, I'd won a diamond. Australia broke the course record in the entire day. My math was olympic distance race, one gel, ironman four gels. I'll take one extra one. So I had five gels at the ironman.
Chris McCormack:Like the nutrition strategy was zero, like I've been so naive and dumb, like I mean, people must think it must have been a completely different era and you're also at a point where you're a world champion in the short course and you think you should have all your stuff together and you're too scared to ask all the questions, especially outside your inner sanctum of people. So you didn't want to look like there was a weakness. As I said before, I was always very attentive to not looking weak in any way and trying to intimidate through presence, and so in Ironman, hawaii, I got absolutely exposed in 2002. I ended up walking, pulling out, and I got crucified by the, by the, by the sport, because I didn't realize that. You know, for me it was like, oh, it's not going to happen, I'll come back next year. But finishing Ironman as we all know is is as much as important as winning it. If you start it, you the journey and I got crucified in the magazines. Forums were starting to come out then on the internet People were Chris, this kid's a cocky kid. And I just thought, okay, I'll come back next year and I'll win. But to cut a long story short, I ended up winning it twice, but it took me five attempts to win. Despite not losing, I'd win every Ironman.
Chris McCormack:I to success in Kona was ridiculously important because I had to turn my back on my Olympic dream to get it, because I felt that this race had my measure and when you said earlier about the race coming back to Kona in 2026, the men and women, it's imperative that that happens because, yeah, I believe there's merit to have world championships all around the world. I think you do that at the 70.3 level, but our sport is Kona, and had world championships been scattered around the world when I was racing, I'd have 10 of them. I could not perform in heat and humidity. I was a big athlete and I had to go above and beyond to perfect my craft to be successful there. Some people find it easy, some people can race in heat and humidity a lot better than the bigger guys, but there are so many stories of of incredible athletes who have never won this race that are probably some of the best you'll ever, jürgen Zach, some of the best triathletes you don't know of anymore because they didn't perform in Kona, but had this new system come about, where they raced in Nice and right, they'd have three world championships. It's just not the same right and for me, winning in 2007, both of them are very, very special.
Chris McCormack:But 2007, my first win, after finishing second the year before in almost a sprint, I thought I had it won, had my best race. I finished fifth the year before that and there was a build-up to get to second and Norman Stadler had beat me in 2006. We'd had a very big conflict after the race that that was very heated and I went out on a mission in 2007 calling him out in the press very publicly, and we both had a very public spat that was coming to a head in 2007, kona, and so much so that my wife said to me look, if this doesn't go your way, you're done. You've. You've said too much, and so there was a lot of pressure on me. I believe I remember looking at myself in the mirror race morning saying if you don't win this race, your career's done. Like a lot of the sponsors were there and I won it.
Chris McCormack:So for me it was just the journey to get to that position. You know a lot of people say second's good, fourth's good, fifth's good, all these other positions, but for me it was. I didn't want to go down as the best guy to never win in kona and and that's what I used to tell myself, and so the relief of that I'm getting the monkey off my back was I don't remember the last you know mile of that race in 2007. I remember 2010 vividly. I was very alert. I'm going to enjoy it because I was just so lost in the moment of 2007. I knew from about 4K out that I'd done the work. I had the gap to win it and I celebrated a little early in my own head and I started tripping over my feet and I don't count your chickens before they hatch and I got myself to the finish and I was just an emotional wreck. So, yeah, 07 will always be super special.
Chris McCormack:Well, if you look at the pictures if anyone sees the pictures of 07, they're probably in black and white. But it was a long time ago. I forgot to remove the sponges from my. You know, usually you zip up your uniform Like I was so lost in the moment. You know that I left all the sponges in, so I like to look ridiculous in my finished photo.
Chris McCormack:And my brothers still tease me to this day. So my brothers still tease me to this day. They say, oh, you're the first woman across the line, but it was. And it's always like a perfect day happens. But you know, I just tell people that's being so in a moment so lost and so elated with yourself that, yeah, you, just I didn't care about anything else and it was just I was floating on air. And so 07 will always be special. 10 was special for very different reasons, because I felt the sport was ready to retire me at that point and I wasn't ready to go. I promised my wife I'd retire in 09 and I didn't win Kona that year, so she gave me another chance to go back.
Charlie Reading:But 07 will always be an incredibly special win amazing, and if you hadn't left those sponges there and been teased by your brothers, you might never have gone back and won the 2010 to get the better finish line photo, might you?
Chris McCormack:Exactly. Well if you watch that 10 finish, I very much take my time stand up right before the zip up and straight down. I'm very, very attentive to that because, yeah, we have the photo at mum and dad's house of me finishing and every christmas they used to go, you know, and they made sure because I want my. My agent moved up the finish in one.
Charlie Reading:He doctored one of the photos so it looked a bit better, but my brothers in the family made sure it was the proper one with the original brilliant, excellent, I mean, it's just, it's just amazing and and I love reading about both of those wins in I'm here to win. I think it's a fantastic book and for those people that haven't read it, you should definitely check it out. Within that book there's a lot of talk of of your and you just mentioned it, you just alluded to it about your smack talk. You were known for playing mental games with the, with the other athletes. I suppose what I wanted to know there was where did, where did you draw the line? Where was, where was kind of intimidation tactics and where was? Did you ever overstep the line? And and did you? You know? Where do you think? Is you know? What strategies do you think are good for for winning versus kind of falling out with your competitors?
Chris McCormack:yeah, it's a good question. I guess as you get older and softer you reflect on that a little bit more and at the time I didn't think I ever stepped the line, ever. I think I used to think it was. There can be only one, a bit like Highlander and it's and there's going to be a winner and we're going to go away from this and in 10 years time we're going to look back on this and I'll have won or lost and I can never take this time back and it's up to the athlete as a professional we're not amateurs to deal with everything.
Chris McCormack:And I knew how and I can be honest about this I knew how insecure I was. I think every athlete is aware of their own insecurities and their own weaknesses. They shield the world from it. But in-house you know that and you know your fragilities and you know your competitive strengths and weaknesses. And I think I always believed if you could betray an invincibility and you can intimidate and almost be crazy, you, they I think they second guess themselves and I always apply it to tennis. You can win tennis through unforced errors or forced errors right, and you know you can force athletes to do something and not work for you because you're not physically strong enough or you can intimidate enough that they start to make mistakes that you can capitalize on and win.
Chris McCormack:And I won a lot of races I shouldn't have won, I believe, by athletes second guessing themselves against me. They just, I think 2010, kona, beating Andreas Rehler for the title. He told me the year prior that his brother had told me the year prior that I was his idol. He had picked my picture up on the wall. So I used that very much so during the race, pre-race all year to intimidate him, knowing he was the man to beat in Kona that year. And and I think he lost that race I say it in the interview when I crossed the line. This will be a race that Andreas Raylet looks back in 10 years and this is the one that got away from him because he let me win that race more than me getting away with winning that race, because he was definitely better than me, stronger than me. At the back end of that race, I just intimidated him enough through presence that he he naturally cracked. So you know with there athletes that I picked on more than anything, I think.
