Ed Fernon Interview
It's time to return to the greatest sport on the planet of Modern Pentathlon as we chat with Australian two-time Olympian Ed Fernon about his amazing career and the amazing sport he competes in! We find out from Ed just what made him decide to take up the sport and how he was able to go from picking it up to qualifying for his first Olympics in such a short period of time. We also find out the unique swimming training methods he had to undertake in order to improve his times as well as just how difficult the mental aspect of Pentathlon is. Added to this we find out how a trip to Wuhan before COVID went down and just why a simple slap helped him qualify for the Olympics. It's an amazing chat that you know you want to hear so get to it to not be disappointed!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
BEN WATERWORTH: It is Off The Podium, An Olympics Podcast coming to you today for another interview episode. And I am excited. Let's just put it that way, because we're returning to Modern Pentathlon today, people. That is right. The greatest sport on the planet. We are speaking to two-time Aussie Olympian, Ed Fernon, competed at the London and Tokyo Olympics. And great story here from Ed of how we got into the sport, as it always is with any of our pentathletes on the show, of course, learning about how they get into the sport, the unique obstacles that he had to overcome, and the short amount of time in which he basically picked up pentathlon to then go to his first Olympics in London. And in between London and Tokyo, the extraordinary story about how he just missed out on Rio, and he almost took that as a good thing. And then the short timeframe that it took for him to get off the couch, basically, and having not trained in four years to then decide to give another crack at the Olympics and ultimately be successful in qualifying for his second game. So this is a great chat with Ed. You're gonna learn a lot about him and a lot more about the sport of modern pentathlon. So here's our chat with two-time Olympic pentathlete, Ed Fernon.
BEN WATERWORTH: Every single interview I say that I'm excited to speak to our next guest today is no exception, particularly when we can return to the greatest sport on the entire planet, modern pentathlon. Of course, we spoke to Queen Chloe several months ago about her experiences at the Olympics, and now we're going to hear from King Ed, I'm just gonna say that right now, two-time Olympian from London and recently from Tokyo in the sport of modern pentathlon. The one, the only Mr. Ed Fernon is with me today. Ed, first of all, welcome to Off The Podium. It's a pleasure to have you today.
ED FERNON: Yeah, thanks, Ben. Very excited about it. Should be good.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's always a pleasure to speak about modern pentathlon. I was just talking to you a little bit about it off air, about how we love it on the show. We like to have this weird claim to fame, Ed, that we made it a thing just before Chloe won the gold in Rio because back in our Rio coverage on day one, we said modern pentathlon is the sport. This is the one everybody needs to watch. And what, 10 days later, we all woke up to a gold medal from it. So we weirdly like to say, hey, did we make this a thing in Australia? I mean, given that you competed at the Olympics before we mentioned it, probably not. But hey, we like to try and say we did.
ED FERNON: Yeah. Well, it's certainly a very unknown sport in Australia, and Chloe's helped support that, and it's got a bit more coverage. But yeah, it's still not a mainstream sport, that's for sure.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, your journey into the sport, you kind of obviously went to London, but tell us a little bit how you got involved in it, because I feel, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure you've met many athletes in the sport who maybe are going to prove me wrong. But I feel, is modern pentathlon a sport that some people really don't grow up going, I want to grow up to be a pentathlete. I mean, is this something you kind of just fall into, or I mean, did you grow up going, hey, I want to be a modern pentathlete. This is a sport for me.
ED FERNON: Yeah, well, certainly not. I didn't even know what modern pentathlon was until I was about 18 years old. My uncle lived next door to a guy called Hunter who trained the horses for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games for the riding event in the modern pentathlon. And so he was always saying, oh, you should give it a go. You can ride horses and you're a good runner. Why don't you try it? And for me, I grew up playing rugby and cricket at school and did cross-country and was always riding horses in the school holidays down on a farm near Wagga Wagga. So for me, I did a number of different sports and never really thought about doing pentathlon or taking sports seriously. It wasn't until I was at university for my first year of uni where I was looking for a personal challenge. I was doing a commerce degree at Sydney University, living on campus at college there. And after a few months of repetitive hangovers, I knew I needed a bit of a change in my life. And so I was looking for a personal challenge and decided to take up modern pentathlon.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I can't think of a bigger personal challenge in taking up five sports into one. Wow, that's crazy. And when you decide to take that up, I mean, what steps can you do in Australia to take up modern pentathlon? It's not like you can just go down to the local cricket oval, is it? And pick up a bat and go, I want to play cricket. I mean, I'm sure it's a little bit more difficult than that.
ED FERNON: You know, I think modern pentathlon, one of the real challenges of that, which people underestimate, is all the logistical issues, the support issues. They're just, that is one of the major challenges of the sport, that there is no structures. There's no modern pentathlon coaches here in Australia. There's no clubs, there's no coaches and other support systems that exist in other sports. So for me, I had to find, do it all myself, find a way. Like the first person I spoke to was Daniel Esposito. So that was Chloe's father. And I met with him. He went to 1984 Olympic Games, and I sat down with him and I said, oh, look, I'm looking to do modern pentathlon, give it a bit of a go as a challenge. And he just stopped me and said, look Ed, unless you're considering going to the Olympic Games, it's not even worth starting. There's too much time, money, effort involved in the sport. Unless you're going 100%, you may as well just go and do your horse riding, or you may as well just go pick another sport. So that was probably, at that particular point in time, that was fantastic advice for me because it really solidified my commitment and said, okay, I'm going all the way. Like I'm gonna commit until the trials for the London Olympics, which was in three and a half years time, and I'm just, there's no, whether I'm doing it or not, I'm gonna commit to that timeframe, and I'm gonna go 100%. And if I qualify, I qualify, if I don't, I don't. And I was 100% committed during that period of time. And yeah, I had to learn how to swim, and I had to learn how to fence and shoot, but it was a very, very full on training program. But yeah, I was able to qualify, and go over and compete with Chloe in London.
