Luke Letcher Interview
It's time to return to the sport of rowing today as we sit down and chat with Tokyo Bronze medallist Luke Letcher about his career and his Olympic experience. We learn from Luke just how he got into rowing and the process it involved to go from just starting out through to competing for Australia on the world stage. We also learn just how close he was to walking away from the sport, and how the pandemic actually helped him to eventually land a spot on the Tokyo Olympic team. Added to this we learn more about that epic day 5 of Tokyo and how the energy was in the rowing team with all the success that followed, as well as learning more about his love for a certain classic Australian movie. It's a great chat that we know you will love, so click away and get to listening!
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 once again for another interview episode. Another great one coming your way today. We are speaking with Australian rower Luke Letcher, bronze medallist from Tokyo as part of the Quad Skull. And great chat here with Luke, learning about his journey from starting off in the sport right through to winning that bronze in Tokyo. And a very unique journey. He actually very much nearly gave away the sport twice. And of all things, the pandemic was a good thing for Luke when it came to the sport of rowing, because without the pandemic, we might not have seen him as part of that Quad Skull that won the bronze in Tokyo. So this is a fun chat, fascinating chat, learning a lot more about his career. So I was a little bit more into rowing. We finally get clarification about a crab in rowing. That has been something that has been on our minds since Tokyo. Finally, we get clarification in this. So stay tuned for that one. Here's our chat with Australian Olympic bronze medal winning rower, Luke Letcher.
BEN WATERWORTH: I always get excited when we get to talk about the sport of rowing, and we have another athlete on the show today to learn a little bit more about his career in the sport, his recent Olympic performance, and everything else in between. It's a pleasure to welcome off the podium, Luke Letcher. Luke, first of all, welcome to Off The Podium. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.
BEN WATERWORTH: Actually, let me rephrase that. Olympic bronze medallist, Luke Letcher. I mean, I feel like, you know, it's still something you need people to keep saying, right, to make it feel real or to kind of, you know, pinch yourself a little bit. I mean, Olympic bronze medallist, Luke Letcher, that's a better introduction.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, I'll take that. It's pretty exciting. Since we got home, we've been in lockdown, so we haven't really had the opportunity to go out and, like, meet my friends and sort of share it with people yet. So I'm looking forward to getting that opportunity sometime soon.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I was going to say, have you taken it off yet? I mean, you're not wearing it right now, so I guess you take it off every now and then. But is it sort of always around you just to kind of look at and go, there it is, Olympic medal? That's just right.
LUKE LETCHER: So it's up sitting on the kitchen table at the moment. So it's not too far out of sight.
BEN WATERWORTH: I like that. Just sitting on the kitchen table, casually, go get a coffee. Oh, there it is. There's my medal.
LUKE LETCHER: Oh, yeah, I remember that a month ago.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, just a casual memory of that sort of stuff. I always love to find out how our guests get started in the sport. And I mean, rowing is obviously a big sport in Australia, sort of a very prominent sport for us. But how did you get into rowing, Luke? How did you find your, I guess, passion and skills for the sport?
LUKE LETCHER: Well, I mean, I started, I was very lucky to go to a school that had a rowing program. So here in Canberra, we row on Lake Bella Griffin, and I was lucky enough to go to a school that had a rowing program. But also coincidentally, the head of rowing at that time, the master of rowing, is also a very old family friend of ours who lives directly over the road. So when it came time to sign up for a summer sport, he sort of came for a walk over the road and was like, Oh, Luke, you're pretty tall. I reckon you should have a crack at this rowing thing. See how you go there. And I jumped straight in, had to fell in a few times. Didn't get too sick from any nasties that might be in the lake. The lake's actually quite clean. And I got sort of put in a squad with a coach, a man named David Bagnell, who carried me through the whole way through school. And he sort of really took the time to do the extra miles and really look after me and my whole squad as individuals and sort of whatever we needed, whatever extra things we could do, he was always really on board for. So David really sort of guided my time through my school program.
BEN WATERWORTH: Were there other sports that you were sort of involved in? You mentioned sort of a summer sport, like typical Australian winter sports. Was there footy? Was there kind of all these other sort of things going on as well in your life?
LUKE LETCHER: Oh, yeah, there were plenty of other things going on. I played soccer during the winter. I mean, I really enjoyed my soccer, but to be honest, I mean, I'm six foot nine now. Like you can imagine what it would have been like. Some of my height playing soccer as a kid, there were a lot of limbs going a lot of different directions. So I had a great time. I wasn't particularly talented at that. I did a bit of sailing, and I enjoyed my music as well. So that took a fair bit of my time as well.
BEN WATERWORTH: No cliche basketball then on the height. Was that just that you got somebody recruiting you for rowing? Is there not the local basketball team going, come on, Luke, this is an obvious one for you?
LUKE LETCHER: I think it was almost too obvious for me. For my whole life, I've always had people asking if I should play basketball and telling me I should play basketball. So it's probably some stubborn part inside me. It was like, no, I don't play basketball. I'm not going to play basketball too bad. So maybe that was a missed opportunity. It seems like a fun sport, but something inside me sort of resisted people pushing me in that direction.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's kind of like when people keep telling me to watch Game of Thrones. I'm like, no, I get it. It's a good show. No, I'm not watching it now. I'm sick of you telling me to watch it. So it's that stubbornness, right, when people keep telling you one thing.
LUKE LETCHER: Exactly. That's right. That's right.
BEN WATERWORTH: So when you sort of get that initial like, hey, you're told you should do rowing. Like, I mean, kind of had it been something that you had thought about, what kind of are you to say, oh, yeah, sure, why not? I'll give it a crack.
LUKE LETCHER: To be honest, I didn't really know one end of the boat from the other. Before I got down to the rowing shed, actually, the only other experience that I had with rowing was back when I was in kindergarten, was the year that the Olympics were in Sydney, the 2000 Games. And I remember everyone in our class got assigned a different sport to do some research on. We all had to come back to the class with one fact about our sport, but we had to tell them. And the fact that I got assigned rowing in kindergarten, the one fact that I came back with was that every stroke of the race, a rowing boat moves 10 metres per stroke, which I thought was an amazing fact at the time. And then I completely forgot about the sport for another nearly 10 years until I found myself in a rowing boat.
BEN WATERWORTH: I do love that kind of school project aspect, that it's something that you do and you're into it, and then all of a sudden, yeah, like I couldn't remember half the school projects I did, but, you know, kind of going there. When you get into it, though, do you go, oh, that fact that I learned, you know, look at me, coach, I know about rowing.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, nowadays we've got a little computer that we have in our boat that you can sort of tell your speed and your stroke rate and stuff on. You can also get your stroke distance, how far you're going for a stroke. And so every time I sort of change the settings so I can see my stroke distance, I always sort of think back to kindergarten and be like, I reckon I can do a bit more than 10 metres of stroke, let's have a go.