Chris McCormack:I think we all behaved in a different way back then there was no social media, so what you had back then was relationships with editors of magazines and other people wrote about who you were and I used to find that really unfair. So, if you know, nowadays athletes have the ability to tell their story naturally through their, through their social channels. But back then you had relationships with Timothy Carlson or Triathlete magazine and I can't tell you how many times I was on the telephone ringing a triathlon. I never said that man. And they used to create these rivalries or these and I think they liked me being the villain right because I was the only one that would say outlandish, stupid stuff, and a lot of people that were in my camp were like, geez, you get a hard run at it. And so when it was sort of created, you just lived it, if that makes sense. You just lived up to what their expectation was.
Chris McCormack:And there was an underlying anger in me that I always felt that I was misrepresented or, yeah, misrepresented in a lot of things. And I think other athletes would read those articles and I've since had conversations. Craig Alexander, one of my main competitors in the back end of my career, lives literally a mile down the road from me here and we've had a talk about this and you know, our last few years in the sport, despite being friends earlier in their career, were very rocky, very rigid, very uncomfortable, and we both agreed that we should have just sat down over a coffee and had a talk, but we communicated with each other through the magazine you know what I mean or through the press we didn't have. So it was always misconstrued and and and obviously they had an agenda and the tv had an agenda that it was nice to have conflict. But yeah, I don't think I ever overstepped the line in the sense that I think it was always in relation to performance. I never. There was never anything personal or you know, but I would always call it out, you know, I would always say you know, I'm a better bike rider than me.
Chris McCormack:You can pretend with your team that you're better and you can tell all your sponsors here, but when you go home at night, mate, you know you go home at night and you sit in bed in the pillow, talk with the wife. You, you know that I'm stronger, I'm better than that and it plays in your head all the time. I constantly say that to athletes and I believed what I was saying right, and I used to think you know that's the fact. You're going to pretend here in front of everyone. Oh, you know, I prepared really well, I'm riding really strong now, but you know that that's a fear and I used to like to instill that fear that I knew their weaknesses and I'd highlight them and hope they would have unforced errors that ultimately allow me to to capitalize on a mistake. And you gotta remember, an Ironman might be, you know, seven and a half, eight hours long for the pro man and but you win the race. It's not like we start and then I'm a centimeter in front after the swim and then over eight hours you get a distance.
Chris McCormack:You win these races in moments Like you can be together with someone and in a moment they go for a bad patch, bang, that's the crack. And you need to be able to capitalise on those moments, those storms I used to call them, and those moments can be self-inflicted. For your own second guessing of that situation, both emotional and physical distress, and the emotional stress is just as as as heavy as as a physical stress in an iron man. You know you run out of that energy lab. You are emotionally, spiritually and physically exhausted and and everyone being iron man, is such a difficult sport, everyone's so focused on the physical enormity of the race and all my muscles were sore and this was sore, but I think the emotional distress is is just as, if not more, and those voices in your head, that uncomfortable conversation you have with yourself, is such a raw, honest reality.
Chris McCormack:And people talk to me now about what you miss most about racing at a professional level. There's two things wanting something so much, wanting something so much that you will do anything to get it, and the honesty of those conversations. Out in an eye, man, the honest conversations of you cannot lie about anything because it's truth and it's those truthful moments. A lot of people don't, a lot of people in training like to push that to the side and not really have those honest conversations with themselves and pretend they can bypass it. And I say in my book embraces suck. It sucks to have these conversations, it sucks to deal with that pain, it sucks. But it's also so pure and so honest and so real. I don't think in a world that's so fake. Now I think I miss that intensely, I miss that honesty and I think that's where that that smack talking was a big part of my game because I think it made others second guess those conversations and maybe slow up for a second. That enabled me to to get the gap it like I like it.
Charlie Reading:When I read the book I remember reading some stats ages ago around how, when Tiger Woods is in the sort of chase pack of of a major the, the average score of all the other players around him drops by something like five shots. There's something in the mind games that Tiger Woods played, or just the fear of knowing that Tiger Woods was potentially chasing them totally destroyed so many golfers' gains, and I'm not sure it was the smack talk, but there was definitely the psychology around the fact that it's tiger. We need to be worried. What would your advice be to a young athlete that is is so now, with the, with the benefit of of hindsight and wisdom and talking about how you now you know, should have catched? You should have just chatted to crowey over a coffee. What would your advice be to a young athlete around this sort of mental side of the of the racing?
Chris McCormack:and I'm gonna go one step back because I'm not gonna say everyone called it smack, talk I. It was because it was so unique to the sport. It wasn't like these boxes that are like I'm gonna kill you.
Chris McCormack:You know you're a piece of. You know it wasn't that it was. It was just honestly answering a question and I think a lot of people I say it a lot now a lot of people, a lot of the old guys in the sport, are like I say, oh, you miss me now, don't you? Because it's so vanilla. Now everyone's like, everyone loves each other, everyone's. I'm so proud of you, I'm so happy for you. I'm like, okay, I get that, but you know there's there's. There's a real honesty when you go home. If you're so happy for everyone else when you go home, then why are you sad with your family? They'll ask you to one.
Chris McCormack:So my advice to a young person is to be authentic and honest to yourself. Embrace that honesty right like. Don't be scared to back yourself, because your brain's very, very good at telling you all the things you're weak and soft at and and all your insecurities. They always bubble to the surface and you need to deal with them if you want to be an elite in anything. As you said with tiger, the reason those other athletes' scores dropped off? Because they know Tiger performs, they know his history, they know what he's capable of, so they second-guess themselves. They know worse a player. It's not as if in one second they forgot how to play golf. It's them. That's the unforced errors part I talk about, and I think it's such an integral part of endurance sports that I encourage young athletes to embrace that.
Chris McCormack:I think be authentic, back yourself, be honest to yourself in many ways and don't be scared to share that honesty. It's not nowadays. It can be borderline, politically incorrect at times, but if you're asked a question, don't feel the need to give the honest, don't feel the need to give the the public answer like how do you think you'll go today? Look, you know, I've worked out hard. It's been a major goal for myself. It's primary focus. There's some great athletes here, but none that I haven't beaten before. So I'm in great shape. I mean, I'm ready. Rock it.
Charlie Reading:That's the answer you want to give, because it's coming from.