BEN WATERWORTH: So I can imagine too, in speaking to him about that, because Australia didn't have a male modern pentathlete in Beijing, so it's sort of what it hadn't been since Athens. So kind of was there like that level of trying to find someone who could bring the sport back, bring the Australian back to the sport at the next Olympics as well. And maybe it was a case of, well, you seem committed enough, I'm gonna back you and kind of help you on this journey so we can get that spot back at the Olympic Games.
ED FERNON: Well, we did have an athlete qualified for Beijing, a guy called Alex Paragon, who won the Olympic gold medal for Kazakhstan in 1996. So he had moved to Australia and had qualified. But unfortunately, with a number of things happened, which I won't discuss here, he didn't end up going to the Olympics. So yeah, there wasn't a male representative at that games. And so the next Olympic games, it was fairly hotly contested. There was a Chinese athlete that came to Australia to try to get citizenship. I mean, they brought in this rule, which at the time I was quite frustrated and annoyed about where if you're from another country, you could come and if you qualified for the Olympics, they'd give you citizenship effectively. So we had an athlete from China who came over and was trying to qualify for Australia. And to put the things in a perspective, I mean, I think China has about 200 professional, full-time modern pentathletes. And this particular athlete, he was highly ranked in China and had quite a distinguished career, but wasn't able to make it on the Chinese team, which was highly competitive. In fact, they went on to win a silver medal in London. So I was up against him, as well as a number of other Australian athletes who had been in the sport for a number of years and were highly competitive and had done the international circuit. And so it was pretty competitive in a hotly contested position, and we only get one position. So you got to be the top male in Oceania at the Asia Oceania Corsair, which was in Chengdu in May in 2011. So it was certainly at that stage, sort of we run through the emotions, huge amount of emotions leading up to those events. And yeah, it was a very, very interesting experience.
BEN WATERWORTH: Was it something growing up before you even took up modern pentathlon that the Olympics were part of your life, that you enjoyed watching them, that you had dreamt about maybe making the Olympics one day?
ED FERNON: Look, I think every single kid growing up has the thought or the, certainly the ponders what it's like representing their country, whether that's in the Olympics or whether that's playing for Australia in cricket or rugby or whatever other endeavour that they're really following. The idea of competing for Australia is something that I think you dream about as a kid. Most people never have that opportunity and something that I'm truly honoured to have done. So for me, I think when I decided to do this the first stage, just to be able to go out there and compete for my country was a great honour and a privilege. And to be able to do that at Olympic Games certainly was even more of an honour to do that at the sort of highest level. But growing up as a kid, yeah, I think I always had those dreams, but just never thought it would be possible or turn into a reality.
BEN WATERWORTH: You mentioned you had the riding, you had the running, fencing, swimming and shooting. What was the trickiest? Was it jumping in the pool? Was it the shooting? Kind of the fencing as well? Something that not a lot of Australians generally do. I mean, neither of them sound pretty easy to just pick up if you don't have much experience in them.
ED FERNON: Yeah, I think the swimming for me was the biggest challenge because it's just most kids in Australia learn how to swim when they're quite young. They have that feel for the water, as they say, as swimmers talk about it. And so they grow up swimming, and that's just a part of them. And I think once you've got that skill, it's quite easy to get it back. Whereas I grew up running and doing other sports, so I didn't have, besides swimming lessons, that was about it. So I could remember the first time trial I did down at the pool was when three minutes and four seconds for the 200-metre freestyle. Wow. You know, the guys who are best in the world are swimming under two minutes. So for me, that was a huge challenge. But I can distinctly remember going down there, and I thought, oh, well, if I've got to be better at swimming, then I'll go get some stroke correction. I'll go get some support. And I met with a coach and had a one-on-one swimming lesson, and she asked me to do a floating drill. And I just sank straight to the bottom. And she said, look, Ed, unless you can float, you'll never be a good swimmer. So I think you should give it up. And I said, no, and I will, the swimming's only one of the sports, so I want to keep at it and keep going. And she said, oh, okay, well, if you want to do it, then you've got to join a squad, and you've got to train every day, and you're not going to keep up with any of my older swimmers. So, you know, my kids from, you'd probably be in line with the kids in the morning that swim at 5.30 who are 12 to 14 years old. So, I actually started, which was a bit of a ruin of the ego, and that just brought me back down a level. So, for 12 months, I went and swam with the kids. Swam 5.30 in the morning every day down at Sydney University Pool. We swam there, and in that 12 months, I was able to get down from about 3.04 to about 2.24. So, it was a huge improvement there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Decent, yeah.
ED FERNON: In the swimming in that time. And from there, then I got to a position where I started moving up through their squads, and then I came across a really good swim coach at the Ian Thorpe Aquatics Centre, a guy called Hamid, who really became my swim coach, then leading up to London.
BEN WATERWORTH: Because is it a case where you need five individual coaches, or someone like Daniel, like is he spread around enough that he can coach you enough on each of the disciplines? Because obviously, they're so unique in the sport of modern pentathlon. It's not like a heptathlon or something like that, where it's all under the same banner of athletics. This is these are five distinct sports in their own right.
