Rhydian Cowley Interview
It’s time to get back into a sport we love on the show in Race Walking as we speak with Australian walker Rhydian Cowley about his amazing career and amazing Olympic experiences. Just how did Rhydian get into race walking and why is it more of an amazing sport than people give it credit for? Why does having the sport featured in comedy shows such as Malcolm In The Middle and Kath & Kim actually help it more than hinder it? Why does Australia seem to produce so many talented race walkers? What brought about his changeup from competing in the 20km event in Rio to the 50km event in Tokyo? How does Rhydian feel about the 50km event being dropped from Paris? And just what happened with a cat before Tokyo that may have his future wife scared for the future? It’s all here and more in another fascinating interview that you won’t want to miss!
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. Very excited for today's guest, Rhydian Cowley, two-time Olympian, Rio and Tokyo in the sport of race walking. We have not had a race walker on this show since Evan Dunphy, who was our very first guest that we had way back in 2016, just after the Rio Olympics, because Evan finished fourth in Rio, went into the bronze in Tokyo in the event that Rhydian finished eighth in the 50-kilometre walk. And this is a great chat with Rhydian, gets into the details about the sport, learns, teaches us, I should say, how he got involved in race walking, the techniques involved, and whether or not this sort of crossover when it comes to runners, maybe switching over to walking or vice versa. And just a real great insight into his career and everything that he has gone through to become a dual Olympian. So fascinating chat that I know you will enjoy. Stay for the talk on race walking and continue to stay for the talk about cats, because as you'll see, I get a little bit excited during this chat when it comes to cat talk. Here's our chat with jewel Olympian, Rhydian Cowley.
BEN WATERWORTH: Another great interview coming your way today on Off The Podium as we continue a series of chats with athletes from Tokyo in the lead up to Beijing. We're covering all aspects of both versions of the Olympics, but today, we have a Tokyo athlete who at the time of recording this is still locked down in quarantine, having a grand old time, and has returned from the Games with a personal best and a career best finish in the Race Walk, in the 50 kilometre Race Walk. He finished in eighth position with a personal best time. And prior to that, competed at the Rio Olympics back in 2016 in the 20 kilometre Race Walk. He's a World Championship competitor, a Commonwealth Games competitor. And one thing that I'm also very intrigued to get to the bottom of in this interview is a cat sitter, which I'm maybe more excited to learn more about across the way. It's a pleasure to welcome to Off The Podium, Rhydian Cowley. Rhydian, first of all, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to have you today.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Hey, thanks for inviting me.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's exciting always to chat to any Olympian, but particularly those who have sort of come back from Tokyo, very unique games and the whole aspect of quarantine. How's it going right now? At the time of recording this, are you counting down the minutes and days until you're out? Are you actually weirdly enjoying kind of having two weeks alone to yourself?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I haven't really been trying to think too much about counting down. I'm not sure that that would be the best strategy for me to get through. I've just been trying to keep busy with lots of different things. So there's been quite a few opportunities to do some school talks, sort of organised through the Victoria Institute of Sport. And I've also had a few friends who are teachers that have asked me as well to speak to their students, which has been great and probably helpful for them as well in lockdown. And then, yeah, you know, reading books, watching movies, chatting with friends and family as well. It's good to have a mix of activities to choose from, just to keep yourself busy. And we've also been pretty lucky here that we can hire some exercise bikes. I've got an exercise bike in my room and just been riding on that each day and doing a few body weight exercises as well, just so that I haven't lost all my fitness by the time I get out.
BEN WATERWORTH: And with all the care packages, we're just talking about that off air a little bit too. You guys are getting sent a myriad of goodies as well. I mean, I guess it's also burning all that weight you're putting on with all the chocolate and food you're being given right now.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, or stockpiling or hoarding it and figuring out how we're going to get it all home.
BEN WATERWORTH: What's the weirdest care package you've got? Like what sort of some of the stuff you've been getting?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: So, yeah, Procter and Gamble, I think, sent us a bunch of shampoos, shaving, hand cream sort of things. Qantas sent some wine and some pajamas and toiletries. I've got donuts from some friends from Parkrun, chocolates, got some books and coffee and a press as well from my fiance back at home. So, yeah, been really spoiled. And yeah, I think it's probably going to be a little bit too much leftover. So I've actually been making some inquiries with the Olympic committee and with Queensland Health to see if there's stuff that I can't fit home. And I don't think that I'll use to donate that to charity somewhere, just to make sure it's not wasted.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, great idea with that. Oh, fantastic. Good to hear. It's actually interesting, Rhydian. Our very first guest we had on Off The Podium post Rio, this was literally, I think, in the weeks after Rio, was a race walk. We had Evan Dumphy, of course, just got the bronze medal in the 50K in Tokyo. And it's kind of a bit strange to me that it's taken us so long to get another race walker on the show, because it's a sport in Australia that, I mean, we've got an esteemed history in it. I mean, we've had a few Sydney Olympians recently, and I mean, everyone remembers James Saville's sort of incident there, but then you got Jarrod Talent, Nathan Deeks, Dane Bird Smith, you know, all medallists post Sydney. So it's an esteemed sport for Australia. So I'm intrigued to find out how you sort of got involved in race walking. Was it a case of watching some of these athletes, or was it something that else that kind of brought you into the sport?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, so I suppose I first encountered race walking at Little Athletics when I was eight, I think it was. And yeah, it was just one of the event groups, along with some of the distance running that I was naturally pretty good at. So that was, you know, when you're young, it's always a bit of a motivator when you're good at something to stick with it a bit. But yeah, definitely, I was nine years old when Sydney Olympics happened. And yeah, it definitely was watching the walks as part of that. I remember Polish walker Robert Korsanowski won the 20k, 50k double there. And maybe it's fitting that then in Tokyo, my race was won by another Polish walker who had a really bold strategy and it paid off for him.
BEN WATERWORTH: It came full circle basically all that way around. Because it's so interesting, like just thinking of Sydney and Jane Savile and kind of everything along those lines. Because I mean, growing up myself, having watched the Olympics, I don't really remember a whole lot of, I guess, publicity or sort of things around the race walking. And that just kind of really put it out there. And I think with Jane, sort of that emotional journey when she got the bronze in Athens as well to kind of see that come full circle. But it's such a unique sport because from the armchair critic myself who's watching it, and I'm going like, you're not walking, that's running. Like, I mean, it just looks like this sort of version of running. I mean, do you remember the first time when you sort of younger and you said you got good of it? Do you remember the first time trying it and kind of, I guess, trying to adapt to the unique style that is race walking?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: So, yeah, usually when people try race walking, you find out pretty quickly whether the technique comes to you naturally or not. And usually it's the people where it comes a bit more naturally to them that they stick around and it was something that came a little bit more naturally to me. But yeah, you know, just because it comes naturally to you, you still got to train and practise a lot to get your body used to walking. I think something that pretty much everyone that tries it, what they experience is if you try to walk for a few hundred metres, because you're trying to pull your toes up all the time to land on your heel when your lead leg is landing. You know, your shins are having to do a lot of work against your calves. And so very quickly, you just get your shins are just absolutely killing you. So, yeah, it takes a lot of practice. But as with anything, you can get really good at it over time and hopefully make it look easy. But yeah, I haven't really thought about it in terms of whether it's how close it is to running or not. I guess, obviously, the whole aim is to go as fast as you can without running. So you're going to be pushing right up against the line. But it's always funny training outside on bike paths or whatnot. And sometimes you'll pass a parent and their child walking the other direction. And then you'll just hear in the background, why is that man walking funny? Or why is that man running funny? So yeah, that's a way to entertain.