Chris McCormack:What you put out to the universe is how you're going to behave. And I see these sponsors now. It's like, oh, we see how it goes. You know, so-and-so is really good and I'll be happy for her if she does well. It's like, well, you won't be. And I think you get what you ask for. The universe is is is an amazing thing. So be honest, be open, have the courage to state your intentions, because if you're not prepared to state them publicly, then how can you live them? And and and I think that's important. But but people polite politeness is very important and I guess sportsmanship is very important, but honesty can exist in that box as well. Just because you're you're confident or you're not confident, but you're expressing what you want, it's not a negative thing in this day and age where everyone's very, very sensitive to to any, any outburst at times of confidence oh, this is cockiness. It's. A lot of people feel feel very restricted in being that.
Claire Fudge:But I think you need to be honest with yourself if you want those results and I, like your, you know your description of actually you're you're saying how it is and that's how it's going to play out, whereas actually, if you're kind of talking about, well, you know, I'll be happy for them, I'll see, you know, see how it plays out, you're not, you know, you're not thinking that in inside that you're going to win. So I was. I was thinking back to some of the things that you said about these emotional stressors and embracing the suck, as you call it.
Claire Fudge:Loads of athletes now train with music. They'll go on long runs with music. They'll even listen on the bike. You know, for a five hour, six hour bike ride to music. I don't know whether you used music at all during your training, but what do you think about that? Dealing with emotional stress, dealing with emotional and physical pain when you're training? How do you think that that changes? How you know your mindset, how you can deal with just being in the moment, just being with yourself, being able to deal with all of that stuff in your head?
Chris McCormack:I. I see a lot of it today and I I don't train anywhere near the way I used to anymore. But there's all the stravers and there's the the garments that tell you exactly how fast you're running in there. And you know, you watch races now and every two seconds the athlete's looking at their watch to monitor their pace. You know, to give you some perspective, we had a stopwatch, a Timex stopwatch, and we only knew what pace we were running by the mile markers. So I'd sit there and go okay, well, that mile was five minutes, I'd better slow up. Now it's instant, right. So you monitored pace in a very different way back then. It was very much harder to do and you didn't have iPads what do you call them iPods? And you know there was.
Chris McCormack:You know I remember my first years in France. I had a Walkman, right with an Alanis Morissette tape that just kept clicking over right, Like I mean completely. So I had the Alanis Morissette, Craig Jagger, Little Pill album better than anybody, because I listened to it for hours right, because it was the only tape I had in my back pocket. But I think I never ran with music. I found immense meditative solace in the time I had alone, Like I like to train with groups, my long runs, and that with groups and talking to my friends. But a lot of my running training, a lot of my longer rides, groups and talking to my friends, but a lot of my running training, a lot of my longer rides I would do alone and and I enjoyed that.
Chris McCormack:And I didn't have music. I never it was around. But I, you know, I used to let my mind drift and because I used to think this was the place to go, and especially, let my mind drift because I knew that that was how it was going to become race day and and and it wasn't as easy to listen to music as it is today either. So it was like, oh, forget it, you know, and it was always better to find a training partner and have a great conversation than it was to be lost in music. I guess the question was more about how, that the question about how it's different now, or is that, was your question about.
Claire Fudge:So, in terms of being in your head and I guess you know during training, learning to cope with all of those emotional stresses, learning to be with yourself for that period of time, and how that translates you know on race day that you have done it, you've learned it, you've been there.
Chris McCormack:Yeah, well, it's very raw and I'll give you a great story One of my closest friends in the entire world, susan Krafner. She was a German psychologist who created a product that she ended up being a sponsor of mine called Beast Milk, which was a colostrum-based product, and we became some of the closest friends and still to this day and she became like my surrogate psychologist. Right, we connected because we're very deep thinkers to some degree. We connected because we're very deep thinkers to some degree and I was always trying to understand. I was always obsessed with where my head went in a race and and quitting, quitting on myself, and the anger I'd have at myself for that moment when you let a guy go, when you, when you're both struggling and you're, I'm like why was it that moment? Why didn't I just hang on a little bit longer and and? At other races where you'd hung on and and and. At other races where you'd hung on and we're talking one night and we're talking about I said I'm a very positive person and she's like how do you know that, chris?
Chris McCormack:And I said well, I just know I am Like everyone says I'm happy and positive. She said yeah, but who you are now and who you are under duress is two completely different people Like I mean, it doesn't matter how you are now, everyone's confident six weeks out or 10 weeks out, before a race, I'm going to do well. And as the race gets closer, the nerves climb because reality starts to sink in. And then, as duress hits during a race and you're very uncomfortable, that's when you know who you really are. So how can you say you're a positive person when you're under duress? And I said I just think I am. She's like well, where does your mind go when you're suffering? I said, oh, I don't know. I think I just think about the moment, what's happening now? And she said, oh, why don't we go down to the track? And this is how raw it was, but I love these raw experiments we used to do.
Chris McCormack:And she rode a bike and she said, oh, we're going to run to exhaustion, we're going to start on the track. And she just had a recorder, like you, she was very deep. She used to work with schizophrenics and she she tells a funny story that athletes and schizophrenics are very, very similar people. But it's another story. And we started running around the track at a very comfortable place, say. I kind of remember say, a minute, 40 per 400 per 400, and we just got quicker and quicker. She rode a bike and she just asked me questions and talked to me and then she would get quicker and she quicker, and I think we ended up getting about 14 or 15k out on the track until I was exhausted towards the end.
Chris McCormack:But she played back the tape that evening and you see, when it starts to get uncomfortable, and a lot of the questions she would ask me were just stupid questions like tell me about what you're thinking, tell me about today, what you did today. And I remember you could feel the tone in my voice change, not from fatigue but from frustration, and you see where you went from being highly positive to to being under duress, to being basically you know what I mean like just let me focus right. And and she said that's the person we need to deal with. See that about this point here, this is the person we need to understand. And now we're going to talk about and understand where your brain goes in that point, because that's the point that wins and loses races. And so we we basically changed our training around at that point, basically when we got uncomfortable. Every time I did a session that was uncomfortable. She's like make sure you understand where your head's going and focus on what you're focusing on, because that's the uncomfortable conversation I talked about earlier and that, that devil side of the brain that's telling you all the things, all the weaknesses you are, why you haven't trained hard enough. You didn't sleep well last night. You need more nutrition. They're better than you. And how you deal with that person then is important. And then we started setting in systems that we would deal with on a day.
Chris McCormack:So she said I used to smile. She said the first time, when you feel that pain, smile, welcome it, embrace it, don't be fearful of it. There's a lot of people oh, it's uncomfortable and they don't want to deal with it and their brain goes really loud, which is what I used to do. So I used to smile, embrace it, talk to it like it was a living thing. It sounds nutty, but say, hey, welcome, you know, here we go, let's go. And she was right. It used to come and go like a storm and you could deal with it by being very, very present in the moment.