ED FERNON: And I think the other thing with these sports is that they don't complement each other. So they require different muscle systems and different psychology and arousal levels that are required in each of the different sports as well. So I think that's also a major challenge. For me, I think it was certainly an interesting experience because there wasn't an overarching coach. So there wasn't someone who could put the whole program together. And every person has their own strengths and weaknesses. They have their own background. So you've got to focus on where can I get the most points? And so look at it quite holistically and say, am I going to target the swimming or am I going to target the fencing? For Tokyo, the preparation for Tokyo, my coach, Dean Gleason, who was my athletics coach for London, he encouraged me to come back to the sport and try and qualify for Tokyo. And one of the things I said to him was, if I'm doing this, you're doing it as well, and we're going all the way, and you're going to run the whole program. And so he ran actually all my swimming training, all my running, and was a holistic coach for me, which was fantastic for organisation, but also in being able to mentally prepare for my training each week. And I think that's sort of something in Australia where they're really trying to improve in the sport, provide some more structure for the younger kids coming through.
BEN WATERWORTH: We talked a little bit to Chloe about her training regime, but I'd love to hear your sort of training regime, particularly in the lead up to London. You mentioned you get switched to the training with the kids 5.30 in the morning. I mean, was it a case of then, okay, you finish by nine, go jump on the track, then by 12, you're picking up an FA in fencing? I mean, kind of, was it a multiple sport a day or would Tuesday be fencing, Wednesday be shooting, Thursday be swimming, something like that?
ED FERNON: Yeah, so I generally swim five to six times a week. I was running four times a week at that stage. I was fencing three times a week. I was shooting every day, and then I was riding once a fortnight. Yeah, riding was always something that I had in the bag, and it was sort of like riding a bike for me. And even in leading up to Tokyo, I didn't ride much at all. It's just something that coming up to a competition, I'll jump on the horse a couple of times to get ready. So that was good to have that in. So I was really only training for four sports. But yeah, it was pretty full on. Most days are three sessions a day. So it's very time consuming. And I think people that do other sports, you've got to have the recovery. Whereas often in pentathlon, recovery is incredibly important. But when you're recovering, you're shooting, and you're doing other things. So the time commitment, I mean, the pentathlon, they train more than anyone else without a doubt, just because we have to, and it's the requirement of doing all those different sports. But we also can because you're not pressuring all your different energy systems. Yeah, you're focusing on different things all the time.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which you mentioned the mental aspect of it. I always love speaking to our guests about mental preparation for their sports. And again, pentathlon is obviously unique, which you've got five distinct sports, and each in their own right would have their own mental preparations for it. But I mean, kind of how do you work on the mental side of things, being having to be so diverse on five different sports physically, and then mentally preparing yourself for something like shooting, which is obviously very mental based, and horse riding when you've got to be one with the horse, and fencing, and all these kind of mental aspects that each sport has.
ED FERNON: Yeah, like fencing, for example, I always fence best when I'm very, very aggressive, have that laser focus, but have an incredibly high arousal level, and I literally want to go out and take it to them, and quite get in their face, and be very, very aggressive on the strip. Like that's my strip, I'm there, that's how I perform to the best of my ability. Whereas on shooting, it's about being as calm as possible, being able to slow your heart rate, keep it steady, and just stay calm, and as much as possible. For riding, for me, that was just keeping the focus, and just focusing on the rhythm and my breathing, and just not, I think people make the mistake with riding, is not letting the horse or their, they're too worried about the things that they can't control. But when you're on that horse, you've got another animal there that's got its own mind, and its own way of doing things in a sense. So you've got to work with that horse, and not try and control the horse, but work with the horse. And so part of that, when I get on the horse, I'm just counting my strides, counting each stride of the canter, and just focusing on my lines, and getting to the fence as best as I can. But I don't want to interfere with the horse doing its job. And then running and swimming, I always found quite, they were often the hardest to train for, because of the physical work involved. But on competition day, they were the easiest to compete in. You just jump in the pool and go and do it. So it was certainly an interesting process. But most of it is in the training aspect, you're always generally tired. And it's about mentally getting prepared for that next session, because you're always failing. You're constantly having good sessions, you're constantly having bad sessions. And it's about staying positive in those bad sessions. And I think as I got to be an older athlete, I think one of the biggest things I learned was getting more emotional with my successes, more emotional with the great things I did, and less emotional or being able to discard my failures. And I think that's certainly been a really good lesson in life and even in my business and other things I've done is, don't get too emotional with your failures, just move on and try and be grateful for all the positive things in your life and the successes that you have. Whereas I think early in my career, I was probably doing the opposite. I was expecting the successes and expecting that and just not putting too much emphasis on that and then getting quite emotional with my failures. So I think I've certainly improved in that space.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I can imagine though, picking up a sport and three and a half years later qualifying for Olympic Games though, might kind of push you on a little bit with those feelings as well, because I'm sure there's plenty of times in that period where, speaking with the swimming situation, for example, that you're thinking, wow, maybe this isn't for me. But you also seem like somebody who just doesn't give up, Ed, that kind of you're picking up a sport and a very difficult sport and three and a half years later, you can qualify for an Olympics in it.
ED FERNON: Yeah, and I think that's sort of a uniqueness to my story in that I was able to do that, which when you talk to people that they're training 10 years to make an Olympic Games and many people, huge amount of people, will train 10 years and will never make it.
BEN WATERWORTH: So yeah, I've been training for 34 years, Ed, sorry to interrupt and I still haven't made it. I'm still hoping. I mean, Andrew Hoy, 62, I'm just past halfway point. So you never know.