BEN WATERWORTH: I undersold that when I was a kid, right? Which when you sort of discover the end of the boat, you're not falling in the water and everything, do you kind of get a passion for it? Is it more of a case of that, well, this is something I'm getting a bit of success in, I'm all right at this, kind of like what sparks that interest to keep going rather than just going, okay, well, this isn't for me?
LUKE LETCHER: I'm not really sure. I think I was okay at rowing in my first year. And I think I was sort of in the top three blokes in my year. And then I just sort of decided that I quite liked it. I didn't really have anything I'd rather be doing at the time. So I continued to row that winter, the master of rowing at the time. Winky had an option for us to come down once or twice a week during winter and go off little paddles. And across that winter, I guess I kept improving a little bit. And by the time we got back to the next summer and all the other guys in my year rocks back up and started joining in as well, I realised that I'd actually come quite a long way in my first year. And that first winter sort of gave me a little head start, I guess, in my rowing. And I kind of ran with that all through school.
BEN WATERWORTH: What's the rowing scene like in Canberra, I guess, at that point, too? Because you've got a massive lake right there in your backyard. So I can imagine it's quite convenient for you guys when you want to get out there and kind of do the sport. I mean, is it at that time quite a big sport? Has it always sort of been a big rowing scene in Canberra?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, we've got a fairly big rowing scene. We've got a couple of fairly competitive clubs that are regularly racing internationals. We've got four or five school programs. We've got the ACT High Performance Program, and we've also got the Men's National Training Centre is now... The Men's National Training Centre is based in Canberra. It used to be the whole AIS rowing program with men and women in Paris, but now it's just the men's here, and the women's training centre is in Penrith. So we've got quite a broad and diverse rowing scene, if that's a thing, as far as rowing scenes go. We cover a lot of bases. We've got a lot of juniors, masters, high performance, you name it. We've got it in a rowing sense.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, I mean, look, come on, we're on the topic of Canberra. Going to make a Canberra joke at least gives you something to do in Canberra, right?
LUKE LETCHER: To be honest, as far as cities go, Canberra is not too bad to look at.
BEN WATERWORTH: I actually don't mind Canberra.
LUKE LETCHER: I'm more than happy to talk down Canberra. The less people that come here, the more it saves the rest of us.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm from Hobart, so I can't talk. It's one of those things where it's like, Ben, you can't make jokes about places when you're from Hobart. Seriously, I've not been to Canberra in a while, but I always get baffled when people kind of talk down Canberra, because I legitimately loved my time when I went to Canberra. I had a lot of fun and kind of enjoyed everything about it. So, yeah, everyone, leave Canberra alone.
LUKE LETCHER: Oh, yeah. I mean, don't shout about it too loudly.
BEN WATERWORTH: Balance it out a little bit. Balance it out. I've always been fascinated in rowing, just the multiple disciplines, obviously, the different types of boats that you can be in an eight, you can be in a single, kind of along those lines. Do you kind of experiment a lot sort of along the way when you're in it? Your coach is kind of trying you out in different boats, different formats, kind of, and where do you find that sweet spot that this is what I'm best suited to?
LUKE LETCHER: Well, in rowing, so we've got two main disciplines. You've got sculling, where everyone has two oars each. You've got one in each hand, and you've got sweep, where you've got one oar per person. And because I went to a relatively small rowing school in Canberra, and we're co-ed, we stuck to sculling boats, which is two oars per person. So when I was at school, I exclusively rode in singles, doubles, and quads. And it wasn't until I finished school that I was exposed to sweep rowing in pairs, fours, and eights. So the naming can be quite confusing, but they are what they are. And I guess as a result of that, I sort of put myself more in the sculling side of it. But I did actually spend a year doing sweep a few years ago. So I've raced internationally in sweep as well. I've raced in eight internationally, but sculling has always really been my go-to. And then across sculling, the single is obviously... The single scullers internationally, they are phenomenal. As athletes, they are on another level. They are physically some of the most incredible people in any sport in the world. And then as you move up in boat size, the demands on the athletes change. So in a double, it's really about matching two people really perfectly together so that everything they do is really, really perfectly aligned with each other. And then once you get to the quad, it's more about building a rhythm and idea that everyone can buy into. Because when you got four different people, it's going to be really hard for them to get the perfect match up like you need in the double. But as boats get bigger, it's really more important the idea and the communication and bringing everyone on to a similar page. So each boat has its own demands that suit different people and have different levels of reward and challenge.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, I don't know if this is a controversial question when it comes to asking this to rollers. Luke, what's easier, the sculling or the sweep?
LUKE LETCHER: Depends who you ask. If you ask a sweeper, sculling is probably harder. If you ask a sculler, sweeping is probably harder. To be honest, they both have their challenges. I've always really enjoyed the challenge of sculling. There's something in it that I've always found sort of unattainable and really hard to sort of get a grasp on that keeps drawing me back. But in my year in sweep a couple of years ago, I definitely found that there's a lot to that as well. You can dive pretty deep into sweep rowing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which you mentioned before about the physicality. I mean, obviously, rowing is an incredibly physical sport, but the one that always kind of throws me of how physically demanding it is, is just going on that rowing machine at the local gym. You sit there and, okay, this is easy. I can do this. And I always get about 10 strokes in, and I'm just like, fuck this. This is ridiculous. Like, I can't imagine what it's like kind of going out there on a lake and doing that. I mean, how can you describe the physical demands that it has had on your body over the years, just of how demanding the sport of rowing is on you?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, part of learning to row is learning how to make that movement more efficient, so that you can get more power from your body into the water without doing the stuff that, without doing the movements that make it sort of feel futile. But in terms of the physicality of it, you need to be really strong. It's a really powerful movement. Our rowing race is about six minutes long, which means that you've got this sort of balance between anaerobic and aerobic, which is sort of your short distance and your long distance energy system. So it's this really sort of quite unpleasant balance of these two energy systems. So you need to do some really short hard training, but also a lot of really, really long, slow training to build those two systems. And so as a result, we do gym three times a week, and also we'll be doing 200 to 250 kilometres of rowing on the water in a week, at a sort of speed like a sort of running kind of speed, like a fast running speed, is how quickly we're going. So we spend a lot of time just out there, grinding away, doing pretty boring stuff to make those really small incremental changes in your physiology.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is it about peaking too, that obviously you're out there doing those hundreds of kilometres on a lake each week? You don't want to kind of put yourself, I guess, in race conditions straight away, but do you kind of need to build around your competitions in a certain year to peak? Say, you're going into Tokyo, so you don't want to kind of burn yourself out leading to Tokyo, so you are at that peak performance level on competition day.