Chris McCormack:So in the last probably five or six years of my career, I really embraced, trying to learn that about myself and, as I said earlier, I think I miss the most about being a professional athlete. I wish I learnt that earlier because, whilst I used to say I was very cerebral in dealing with it, I didn't really have any systems in place that enabled me to understand the person that this sport was making me and the person I came out. I believe that experience of dealing with myself in that way, under these conditions, I came out the other side in this sport very centred. Maybe my wife thinks differently, but I feel very. But I knew who I was and I knew that I could handle things and I knew I could do things under stress and I knew the conversations I could have and how I responded and and I dealt with the successes and failures in a completely different way than just the the color of the metal. So yeah, and I did that in training a lot. So I didn't used to train a lot with those with with machines and things and and and one of our coaches another before we go, another one of our coaches, another before we go, another one of my coaches.
Chris McCormack:When all the garments came out, it was right at the end of my career and I used to know all these loops that I used to do, basically by time. You know, this is about 10 kilometres, it's about a 16-kilometre loop and Brett, the old national coach, he trained Daniella and everybody. He used to say, man, you're amazing at your pacing because we've got these garments. We. He used to say, man, you're amazing at your pacing because we've got these garments. We do it at Macca's Loop in Davos in Switzerland.
Chris McCormack:Before these garments came out, I said, oh, it's about 16K, brent, you know he's like you reckon. I said, yeah, give or take. They got the garments and it was like 15.8K. It was out by like 200 metres. And you know he's like because I was very good at pacing and he did an experiment with his athletes that he said, okay, I want you to go and run for an hour. And I was there for the first run and without a watch, we took the watch off and we ran around for an hour and I literally got an hour to within 25 seconds. So that would be about it, right. And Brett was like, oh, I was out by probably a minute 25.
Chris McCormack:But a lot of these other athletes were stopping at the ones that have been training with these watches. You see how much they're disconnected from time and and and feeling they're running for 45 minutes, thinking it was an hour without the watch. They had no idea where they were. And then we did the same with distance and brett was like this is the difference between old school athletes and the new brigade. You guys are obsessed with something you've lost, the, which is the whole drug that brings us to endurance. Sports is connection with body and mind. You've lost it and you're trusting a computer and you're really losing the romance and the essence of what the sport is.
Chris McCormack:And it was towards the end of my career. It was in 2012. It was the last year of my career and I went from there to win the long distance world championships off that. But I was training with daniella reef a lot of the guys preparing for the olympics at that time and daniella and I still talk about that. She's like remember that session where you could nail the time. I said I just didn't train with watches. I always knew, sort of by feeling, what the distances were and the old brigade of runners that you grew up with in in your area. It's a 10 mile loop, that's a six mile loop, and you just trusted the distance and and so it's a very, very different.
Claire Fudge:I think I was very connected in that sense with with pace and and and feeling being down at the track with your friend he's a psychologist, you know being able to learn a little bit more about your body and you know, just bringing in what you're saying about all the devices we have, you forget or you don't listen to your own, your own body, your own mind, um, so it's really good to hear it from from your angle and and the way that you sort of came up in sport where you didn't have, you know, all of all of these devices springboarding into the world of super league triathlon or super. Try, talk to us a little bit about how you used your experiences, I guess, as an athlete and the way that you built up Super League triathlon and what do you think you know this is going to do to sort of change how triathlon is, potentially as well?
Chris McCormack:Well it's a deep I think I think people in the sport knew me from. I was, I represented myself, had a friend who was my agent and I always believed that I had a semi-savvy around value, being an economist, I guess, at school and I did very, very well commercially out of the sport of triathlon, which I think you know a lot of the guys will say. I had the underarmors and brought the specialised bike deals across, and so when I left the sport I left in a very, very good spot and I believed I was relatively astute when it came to commercialising an asset right, and that asset when I was racing was myself and milking the most out of what I could get out of it. When I retired I moved to Asia to build a sports center in Phuket. We'd raised a bunch of money for a German guy who had read my book and he wanted to build this wellness center called Tanyapura, which is now an international school in Phuket, and so I spearheaded the development of this school. So I was very and for me I jumped into that with vigor and I recall the transition from being an athlete to the corporate world and I must admit I thought there was a lot more phonies in the corporate world than there was in the. I think sport is very real, right, like you can't hide a lie, right, you get exposed very quickly If you tell them, fibsebe, so you've done the work. No, you haven't. You know, we're in the corporate world. I was like, oh, I just felt like I could steamroll people Like they didn't have a very, very you know these big titles but their work ethics sucked right, like I mean, that's how I felt.
Chris McCormack:So when I moved to Thailand, you know, I had this $250 million budget. We were building an incredible center and I sort of stepped in as his executive chairman. And when you had this money, I had a lot of. I was running a lot of people and people started taking you seriously and this is how we got to Super League. And so I set up all my structures and my business at the time was called Mana, out of Singapore, built Tanyapura, we launched it, launched the school, changed the face of Phuket and my family was living in Thailand at the time. It was an amazing time.
Chris McCormack:And then I'd met the royal family of Bahrain who were building a sports city. I'd met Sheikh Nasser and basically said I can build you a sports city. I just built Tanyapura and a lot of people are like, how arrogant are you to say you can do these things? But I was, like I was in sport, like why not? Someone has to do it? Like I've done a little one, why can't I do a big one? It's sort of like the naivety of going from Olympic distance to Ironman. You can do that. Well, why can't it just be that? And naivety is bliss. Kids to this day and a lot of people that in the same way, sports you second guess yourself and you tell yourself what you can't do. A lot of people do that in business and put themselves in a box and especially when I'd come out of sport, I felt like I'd been at the top of something. Then why can't I be at the top of something else?
Chris McCormack:And so when we went to Bahrain, we started working on on the development of the at next to the Formula One track there, the conference center and sports city. And then I learned the errors from Thailand about when you build a city, you should bring the soft assets in first. Like Tanjapur, we built this incredible wellness center athletics track, swimming pools and we finished it and then we marketed it. So we burned a lot of operational capital, in trying to tell people what we just built. We should have done it on the journey. That was a big error. So I said the same thing to Sheikh Nasser and the Economic Development Board there. And so we said why don't we acquire sports assets? Why don't we do a Tour de France team and start talking about the victorious city, the sports city? And why don't we do a triathlon team? And why don't we buy football teams? And then in the future, when the city's done, we by football teams, and then in the future, when the city's done, we'll park them all in your sports city and and sports tourism will become a thing. That was sort of the the wide pitch and he's like great idea, let's do it. And so then we launched the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, which is now and it's like 11th year of racing. We launched, we went to the Tour de France, we bought the old Mappe team. We launched Bahrain Victorious Tour de France team. We ended up buying McLaren. We ended up a whole bunch of things, which was just an initiation of fire for my company.