ED FERNON: We've got to do some riding sessions together then get you on the horse.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly.
ED FERNON: Absolutely. So yeah, I really think that that timeframe for me, it was something I'm very proud of, but being able to stay focused in that timeframe and not look too far ahead and just stay in the moment and just look at, okay, what's the next competition? What's the next couple of weeks involved for training? And as I mentioned to you, I made that commitment that I'd go to the trials. So when I felt like a failure, I remember turning up to the Junior World Championships, which was in Taiwan. And that was my first international competition. I was so nervous. I was wrecked with nerves. And I performed terribly. I think I came second last in that event. But it was just a learning experience. And I can remember on the bus afterwards, just coming back, I'm like, you can't, I think you're coming second last at the Junior World Championships. And you're expecting in a couple of years to go to the Olympic Games. I'm not expecting, but that's what you're targeting, to go to the Olympic Games. And like, how are you going to do that? But I think for me, I was willing to work harder than anyone else at that particular point in time. I was 100% focused and really committed to the sport. And all things are passing. And for me, that was just a matter of, let's just go back to the process. What do I need to work on? How do I need to improve and learn and become a better athlete?
BEN WATERWORTH: And through all that process then, the moment you qualify for London, what's that feeling like that all that hard work you just mentioned there has paid off and you're officially an Olympian?
ED FERNON: Oh, that was incredibly emotional. I had a number of my friends actually flew over to China to come to that event and support me and have that there. But I think the big turning point for me was in the fencing. So in Chengdu, at the qualifier, I was really nervous going in, but beforehand in the weeks leading up, and then on the day I felt like I was in a good head space, but I just kept on going on to the strip and I just kept losing and losing and losing and losing. And halfway through the fence, I was in third last position. I think I'd lost 13 and I'd won three. And all the other Australian athletes were doing quite well. And if you have a bad fence, it's pretty much game over. And I can just recall at the big, it was, I got to a point where it was, yeah, it just wasn't going to happen. And then my fencing coach, Bill, who was there with me, he just grabbed me and he just said, look, you know, you've lost, you've lost now. Just go out there and just fight for it. And, you know, just turn it around. Like you can still, there's nothing to lose now because you're at a point where, you know, you've basically forget about your dream. You've, you know, you just got absolutely nothing to lose because you've already lost it. And I can just remember he sort of slapped me in the face and that sort of slap sort of jolted me. And I just went to a headspace that I'd never been before. It was crazy. It was like an absolutely emotional supercharge. And I went on the strip, and I had all my hard bouts in the second half as well. And I won every single one of them. I won 13 in a row at the end and ended up with a really good fencing score at the back end of it, which got me through to the next event. And that was, I can remember coming off that strip and seeing tears in his eyes and seeing that we were able to turn that around. And then we still got four events to go, three events to go. And then from there, we went over to the swim for the warmup of the swim. And I just worked so hard in the back half of the fence that I dived in the pool and all my legs started to cramp. So my quads were just cramping because I'd been loading them up in the fencing. And so then again, I was incredibly concerned that I wouldn't even be able to swim. Like that had never, ever happened to me before. So instead of doing a swim warmup, I just went in, put my suit on, and my coach was just digging his elbow into my quad to stop it spasming. And then when the race came, I just got on the blocks and thought, well, if I cramp, I cramp, I can't do anything about it. I got on the blocks and managed to achieve a two-second PB and get through it and then rode well and then was able to go through the run and had a very strong run and qualified for the Olympics. So it was an incredibly emotional day, and to be able to share that with family and friends was a day that I'll never forget.
BEN WATERWORTH: The secret is the slap, Ed. You know that TV show The Slap? That's what they should be writing it about. It should be about you, just a coach slapping you and get you to the damn Olympics.
ED FERNON: Yeah, well, we do laugh about that. We still do laugh about that today when we catch up. Yeah, that's right.
BEN WATERWORTH: I just expect this, if people are watching you every day, they just constantly say your coach is slapping you. It's like, you get there, it's about to swim. Slap me, slap me, coach, come on.
ED FERNON: No, no, it's not a regular thing, but it did the trick, it did the trick.
BEN WATERWORTH: We always like to hear about Olympic experiences outside of the competition. London, obviously, a fantastic game, and the 100th anniversary, too, of the Pentathlon as well. I mean, just sort of outside of the competition, do you soak up the Olympics, are you going around the village kind of taking it all in and kind of all the great things that no doubt come with being an Olympian outside of actually competing at the games?
ED FERNON: Oh, well, London was an amazing experience because it was such a good Olympics. It was the city of London was so accommodating and it was just they put so much money and effort into it, not that the others don't. But I think it was so like Sydney where we could speak the language. It was a beautiful place and had a lot of affinity with London as well. I think the big, I wouldn't say it was a mistake, but I think the first couple of days as I'm absolutely loving the Olympics, whenever the Olympics is on and it wasn't competing, I'd be watching every single event 24 hours a day, wasn't sleeping, I think like a lot of people. And so when you're competing, you're like, oh, no, actually, I can't do that. I can't watch every single event. So when we got over there, turning up to the opening ceremony and walking from the village to the arena and the main stadium and having, it was about a three kilometre walk and having hundreds of thousands of kids just all lining the walkway as we walk down there and chatting with them and then being held underneath the stadium, like the huge roar of that stadium. It was like a coliseum and you're just underground, not knowing and being able to walk out and experience that. And then the second day, I was one of three Australian athletes that met the Queen and Prince Philip in a sort of reception there. And so you're having all these amazing experiences all the time when you're there and things that you're just completely foreign and that just would never happen in ordinary life. I mean, even the first day I arrived in Tokyo, go down for a coffee in the morning and Ash Barty sitting there having her coffee and to sit down with her, have a chat with her for 20 minutes and then go off and spend the rest of the day. When do you do that? Like, ever. You have all these amazing experiences that are happening all the time. And the great thing is that everyone's there together. It's the same objective. They're all trying to compete and even with the Australian team, everyone's so supportive of each other. And it's just great being a part of that team environment, particularly coming from an individual sport.