BEN WATERWORTH: Kind of also, I guess, didn't help the whole Kath & Kim phase, right? Where that kind of almost made a bit of... I mean, what did that help? Was it the other way around? Maybe did that kind of add a shining light to it?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I love that stuff as well. Like people who grew up in the early 2000s might remember Malcolm In The Middle. There was also an episode there where Hal, so the same actor, Brian Cranston, that plays in Breaking Bad. I think that's probably his most famous role. He was the dad in that show. And I remember that really, really invested in race walking in this episode. And I love funny things like that. There was also probably a bit more niche to race walkers and Japanese people. In the lead up to the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, the reigning world champion and world record holder was pranked by Japanese TV. They set him up that some dangerous samurai had broken out of a nearby prison. And then he was doing a training session. And the samurai broke into his training venue and chased after him. It was just because the Japanese wanted to see if he was in life threatening danger, whether he'd run or walk.
BEN WATERWORTH: And did he?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: He ran, but he actually slowed down initially when he started running and then accelerated.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow, that's something I need to see. Because I mean, it kind of like it's interesting because, you know, a lot of people will probably think about it with Kath and Kim. Malcolm In The Middle kind of it's almost, I want to say mocked, but at the same time, it's I guess if it's done in a, you know, good spirits, it's kind of something that it's not done in an offensive way. It's bringing some sort of attention to the sport, at least. Yeah.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah. And I think with those TV shows, it hasn't hasn't been mocked. It's been quite a funny way to engage with people and introduce them to a bit of a weird sport. And, you know, I think if you're a race walker and you can't laugh at yourself, you're probably going to have a bit of a tough time. So I like to laugh at those things. It's usually pretty funny.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is it a sport with much transition? Do you find you'll have sprinters or runners who maybe aren't sort of achieving what they want to, and they give race walking a try? Is it something you can kind of transition easily from running into race walking?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I think particularly for elite walkers, it seems like the majority of people sort of pick it up during their childhood years, maybe their teenage years when they're trying athletics. There's a few examples that I'm aware of, of people picking it up later in life. So there's New Zealand race walker Quentin Roo. He's been to three Olympics now and he was living in Melbourne, the last few years, I think he's quarantining in New Zealand at the moment. But yeah, we've been training together in the lead up to Tokyo. And he only picked up race walking when he was, I think, 24 because of some running injuries that he had meant that he couldn't really run much at all anymore. So that does happen. But I think the majority of it from that perspective is people just picking it up. And that's the event that they're good at when they're at school.
BEN WATERWORTH: So when you're discovering this talent you've got sort of going along with the racewalking, was there sort of moments going along that where you wanted to kind of pursue this? Did the Olympics sort of as a young age become a goal? Or was this sort of something that kind of came to you, the more and more you advanced with the racewalking?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yes. I mean, some athletes are just really, really driven from a young age. But I suppose I've been fortunate to, I guess, in a sense just to pick things that I like doing and just stick with them. And that's sort of how I went through my university studies, being like, oh, I like these subjects. These subjects, I'll just study them and those can be my majors. And sort of the same with walking. It's like, oh, I enjoy my walking. At school, I did a few other different sports, but I think walking was always the one that I was best at, most successful at, and ultimately stuck with. So yeah, but I think the important thing is that deep down, I just enjoy doing it. I also do enjoy running and doing running races. But yeah, I think a big difference for me, particularly as I got older, made my first team for the junior Race Walking World Cup when I was 17. And I realised that I could travel and make friends from other countries doing the sport. That kind of moved from doing it just because I enjoyed the sport to pursuing it and being like, well, this is a way for me to get those experiences and probably be valuable for me later in life to be a little bit more worldly and have these friends and what have you.
BEN WATERWORTH: And when you were sort of making those teams and starting to kind of progress, I mean, how was the talent pool sort of in Race Walking in Australia? Cause I mean, I mentioned sort of all the big names before that have kind of come through, but I mean, we seem to always be producing very talented race walkers. So I can imagine that the talent pool is always kind of strong, that we seem to be producing people like yourself who are doing so well on the world scene.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, certainly it's not as deep as like the talent pool that running gets just because it's a little bit more of a niche event. But yeah, particularly through the 90s and 2000s, when we had the walks program at the Australian Institute of Sport, it was not so much that there was a huge amount of talent. There might be often like two or three really good walkers max per age group each year. But if you can pick them up and get them into a program where they're training well and getting all the other little details there so they can train consistently. Yeah, that's where you can then unearth talents like Jarrod Talent, Nathan Deeks and polish them up to become world champions, Olympic champions, in Nathan Deeks' case, a world record holder for a time in the 50 kilometre walk as well. And the same with the women, with Chaine Savile. She still has our national record. I think the way Jemima Montag is coming along, that national record might be under threat. But yeah, and even before Jane, I think Kerry Saxby as well. I think she was a world record holder from memory. So yeah, this has kind of been a bit of a target event for Australia. And even if we haven't had a gigantic event or a gigantic pipeline of talent coming in, just being able to make really good progress with the talent that we've had, I think has been something of Australia's strengths. It's been a little bit more of a challenge since the end of the walks program at the Australian Institute of Sport. But I think we're building back up to that at the moment. We've got a good core of walkers in Melbourne that have been training together whenever we're not locked down. So I think, and a lot of us actually made that Olympic, this Olympic team for Tokyo. So yeah, be good to watch some of those other guys and girls come through in the next few years.
BEN WATERWORTH: In terms of sort of, you know, mentorship, are there moments like that where maybe you get to speak to Jarrod, you get to speak to Nathan, you get to speak to Jane and kind of get some advice or tips. I mean, is that something that they're still kind of involved in? Obviously Jarrod was still sort of competing around about that time when you were sort of getting into it, but are you able to kind of lean on them for some advice with the techniques? And then moving forward to when you go to an Olympics, get some advice of what it's like competing at, say, an Olympics versus another event?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I think the big thing has been like less about mentorship per se and more about training camp opportunities. So we've particularly in the last few years had opportunities sort of usually about January of each year where we've partnered with Australian Catholic University to do some research studies. And basically that's been a way to fund training camps and then instead of having to call someone up or send them a message to ask some questions, like they're literally there. You can just have a casual chat to them during the day, chat to them during a training session, watch what they do, be like, oh, okay, this is what person who's won four Olympic medals does for their training and just sort of like take that on board and be like, okay, well, what do I need to do to get to that level? What are the sorts of things that they're doing to make sure that they can keep returning up to training each day? And yeah, that learning by experience, I think is really valuable. And yeah, now that Jarrod's retired, we were lucky in December this year and January has got old to have Jarrod come along to the training camps that we were doing in that, you know, that really good summertime where there weren't any lockdowns and there weren't any cases.
BEN WATERWORTH: Good memories.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: It was great to have Jarrod along there. And now that he's retired, I'm sort of mindful that I'm kind of like the old man of walking in Australia at the moment. So I'm trying as well to be that sort of person for some of those younger athletes that are coming through like Rebecca Henderson's 20, Katie Haywood's 21, Declan Tingay and Kyle Swann, they're 22. So they've all hopefully got long careers ahead of them. And, you know, if I can help to make that a little bit more successful, a little bit easier for them, then I'm gonna be really happy to play that part.