Chris McCormack:I was like unbelievable. I grew it out of Singapore and was living in Thailand. It was just the greatest period of my life and at the same time I just thought and Michael Dulce is now the CEO of Supertri, he was working for me at Tanyapura, running this whole sports division and we were humming. You know, we had all these projects on, or my company did and Michael and I went to do a sports conference in Moscow and I'd met Leonid Boguslavsky, who ended up he was keen to buy Ironman At the time. He was a Forbes list in Canadian Russian gentleman who was obsessed with triathlon and he missed out on buying Ironman to the Chinese. And I was at that time the ambassador for Challenge. I'd signed a 10-year deal as the ambassador of Challenge. I'd won Roth a few times, four times, so they'd sign me up to help them promote the brand worldwide and build the product, especially in Asia.
Chris McCormack:And he said tell me about this Challenge brand, this Challenge brand, what's your perception of it? He says it's a fantastic brand. You know it's Willoughby Ironman. Look, it needs a lot of capital. How much capital does it need? To cut a long story short, there was a whole bunch of them. There was Leonid Boguslowski, there was Alexei Pamferov, who owns Bournemouth football team A whole bunch of these high net worths. And they said we want to do something in the triathlon space. And I remember in my head thinking mate, this is your chance.
Chris McCormack:I'd always had this vision of a closed league triathlon series, building a professional series which could escape the federations. Give athletes like a professional chance where a young kid goes here's the way you get in. It doesn't matter if you don't like the high performance director in your federation or he doesn't like you, it's just bang, bang, you're in right, just clear pathways to a pro league. So it's just simple. I said if we could build a simple pro league, make it consumable for television audiences, get it on networks. I love triathlon, I'm sure everyone else loves triathlon. Right, that was my naivety, but I I thought so I'm going to swing for it. So I said look, I've got an idea. I've got a closed league idea where we own all the best athletes in the world. They race into our series. We condense the formats, we make it live on television, we put it into a you know one hour package, broadcast live on bbc, worldwide, fox sports, everything. But it needs to be short and and you need to have the best athletes in the world racing week in, week out, not avoiding each other, not one doing this week, one doing that one, one in training camp, which is where it's going. Nowadays we contract the best, like they've done with the UFC, dana White, right, look what he's disrupted the MMA space.
Chris McCormack:And Leonid said to me and you know who does, you know who can do this league? I said I've already got it done, I've already signed. I had nobody. I said I've already spoken to all the best professional athletes. They're in. I'm in the process of building this league out and I know you want to buy a challenge, but I have this league. I'm nearly done with it. I've got all the pitch papers with my team. Didn't have a team back in Asia, asia, and I'd love to present it to you guys. If you guys legitimately want to invest in triathlon, this is the way to go. And he asked a couple more questions and they spoke a bit of Russian and he said can you be in London next week? I said absolutely so.
Chris McCormack:I flew back to Thailand, I grabbed Michael Durst, who was really good at computers, and we put together a pitch deck for Supertruck and I've done this racing in Australia. It's called the Formula One Triathlon Series in Australia in the 90s and the juniors used to do it. And then the pro. It was on live television just before the Sydney Olympics. So I knew that this format worked very specifically in Australia and so we copied a lot of the formats, changed the names, changed the distances. I'd raced it so I knew what worked and what didn't work, created these short shoot concepts, created the branding, went up there and pitched.
Chris McCormack:I remember being in London at the Canute Hotel, canute or whatever it's called and sit down with the both, and the first guy that owns the Bournemouth football team said no-transcript, no. I'm thinking, oh, all, right and lean. It's like, oh, what about alistair brown? You know? I said, yeah, no, alistair, will he do it? I said, absolutely, he'll do it.
Chris McCormack:I hadn't spoken to alistair at all about series. I'm thinking, mate, the money's right, he'll do it. Um, and he likes his concept. I said he absolutely loves it. He can't wait for me to get it off the ground. He had no idea it even existed, right, like I mean. And um, he's like, I like, I like how much money you need. You know, I need x amount of dollars to launch it. Let's do proof of concept. Okay, I do, we do it. And I remember you'll never regret it shook his hand and I remember trying to be cool, the amount of money we had. And michael, I remember I'm treading on his foot because I didn't want him to like I can celebrate that I wanted to look like this has been in the planning.
Chris McCormack:It had been one week of work, like I mean, I'd been thinking about it for years but I never thought the opportunity would come. And that's why I tell people always swing man for the opportunities. Right, you've got to swing. And Leonid became an incredible partner to have. Like I mean, we launched the first race in Hamilton Island.
Chris McCormack:It was successful, and my first thoughts were that the you know, the entire sport of triathlon was going oh thanks, macko. Like oh, man, you're investing in triathlon. And I had no idea that. I guess, naively again, that you know, when you disrupt other people, they, they don't take to that too kindly. So the, the world triathlon body, was a little bit taken back by it and they tried to say you're not doing this. So I ended up getting back into these arguments with you know, iron man was like who are you to do this? And I thought everyone would be like happy, you know, like there's a new player. But it didn't really work out that way. And then obviously, the federations world triathlon was working with the federations to not let athletes race in the series and when. So then we end up having to do deals with them to pivot the series to a certain time of the year.
Chris McCormack:So our long-term, my naive game, thought that we'd take not take over the sport but be like the Grand Slams of tennis and the World Series would be like the amateur racing, get into the Olympics. But this would be like a pro league and we raised Leonid, just fell in love with it and it's become his legacy and he's like look, I want to leave a legacy in this sport. I think this sport is an absolutely incredible sport. I want to build this league. And we went all the way through until we were booming and then COVID happened, which was we just moved to London from our Singapore offices. We moved a lot of our staff, we just done a huge raise with two big investors and a guy out of Jersey and Leonid again, and we're about to double down on it, or we establish a three, three, two, two level series.
Chris McCormack:Covid locked the world down and a lot of our staff were living in the UK but they weren't British so we didn't get furlong. Was it furlong? The money from the furlong? So we went through incredible amount of money to keep our staff there and employed and no events. And then we by chance pivoted to that. It was called the Arena Games. It's now Super Tri-E.
Chris McCormack:We had all these athletes on contract which we had to pay and we're burning through money left, right and center. And we knew Zwift and I rang the Zwift guys and said how about we broadcast a triathlon where they run on your treadmills and we'll do it at a swimming pool with masks on, and I've got the best athletes on the world on contract. Like, I mean, I'll put them on and we can broadcast. And everyone was stinging for any sport and it sounded Mickey Mouse at the time. But we thought we've got to do something with this. We're paying these athletes and Super Tri he took off at work. So we're like, oh my gosh. And so then we had these two products, we got out of COVID and we'd burnt through a lot of money and then the landscape was very, very different. A lot of countries that were paying money to have your events there weren't in the place to pay that anymore. They spent a lot of money during COVID so the landscape looked very different. It's coming out the other side now, without question.