BEN WATERWORTH: You're just used to meeting royalty. The Queen, Queen Ash, Queen Chloe is part of your sport. I mean, Jesus, you're just friends with all the royals, Ed.
ED FERNON: Oh, look, I've been very fortunate to have met amazing people and have a great support network. So it's great. I mean, Chloe's done a huge amount for our sport. Obviously, winning the gold was helpful, but even before that, she was a great ambassador for the sport and has done tremendously well.
BEN WATERWORTH: The first family of modern pentathlon, right, the Espositos. It's pretty hard to go by. How many Olympics between them all now? It's adding up a little bit, isn't it?
ED FERNON: That's right. They're a family that... I think when you talk about the Espositos, it is a family affair, but the biggest thing is that they just put everything into it. And Daniel, they have a swim school, and they don't have support. So one of the biggest things about pentathlon is unless you've really podium potential, they support you financially. And so Daniel really wanted to support Chloe and Max as much as possible. And so he moved the whole family to Europe, to Budapest, to go and train, all of his own cost, hundreds of thousands of dollars to support that. And a huge personal sacrifice for himself and the family, which they were willing to do. And Max came out of school to go and train and move over there. So yeah, huge sacrifice on their behalf. And then they win that gold medal. And I always sort of laughed. I was pretty frustrated and annoyed, but in a sense, had to laugh about it when all the media after Chloe won, they were saying how Chloe's gold medal was the best return on investment for Australia, because basically they put no money into supporting her to get there. So you reach the pinnacle of your sport, you do that, and then some funding comes. But by that stage, you don't need it, because you've already got there. So it was a bit of a, like I think for them, and obviously we're starting to get some more funding in the sport now, and hopefully we've got Brisbane Olympics to look forward to. There will be more funding that comes. But I think whenever I've turned up to competitions, particularly the Olympic Games, everyone there are full-time professional athletes. They're all either in the military or in the case of the British, lottery funded. And in Australia, we just don't have that support. And I think that's one of the major issues with Olympic sports with the lack of funding. And yes, we win a lot of gold medals. Yes, we're incredibly successful, but that's because of who we are as people and most of those medals coming from swimming and sailing and in those areas where we've got a huge base where money isn't really that much of an issue. But if we're going to continue to perform well at the Olympics, and we want to encourage these other sports to come through, then we've got to support them. And I've been a very big proponent of improved Olympic funding, not only for the athletes themselves, but just to inspire the younger kids coming through and provide that support. So I think if we can do that, then it's something that Australia will benefit from in the future.
BEN WATERWORTH: How was that experience in Tokyo versus London? So going to London, a sport which we mentioned that often Australians don't know a lot about, it's really a sport Australians might only catch at that time ten minutes of highlights on Channel 7 at four in the morning. And essentially going into Tokyo, where we've now won a medal in the sport four years prior, so a bit more attention on it. Did you find it a little bit different? Were people at Channel 7 maybe focusing on your event a little bit more now? Because they did show it live. They did show it live, I think, on 7-2 on both the days. Obviously Chloe wasn't competing, but we now are a bit more aware of modern pentathlon in the country because of what happened in Rio. So how was that kind of with a bit more focus on you than you would have had in London?
ED FERNON: Yeah, well, look, for me, that didn't really concern me while I was over there. I mean, I've always been happy to do media interviews, and I think this time around as my second Olympics, I came at it for different reasons, and I had different motivations. And one of the major motivations was to be able to come out and inspire my kids, and to go and have that experience again, which I cherished my London experience. But in terms of the media, I didn't notice it particularly, and we were sort of kept away from those media while we were in the village. So in London, you could actually go out and speak with them, whereas, and you have press conferences, where as in Tokyo, we really didn't really have any, because of Covid, any real engagement with them.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, just before we talk a little bit more about those experiences, and you sort of touched on before about sort of going to Tokyo, Rio, you ultimately don't go. Max goes instead. What sort of happened sort of through that Rio experience, and sort of how challenging was that, not to be able to go to consecutive Olympics, sort of, and back that up and go to another games in 2016?
ED FERNON: Yeah, well, I continued in the sport after London. After the London Olympics, I came back, and I did a large charity horse ride over the Snowy Mountains for five weeks, and raised some money for the Black Dog Institute, which was a cause that was very close to my heart. And following that, I came back, and really had $5,000 in my bank account, and spent everything else to try and get to the Olympics, and didn't know what I was going to do. But I was frustrated being a poor athlete, and I really wanted to start getting a job, and start working and doing other things, and build a business. So it's hard to be 100% focused in the sport when you've got other endeavours and other things you're trying to do as well. So in 2013, I was still training full-time, but I was trying to work full-time. I was trying to start a business, and a number of other things going on. And I can remember in September of that year having a massive issue with fatigue, and just overloading myself with everything I was trying to do, and try and keep going. So that was my first major problem with fatigue. And then I kept going through to the Rio trials, as you mentioned. Just prior to the Rio trials, I had issues with fatigue leading into that event. And then we went over and competed in Beijing at the Rio trials, and Max performed amazingly well. Not only did he win the Oceania competition, he actually won the Asia position as well, which has never been done before. So to put that into perspective, I think Chloe came seventh at that event, or sixth at that event. Then Max won it, which was an amazing experience. I think that would be up there with one of his career highlights and did really well. So part of me was actually incredibly relieved once Max won that, because I felt like I could now relax, and I could stop, and just give my body a rest and give my mind a rest. I'd been training then basically for eight years, full time, up to then. And so it just allowed me an opportunity to stop. And it was OK, because someone else gave me that opportunity, rather than me telling myself that I could stop. So that was good, and then really ploughed into my business and focused on doing a number of other personal challenges. I still love doing different physical challenges. I went and climbed a mountain in Argentina.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was going to say, for somebody who's so fatigued, you did a few things that were a little bit more gruelling. I can see climbing mountains and doing what? The world's longest horse, right? I mean, the fatigue must have been a bit challenging to overcome for those.