BEN WATERWORTH: What was that period like from making your first team right through to when you eventually qualify for Rio? You went to the World Championships, you were on the World Cup scene for quite some time, the university games, everything along those lines. I mean, was it a case of just building up that experience competing on that world stage that would sort of lead you to an Olympics and kind of similar to what I asked before, was it that maybe a point then when something clicked and you thought, well, an Olympics really is a possibility here, this is something that I can really achieve through my race walking.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I suppose. Not necessarily so much the competitions themselves that give you that experience that just magically improves you. You've got to go and get a takeaway from that championship and be like, okay, well, this worked, this didn't work. What do I need to do to get to the next level? And then you go back home and you try and train really hard. And I think for me, particularly earlier in my career, sort of when I was early 20s, the challenge for me was training consistently at my home environment. It's not that I had necessarily huge obstacles to that in terms of what I was doing. I was living at home, studying at university, but sometimes you're just figuring out how your body works and how you can get it to be its most consistent self is its own challenge. And then as well, just getting the training age of just getting your body used to a certain volume and then like stepping up that volume a little bit, a little bit and just building near on it. Yeah, that's I think been the big thing for me. And yeah, particularly, I think in recent years, I've just really got my training environment sorted out and got my sort of fueling recovery, all that stuff that supports being able to train well and get those gains sorted out. And I think that's where my performances have started to take off a little bit. They were sort of tapering a little bit or plateauing sort of in my mid 20s, but they've been able to take off again a little bit. And yeah, it's been another challenge to be able to turn up to a championship and actually have my best performance at the championship rather than, I don't know, leaving it on the training track or doing it in a qualifying race. And that's been another bit of a learning journey, which I've just tried to, even if I've had bad championships or okay championships, just keep learning and keep getting takeaways from those events. And yeah, I think it's probably paid off a little bit in my result in the Tokyo Games, but at the same time, you know, finishing eighth, you're like, oh, I'm not too far away from a medal now. And it's like, okay, well, what do I have to do to get there? So yeah, we'll see how that progresses when I get back home and start training in for the next year's championships.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is it similar, particularly with the 50K, to say marathon runners where you're not going out every single weekend and doing a 50K, you're obviously getting that body into a place where you may be only doing a certain amount of those races in a year. I mean, is it that way when you're doing the 50K and when you're doing the 20K is a little bit different? Can you kind of get your body into line to do more of those in a year than you would say the 50K?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, definitely. I think for the 50K, it's similar to the marathon. If you're trying to race them seriously fast, you're probably not going to be doing more than two or three a year. But then with the 20K, you can probably tackle again a few more and expect to get a really fast time. You might be able to get six or seven in a year doing that. But if you're racing that many times, unless you have like a real big racing block where you're hitting two or three races back to back to back, you run the risk if you're racing too much, you're not actually doing the training blocks that you need to be racing at your best. And even if you're doing six or seven races, which you want to do really fast each year, there's going to be some that are more important than the others. Like there's one or maybe two championship races per year. And so if you're racing for championships, those are really always going to be the number one aim compared to any other race that you're doing, even if you're racing some other 20 days throughout the year.
BEN WATERWORTH: In terms of deciding between the lengths, you obviously did the 20K in Rio, 50K in Tokyo. Some people obviously, you mentioned sort of Robert back in Sydney, did the double. Obviously it was a little bit more difficult in Tokyo because they were both sort of the day after each other. So I can imagine that was something that wasn't possible, but what is kind of the choosing factor when it comes to deciding between a 20 and a 50? Is it sort of a coaching thing? Maybe a coach says to you, hey, like you're good at the 20, but have you tried the 50? Is it up to you kind of, how do you decide between the two?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, I suppose some particularly like for a coach or sports scientist or whatnot, they'd probably look at physiological markers to work out what your best event is. So people that have got a really, really good exercise economy at the marathon or 50k race pace, you know, that would be people that you'd identify as a 50k walker, but Australia's development historically for 50k walkers has been that their best 20k walkers are also their best 50k walkers. You just have to put the right training into them. And so it's been a bit of a process for me over the past few years to just introduce the right sort of training sessions over a consistent period of time to be able to do a 50k and then also to be able to do a 50k well. But yeah, I was, I actually did qualify in both the 20k and the 50k for Tokyo. When I did qualify at the start of 2019, they were both, it was like both events were scheduled in Tokyo in front of the Imperial Palace. And there was about a week's break between the two of them, which would have been perfect for doing the double. And yeah, unfortunately, with the decision to sort of in the interest of the spectators and the athletes, health and safety to move it up to Sapporo meant that for logistics purposes, they had to just put everything day after day and yeah, the double wasn't something that was considered. Yeah, in Beijing, Joe Talent doubled. He did the 20K and finished third and the 50K and finished second. So, and like I said about Robert Korsanowski in Sydney, winning the double in the 20 and the 50K, it's yeah, the best 20K walkers are also likely to be good 50K walkers if they've done the training for it, because you know, if you can walk 80 minutes or 78 minutes or whatever for a 20 kilometre walk, there's not a lot that people can do in the first two and a half hours of 50 that can hurt you much, just comes down to what happens in the last hour or so.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's insane to think that you can sort of meddle in both, because I mean, it's to me that's likening that if, you know, you win the marathon, you go and win the 10,000 metres. I mean, it's kind of, there's a discrepancy there in it, which is incredible. And the thing is too, with the 50k, yeah, the marathon's great, 42k, good for them. You're doing 50, you're doing more than they are, 8k is more. So I mean, it's just, the amazing talent it is from someone like, you know, Robert and Jarrod to kind of go out there and double meddle in the event. I mean, that's an insane feat.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: It's a testament to how fit they are, but also because we're walking a bit slower than the marathoners are running. You know, we're out there for at least three and a half hours and some people close to over four hours. So it's a bit more time on your feet than the marathoners. But mentioning the 10K marathon double, it's pretty famous, particularly in Melbourne, with the yearly event that Emil Zatopec won that and also won the 5,000 metres at the Olympics back. Gosh, I can't remember which Olympics it was, but-
BEN WATERWORTH: 2008 was it?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Zatopec? No, that was like 1950s, I think.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, right, sorry.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: But Galen Ruff, I think, did the 10,000 in marathon double in Rio. So again, like it is possible. And I think probably for me, a closer analog would be half marathon, marathon double. And I think if there was an Olympic half marathon, you might see the likes of Kipchoge running that as well. But then you'd also probably see a bunch of 10k runners stepping up and doing the half marathon, which would be quite interesting, I think.
BEN WATERWORTH: Because it's always just fascinating in athletics, just the spread between the disciplines and all that sort of stuff. I mean, everyone remembers Michael Johnson doing the 200-400 double, which was unheard of. It's all well and good to have the 100-200, but it's different, isn't it, from going from that side to the other? So yeah, and we obviously saw that with Safana San in Tokyo too, spread across all the different disciplines there that she was able to compete in. So it's fascinating and it's mind boggling as a non-athlete to kind of think about the aspects that you've got to put into your body to kind of do that.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I think the craziest double for me in Tokyo was the American who did the long jump high jump double.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't see that often anymore.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Obviously, they're both jumping, but it's really uncommon to see field events double, or you might see a long jumper become a springer or be in a relay, like a four-by-one relay.