LUKE LETCHER: Absolutely. And that sort of comes back to those two different energy systems and also sort of training yourself mentally how to race. You're sort of long distance base. You can build over quite a long period of time, but you're really high intensity stuff. You sort of start to ramp up as you come into racing. So a year out, six months out, we're doing really, really long, slow, pretty boring Ks. And then as you sort of get closer and closer to racing, the training sort of gets more and more high intense, obviously still with a lot of Ks and a lot of distance, but the type of training that happens in there changes. And then as you get even closer to racing, you start doing more practice races to sort of more training your mind than training your body and remembering how to put yourself in the places you need to be across a 2000 metre race. And then obviously, right coming into the games for a couple of weeks out, you start to take your training off so that all those physiological benefits that you've tried to build on can really come to the front and be in a place to work properly.
BEN WATERWORTH: What are some of the key mental aspects in that you're training on? I mean, obviously, you can't exactly, I guess, use your brain in a gym, but what's the mental gym aspect that you are working on when you are doing the mental aspect of the sport?
LUKE LETCHER: What you're thinking about mostly when you're on the water is, obviously, you're trying to put yourself physically in the right place that you need to be for whatever training session you're in. If you're doing a long, fairly slow training session, you're cruising along, and if you're doing a fairly hard training session, then you really want to be hitting those right training zones. But all while that's going on, you're thinking about how you're rowing, how you're moving the boat. I mean, the rowing stroke is a very simple thing. You're doing exactly the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times, day in, day out. There's nothing particularly complicated about it, but it's a remarkably hard thing to get really correct and as efficient as it can possibly be. And there's big differences in really, really small things when you get to the top end. So while you're doing that, while you're trying to put yourself in those physical places, your coach will be talking to you and you'll be trying to work out things that you can do in your movement to make it more efficient and to get more speed out of the work that you're doing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, when it comes to strategy in a rowing race, how important is that aspect and working on that? Because I can imagine you can go into any race with a strategy, and then all of a sudden it can go out the window pretty quickly. I mean, is it just a general strategy you'll always have, or is it always dependent on conditions, on who you're up against? Is it always free-flowing?
LUKE LETCHER: I mean, how you approach races actually changes depending on your boat class. If you're racing in an eight, it's really a drag race. You just have to go as fast as you can for as long as you can and hang off a dear life, because there's so much momentum to those boats. It's really hard to get a change in speed. So you just got to get the boat up to speed and keep going as fast as you can and not rely on doing any moves or making any changes in the race to get you the win, I guess. Or certainly not more than one move through the middle of the race. But then if you get down to the single, when you're out there racing in a single skull, down a 2,000-metre course, you're very, very alone. And that can be an opportunity in a way in the fact that if you can make a move on an opponent through the middle of the race at a point they're not expecting, people are mentally as strong in the single skull off. And it's easier to play mental games and encourage other people to have a suboptimal race through something that you do. Obviously, you can't actually interact with them. So it's sort of in small bugs, you can try to sort of play head games a bit and try to get the most out of yourself while being in an advantageous position mentally.
BEN WATERWORTH: I always love hearing that. It's one question I always like to ask is sort of about that, you know, psyching out the sledging sort of of other competitors. And while in some sports, it's a quite obvious way of, you know, your shit do better. But other times, it's obviously, it can kind of come down to different subtle things, which, I mean, you're all competitors, you're all there striving for the same goal. So it's kind of that unique aspect of rowing that you just got to do it slightly differently rather than just being in the boat stroking going, you shit, you know, row better.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, we don't get to interact with our competition much, particularly internationally, like maybe when you're racing against people domestically, like we all know each other domestically, so we might talk a bit of shit before and after races. So you can try to play those games a bit if you like, but it often won't end up working in your favour if you try too hard. There's a fine line between throwing someone off and making them angry. One of them can go well for you, and one of them can go very badly. So the best way to do it is on the water, and what you do in a race, but also what you've done in previous races. If someone knows that you're going to get three quarters of the way through a race, and you're likely to slow down towards the end of the race, they're going to be pretty confident being alongside you, coming three quarters of the way through the race, because they'll know that you're probably going to break. But if you show regularly that you're really capable of putting down a good race every time, then someone who's next to you three quarters of the way through, they're going to be a bit concerned that you're still there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Because I can imagine, I love hearing about when swimmers talk about sort of that notion that they know someone's next to them, or they can kind of have that awareness of, oh, I'm ahead or anything along those lines. It's obviously a bit different in rowing. You've got more visual aspect of being able to see. But it's also, again, what you're saying, sort of staying in your zone and everything, that you can't let that get to you, that if you're the one who's being caught by someone, you don't want to be going to the left like, shit, they're coming, they're coming. You've just got to stick in your zone and worry about your own race.
LUKE LETCHER: Absolutely. One of my old coaches, Lion McCarthy, had a great saying that I really like in rowing and in life, actually. It was just tell me, keep your head in your boat and get their head in your boat. You can apply that to a lot of other situations in life, but it's particularly obviously applicable to rowing in that you can't really do anything about what's going on in their boat, but you can try to get them to worry about what's going on in your boat, and you can make yourself go as fast as you can.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's a great thing. You should put that in a t-shirt. You could sell some rowing merch with that one. I like it.