ED FERNON: It wasn't physical fatigue. It was mental fatigue. It was neural fatigue. So being able to, yeah, when you're working full time and you just had so much pressure and overloading in so many areas, that's what happens. But yeah, it's something I had to manage, something I still need to manage. Yeah, those other challenges, at least I could focus on those for a period of time. And so I wasn't overloading myself, for example, in business, whereas pentathlon is just constant. It's constant. So you've got to be always on to it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which then in the lead up to Tokyo, three months out from the Olympic trials, I believe is when you sort of got that, hey, do you want to try again? I mean, did you ever imagine that that would be something that you would be doing, going back to another Olympic Games? And what made you say yes? What made you go, okay, sure, I'll give it a crack.
ED FERNON: Yeah, well, it's certainly I never thought I'd go back, never ever in my wildest dreams. It was after the World Championships in 2015, which was my final competition in Berlin. We did a teams event with Chloe there, and that was the last one. And then I sort of said, that's my retirement done now. I can move on with my life. Yeah, three months before those trials, my athletics coach at that time, previously Dean Gleason, he called me out of the blue. I was walking into a business meeting, and he said, oh, I think you should make a comeback. And I thought, I literally laughed it off. I thought, that's ridiculous. Because by that stage, I hadn't been training for four years. So every now and then, I was riding my horses, which I enjoyed, and I was going for a run once or twice a week just to keep the wheels going. But that was it. I wasn't swimming, I wasn't fencing, I wasn't shooting, nothing. So yeah, that wasn't something that I was thinking about. He said, no, you should make a comeback. I sort of laughed it off. And then two hours later, he called me and he said, no, so are we going to do this? Are we going to do this? I'm like, what are you talking about? And then I came back and saw my wife that afternoon and said, oh, Dean's wanting me to make a comeback to the Olympics. And she said, you know, well, why don't you do it? And her saying that was sort of my first thought, saying, oh, OK, well, at that stage, we had a three-month-old and a two-year-old. So it was the thought with the kids as well and everything going on, for her to be able to support me in that way, that was sort of her permission was then the reason that I actually started to contemplate it. And then I said, OK, well, how would I do this? And then I called around a couple of the executives and tried to gauge their level of support. Kitty Chiller, who is the president of Australian Pentathlon and who was the chef de mission for Tokyo. She's a good friend of mine, and I asked her thoughts and her opinion. I mean, her career in modern pentathlon is also an amazing one. She actually, when she competed in Sydney, was quite a bit older. So to get her opinion, and she was incredibly supportive and just said, Oh yeah, absolutely, you should do it. And so I said, Okay, well, let's just train for six weeks and see how we go. I had no idea where I was at swimming wise, and we had to qualify for the Olympics. You need to do a minimum performance standard. So there's a standard. And so of all the things I thought on there, the big challenge would be the swim, which has always been a challenge for me. So I needed to swim at 214 or under 215, so 214. And I had to do that in six weeks, which was a massive challenge. So we went down, and remember the first swim I had at Katoomba Pool, and went down and I did a time trial there, and I swam 240. I thought, oh my gosh, how am I going to get from 240 to 214 in six weeks? But we mapped it all out. I said, look, we'll go hard for that period of time, and whatever will be, will be. And at the end of the six weeks, we had the New Zealand Championships in Hamilton, and Dean put me through an absolute, incredibly hard training for six weeks. He smashed me, absolutely smashed me, and I think I finished one swim session in that whole time. We called it, yeah, there wasn't water in the pool. It was all lactic acid by the end of it. So that was a very, very full on training for six weeks. And then I went over to New Zealand, and we had the swim there, which is the first event in the morning. And got up on the blocks and had my new suit, went and got a new suit for the race. And I swam 214.9. Oh, wow. Got the time, and I thought, okay, well, I've done the time now, which is what I thought would be the biggest challenge for me. I didn't think I'd be able to do that. And then to be able to come out in six weeks and do that time, I thought, oh my gosh, that's amazing. And then I won the fencing at that event. I did well there. And then my run got me through, and I rode perfectly. So I managed to meet the qualifier and qualify for the trials. And then I thought, okay, well, I've only got six more weeks till the Olympic trials. We might as well keep going. We did.
BEN WATERWORTH: And there you go. And this was at the end of 2019, wasn't it? So this isn't even sort of after the reschedule. So basically when you eventually qualify, then you've got Covid and postponements and everything. So it has more challenges, right?
ED FERNON: And probably the thing that everyone likes to talk about when we talk about the trials is that that was actually held. Those trials were held in Wuhan in 2019.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I was going to ask you, Ed. Was it you? Did you get a bat when you were there?