BEN WATERWORTH: Karl Lewis used to do it back in the day. Marion Jones, I remember, back in Sydney, yeah. Jesse Owens back in the day as well. But I mean, yeah, it's kind of that cross. I mean, sort of on a slight tangent, but on the same page. I mean, one of my biggest stories of recent years was Esther Ledecker in the Winter Olympics, winning a gold in snowboarding and skiing, like the first athlete to do something like that. It's great to see these cross-platforms. I mean, we think of our great Edwin Flack back in our first ever Olympic gold medallist who got gold in, what was it, athletics and tennis, a bronze in tennis. I mean, you're never going to see Ash Barty going off and getting a bronze in tennis and then backing up with a hundred metre sprint. I know, disrespect to Ash, I'm sure she's a great runner, but it's just something you just don't see anymore.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Maybe we'll have to speak to the athletics coach to see what sort of talent ID we can do.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. Rowan Browning might be a fantastic sport climber or something like that. We don't know.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Maybe with hitting power, maybe doing something like a discus would be good for Ash.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, exactly.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Or maybe she's an all-rounder. Maybe she could do the decaf.
BEN WATERWORTH: She could, yeah, exactly.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Or the heptathlon.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, heptathlon, yeah. Everything, just kind of have the, I mean, she did well on the big bash when she went to cricket and then came back and becomes a Wimbledon champion. I mean, she can do anything.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, and then there's like Elise Perry. I think she's stuck with cricket a bit more now, but when she was a bit younger, being on the Matildas as well as the women's cricket team.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yep, Georgie Parker went from hockey to AFL. I mean, you got all these cross platform coaches.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Nova Paris as well. Oh, exactly.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow. We're listening to all these. I mean, I think of Jana Pitman going from sprinting to bobsleigh, kind of a bit more closely connected there, but I mean, still, you know.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: That reminds me of the Tongan flag bearer.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, he the fun story about him was that like he actually tried to qualify for I think it was canoe sprint for Tokus. He was trying to do three different sports and he narrowly missed out, so he kind of had to go back to the, you know, the backup plan of Taekwondo again. But if he had have qualified for canoe sprint, I mean, three different, I don't know if that's ever been done before, kind of three different Olympic sports over three different Olympics. So, yeah, it's an enigma. I mean, God, I would be having to qualify for one in any sport. You name a sport, I'll try, you know. I've always said about curling, but recently I've discovered curling is a lot more harder than it is than you think it is. So, you know, when they-
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I think I'd be slipping over a lot if I was doing curling.
BEN WATERWORTH: Probably just falling stone alone. Podcasting Brisbane 2032, let's bring him in there. Do you remember that moment when you were officially qualified for Rio and kind of what that was like to kind of get the official announcement that you are an Olympian from that point on?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, so for Rio, I got a qualifying time pretty early, relatively early in the year, but not winning the national championship means that I wasn't automatically selected in the team. So I kind of just had to sit and wait around a bit. And so in that sense, just getting the call and getting the announcement and just knowing I could tell people that I am going to the Olympics instead of I'm going to be selected, was just nice because it's a little bit complicated to explain to people like the nuances of when you're going to get named. So certainly it's a lot easier once you have been named. It's easier again once you've been and you're like, yes, I am an Olympian, I went to the Olympics. I found that in 2016, I was in a race in Japan where I was after the race, I'd gone back to Kyoto and I was in a hostel there. And it just turned out that the hostel people just really loved running. They had a wall of different race bibs. And I was like, oh, I've got a race bib. You can have this race bib. And then they were asking about the Olympics. And it's really hard to explain across the language barrier about whether I'm going or not. It was great. It was actually before Tokyo, the person that I'd swapped an Australian singer with him, made a bit of a post about me in Japanese on his Instagram. It was kind of nice to know that he remembered me. And it's great to feel supported, even though no one could be on the sidelines. It was, yeah, definitely, I think for a lot of us in our heads, just knowing how many people were cheering for us back home was, and for me as well, like even in other countries was just really powerful.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic. Good to hear those sort of little moments there. We spoke to Elise and Jordan Wood recently, sort of they had competed in Rio and then Tokyo and kind of the differences. I mean, sort of that whole debut Olympic experience, I can imagine can be everything from overwhelming to exciting and everything else in between your first Olympics. But kind of looking back on Rio versus Tokyo in terms of experiencing, I guess, a quote, a normal games with crowds and everything along those lines versus the uniqueness of Tokyo. Are you kind of glad that you got to sort of experience what you did in Rio versus what you did in Tokyo? Or kind of can you sort of take away just similar experiences from the both despite, say, the lack of crowds and everything that you had at Tokyo?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, well, I think people were telling me that had been to London and previous games to that Rio was very different to them and maybe even in their opinion, not as good. But I didn't have any reference points, so it didn't really bother me. And then, you know, it's different again. I think all the Olympics, you're in a little bit of a bubble anyway. So in terms of interacting with people, it's usually pretty limited unless you follow the Olympians. So that bit wasn't too different. But then not being able to interact with people on the street was... Not being able to walk around outside the hotel was a little bit... Yeah, a little bit to the challenge, a little bit different. But we'll say the toilets in Japan were definitely an upgrade from the toilets in Rio, because in the village, the plumbing was pretty dodgy. And I think lots of people had flooded and backed up toilets by the end of the games. Whereas in Japan, we had the fancy futuristic toilets that talk to you and have a bidet and a seat warmer. And God knows what else.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's all the important stuff you need as an athlete, right?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, that wasn't too bad.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which also too, I mean, I saw some of the posts on social media, I believe you did it as well. Like, what was that like watching the opening ceremony from home, knowing that all of a sudden you're going to be there in a week? Because obviously, I can imagine in Rio, whether you attended it or not, you sort of probably swept up a little bit more in the Olympic fever. I imagine that would have been a very unique experience.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, the athletics team often doesn't march in opening ceremonies, particularly for Olympics, just because, yeah, I think sometimes just even just managing bad numbers, they sort of swimmers will compete first and then swimmers will move out and athletics will move in just so that the village isn't completely bursting at the seams or like over capacity. So before Rio, we were actually in Florida for the opening ceremony, but we were able to have our own little ceremony in this place. We were having our staging camp and do our own little march around the track there. So that was a bit novel. And again, we just those of us that were in the Cairns staging camp were able to have a little bit of an opening ceremony event in our camp. And I think we also zoomed in with some of the team members that were stuck in Sydney as well, just to help them feel included. So it was kind of like having our own little opening ceremony event. Having said that, I was at the opening ceremony at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. That was a really amazing experience. But in terms of missing opening ceremonies as Olympics, I haven't actually been to one, so I don't know what I'm missing out on.
BEN WATERWORTH: Can I ask just on the Gold Coast topic, did you go to the closing ceremony, Rhydian, and if so, have you recovered from it? Because I was there, and that was an odd one.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, it was. I think a lot of us were standing around there being a bit confused. But then, you know, as athletes, you're pretty pumped up about your events finished. And I think also sometimes there's shows that are there to be viewed on TV or from the stands. So as an athlete, I suppose standing around being confused is not necessarily out of the ordinary.
BEN WATERWORTH: Seeing the same bold DJ with Borobi was pretty confusing as well. So I don't know if that's something that we'll ever get from our memories.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Borobi was really good, I think.
BEN WATERWORTH: Borobi was brilliant. I've got a Borobi somewhere. I need to put on display behind me, actually.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I've got a Borobi at home, but I've got a couple of the Olympic mascots here with me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Great.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Fortunately, I can't show people that are listening.