LUKE LETCHER: There's plenty of other average things on rowing merch.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which your career progression, kind of going through the ranks, eventually representing Australia, you sort of alternate a lot between the quads and the pairs. I mean, do you get, again, back to sort of what I was asking before, like a sweet spot where it's more of a coach that's like, okay, Luke, you're really suited to this quad. We're going to get you on this team. These guys are going to work well for you. I mean, do you get much of a say in that? And do you then have a preference kind of as you get on in your career that, okay, I want to purely stick to quads here. I want to stick to doubles kind of, you know, as you go along.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, my journey through rowing has sort of been a little bit complicated. So if you take from when I finished school, it became fairly simple. In rowing, we sort of peaked quite a bit older than many other sports. So I had my sort of four years as an under 23, and in my second year, I got selected in the single. The third year, I got selected in the double, and the fourth year, I got selected in the quad. The single was, racing the single internationally was pretty rude, to be honest. It's pretty eye-opening to see how impressive some of these other people are overseas that are in these boats. But I was actually, through my four years as an under 23, that was the four years of the 2016 Olympic cycle. And obviously, being in Canberra, who else was training in Canberra was Kim Brennan, and she was coached on the La McCarthy, and right at the start of their cycle, I think Lyle found me out in the lake and saw me kicking around, and was like, oh, how quickly do you row around the lake? And I think I told him a little bit of an ambitious number, to be honest. He was like, oh, that's great. That's exactly the same speed that Kim trains on. You want to come train with us? I was like, oh, God, I've sold myself a bit long here. But I ended up being Kim's training partner across most of her 2016 cycle, sort of for at least six, nine months of every single year while I was in Canberra. So she's an incredible person, an incredible athlete. So I sort of got a really good role model from her as to how to do things right. But also, even more than that, how to find out what works for an individual. There are plenty of ways to do it right, but that way will be different for every person. And she really found her way and she dialled into it. So my first year in the single skull, I trained alongside her and that was incredible. And then my second year, I got selected in the double with a bloke from Sydney named Tom Sramko. And unfortunately, I got really sick just before we raced at World Champs, so we kind of underperformed there. And then the third year, I got selected in the quad with Tom again and another guy from Canberra named Caleb, and he was in my quad this year, and another guy named Rob. And we ended up going on to win the under 23 world title in that boat. And that sort of lit my passion for the quad, I guess, in a way. I mean, it was always there, but I really, really loved the quad. And then starting the next cycle, in Australia, we started up a new system of these men's and women's national training centres. So the men's training centres in Canberra, the women's training centres in Penrith. I got invited into the training centre, and my training didn't step up, but it changed in a way. And I peaked quite early in that training centre, and then I had quite a gradual decline across the next couple of years, which left me doing a bit of soul searching, I guess. And that's how I ended up rowing sweet for a year. That's how I ended up racing the 8th at a World Cup internationally, because I've done a couple of years in sculling on the men's senior team, and it wasn't really going the direction that I hoped it would go. And then I had a run in sweep, and to be honest, that was okay, but I think it was a bit late for me to be really starting up sweep at an elite level. And after that year, I was still physically in a pretty good spot in the squad, but I just wasn't running well. I wasn't mentally in a good space, and because of my internal frustrations, I've become probably quite abrasive to the coaching staff and the selectors and staff, and I ended up getting dropped from the National Training Centre. And so this was at the end of 2019, and so I found myself in a position where I was like, I could probably quit here and no one would really ask any questions. But I went back across to ACTAS over the road, the ACT High Performance Squad, which is where I trained with for a couple of years right at the end of school. And I just really, I spent two weeks just kicking around, not really doing much training, but just having a bit of fun in the single, and I really like rediscovered my love for the sport, as cliche as that is. But I just had my head to the grindstone for such a long time. I've been overlooked by selectors every stroke of my training, and I just had this opportunity to just go away and do what I wanted to do. And try to make this rowing thing my own. And so I sort of decided, I'm going to have a bit of a crack at this and see what we can make of this and try to prove those people wrong, who dropped me from the training centre. And right at that time, Act House got a new coach. Unfortunately, the previous coach, Nick Garrett, passed away just before I came back to Act House, which was a huge loss for the ACT rowing community. But I sort of came in at a time when we were getting a new young coach, Dave Fromano, who still does have so much energy to put into athletes. And he really sort of bought into what I wanted to do with open arms and sort of try to afford me any opportunity he could through the Act House program. So across that 2019-2020 season, I really worked away. And my motivation across that year was really to try to prove them wrong and do what I could to show that I try to validate myself somehow, I guess. But by the time we got to trials, I was performing much better than I had for any year. I was rowing much better. I was physically in a better place across the board than I had been in any previous years. But I was still quite offside with the selectors, believe it or not. When your motivation is to prove them wrong, you don't tend to endear yourself to them anymore. And so I didn't put myself in a particularly positive position when it came to selections. And rowing selections is a pretty challenging thing. You've got to put yourself in a position where they want to select you effectively. And the reality was I hadn't done that. I hadn't made it clear that I was ready to buy into what their team was going to look like. And I didn't get selected for the boat in 2020. And then I was like, OK, I'm done. Quit. Let's see what the Olympics over. And then obviously COVID hit, and we were in lockdown for four months, and I didn't do any training for those four months. I just rode my bike a few times a week. And as we were coming to the end of that lockdown back then, Dave Fromano came up to me again and was like, all right, are you going to do this again? I was like, absolutely not. This is ridiculous. I didn't get selected last year. And he was like, I reckon we can do some of these things better. I reckon there's a real opportunity for us here. And so I guess not getting selected in 2020 was like a near-death experience for me in a way, like in inverted commas. In 2021 was an opportunity that shouldn't have been there. And so I could sort of approach the year in a way that nothing really mattered. Everything was a bonus. Every opportunity that I got was an opportunity that shouldn't have really existed. And so I put a lot of work into expressing to the selectors that I was willing to buy into their boat and be a part of the team and try to buy into what they wanted to happen with the program. While also in the background, being an activist, doing my own training, doing something completely different to half the training they were doing. But rowing better, getting really good guidance and support, and trying to get the most out of myself physically and mentally, and put myself in the best place to be selected. And then I started going very fast at the time trials in December 2020. And then we came into trials, and I think I came third in the single sculler trials, which for me was a pretty good result. And the two guys had been me, Caleb and Cam, were really flying. So I really put myself in a good position to get selected in the quad there. And across the training process, in the next couple of months, I got myself selected in the stroke seat of the quad, which the stroke seat is a seat that everyone else follows. And so you've got a lot of responsibility in the stroke seat to set up the rhythm and the stroke in the way that's going to be really conducive for everyone else. And I think the time that I spent over at Act House working with Dave Formano really put me in a position where I was rowing in a way that I really understood. And I knew would make the boat go faster, and I could sort of instil that confidence in the rest of the boat from that seat, from that seat in stroke seat.
BEN WATERWORTH: What an incredible story to kind of think that had the pandemic not happened, we might not even be speaking today, Luke. That's incredible. I mean, how do you feel when you get that official confirmation that you're on that squad, you're going to the Olympics kind of after everything that you just endured, where you essentially had thrown the sport away, had it not been for this pandemic?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, it just all felt like a bonus. I've never rode or raced with such, I guess it sounds a bit cliche, but such inner pieces I had for the last year, because everything just wasn't meant to happen. So every time another opportunity comes, I'm almost surprised and like, all right, sweet. Why not? Let's have another go. Let's take this another step. And I never really believed that I would get there until, until I think we crossed the line of our heat. We qualified through to the final. I just remember sitting there thinking like, it's pretty sick that we qualified through to the final, but wow, I just made it to the Olympics. I'm a part of this now. No one can take that away from me again.