Chris McCormack:But I think fundamentally for the short course space and I think from a from a consumable point of view, it's been remarkable. You see it in the in the media numbers. The following is has been great. But triathlon is a difficult sport right to to commercialize to a broader audience and, and I think the way people consume media now, super tri is definitely the way to do it. We're pivoting a lot now into the acquiring a lot of the mass participation races.
Chris McCormack:We used to be called super league triathlon but internally we discussed that super should be attached to the sport, not the league, and so we changed it to super try and we thought we could change the narrative on olympic distance and make us own that whole entire short course ecosystem worldwide. So we bought, you know, toronto triathlon, we bought austin triathlon, we bought malibu, we bought chicago. We buy, we're gobbling up a lot of those short distance triathlons which are the you know 70 of athletes to do a triathlon, do it through this short course, even though they're very community based. But we want to get that singular brand and then feed into that pro league. We sold off franchises. We create a different model in that sense, where we have teams racing.
Chris McCormack:But for me, it's been an absolute buzz trying to create something from, from an idea, and then seeing it come to life. And then you know, watching it. I remember watching the. There's a race we did in jersey, I think in 2018. It's on the, on the website. It's where vincent louis, henry skuman, richard murray, johnny Johnny Brownlee and Christian Blumenfeld have an absolute war and it is packed streets.
Chris McCormack:And I remember being the commentator, with Ali Brownlee in commentary and Will McCloy, and I remember watching the screen. I just went quiet for a while, going, shit, man, this is really cool. It's an amazing feel. It's a racer like the best guys on the planet racing head-to-head on a incredibly tight circuit, like real, real racing. And I just remember sitting back and just going, wow, like we've done something really cool here.
Chris McCormack:And you know, speaking to the athletes, they absolutely love the racing, they love the being a part of it. We treat them very, very well and and I think you know all of them will say for us we used to say, if you don't do super try, you're not going to be successful at the olympics and you saw the line all the guys that do super try won the olympic games. It just really refines your craft you're doing, you're perfecting transitions, you're perfecting explosive racing and and, and we believe whether we're right or not, but we do believe that we've been a big catalyst in that whole big step up in that short distance racing. You see, the athletes that have raced our series and those that haven't, and if you haven't, you're at a distinct disadvantage.
Charlie Reading:And it's going to be a huge. I mean we've had Chris Williams on, we've had Alistair Brownlee on. We've talked about it a little bit before on the podcast, but it's going to be so I I see it as the, you know, the it's going to have this really important role in the future of triathlon because, like, if we, if we use cricket as the analogy test, cricket is great. If you love cricket, if you're, if you're an advocate of cricket and you're happy to sit there for five days, it's a beautiful sport. But t20 and the 100 is is what's going to get people in at a young age and kind of watching it, engaging, and so I think I think that's, I think it's brilliant, um, and yeah, really exciting age for them through that, because it was.
Chris McCormack:It was packer that brought in the one days and the. You know, the cricket was very english and so we grew up with with kerry packer disrupting the cricket space with with the one day cricket thing he took on the English cricket board. Nelly sent himself broke because he loved the sport so much. And as Australians we're like, yes, we're such disruptors, you know, like taking traditional sport and disrupting it. And then obviously, t20 came along again and it's just changed the entire cricket landscape and I think you know you can be a purist and a lot of that.
Chris McCormack:That was a lot of the pushback when we had short shoots and the purists were like, oh well, this isn't really triathlon, you shouldn't be. I'm like, guys, it is very explosive, it's swimming, biking and running. It's very difficult. But you've got to understand that media is consumed differently now and without pivoting in that direction, you're going to become obsolete and we're not competing. And I used to say a lot of time we'd have all these agencies come in and they'd sit there and go triathlon in formula one tennis and I'd be like, guys, we're not, we're not formula one, we're not tennis. I mean, you can show me all these great numbers on these amazing sports, but let's, let's compare apples with apples. You know, if you talk to me about surfing and triathlon or athletics and triathlon, I could, I could, you know they're both tier two, tier three sports. Like I mean, athletics is probably a lot bigger, but I mean, start talking to me in that space. And how do we go from a tier three to a tier two sport? Let's start there. Give me the grand sports. I don't know how good they are. We're a long way off that, and you know, and so it is a difficult. And now I've seen the PTO come in and they're trying to disrupt that whole long distance space, which is very interesting it's.
Chris McCormack:You know, I'm not overly. I love what they're doing, I love anything with triathlons on television, I enjoy it. I just I'm not overly. I don't understand the business model too much because I just it's a very you can't. You're buying the TV time and you can't get the lives. You can't. They're not doing a post-production cut, which if I was them I'd I'd forget the lives. Post it up into a, into a package. It's really, really cool. Be more story, story till narrative, led like a bit like the formula one's done with the netflix series. Be more narrative, led, story led and tell that story. The racing's boring. I. I love triathlon. I said they are definitely the bike you know I want you to run, be it's. It's too much and I think they should. I will focus my attention in that space because there's a long course guide above nothing more than to see that that work.
Charlie Reading:I think you know we've said it a few times it would triathlon the long course. Stuff needs an unchained or a drive to survive, or whatever it is, because it's the stories behind what those athletes are doing. It is better than the actual sitting there and watching the race unfold over eight hours.
Chris McCormack:The money they're spending on the live. You know there's a lot of like Ironman's trying to do a couple on YouTube, but you can see the spend. The spend's not there to deep dive enough to follow enough, so it's very shallow and hollow, but the amount of money that they're spending on each live play, they've got the funds to do a Netflix style. It doesn't need to be Netflix, but that type of deep dive into the sport, which is game-changing, it wouldn't be a good idea.
Charlie Reading:Yeah, brilliant, yeah, well, yeah. And also, what I love is the similarities between your approach to going into business and Supertri to where you started in France, and your approach to going into business and and super try to where you started in France and your approach to going into triathlon. So I think it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating. It's fascinating to hear these stories kind of come full circle. One of the things that we do at the end of this podcast is we always ask for books that have inspired you on your journey. So, like I said, I love, I love your book. I'm here to win, but what books have you found yourself either recommending to others or books that have helped you on your journey?
Charlie Reading:I think we all loved it when we read it and and then like, like.
Chris McCormack:Like we said that you know they moved into the fiction section, but that's exactly um I read a book least recently called the Value of Others, which was a very interesting book about human relationships. I like books that are. You know. I do like autobiographies, especially this one, but this one I found really interesting the Value of Others, by Albion I've forgotten his name, albion. It was about relationships with each other and how we operate in the world, especially from a business perspective. It was very interesting. It was not just very business related but it was more relationships with lovers, with partners, with parents, with friends and how they interact and it was an economics, very much an economics-driven look at the marketplace of relationships, which I loved. I enjoyed. What other books will I say? I loved Open by the Andre Agassi story. I was a big andre agassi fan and so open I really loved. But what else I'm not? I haven't read outside of the value of others.