BEN WATERWORTH: I can firmly establish that there is an Olympic mascot there, clearly, on the screen. We did an episode recently after Brisbane got the Games, and we were trying to think about what will the mascot be? We all remember Oli and Millie from Sydney. I'm just trying to think what they can have for Brisbane.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Bring back Borobi. They might bring back Matilda from the Brisbane Commonwealth Games as well.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, we didn't have a kangaroo. No, because Sid was a platypus.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: In the Brisbane Commonwealth Games, it was that famous kangaroo.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, but I'm thinking sort of for the Olympics, because it was a frilled neck lizard for the Paralympics. A kookaburra and a platypus.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'd say a Tassie devil as a Tasmanian, but save that for when Tasmanian gets the Olympics.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: And the Melbourne Commonwealth Games as well, that was a red-tailed black cockatoo.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've got so many great animals, though, in this country, so I mean, you know, the choices are endless.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Spoiled for choice.
BEN WATERWORTH: My personal favourite Olympic mascot is Izzy from Atlanta, which still to this day, nobody knows what it is and nobody knows what it was, but I don't care. Izzy was amazing. People talk about Wenlock at London kind of being a bit odd, but no, like I'm all for Izzy. Bring back sort of a weird concoction of whatever the hell Izzy was, and I'm down with that for Bruce.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: The Rio mascot as well was, I don't know, literally like an amalgamation of about seven different animals, which was interesting.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, yeah, which, you know, I mean, it works. It kind of, you know, I'm surprised they didn't have like, you know, Pele as their mascot because they love him so much, right? Like, I mean, we could have Emma McKeehan now as our mascot now that she's so good out there, winning so many medals, you know, kind of, who knows with that sort of stuff? I mean, outside of, you know, I'll get to sort of the event, you know, the 20K, how you did it in Rio, but just in terms of just atmosphere soaking it up, everything else along those lines, I mean, are you so focused on your event that you kind of can't soak in the Olympic aspect of things and maybe you did sort more so in Tokyo, or were you fully invested in kind of, you know, here you are in a village, here you are kind of experiencing everything about an Olympic Games that an athlete can outside of competing?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, I think that sort of would vary from athlete to athlete, but for me, I know in Rio, I was kind of like, I don't know, not really feeling super excited or nervous, but necessarily I was like kind of reminding myself on the start line to be like, hey, Rhydian, this is an Olympic, this is something you might not get to experience again, You should be enjoying the moments. Yeah, it was similar in Tokyo. It was kind of like focusing, okay, it's just a race that I'm getting ready for. And I was getting a little bit nervous for it in the last day or so before the race started. So even that morning as well. So when we got to the course, and it was still a punch of time to wait before we even needed to start to get ready. So my coach Brent and I just laid down on the grass, watching the sunrise over the Sapporo TV tower, just to calm me down, settle me down a little bit, because you're out there for nearly four hours walking 50 k's. You don't want to waste any energy on not walking. So I'm just going to try and stay calm and relaxed.
BEN WATERWORTH: 33rd in Rio, did you kind of set yourself for any sort of goals in terms of where you wanted to finish times and kind of how did you feel after your Rio performance?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I was pretty happy with how I went in Rio, just because it was more or less on form with how I'd been walking throughout the rest of the year. And so just to be able to replicate what I'd done to get to the Olympics. And it was in warm weather, so that was quite good. And I was happy with that. Someone has to finish 33rd, if there's 50 people finishing, someone has to finish 49th, 50th, et cetera. So yeah, I think it can be easy sometimes to just focus on the medal winners or the top eights, but there's usually people who are happy or have had good performances right down the field. I know in the women's marathon this year, I've got a friend who runs or has run with my athletics club back before COVID, and she's from the Solomon Islands, and great to support her. That was her second Olympics. She was setting up the marathon this year, and she actually ran a national record in the women's marathon. So it was really, really exciting to see that. So I think between all the marathons and all the walks, there were only three people that did a personal best. One of them was myself, one of them was Declan Tingay in the 20K walk, and the other one was Sharon Firasia of the Solomon Islands who ran a national record. So yeah, small club that we were a part of.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic. So it's good to hear, because that's one thing that we talked a lot about during the games is, I mean, particularly sort of with the way Channel 7 will portray in the athletics team, it's kind of, it's always that sort of second week that, you know, after the swimmers are done, it's kind of like, okay, where are we going to go in the next week? And it's just, it's the opposite, I guess, mentality on, I feel, how we perceive the athletics team versus the swimming team. Because if the swimming team don't come away with like five gold medals, they've failed. Whereas like the athletics team, it's like, everything is being talked up. Like Rowan Browning makes it talked up, personal best talked up, you know, Matt Dany finishing fourth, it's talked up. And that's to me how the Olympics should be. Yeah, medals are great. But at the end of the day, if you're putting out a personal best, if you're finishing 33rd and you're satisfied with it, and you know, it's a season best personal best, that's the achievement in itself. And that's what I really did like about the Tokyo Games this year is how, you know, Bruce and Tamsin and Dave Colbert were just really talking up all of the athletes performances no matter where they finished.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I think athletics is basically the event where the most different countries compete in all the sport, rather, where the most different countries competing in. And so in that sense, it's just a lot harder. Like swimming is obviously hard to win a medal, but it just, I think the perception is, and I'm not sure how the data, how you'd even get data to sort of research and to back it up is that athletics is just so much harder to win a medal. And so I think you pair back those expectations a little bit. And it also just gives you a chance to look into the stories behind athletes. So, you know, Peter Ball was just a fantastic story. And those of us who've been running with him in teams for the last five or more years, you know, we already know Peter and how great a guy he is, but it's just amazing for the rest of Australia to discover that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, and the camaraderie too just seems so strong in the athletics team as well. I mean, you know, some of the scenes we had of you guys sort of sticking around obviously with no crowds and kind of cheering on everyone along those lines. I mean, it just seems like such a great atmosphere that everyone from the race walkers to the discus throwers to the sprinters to the hammer throwers can all kind of come together and I guess have this great team environment.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I think there's been a lot of work in Athletics Australia and particularly amongst the athletes to sort of make a team that's really supportive of each other and just like a really safe and welcoming environment for people. So we had Ange Blackburn is an Indigenous woman and we had a welcome to country in the staging camp in Cairns. And I think that was the first time that we've had something like that in the staging camp. And she was just saying afterwards about how it's made her feel so much more welcomed and safe in that environment. And yeah, I think those sorts of steps that we've been trying to take and there's more steps to go on that journey. I think is just means that the teams just perform so much better because everyone's just feeling good. We're able to look after each other. Everyone's a bit less stressed out and just able to focus on getting their best performance.