BEN WATERWORTH: You must make that medal look even more special on the kitchen counter right now, then, whenever you do have a bit of a look at it.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, on a personal level, my journey up until selection, it means a lot from that end, but then also once we got selected. At trials, there were a couple of guys who had some medical exemptions from trials, and things all started to look a little bit more complicated. The four of us were effectively the four guys that were left over. Not that we were the dregs, but there were a couple of people that were missing. We were told at trials, you guys are selected for now. If you can show that you're fast enough to win a medal across the next couple of months, we'll keep you in the boat. And so as a crew, we all had a chat. We all quite wanted to be there. We all quite wanted to be in the crew. And so we really banded together and made that boat our own because the coach was also the selector. So he was incredibly supportive of us, but he had to keep a level of objectivity for a little while. And so in a lot of ways, it was really on us to try to get the most out of ourselves and prove that we deserved those seats in that boat. And so that meant across the next two or three months, we really made it our own. We trained how we wanted to train. We didn't pander to how the head coach wanted the program to be done. We did it how we knew we would get the best out of us. We rode how we knew we were going to get the best out of our boat. And so everything that came together on Finals Day, we felt was a product of what each of the four of us had brought to the boat and also how we'd come together. So when we sort of crossed the line and we got a medal, I mean, on a personal level, it was the things that had helped me to get there. But then on a crew level, it was incredibly important for us because we felt a real ownership over that result. We didn't feel like a product of the program. We felt like it was something that we had really made.
BEN WATERWORTH: When you went into Tokyo, what was the mindset? Was it a case of we can medal, we will medal? Kind of like what was the goal going into the event?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. We did some sort of practice regattas in Australia. Obviously, we couldn't go overseas to do any races against the rest of the world. So we just had some practice regattas domestically, where we raced all the boats in the team. Obviously, each different boat has a different speed, and there are women's boats and men's boats, but we compare boats based on how quickly they go relative to world's best times. We call that prognosis or progs. And in these practice regattas on the progs, we were pretty consistently up near the top. The women's four were consistently right up there, but occasionally we'd knock them off, or we'd normally be sort of the second boat on those. So we sort of knew that we were around the mark to get a medal, but we don't know because we don't know what the competition is like. And we also knew that based on previous years results in the race, and then we're going on overseas, that the Dutch, who went on to win, were one of the most impressive crews in any boat class across the board. And they had also been beaten in one of the lead-up races. So we knew there was some pretty red-hole competition in our boat class, so we didn't really know where we stacked up. We knew that we had the potential to be around the mark. And you never really know, particularly if you haven't raced against them, but it is what it is.
BEN WATERWORTH: I always love finding out about just Olympic experiences, what it's like for you personally to kind of soak up that atmosphere. I mean, do you take moments when you're there in Tokyo in the lead-up to your event, that you're at the Olympics, you're in a village, you're surrounded by the world's best athletes, or is it sort of so focused on competition that that's maybe something you, I guess, soak in a little bit maybe afterwards?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, no, it definitely is something that we took a bit of time to appreciate. Before racing, we didn't have a huge amount of time after racing. We had to leave Tokyo within 48 hours of our event finishing, so there wasn't much opportunity afterwards for that. But I remember in walking out of the Australian building for the first time the morning we'd arrived, and just there's just an energy to the place, there's an energy of thousands of people that all really wanted to be there and had a real enthusiasm and a drive and a purpose to what they were doing and where they wanted to be in their lives, and that this was it. It's sort of hard to describe anyway other than that, but it really struck me that that was, for me, the thing that made the village so special, that this is this coming together of energy and enthusiasm and excitement for some sort of shared purpose for all these people across the world.
BEN WATERWORTH: Talking about energy, day five was where it was at for the rowing for Australia. I mean, obviously, a couple of gold are won in the women's and the men's coxless four, and then obviously you add the bronze to that as well as the women as well. I mean, just what was the energy like going into your race knowing that Australia just picked up a couple of gold? Ariana got a gold earlier in the swimming. I mean, it just happened so quickly. It just everything. I remember that day so vividly because it's like, shit, I can't keep up, stop winning gold Australia. So, I mean, what was it like going into the race knowing that there was a bit of momentum, a couple of gold for the rowing team going into your event?
LUKE LETCHER: We didn't know, actually, because the start line is 2,000 metres away from the finish line. We don't hear any of the commentary. We have no idea what's going on. The only indication we had was seeing the men's and women's sports racing. As we were warming up, we saw both of them were out in front. To be honest, we kind of knew that they were going to win, both of those boats. I mean, things could have gone wrong, but all by all by things happening, they're both two very, very classy crews within their fields. And that was never a sure thing, but we had a lot of confidence that they were going to get a result. And so seeing them come down in front, what it did for us was that it validated the racing that we've done domestically. All those practice regattas, those boats that were up the top of the practice regattas were boats that were up the top of the world. And so it meant that we could sort of sit on the sideline of the final and go like, we could be in this. If we do our best here, we should be in this race.
BEN WATERWORTH: When you cross the line and you look across, you've got the bronze. I mean, obviously, it's very close finish, very close to the silver and very close to fourth, essentially. Kind of, it could have gone either way there. But I mean, sort of, is it those moments when you cross, do you get a feeling? Okay, well, we've got a medal or kind of, is it straight away, look to the scoreboard? I mean, kind of, what is that feeling like crossing? And then kind of that moment, you're like, shit, what do we get? Where do we finish?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, it was a moment of crossing the line, thinking like we might have been in third here, and then looking up to the scoreboard and then sort of just disbelief that it had all sort of come together to get a medal. And then that sort of disbelief doesn't seem to leave for a little while, not until you sort of feel like someone's going to come and take it away from you. It wasn't really until maybe half an hour, 20 minutes, half an hour after our race, we did the podium and got back in the boat, rode the boat back around to the pontoon, and then you need to weigh your boat, because there's a minimum weight that these boats need to be above. And so we had to carry our boat and carry it out and wear it. Gee, that was the nervous 20 seconds of my life waiting for the weight to come up. And it wasn't until that weight came up over the 52 kilos or whatever it is that I was like, wow, okay, there aren't many other ways that this can get taken away from us now. I think this is ours.
BEN WATERWORTH: This is yours. And what was the party like then that night? Four of you had walked away with, you know, four crews had worked away with medals that night. I can't imagine you had a very, you know, not sore head the next day.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, no, we had a really nice evening actually, because there weren't many other people around that were finished racing and hadn't left yet. And we weren't allowed out partying in any sort of public areas or anything. So we were really just, you know, in a couple of the rooms, having a few sort of relatively quiet drinks. And I think there was a lot of just satisfaction in the room. A lot of we all just sort of sat around and sort of looked at each other. I was like, we've done this, we're all a part of this team together. It was a pretty incredible sort of shared feeling amongst us. I mean, the women's quad as well, like their result was amazing. And where they'd come from as a crew, they'd have to qualify that boat late. They sort of had a lot stacked against them and to come away with the bronze, they were overjoyed as well. They were sort of in a similar position to us where it could have gone anyway. They put down a really, really good race. They put themselves in a position to get third, and they took their opportunity.
BEN WATERWORTH: What are the quiet drinks? Are you drinking just some Japanese beer? Do you bring over some local kind of stuff? Do the AOC have the sneaky beer collection ready to go to celebrate these moments?