ED FERNON: All my mates always joke that I was patient zero. But no, no, no symptoms, no symptoms. So that was going over to Wuhan and competing at that event. It was actually really interesting because there was a lot of the guys who when I was competing four years earlier were still in the sport. So to see them and really just sort of turn up again and walk straight back into it as like I had never left was a surreal experience actually. And I fenced really well on the day. I actually fenced exceptionally well. I swam not to my standard because I was so cooked after my fence. But the swimming, they actually reduced the amount of points that were for the swim, which was significantly to my advantage. So that didn't cause me too many problems. But I actually thought the most difficult thing on that day was the riding. I drew a horse that was probably the worst horse in the lot that day. We had an Australian coach who came over for the riding, and I went up to him and asked him about the horse. And normally we take notes on the horses because we get to see them ride. And he said, oh, sorry, Ed, I don't have notes on this horse. I said, what do you mean? You've got notes on all the other horses. Why do you have notes on this one? He's like, oh, I just missed it. I'm so sorry. I don't have anything. Oh, okay. Right, Owen. So I got on this horse, and it just starts bucking. Okay. Right. Oh, so I just looped it around. Looped it around a couple of times in a circle, just trying to get it focusing on something else rather than trying to take me off. And then it stops and sort of rears up a little bit. Then we just had to really focus on just getting that horse moving forward and giving it a job to do. And then we get five warm up jumps and come around for my first warm up jump. And the horse just completely just stops right in front of that jump and wouldn't go. So this is great. I'm in a very good position here to qualify for my second Olympics. And now I've got the worst horse in the ride. So we just got the coach to drop the height of the jump. And we went over there successfully on the next one and just tried to build its confidence. And then I can remember walking in for my ride and just thinking, you've won the Mongol Derby, the world's longest horse race, you can do this. And this is your event, your ride. And I went in there and I gave the horse a really long, normally we get 30 seconds before we start, but I gave a really long run in before the first jump to make sure the horse was moving forward. And I just kept my leg on at first jump. I felt the horse hesitated as it was coming up, but I just held my legs into it as much as I could and got over the first one. And that actually gave it a bit of confidence. And then we got to the second one, so it had a little bit of a look, but we got over that one clear. And then it was fine. And we actually went around clear that ride and ended up winning the ride at that event. And then it ended up in the final event with a minute advantage into that final event and was able to qualify. But I think the other funny story I've got from the trials is because I just come back to the sport, I didn't have a pistol. The amount of rule changes and innovation in the sport meant that my old gun was pretty much null and void. So I had to borrow a pistol, and they gave me like a pretty much training practice pistol that I was using. And so I was using that, and I thought, well, I don't want to go out and spend the three grand to buy a brand new thing for six weeks leading up to the New Zealand comp. So I turned up to the trials with this plastic pistol, a laser pistol, and they did a weapons check, and they took it, and the Chinese official said to me, sorry, it's not heavy enough. There's minimum weight that the pistol needs to be, which was a new rule that I wasn't aware of. And so I thought, well, how am I going to put weight on this pistol? So my coach and I walked the streets of Wuhan for half a day looking, trying to find weight for this pistol. And in the end, what we ended up doing was we went to a hardware store, and we bought drill pieces, little drill pieces, and duct tape, and we duct taped 30 drill pieces to this pistol. And then took it to the officials, and they said, yep, no problem, it passes. So I qualified for the Olympic Games with a pistol full of tape drill pieces around it. So it was a bit funny, but yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Did you keep that then for Tokyo? Was that your lucky pistol?
ED FERNON: No, I went and got a proper pistol for Tokyo. Wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: I love this MacGyver nature we're learning from our Olympians. Jess Fox, I think, used a bunch of condoms to fix her boat in the Olympics. So now you're using screw and drill bits. The innovation here from our Olympians is crazy.
ED FERNON: You've got to do what you can do, right? You've got to find a way when there is no way.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm just seeing this now. There's so many TV shows about you, where the slap MacGyver, like it's just building up. I like this kind of how it's turned out. Which, come Tokyo then, the thing that I loved watching the pentathlon this time around was the fact that they encompassed all in a stadium. It was such a shame that they didn't have fans, because this seemed like it would have been an event. I mean, what was that like, kind of having all the events in one? Was that something you'd done at an event before, kind of having them all encompassed in one stadium? Or was this unique for you?
ED FERNON: Oh, it was absolutely unique for me. I'd never done that before, but it was amazing that Tokyo Stadium was where the Rugby Sevens was. It was an amazing arena, and it would have been extra special if we had 40,000 or 50,000 fans in there that were watching. But still, it was still a great atmosphere and still great to go out and compete again. Yeah, it was awesome that day, being able to just get out on the Olympic arena. For me, that was the second competition, really international competition, I'd done in six years. So just to be able to go and compete again was fantastic.
BEN WATERWORTH: In both your Olympic appearances, did you set yourself a goal, finishing position, points score, obviously different formats, different points scoring formats in London and Tokyo, but 27th in Tokyo and 31st in, sorry, 27th in London, 31st in Tokyo. I mean, do you come out of those, happy you set yourself a goal, kind of different sort of feelings on both performances?