BEN WATERWORTH: In terms of you mentioned before about how you had qualified for both 20 and 50K and obviously ultimately had to make a decision between the two when they sort of move them around, what was the decision to focus on the 50K besides the 20K?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, I think there's a few factors going into it. So we sort of looking at the 20K and the 50K, there's a lot of really fast guys at the moment in the 20K men's event. And it's really, really challenging to get a good performance or high finishing performance there. Whereas looking at the 50K, we were sort of assessing that as a little bit weaker, a little bit easier to get a top level performance there. So just strictly from a performance perspective, that's like, okay, maybe the 50K is a good idea. And then looking at my own physiology, I've got a really, really good exercise economy at the 50K race speed. And so I coach with his experience. Brent Valence, he coached Jarrod to a bunch of his Olympic medals. He coached Dixie. He's coached a lot of really good athletes. So I trust his opinion on that. It's like, well, 50K is probably my most suitable event if I have to pick between one or the other. And so that was like another thing in the 50K thing. And then also because, you know, Dane Birdsmith had qualified in the 20Ks, but then we also had Kyle Swan and Declan Tinge knocking on the door. Unfortunately, Dane had to withdraw just because of that family illness thing. I suppose it meant that in practice, it may not have necessarily been an issue, but it just meant that if I stepped up to the 50K, there was room for more walkers and the more the merrier, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it worked out for you. Top 10, you finished eighth, a personal best. I mean, you must have left with a pretty big smile on your face to kind of walk away with that achievement.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I suppose I didn't really walk away because I hopped straight into a wheelchair.
BEN WATERWORTH: Bad choice of words, Ben. You probably don't want to walk for a while after a 50k race walk, right? Push me around, everyone, right now. I'm tired.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: A few people have talked to me about my interview after the race when I was sitting in the wheelchair. It's like, well, at least people have got something memorable.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, all race walkers give great interviews. Jane Savile wanted to shoot herself up to Sydney. Dane kind of had everyone jumping and getting arrested in Rio after winning a bronze, and there you are collapsing in a wheelchair. I mean, there's something great about race walkers post interviews.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: It's just our personalities, you know, but it's absolutely over the moon, especially this Olympic cycle. You know, not like before Rio where I've been studying at university, I've been working full time almost the entire Olympic cycle. Last few months leading into Tokyo, it was just sort of winding down to part time a bit. But yeah, I think probably my field, I was the highest finishing person who's not a full time athlete. So I was able to take that away from myself. And in terms of setting myself a personal challenge and something that I can tell as a story to anyone that wants to listen or is a captive audience and has no other choice in the future. It's like, well, you know, I pushed myself. I did the longest event on the athletics calendar, and I did it whilst I was working full time. You know, not everyone can say that. And yeah, you know, it's working full time in an office isn't the same as, you know, laboring as a brickie or whatever outside every day. But it's still challenging. It tires you out, and you've got to travel and get ready. And sometimes, you know, you don't have as much time to train as you might like. But yeah, I think there's definitely a few of those other stories amongst the team. I'm not the only person that's managed to compete and go well at the Olympics whilst working. And on top of that as well, everyone had to navigate the pandemic in their own different way, and everyone's got that story to tell about how they navigated those challenges. So I think for a lot of us, just getting there and getting to the end of that journey and being able to say, OK, well, this is my story now about how I went to an Olympics during a pandemic. It's something that it'll make a lot of us in terms of what our story is going forward to our friends and family and whatnot. So yeah, I think we can all be pretty proud of the way that we acquitted ourselves.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is, it's always going to be that unique aspect of the Tokyo Olympics that any athlete who competed there can talk about being it maybe the weirdest Olympics ever, essentially.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: The Olympics held in an odd year so far.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. Yeah. And still cold 2020. Like it's kind of, you know, they didn't even cave for that sort of thing. But I mean, on that, was the extra year a hindrance or a benefit for you in terms of kind of how you went?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: So for me, I think definitely a benefit. The pandemic's been really, really crappy for a lot of people. But for me, I've been really privileged that it's kind of worked out well for me. Working from home most of last year meant that I just had a whole lot more time in my day to train. And even when I was in Melbourne, I could only go out for an hour of exercise a day. I could still have a treadmill in my garage and train as much as I wanted on that. And being in an event that I can just do that was really fortunate. I was really fortunate. I still had work. My fiance still had work. And having an extra year to just get the training volume in for the 50, I think probably the difference between top eight this year and probably something a little bit further back in the field last year. So all in all, I've been really privileged that the pandemic's probably worked out as a net benefit for me. And I think probably not too many people are in that boat. So I've been conscious of that. And I've just been trying to think about things that I can do in my community and within the sport as well, just to try and share that privilege and make it a little bit easier for people that maybe aren't having as an easier time of it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, I've learnt this is probably a bad question to ask Olympians who have just come back from the Olympics, Rhydian. But kind of moving forward, is Paris a goal right now? Is it too early to kind of ask that question? Kind of what are your thoughts in the next three years towards the next Olympics?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, the good thing about this last on the big cycle being five years is the next one's only three years long. So is it going to make it a little bit easier? Sometimes those commitments, the more years you're adding on to the commitment, the harder it is to make it sort of anything for time out. But I'm hoping if weddings aren't banned this year because they were last year, we had to postpone to get married at the end of this year. And yeah, so maybe priorities might change at home. But in terms of, yeah, maybe, maybe not.
BEN WATERWORTH: Maybe, I mean, I don't know, like it kind of does change a few things. You never know.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: But yeah, between that and then, you know, see how my body is going, see how my motivation is going. I think I'd like to go and have a crack at Paris and the 50k event, unfortunately won't be there. But yeah, I think I'd like to have a crack at it and at the very least, like say that I gave it a shot. But at the same time, you know, there's, has my body going to hold up? There's a bunch of great young walkers as well in Australia that I might have to be fighting for a spot. So it's not necessarily going to be as straightforward as deciding to go for the Olympics or deciding to be there. But yeah, I think for me, particularly at the moment, I'm just happy to take it one year at a time. It's going to be a pretty crowded calendar by the looks of it next year with the Birmingham Commonwealth Games and the Oregon World Championships.
BEN WATERWORTH: And they're pretty close to each other as well, aren't they? They're very close.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: There's just enough gap that in theory, a walker could do the 20k, 35k and then Commonwealth Games triple. But you'd want to be pretty fit to be able to do all of those and expect to be walking at your best. But the good news is after that, I think 2023 should hopefully be a little bit of a quieter year. I suppose they would be still at World Championship in 2023 just because everything's been thrown out of whack with their calendars. But yeah, it'd be nice, hopefully, to have a little bit of a quieter year and then push back up the hill for Paris.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is there, I guess, as an athlete in a Commonwealth nation, I mean, does a Commonwealth Games take precedence over a World Championship or other way around? I mean, kind of, how do you, I guess, rank either how you go or, I guess, the prestige? I mean, how do you kind of weigh up if you had to choose between a Commonwealth Games and a World Championship? Because usually they're not in the same year, of course.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, well, I think generally speaking, from a high performance perspective in athletics, at least, I'm aware that they consider a World Championship higher than a Commonwealth Games. But I think as an athlete in the Commonwealth Games, you know, you get chances to win medals or compete where you might not otherwise get that opportunity just because you're not facing the entire rest of the world. You know, that can be a reason, I think, why some athletes would prioritise the Commonwealth Games, and I completely understand that. But I suppose in preparing for one, I'd be preparing for the other next year. So I don't fortunately have to worry too much about prioritization, but also the walk event will be 10 kilometres in Birmingham. So it's going to be a little bit of a step down from the 35 kilometres if I do that. And it'll just be interesting to see if I can, well, firstly make the team and secondly, just testing my range. Like, can I step down?