LUKE LETCHER: I'm not sure I'm allowed to say. No, I think the AOC had a sneaky beer collection for us.
BEN WATERWORTH: And are they sponsored? Are you allowed to tell us what the sneaky or is it kind of regional? Like, oh, you're from Canberra. This is what you're drinking. You know, like, I don't hope they don't provide you just with fosters and be generic.
LUKE LETCHER: To be honest, I can't really. I think they were Japanese beers. I think someone had probably been tasked with going and getting some, but we weren't allowed to leave the village either. So the only way for us to get any other drinks was to Uber Eats them to the village, which was a painful process. So we're kind of limited for better or worse.
BEN WATERWORTH: I like to think that somebody got the job on the AOC. Your job, you're coming to Tokyo, you are the beer buyer. You will be the one tasked with going out and sourcing beer for each of our medal wins. That is a cool job to have.
LUKE LETCHER: It wouldn't be a bad job to have, but I think you get a funny look from security when you're taking that much beer into the village.
BEN WATERWORTH: You might be an alcoholic, mate. It might be time to sort of look at that. I think your Instagram post that I absolutely loved after the medal win might be the most Australian way of celebrating an Olympic medal win. Simply saying, this is going straight to the pool room. I mean, that has to be the most Australian way to celebrate a medal win.
LUKE LETCHER: I love The Castle. It's one of my favourite movies. And also, the bow seat of my crew, Jack, hasn't seen The Castle. What? How? I don't know. It's been beyond me, and I spent months blowing them about, and he still hasn't watched it.
BEN WATERWORTH: You wonder about the gold, had he bloody watched The Castle. I'm saying it now, it's his fault.
LUKE LETCHER: Oh, exactly. It would have got the vibe. So, I mean, I love it as a movie. I reckon it sums up everything great about Australian culture in a single film. Yeah, I don't know what more to say.
BEN WATERWORTH: Straight to the point. I want you out in the boat now, just for a second. How's the serenity? Halfway through. Maybe he'll get it then. And then again, gold medal to Harris.
LUKE LETCHER: Absolutely not. Me and Cam, who was in the tray seat behind me, we would constantly quote the castle in the boat, just to annoy Jack. He would be like, I know their quotes. I'm not going to watch it too bad.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's going back to that whole thing of like, stop telling me to play basketball. Stop telling me to watch Game of Thrones.
LUKE LETCHER: I'm not watching the castle. I can identify the feeling, but I still wish you'd watch it.
BEN WATERWORTH: The thing that's fascinating is like Australians watch the rowing. We think of a group of four men in a boat, the Awesome Foursome. And obviously we have the Awesome Foursome. We've had many of Awesome Foursomes over the years, but that obviously comes into the different category. For your event, now I looked into this in the Quad Skulls. So this was the fifth medal Australia has won in the Quad Skulls, but never quite the gold. It's fascinating to think that we've never actually gotten that gold in Quad Skulls. Is this sort of what drives a lot of you then to maybe move towards a Paris appearance or something like that to kind of get the breakthrough, bring the gold home in an event that we're pretty good at, we just can't quite get the gold in it?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, it's been sort of elusive. We've come pretty close a couple of times, but we've never quite made it. The Quad is about the European countries, a lot of European countries really, really love and they put a lot of energy into it. So every Olympics, the standard in the Quad, the minimum standard in the final is really, really high. And so that means often races can go a lot of different directions and there's no sort of real certainty to it. I mean, I would love it if we could win the Quad. That would be incredible. That would be really, really one for the record books. It's not something that we've got a lot of pedigree in it. Sorry, we do have a lot of pedigree in it, but it's not something that we've ever done before. And it would be quite an upset for a non-European country to win. I don't know when the last time a non-European country won.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm looking here, and according at least to what I'm seeing in the Olympics, it's only ever been European countries that have won the Quad Sculls.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, so they've got quite a hold on it. So that would be amazing if we could do that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I mean, looking here outside of just the different coloured medals, obviously Australia, five, as I said, the US have won a couple, Canada won a bronze back in 84. So even our dear friends in New Zealand haven't even medalled in this event. So how good are they at rowing?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, it's a weird boat class. It requires a certain mentality to get it really singing. And if you jump in an eight, an eight is a lot about the energy and the power, and really just getting eight people on the same page, you've got to put out as much power as they can. The single is obviously the complete other end, but it's also similar in some ways. There's a huge amount of technique to it and skill, but the physicality of it is a really overriding part. It quads this weird middle ground where you can have some, you can have the four physically best rowers in the world in one boat, and it can go incredibly slowly because there are some details to making it move that are really hard to nail sometimes. And those European countries with a bit more pedigree in it, they seem to be able to repeat it a bit better, maybe that handing down that information from generation to generation, but that's what we're trying to build. It was incredible having Cam in the boat who had got a silver medal in the previous games. It was a real rock for us that Caleb and I were the ones pushing different directions in what was going on, and Cam was really like, we're on to something good here, let's stick with this, this is good. We can back this idea and back this philosophy.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which then does that lead you on to the momentum with only three years to Paris, that this is the next driver, that you will aim towards those games?
LUKE LETCHER: To be honest, I'm not sure at the moment. Like I sort of said, I've spent quite a long time in the system. I've been on international teams for the last 10 years in a row now, and being in the training centre for a while has really hampered my studies and the other things I want to do in my life. So I'm not quite sure where I sit looking forward to Tokyo at the moment. I mean, I think I've taken an awful lot of satisfaction out of what we've done this year. And so I think I'd need a goal that would justify another three years.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I've got a goal just quickly for 11 years. I mean, Brisbane, you know, you'll only be, what, 38? I mean, that's not too bad. James Tompkins was 43, I think, in Beijing. So, you know, you've got plenty of time.
LUKE LETCHER: I'm not going to lie, 2032 would be incredible. Racing in a home games, that would be a goal worth sticking around for. So maybe it could come back a bit later in my career, but I'm not sure about this cycle.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm thinking we might have crowds, hopefully, by 2032. I'm assuming we will have the restrictions lifted, hopefully, in 11 years' time, right?
LUKE LETCHER: I'm assuming the pandemic should be mostly done by then.
BEN WATERWORTH: Hopefully. We're kind of looking towards that. Now, we'd like to close out, Luke, with a series of kind of just get to know your questions. I'll get to in just a second. I mean, you're mentioning sort of studies, things you want to do, kind of moving forward in life. What are some of those goals outside of rowing that you're sort of looking to achieve?