Charlie Reading:I haven't read a lot recently I've been no well, we love a good podcast, obviously, but no, that's fantastic and actually the value of others is not a book I've heard of before, so I'm going to check that out. That's that's. That's, that's a brilliant recommendation. Now we also have a closing tradition on the podcast where the like we asked the last guest to ask the next guest a question, without knowing who they're leaving it for. So our last guest was was matty trautman, the south african ironman athlete. So what's one belief that you held early in your career that you've since completely changed your mind about, and what led you to that shift?
Chris McCormack:um, one belief that I've checked, convinced that the best, the best guys, or best guys or girls always win on race day, and that's you know. I always thought that the most talent the best, and that's not the case. I I've realized that a lot of times. You know, when I was young, I thought if you trained harder than anyone, you would win, and, as I said earlier, I don't believe that's the case. I think you can be outplayed, outsmarted out. There's a lot of tactics involved in sport that we don't talk about enough. We do in team sports and football, but in these sort of sports, we just there's such a physicality around it. Everyone like, oh well, he's just dropped off. But I don't think the best always wins and, as I said in 2010 with andreas rayler, I think he was the best athlete on that day and he got the silver medal and uh.
Charlie Reading:So the best doesn't always win brilliant, excellent, and I'd like to finish off by asking you so. In your book you tell a joke about the bull. I'd like, I'd like you to to finish off this podcast by telling that joke again, but also telling us what it meant to you at the time and what it means to you now what a joke about the old bull and the young bull.
Chris McCormack:Everyone knows that's, it's not really.
Charlie Reading:I don't think in england we did. I'm not sure I'd heard it before.
Chris McCormack:Yeah, I don't know how crass it was in the book, I can't remember, but it's basically the story of the old bull and the young bull and and the young bull's looking down at the, the cows in the paddock, and says, dad, dad, let's run down there and and and have our way with the, with a cow. And the old bull says why don't we just walk down and and have our way with them? All sort of thing was the story of the and so, and it was for me, it was the story that I I used to think to myself that impatience, the youthful impatience, and the youthful makes you, not makes you, make errors. You know and I think youth forgives, like errors in training and everything. I say it a lot that you can over train. You make mistakes a lot when you're young and youth will forgive you.
Chris McCormack:And as you get older, if you don't start being a lot more clever in your training, a lot more clever in the way you approach things, that your lifespan in the sport is diminished and about thinking things through, being patient, being alert, being reactive, I think a lot of people can overthink things. I think it's important to make a decision, but I think being aware of of your surroundings, being aware of the situation, being aware of what you want and then looking at the best way to get there, because not always is what you see the easiest way to get there. It can. It might seem easy, but it's actually the longer way. So, to be more attentive to things and I think, my last part of my career, I and I think everyone says that my father's, they can't put an old head on young shoulders and it's such a true statement.
Chris McCormack:You know, I wish I could have been the, the, the athlete. I was at the end of my career, in my early career, because I would have. I would have really utilized my talents a lot better than I actually did. I think I I was so impatient, so almost ADD-like and wanting to prove myself so much that I underperformed, even though people were like, wow, you had a great career. I was like, yeah, but a lot of them got away. So, yeah, I think that's sort of the whole story of the old bull and the young bull.
Charlie Reading:Brilliant. Well, I think it's a lovely way of finishing off because I think, yeah, I think it's a lovely way of finishing off because I think, yeah, I think you can see it as you gain the experience throughout your career. But equally, I think there's, you know, some of your success is driven by the young bull's enthusiasm to charge, and likewise in business as well. I think you know there would have been many people that would have said, oh now, the experienced version of me is I need to go off and do a year's research into this concept, as opposed to sell it and then make it up in a week and just go.
Chris McCormack:So I think, more than anything, I think I think I've found being in business. As I said earlier, I think I've entered the workforce to my father's delight, but I entered the workforce almost more than a decade ago, but I was a much more. I'm so happy with where I came out of my spot. I retired on my own terms, I was ready to leave and I was in such a strong headspace and such a different person. Had I entered the workforce as a young entrepreneur, I would have made a lot of the mistakes I've made in my career and I was such a such a stronger, cerebrally, more more balanced person to rush into things, definitely, to have the courage to explore every rabbit hole and yes, I can do that and then unpack it and work out the people be confident enough to put the people around me to help me do that. And I think, being in a sport that was very individual, like I, was very happy to work within teams and and share the experience with others. So I found, as I said, I found I enjoy business very much.
Chris McCormack:So and and I've taken so much from my sporting career and I say to a lot of athletes that you know there's a lot of discussion around what you do post-career, and there's a lot of post-career depression and and I say a lot of I find that I meet athletes that they become a different creature when they leave sport.
Chris McCormack:You know, they're such brave people in sport and they take chances and risk to win races and then they get out of the sport and they clam up and they're like I won't do that, what if it doesn't work? What if I get judged? What if I'm like you were just a beast when you raced. You took chances in everything. You'd attack off the front and blow up and you didn't care. And now you're this completely different being. Why don't you just be the same being that was successful in sport, that gave you that success? And and I say that to you know, one thing I learned from sport is trust your instincts, have a crack, and what do you got to lose if you fail you? In sport, you fail more than you win, and it's the same in business and life.
Charlie Reading:So yeah, brilliant swing for the fences absolutely. Maca, it's been fantastic chatting to you. I love listening to the stories. There's so much wisdom there but it's also there's so much raw kind of energy of everything that you've done in in that journey. So it's been it's been absolutely brilliant. I I strongly recommend people watch super try, check out your book and yes, it's a huge thank you for for everything you've done for the sport and for for joining us on the business of endurance it's been a pleasure.
Chris McCormack:Thanks for having me?
Charlie Reading:well, wow, what did you make of that one claire?
Claire Fudge:it was, honestly, I haven't laughed so much in ages although I was on mute, not laughing at him, laughing with his stories. I mean just the, the enthusiasm that comes across about how he got into his sports, I think is, and what happened like during his sporting career. And he he talks a lot like both in the the other interviews that I've listened to him talk about, in terms of you know how he came across at the time of him being at the top of his career and actually now him explaining himself about you know why he came across in that way? Cause when you listen him speak, you can you know, yes, you can really feel that kind of you know he just goes and gets things and he just says yes. But I thought it was really great just to hear the you know from him the other side as well, in terms of the mind games and and kind of what he was about.
Charlie Reading:I thought it was brilliant. I love the story of him getting into triathlon and going over to France and and then you hear the story of of super try and you're like it's basically a replay, isn't it?