BEN WATERWORTH: For you guys, isn't it?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I had some really good 10 kilometre performances earlier this year. Myself and Declan Tinge had a couple of really good races where we walked quite quickly. And I think we're ranked third and fourth in the Commonwealth this year on 10K times. So that's behind Calvin Wilkinson from England and Evan Dunphy from Canada. And it was really good to see, I know you mentioned him before, it was really good to see Evan win his bronze medal.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was going to bring up Evan quickly because you obviously mentioned about how Paris is no longer having the 50K. And Evan's been very outspoken on the fact that that's been dropped in favour of the mixed relay. I mean, what's your kind of take on them dropping? Because ultimately it all comes down to, they've only got a certain amount of medals they can give out, so I guess they're scrapping one to bring in another event. But I mean, it baffles me that something like the 50K, which to me is one of the top events in the athletics program, has kind of been scrapped.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, so I think it kind of started a little bit. There was a push to open up the 50K so that women could compete in the 50K for gender equity purposes. And obviously, when it's a new event, it's stepping up like that. It takes a few years for the field to sort of mature. But yeah, I think there's been some sort of ongoing issues with walks don't attract a huge crowd. And unlike running, they're not really a big money spinner. So it often costs more to hold a big walking event if it's a standalone event compared to running events. But yeah, I think as well, I'm not entirely sure what's motivated the decision to include a 35 because you just wiped out a bunch of history from the 50 kilometre event. And you've got a distance that is just seemingly drawn out of a hat that's some bit of an in between distance. It's not a marathon distance. So people have got no reference point to a marathon with it. And it's good to have it like, you know, like the same number of events, male and female events. It's good that that's finally happening. And the mixed relay or teams or whatever event it is that they're trying to come up with, I just feel like it's a little bit confusing. It doesn't really do anything to make the walk any more interesting to people that don't watch the walk or don't enjoy the walk. So it feels like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. It's not really doing anything that makes the walk more interesting to people. And if anything, it just annoys the people that already like the walk and are passionate about the existing history.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is fair because I thought it would be, and no disrespect to the 20, but I thought if you're going to scrap either, you'd scrap the 20 because that's got a lesser history than the 50, kind of as you're mentioning with the history behind the 50. So it's kind of, and I guess does that keep it on parity though with the fact that you've got a 20k in the women, so you've got a 20k in the men and women, and then you've just got the mixed relay rather than confusing and saying, we've got a 50 for the men, a 20 for the women, and then a mix in the middle.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I don't know. I think some of the issues with the 20k and shorter events is that people are walking that fast that it starts to become really hard to judge. And then sometimes, you know, a lay person that doesn't know a lot about walking might be like, hey, they're not actually walking, they're breaking the rules. Whereas in the 50k, you know, you're slowing down a lot more. So that's less of an issue. But and one of the things I was looking at for that was investigating shoe chip technology that did the job of judges. But that's not really been able to take off. And that again is just another really, really big expense. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think something that might have made a bit more sense and I think could be more easily solved to the general public would be turning it into half marathon and marathon distance walks. And again, that would kind of get rid of the any history of the 20 kilometre event. But at least then it's like, OK, what's standardised to what people are running and gives people that do half marathons and marathons the big city events a bit of a reference point about how quickly people are actually walking.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, that's a good point of doing that. Maybe that's something they can sort of adapt in the future. Now, Rhydian, we're going to get to some fun questions close out, but two things I've got to touch on quickly, including the one that I'm very excited about. The first one I want to ask you about sports environment alliance. Now, you're very passionate sort of about the environment. Label yourself as an eco athlete, which I'm very intrigued to hear a little bit more. Tell us a little bit about sort of what you're doing and hoping to achieve kind of while working with the sports environment alliance.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yes, eco athletes is actually another group that I work with. I suppose that doesn't make me an eco athlete, but it is actually a group called eco athletes as well. Sports environment is more sports environment alliance is more Australia, New Zealand athletes sort of based and eco athletes is organised by a guy, Lou Bloustein, who lives in New York, and it's a fair bit more international. So there's people from North America, Europe, Oceania, all involved in that. And it's basically a recognition that sports contributes to global warming climate change through the carbon emissions used to hold events and travel to events. And we have a responsibility to do something about that. And then also sports connects with people in a way that politicians often struggle to and sometimes scientists as well struggle to in terms of getting to particular audiences. And yeah, just for me, trying to find other people who are like-minded, who are athletes that want to do something about it and just talk to their communities about what the issues are and also what we can do about it. I think it's particularly important just to empower people to help them feel a little bit less despondent about things. Even if I only make a small impact myself, if we all work together to do that, it's going to be necessary to achieve emissions reductions at the speed that we need to do. We need all hands on deck in that respect.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is there a place where people can check this out? Is there a website or places they can follow to see what you're doing and maybe also get involved themselves?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: So the Sports Environment Alliance has a website and they've got social media as well. So you can just type into your web browser, Sports Environment Alliance, or search that up on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or what have you. And the same with eco athletes. And you can sort of follow things that they're going on. And it might take you, if you're interested, to go in a bit of a wormhole about different people who are involved in those organisations and what they're talking about. And yeah, this... I lost my train of thought.
BEN WATERWORTH: You're on the show, you're doing well. This is Off The Podium. This has always happened.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, to this day, I was Off The Podium.
BEN WATERWORTH: This is what we've tried to realise actually recently, Rhydian, that we need to stop getting these medallists on the show. We're called Off The Podium, for god's sake. Screw the medallists. You know, they can have their moment in the sun. It's all about being Off The Podium.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, it's certainly like connecting with people and just making climate action accessible, I think, is really important. You know, looking at the Black Summer bushfires, that was really a bit of an activation moment for me about, shit, I've got to do something about this. I can't just wait for other people to do something. And we're seeing, you know, in the Northern Hemisphere, there's been bushfires or wildfires everywhere, massive heat events, massive flood events, you know, climate change is here, it's doing stuff. Now, the venue for the World Championships for athletics next year, Oregon, the US Olympic trials this year, they actually had to postpone some morning sessions because of extreme heat there. So it's impacting sports, you know, re-impacting regional and rural sports, community sports as well. If there's a big drought, how do you water your cricket pitch or your cricket oval? Sorry, footy oval or whatnot. Yeah, it's going to be really hard to adapt to. Even the decision to move the walks and the marathons from Tokyo to Sapporo was based around trying to reduce heat risk. Didn't really pay off in terms of the conditions that we had to race in, but that again just underlines the issues of climate change. On the buses to do the drinks for the women's marathon, there was a volunteer who was telling us he'd moved to Sapporo 40 years ago, and when he first moved there, they maybe had two or three days above 30 degrees per year. Now he was saying that it's two or three weeks a year. It's going to take a big team effort for us to all reduce our emissions, and particularly coming from wealthier countries, we've probably done a lot more in terms of emissions. Then again, as sports people that are travelling, we're probably doing a bit more than the average person from Australia in terms of emissions. Things that we can do to reduce our own emissions, and then just also push businesses, push our sporting organisations, push governments to take the steps that they need to take to make everyone able to reduce their emissions to zero as soon as possible is going to be critical.