LUKE LETCHER: Well, I'm studying engineering. I've been doing it for far too many years now, so I really want to finish my engineering degree. It's been hard to do my practical hours in labs and those kind of things when I'm in the training centre training three times a day and off overseas. Two or three months of the year, so I really want to and really need to get that finished. And I'm also sort of excited to just find another challenge worth digging my teeth into. There's plenty of other exciting things in the world other than sport, and I'm looking forward to trying to find other areas that I might be good at, I guess. I'm hoping the only thing I'm not... I'm hoping that I'm not just good at rowing in life, and maybe I am, but I'd like to find that out the hard way.
BEN WATERWORTH: One thing actually I'd like to find out too, we had a lot of fun during the Games when we were talking about rowing, showing our limited knowledge of the sport too, Luke, is that when the commentators would talk about hitting a crab, now we were like, holy crap, what's wrong with the water in Tokyo? Why are there just endless crabs floating around? Did they not clear this out beforehand? Can you explain us a little bit more about hitting the crab so that we don't get a little bit freaked out that we should never go swimming in a lake in Tokyo and get bitten by these things?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, we call catching a crab is just when you get your oar sort of stuck in the water a little bit. And that can be a fairly small thing that you can get over pretty quickly, or it can be a really big thing that can probably stop the boat. So we caught a crab in our final. It was about 750 metres to go. The conditions were pretty challenging. When you're putting yourself in a physical place like that, you're really running on the edge of your skill level. And so catching a crab in a wave is sort of indicative of the fact that we're right on the edge. We're pushing as much as we could out of the boat. But yeah, it's just getting all stuck in the water. It's nothing to be scared of.
BEN WATERWORTH: Right, it wasn't like the marathon swimming where you're literally seeing these fish jumping over these athletes as they're swimming. You're not got real life crab just crawling all over you basically.
LUKE LETCHER: Absolutely not. That would be terrifying.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I kind of had an image as well. Also too, Lake Barrington here in Tasmania is a pretty decent spot. How do you find coming down to Tassie and being able to compete on Lake Barrington?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, well, I mean, the first time I've ever been to Lake Barrington was this year for Nationals. And I mean, I can't say to me more amazing words about it. It's incredible. It's a gorge. You sort of feel like you're out there by yourself, like in the middle of the wilderness. The serenity levels are off the charts. And it was incredible to get the opportunity to race down there for Nationals this year. We've done a lot of Nationals at Cirque at the Olympic course in Sydney, which is an incredibly good running course. It's one of probably the best running course I've ever ridden around the world. But Barrington was stunning. Everyone on the team really, really enjoyed being down there. And there are some inconveniences. There's not much accommodation nearby, but it all seemed worthwhile to get the opportunity to be down there in that stunning country.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's beautiful. It's just in the wrong half of the state. We don't care about the north of the state. You've got to be in the south, mate. That's where it's at. Get some Cascade into you. Go to Mona. All the fun stuff's in the south part of the state.
LUKE LETCHER: I don't want to feed any of those rivalries.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's no danger. Hello to all our Launceston listeners. I'm glad you've worked out to listen to a podcast. Now, we like to close this off with a series of, as I said, get to know your questions now. This is based on a questionnaire that Team Canada gave to their athletes ahead of the Rio and the Pyeongchang Olympics. As always, I like to try and find an athlete who is from the same sport, but sadly Team Canada has not put these questions to rowers, at least that they've published on their website. So the closest I've found is a canoeist. I've got a paddler by Cameron Smedley. I sort of thought, well, it's close enough, right?
LUKE LETCHER: It's close, just facing the wrong way.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly, exactly. They're going forward, you're going backwards. So let's start off with, if you could choose any Olympic host city, where would it be?
LUKE LETCHER: I think it would be amazing to have a host city, like a really historical old city in Europe or something, like somewhere with some real, I mean, there are plenty of places with some great heritage and history, but we get to race in Lucerne every year rowing, and it's just an incredible place to row, and there's so much history and culture, and it's so old, I guess, which is maybe something we're lacking a bit in Australia. So maybe it's just the Australian, but love to be somewhere with some very old infrastructure.
BEN WATERWORTH: We spoke with Swiss rower Barnaby de Laas recently, and he was sort of selling Lucerne a little bit, and just the beauty of it and everything along those lines.
LUKE LETCHER: I mean, I had to agree with him, but it's pretty good.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, no, it definitely looks like an amazing place. You can choose your own for this one too if you want, but what is your favourite ever Olympic moment?
LUKE LETCHER: Well, for me, I mean, I said earlier that I've been Kim Brennan's training partner across that 2016 cycle. And I don't think I've ever been as nervous for a race of my own as I was watching her final in Rio. So I think seeing her across the line and win that gold medal was, I think that's right up there for me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Great answer. I like it. I loved that moment completely. You sort of gave almost an answer to this earlier, but maybe there's another one. The weirdest instruction a coach ever gave you was?
LUKE LETCHER: I've had some cracks in the time, but I caught coach this year. One of his favourite ones was that we used to really, we used to quote a lot in the boat was, the things that make the boat go fast are the things that make the boat go fast. I still don't quite know what it means, but it came with the right weight, and we bought into it.
BEN WATERWORTH: This is why I love this question, because I just love hearing all these things that coaches say that are just like, what moment, but you somehow remember them.
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of weird ones that are very technical and specific to rowing, but I think that one sort of hit me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, there's another t-shirt for you. That's rowing merch things that can do that. I didn't mention, if you want to do some extra homework, Luke, there's always a drawing element to this. They ask their athletes, there's a drawer picture of yourself. So, I mean, look, if you so want to, feel free, send it in. We'll put it on the social. If not, it's all good. No pressure.
LUKE LETCHER: I'm not a great artist.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm not a great artist, okay. When you get one person one day is going to be like, yeah, actually, I love drawing. I want to do it right now. Your favourite workout is?
LUKE LETCHER: Oh, gee, I like every kind of workout in moderation. I guess I don't like gym. I don't like weights. I'm probably a bit unusual in that one. I quite like a sort of a short, hard interval session where you can really hurt yourself. There's something quite pure about just putting yourself in a pretty unpleasant place.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I see that. Barney actually told us about the World Indoor Rowing Championships. It blew my mind at first because I'm like, how can you row a boat inside? Then I realised it's just on a rowing machine. Is that something that you've had a crack at? Is there an Australian Indoor Rowing Championships that I should know about?
LUKE LETCHER: There is an Australian Indoor Rowing Championships. It's coming up in a couple of months' time. You sort of have a different location in each state around the country, and you'll compete on the same day and compare your times. Yeah, I mean, if anyone's in a gym, and they're really enjoying the idea of the erg and want to take it further than the side of the row machine, then absolutely jump into Australian Rowing Championships.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'll tell you one thing. Next time I'm at the gym, I'm going to look at that thing, and I'm going back to my point where I said 10 seconds in, I'm going to get to 11 seconds in and see if I can do it. Just push through that motivation. Exactly, exactly. If you could have lunch with any one person, who would it be?