Charlie Reading:it's just like right, make it up, and I'm just gonna go for it, say yes and see where it takes me, but there's a, there's a huge amount to learn from that isn't there. There is, you know that and also that ability to be able to say well, this is the goal, this is where I'm aiming for. I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I'm just going to go at it and go hard at it, and then we'll work it out along the way. And that is phenomenal. I mean like great athlete, great stories, but but also what he's done in business since retiring is is absolutely phenomenal.
Claire Fudge:So, yeah, so the, the saying yes principle, as you said, like this, that's exactly what I took from it this playing out of yeah, yeah, okay, cool, great opportunity, we'll. We'll do it. But also he did talk about which I thought was really interesting and comes back to a couple of things that I think in business is sometimes ideas. You think is an idea that you've just had and actually it's an idea that's been playing out in your mind for like five years, 10 years, maybe longer, and it comes to kind of fruition, doesn't it In some shape or form?
Charlie Reading:Yes, so it's interesting to hear that Carol would say to me that that's the sort of idea that I came up with a year ago.
Claire Fudge:And you've been, and you've been sort of bouncing around and now it's your idea, it's a good idea. How?
Charlie Reading:irritating, yeah, but I think it's just. I thought it was brilliant. I loved also where he started talking about where the psychologist was trying to understand who the person was when he was kind of in the pain cave. You know properly, and I thought that was. That was fascinating. It reminded me a bit of Ryan Stranbury talking about becoming an excuse magnet and who are you at that point and trying to get to the bottom of who that person was. And then that strategy of when you're in there, smile, embrace it and talk to it. I thought that was a really good. I yeah, I probably could have done with a bit more of that in while I was in the energy lab on my on my arse. So, yeah, yeah, really, really interesting. What else did you take from it?
Claire Fudge:Well, do you know, I'll tell you. I'll tell you a very short story. When I first got into doing Ironman, maka was at the top of his game, like so this was the year that he won Ironman World Championships. So I really sort of remember kind of what that time was and, yes, we had kind of you know, watches and things, but we didn't have as much as we do now. Um, so I was really interested, as I always am, to ask these questions about, you know, headphones, and so I did think it was interesting how he because they didn't train with lots of things how they potentially, you know, more in tune with their body than we are today, you know, in terms of, in terms of racing. So it's really good, really good to hear him talk about that and hence, you know this, this part about learning a bit more about yourself and these, you know, embrace the suck legals that you know, learning to deal with these emotional stressors rather than just going on. You know, I'll deal with it another time. I thought that was. I thought that was really interesting. Also, going back right to the very beginning, I just picked up on what he was saying about, you know, at the beginning of triathlon, that it was kind of this, you know. You know sort of three sports sort of mashed together a little bit and how actually he was doing all of those things.
Claire Fudge:You know he was surfing, so he was confident. You know, swimming in the water, he was a runner but also this idea of I don't know he was grew up in Australia but children did a lot more, you know, like cycling, he said. You know I cycled to school every day. I was running for my sport and I loved surfing, so I was swimming and I was thinking, god, what do our children in the UK do right now? They get in a car, probably, and go to school, or they get on a bus. They're maybe not walking, maybe not, but they're. It's not safe enough to cycle, you know. So the opportunity of being very, very active as a child, I think, and you know, as you always talk about like doing all of these different sports, I think it's really uh, is is really really useful to becoming an athlete yeah, yeah, you're right and it's interesting, isn't it?
Charlie Reading:because you say it's not safe to cycle now. But is it that's? It's actually probably just as safe to cycle now as it was 10, 15 years ago. I would suggest it's just an awareness of, of the. The risk that is is greater now than it was then, you know, but I, I agree, I think it's. It's really.
Charlie Reading:It's really sad that the, the kids, are spending way more time in front of a screen and and gaming than being out playing sport and and, and I think it's also a reflection on the aussie lifestyle you know, with with great weather, there's a, there's definitely. You know, that is definitely a culture that spends way more time outdoors. I remember seeing a stat years ago where apparently Australia has the highest sick day rate of of any country on earth, and it is perfectly in tune with how good the surf is. So, but it's like, yeah, it might not be the the most productive business way of doing it, but if the surf's good, you should just go surf. You know, I was listening to a book recently, actually, and it got me really thinking.
Charlie Reading:It was like it was. It was somebody, what was it? It's the good psych, it's the good psychopath guide, I think, is the book called by Andy McNabb and another guy who wrote, and they were talking about taxi drivers. He, I was chatting to this taxi driver and he said you know, it's really tough being a taxi driver. When the sun's shining, I have to work twice as many hours because everyone wants to walk when the sun's shining, when it's raining, everyone wants to jump in a taxi. So and he said you know, I pay a monthly amount to have this taxi. So he said, I know I need to clear £200 a day to pay my way in the car.
Charlie Reading:And they said to him so what you're saying is, on a lovely sunny day, because there's not many punters, you have to work twice as many hours. And then, on a rainy day, you have to work, you can knock off early because you get all your £, all your 200 pounds, you know, by lunchtime. So have you ever, have you ever thought of just working longer on the rainy days, so that you and then just having the sunny days off? They're like, well, no, I haven't. Actually it's sometimes you have to. Just yeah, yeah. I can't even remember where that transition went, where it took my brain, but it's like yeah, you've got to. You've got to work hard on on the on the days where there's no, no surf, and just take the day off that where there is surf, you know just enjoy it and yeah, so I thought, I think it's like I really really enjoyed into your maca.
Charlie Reading:I think he's a he's a great guy and I think and I think the smack talk bit was interesting in the sense that they, you know, like his relationship with crowey, they could, should have just sat down and had a coffee and they would have all resolved it, but because it was all through through the magazines and it probably got blown way more out of proportion than it ever needed to any final takeaways from the the interview with maca I think, well, I actually think there's a lot to be taken from listening and reading again from athletes, you know, from years ago, because I think there is so much to take from the way that they trained their mindset, the things that they had to get through, that really, for athletes today is maybe easier, you know, in terms of all of our devices.
Claire Fudge:So I think there's loads to learn as as an athlete. So I think there's loads to learn as as an athlete and I love I, you know, I love the idea of, from an entrepreneur's head, how you can bring that athlete head and sports head into the world of business. I mean, you know, he just gave us a really good example of that, didn't he?
Charlie Reading:He did and the other the other one that I'll throw out there is it doesn't, it doesn't it wasn't a great example of the power of storytelling. You know, he made our job really easy because he could tell the stories and within those stories was all the lessons that we needed. We didn't need to ask specific questions. I mean, we didn't ask even a third of the questions that we had lined up, but he answered a good good most of them because because of the way he could tell the stories and weave those lessons in. So I think you know, in business, if you can master the art of storytelling, whether it's in your marketing, whether it's your new york communication, anything like that, it's um, it's just incredibly powerful um. So, yeah, a brilliant interview as as far as we're concerned and for all of the listeners out there, keep on training.