ED FERNON: Well, they're both different in a way. And I think instead of looking at the position, I just look at how I performed in each of the events. Fencing is the only one where you're really competing against someone else. But yeah, the other events, you'd just go off point scores. I actually came, I think I got beaten by 0.2 of a second in the swim. I swam a 210 in the swim and ended up coming last in that event in Tokyo. But for me, that was one of my best events. I was so happy with that performance because it was an event where we didn't do, we swam three times a week, but we worked really hard during those sessions. And to be able to turn that around, which was close to my PB, with that amount of work, I was really happy with that performance. And as I mentioned, the swimming wasn't as important. And then in the ride where I generally do well, I mean, I wasn't as happy with that. So I try and take the position out of it and just say, well, how did I perform in the individual events? And was I happy? I mean, overall, for Tokyo, I wasn't happy with my overall performance. I thought I swam well and I thought I ran well and was in really good shape. And I rode well enough, which I generally do. But I think the lack of competition leading up to that event hurt me there. And although I was fencing really well and shooting really well in the lead up in training, I wasn't able to put that together on the day, which was disappointing. But yeah, it is what it is. And I think for me, I'm just so grateful that I've got so many things in my life that are going really well and really got amazing kids, amazing wife, business is going well, and so many good support networks that when you don't quite reach your goals, you can focus on the things that are good in life and reframe how you think about things. But for me, to just go over there and compete again and be a part of the Australian team, that was a great honour and privilege, and so I prefer to be very appreciative for the experience.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which does that then mean that this is it now, Ed? You're not going to be spurred on to go ahead to Paris, or are you going to get a tap on the shoulder ahead of LA or Brisbane again from the coach and go, hey, three months to go, you want to give another crack?
ED FERNON: Yeah, Brisbane, I'd be what, 44 years old in Brisbane?
BEN WATERWORTH: You're nowhere close to Andrew Hoy, plenty of time, come on.
ED FERNON: Well, I think the thing with the sport is that it's just so much time, and you need to be so committed in all the sports. And yeah, for me, I think it's that opportunity cost of the time. So I've done it again. I've done two Olympics, which have been absolutely fantastic experiences. But unless I thought I had a really good shot of a medal at the next Olympics, I don't think I'd be going again. So other than that, I'd really just like to see, support the other Australian athletes and the younger athletes coming through and try and support them and build the sport up as much as possible.
BEN WATERWORTH: I didn't hear a firm no there. I'm just saying. I didn't hear a firm no. It wasn't, I'm done. This is it. I'm done. It was not a firm no. So I'm saying there's a chance.
ED FERNON: I think it's highly, highly unlikely. I had to make my declaration of retirement with the anti-doping the other day. So if that gives you an indication, then yeah, I think I'm done.
BEN WATERWORTH: There's a declaration of retirement? How does that work? Like, oh, I can now take drugs? Is that basically what you're saying? I mean, how does that work with the anti-doping?
ED FERNON: You come off the testing pools, they stop testing you. They stop testing you if you're retired. They're not going to keep turning up to my house at weird times and scare my kids.
BEN WATERWORTH: Don't hide the steroids anymore, honey. It's fine. They're not coming on Tuesday. Ed, before we let you go, if anybody sort of wants to stay up to date with you, the journey, whatever that may be, kind of moving forward, can people follow you on social media or anything else? You want to give a sneaky plug here on the show today?
ED FERNON: Oh, I'm not really one for the social media, to be honest. I try and just keep more of a... Yeah, I mean, I certainly enjoy my adventures, enjoy doing that, but I'm not the one to be massively out there on Instagram or Facebook. But yeah, people can certainly send me an email or message or go through yourself, and I'm more than happy to respond. I know there's, if anyone is looking to do Pentathlon, happy to provide some tips and assistance where I can and look, it's a small sport, but we can always do with more members and improve the community. So very supportive of that. And hopefully leading into Brisbane, we can look at trying to win another Olympic gold medal.
BEN WATERWORTH: Absolutely. Well, I'm just saying that I can obviously run. I've never ridden a horse in my life. I've never fenced in my life. I've shot one or two guns, but not very well. And I can swim.
ED FERNON: That's enough. You can stop right there, mate. I'll send you the membership form.
BEN WATERWORTH: Please do. Please do. I'll take 11 years for Brisbane. I can do that. That's fine. Ed, it's been an absolute pleasure, mate, to be able to talk to you about today. It's such an incredible journey for you to get to two Olympics and everything else in between. We appreciate your time. And I now know that if I ever do get into the sport, I'll just constantly get slapped, and that will spur me on.
ED FERNON: Thanks, Bandits. Thanks, Ryan.
BEN WATERWORTH: And a massive, massive thanks there to Ed for his time. We love the sport, Modern Pentathlon. I am sitting here in my Modern Pentathlon T-shirt, any excuse to wear it, of course. And as we know in that interview, of course, royalty surrounds the sport. So a very regal interview whenever we get a pentathlete on the show. Thanks, Ed, for your time. We're getting closer and closer to Beijing, of course, getting very, very close. And we do have a myriad of other interviews coming your way. Still mixing it up with the summer and the winter, but of course, getting very close to getting a bit chilly and cold as we go towards the Winter Olympics. If you want to stay up to date with everything that we've got going on, on the show, of course, hit us up on our social media channels, search Off The Podium, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And to subscribe to the show, all the podcast platforms Off The Podium, of course, subscribe, leave us some feedback. We'd love to know what you think of the show. And as I always mentioned too, if you've got any requests, any guests you want us to get on, shoot us a message. We'll see what we can do. And any other style of episodes that you might want us to do as well, we are open to hearing about that. So yeah, hit us up. We'd love to hear from you. Big thanks from Ed once again, and big thanks to you for listening out there in the podcasting world. My name is Ben. Special shout out to Jason Momoa. How you going, Jason? Hope you're doing well. And until we're next week again Off The Podium, always remember, go left.
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