LUKE LETCHER: Dead or alive?
BEN WATERWORTH: Dead or alive, anybody you like.
LUKE LETCHER: Dead or alive, gee, my favourite biography that I've ever read was a theoretical physicist named Richard Feynman. He was one of the people who ended up working on the atomic bomb for the US in the 40s. But just the way that, beyond that, just the way that he saw the world and his sense of humour and stuff, I'd love to, he's passed away now, but I'd love to sit down for lunch with him. He sounded like a really, really fun character.
BEN WATERWORTH: Great, great answer. Much more intelligent conversation than this one, Luke. Let's be honest. Just saying.
LUKE LETCHER: Everything in moderation.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. Your favourite sandwich is?
LUKE LETCHER: I can't go past the ham and cheese toastie.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, classic.
LUKE LETCHER: Doesn't get much better than that, I don't think.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, I always have to ask the bread. Is it just standard white bread? Do you like to kind of go a bit fancy with the sourdough? Or is it just kind of what's ever on the kitchen counter next to the metal?
LUKE LETCHER: Whatever is there. Whatever is there. White bread, sourdough, whatever. Chuck a few condiments on there. If you got some chilli sauce, tomato sauce, barbecue, whatever. Make it a bit of fun. Spice up the ham and cheese sandwich. Yeah, why not? Treat yourself.
BEN WATERWORTH: Go for it, exactly. You deserve it. You deserve it. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
LUKE LETCHER: Maybe to teleport. I reckon that would be pretty cool. That sort of covers a lot of bases as well. You can do a lot of stuff with teleporting. You can kind of fly as well, in a way. Just teleport to different places across the sky. That sounds pretty good. Saves a lot of time.
BEN WATERWORTH: Good way of looking at it, actually. Yeah, you kind of tick all the boxes. I like it. The best candy in the world is?
LUKE LETCHER: Tim Toms.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, yes, yes. Do you have a particular favourite? Like, do you just like the classic, or do you go for the different flavours?
LUKE LETCHER: Just the OG, for me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yep, works. I like it. As a kid, your favourite sports team was?
LUKE LETCHER: Well, I don't actually follow many other sports in particular. I follow Formula One a bit, but not too many other sports.
BEN WATERWORTH: That tickles my fancy, Luke. I'm a Formula One man, yes.
LUKE LETCHER: I love it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Who's your driver? And I'm going to say, I'm guessing it's Dan, but I mean, besides the obvious, do you sort of have teams or other drivers you follow?
LUKE LETCHER: I love to see all the Max Verstappen get up this year. But yeah, Danny Rick, absolutely.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'll move my head slightly, and you can maybe see my Ferrari cap behind me just to kind of...
LUKE LETCHER: Alright, we'll show you your legends.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I mean, you grow up, Schumacher, it kind of sticks with you, so it's sort of... But you can't go past Dan. Come on, Dan the man. Your favourite sports movie is?
LUKE LETCHER: Eddie the Eagle. Oh, yes. Have you seen that one? There's actually a scene in that movie that was quite a fundamental one for our crew this year. There's a scene where Eddie, who's obviously not a great ski jumper, is going up in the lift to the 90m jump with the flying fin. And they have this conversation, and sort of long and short of it, this conversation is like the flying fin is the best in the world, and Eddie is just there to sort of do it. And the Finnish bloke just says, look, the only thing that we have to do here is our best. Like, that's all that matters. That's all you can do. If we do less than our best with the whole world watching, it will kill us inside. And that was kind of our motto for the season. We don't have to beat anyone. We just have to do our best, winning and losing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic.
LUKE LETCHER: It doesn't matter, in a way.
BEN WATERWORTH: I watch that movie slightly differently now that you kind of say that.
LUKE LETCHER: All the rest of the movie is crazy and hilarious, but that one scene is actually quite powerful.
BEN WATERWORTH: Geez, I'm here about to comment on Hugh Jackman, Christopher Walken, but no, we've got some inspiration going on there, so I can't even add to that right now. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
LUKE LETCHER: I don't know. I haven't lived enough places in the world to know. We spent a lot of time up in Northern Italy as part of the team, and I really enjoyed that part of the world, but I've tried anywhere once, I guess. I've lived over in Perth for a while, and that was beautiful.
BEN WATERWORTH: Why not?
LUKE LETCHER: Hard to say, so let's say Northern Italy for the sake of this one. I've had some good times up there.
BEN WATERWORTH: You can train in time for the 2026 Winter Olympics while you're there. Why not?
LUKE LETCHER: Yeah, exactly.
BEN WATERWORTH: Get on another Olympics, different sport, try your hand at bobsled, ski jumping. I don't know when the last time Australia had a ski jump. Maybe never had one, I don't know.
LUKE LETCHER: I'm not sure how my 6'9 frame would go, ski jumping.
BEN WATERWORTH: You'd be landing before you took off. Luke, before we let you go, mate, if people want to start the day with your journey, everything else you're doing in life, social media, anything you want to plug right now for our listeners?
LUKE LETCHER: You're welcome to follow me on Instagram, I'm Luke.Letcher, but I don't post there a huge amount. I'm not a massive social media guy, but that would be the place.
BEN WATERWORTH: Go for the pool room photo. That's all I can say. And do you have a pool room? Have you got that photo printed ready to go and next to the medal?
LUKE LETCHER: I don't actually have a pool room. I mean, I've got a figurative pool room, but no literal one yet. That's one for the ambitions.
BEN WATERWORTH: It will happen one day. Luke, it's been a lot of fun learning a lot about your career, your experiences and love for The Castle. We could just sit here and talk about how amazing that movie is all day, I think. But thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations for Tokyo. And yeah, we really do appreciate your time on the show today.
LUKE LETCHER: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
BEN WATERWORTH: And a massive, massive thanks there to Luke for his time. I never knew Eddie the Eagle, was that inspirational? So maybe I need to give that a sneaky re-watch and kind of watch that scene. Great movie, fantastic movie, and always good to see these movies inspiring our athletes on the show. But a big thanks to Luke for his time, very much appreciated. As always, this is a part of the show where I tell you, we've got some great interviews coming your way, and I'm not lying, we've got some great ones still to come, covering a variety of different sports across both the winters and the summers in the lead up to Beijing. So stay tuned for those if you want to stay tuned as always. Search for Off The Podium on all the podcasting platforms, all the social media, leave us some feedback, rate us, follow us on the social media, and subscribe to the show, and you will never miss one of these episodes. And we always love to hear what you think of the show. If you've got any guests out there you'd like us to track down, anyone in particular, let us know, and we will see what we can do. Big thanks again to Luke. Big thanks to everyone for listening. This has been Off The Podium. My name is Ben, and remember, go left.
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