BEN WATERWORTH: Great, great cause there, and good to hear so much work is being done there. Yes, Sapporo, a host of a winter Olympics of course in the 70s, and here they are getting weeks above 30. That's crazy. The other thing I wanted to touch, and I mentioned this at the very beginning, now I love on your Twitter, it literally says Rhydian The Cat-Sitter. Now please, Rhydian, as much as I love hearing about your Olympic exploits, I'm a massive cat man. So I really want to know, tell me more about cat sitting. I want to know how did this come about? What do you do? Give me everything to do with the cats right now.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Oh, well, I kind of awarded myself that nickname because a few weeks before I was going to go off to the staging camp in Cairns, I had just come back from my morning training and done some shopping. It was just unpacking the shopping and I heard this meowing outside and I looked out the window and there's just this cat staring at me in the back courtyard, meowing at me. And I was like, what the hell are you doing here? And I opened the door to go outside to investigate. And the cat basically just bawled it inside and I was like, great, I've got a cat now. The cat didn't have a collar on and none of the vets were open on the weekend. So I just had to look after it for a couple of days until it was Monday again and had to borrow someone's cat carrier so I could take it to the vet. Fortunately, the cat had a microchip and had a home. So I thought it was better off going to its own home. And I think there's probably laws against just stealing random cats that walk into your house.
BEN WATERWORTH: Maybe not exactly, you know, encouraged basically.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, it's sort of a bit funny being like, help, I've got a cat, what do I do? Because we don't have any pets at home.
BEN WATERWORTH: Has it encouraged you to get one now? Like when you get married, are you and your fiance going to get a cat now?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: My fiance is not much of a cat person, so I've got a bit of work to do on that. But you know, there's time, we can work on it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Plenty of time. You can call Ben. There you go, call the cat Ben. You're welcome. You can have my name.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Oh, a couple of friends actually nicknamed it Tokyo for me, so I think that might be its name.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, that works. Yeah, work on the fiance. That's the hard part. But just come home. Just like, oh, look, another cat.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: The funny thing is, my fiance's been sending me some photos of where she's seen the cat walking around over the back fence or whatnot.
BEN WATERWORTH: Spot the cat.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I've just been like, well, I'm not here. Have you told the cat that I'm away?
BEN WATERWORTH: The cat misses you. Oh, that's gold. Love it. Please keep that on your Twitter forever. Just the cat sitter. I think that's perfect. Now, Rhydian, we'd like to close out our interviews with a series of fun questions. Now, these are based off Team Canada questionnaire that they gave to their athletes prior to Rio and Pyeongchang and just a series of fun questions to get to know you. Now, they're easy answers. There's no right or wrong. It's your opinion. But as always, if you want homework, they ask you to draw a couple of pictures. So again, we had Bob Slutter, Ash Werner doing it. So if you want to kind of compete with the winter athletes, you can be our first summer athlete to draw. If you're that bored there in quarantine, I can give you some homework.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I've got to work on my drawing skills.
BEN WATERWORTH: Six figures are acceptable. We'll say that. I mean, the first one here is draw a picture of a Canadian animal. So if you've ever wanted to draw a beaver or a moose, you're welcome to. What is your favourite ever Olympic moment? And you are allowed to answer your own Olympic moments, of course, too.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I think probably for me, Cathy Freeman in Sydney winning the 400. And it's got to be it because, you know, it was just like really united the country. And, you know, it was only six years before that where it had been quite controversial for Cathy to have the Australian and Aboriginal flag with her when she won the Commonwealth Games. So to see everyone celebrate her and she could run with both flags, it was applauded. I think was a big moment for Australia in terms of, you know, taking a concrete step towards reconciliation. And we've got a long way to go. There's always seems to be an issue popping up in the AFL and their cultures there. But we're making progress. And one of the other things I do as well as being a Sports Environment Alliance ambassador is I'm part of the AIS's Shari Yan program, which is just sort of trying to empower athletes. And they can be Indigenous or non-Indigenous to be a part of the reconciliation process and sort of help push those processes along within their own sports. So for me, that's an important moment just as much because of that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, no, definitely a where were you moment in Australian history when we all remember where we were watching that no matter how old you were. So 21 years later, we still sort of remember that vividly. If you could choose any Olympic host city, where would it be?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Like one that's already hosted in Olympics or?
BEN WATERWORTH: No, it could be anywhere. Like it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, it could be Hobart if you want to give it to us. I mean, anywhere you would like to see the Olympics be hosted.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, I have to say, I was pretty excited about Tokyo just because I really, really like Japan. But I mean, it's just been there, so a bit hard to award it back to them.
BEN WATERWORTH: Give them the full experience, though, with the fans and the atmosphere and everything along those lines.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I don't know. It would be another country I like is Ireland, so maybe I'll award it to Dublin.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if they've ever bid for the Olympics Dublin, but that'd be a pretty popular game to having it in Ireland. That'd be a fun place to have the Olympics, I can imagine.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, maybe so.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, maybe one day. In your spare time, what do you most like to do?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Ah, this depends what's available, but I've got lots of fruit trees around where I live. I've got a fig tree that hangs over the back fence. Neighbours got a plum tree over the driveway, and there's a bunch of crab apples and apricots and prickly pears across the road from me. So I really like when they're picking some fruit and making some jam and sharing jam with people.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was going to ask that because I saw on your Instagram plenty of jam pictures. So is this a Race Walkers secret or just a Rhydian Cowley secret?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I think it's just me. It's something that I guess is a bit of a mindfulness, relaxation thing as much as anything else. And sometimes I'm a bit crap with getting people gifts. So if I cook my own jam and just share some jam, then people won't realise that, and they'll think that I'm really good and generous.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, that works. Just don't listen to this interview.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Before I went to the Olympics, I planted a couple more trees across the road because there's already the fruit trees there. It's like an unofficial orchard. So hopefully in a few years' time, there'll be some more blood oranges and crab apples available.
BEN WATERWORTH: And is that your go-to jam? What's your go-to, your favourite jam that you do make?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Absolute favourite has to be the crab apple.
BEN WATERWORTH: Nice.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I guess not a super common fruit, and it's sort of almost cherry-sized, but it's a bit tart. Not many people will necessarily like it when they eat the fruit, but the jam is just out of this world.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow, getting me hungry now all of a sudden. I've sort of got a follow-up question to that very shortly, but what is your favourite workout?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I was going for a casual Sunday three-hour long walk on the beach.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think I saw on one of the lead-up newscasts they did on Channel 7, and I'm not sure if it was you or one of the other walkers walking around Albert Park. Is that sort of a go-to place in Melbourne that a lot of the race walkers do go to?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, so a lot of the walkers in Melbourne are kind of spread out geographically. I'm in the northern suburbs. There's a few people in the eastern, southeastern suburbs as well. And then my coach lives in St. Hilda West, and Jemima Montag lives sort of a few suburbs down next to the beach. So it's basically central for us. And there's a good walking path along the beach. You can head down. I think we've only ever got as far as Black Rock, but you could probably keep going further down if you wanted. In that direction, in the other direction, you kind of walk to the Yarrow and under the West Gate and sort of the exhibition centre and then back around. And then, you know, you can do laps to the lake as well. So it's just really good for being able to get out there and have a long walk and hopefully not get heckled too much by cyclists as they're going past you.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I'm a big F1 fan and I've actually, like, I go there every year and I only, it was about two years ago, I finally took myself to Albert Park for the first time outside of a Grand Prix and it was odd because I'm like, I know exactly where everything is from a Grand Prix and all of a sudden I'm like, this is really weird. But I guess for most people in Melbourne, it's the other way around. You probably never go to the Grand Prix and it's just a standard lake and a park for you. So it's kind of weird when the Grand Prix is on.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, and because the Victorian Institute of Sport and Lakeside Stadiums at Albert Park, it's actually a pain in the ass when the Grand Prix is on.
BEN WATERWORTH: I actually love it during the Grand Prix when you go past the Aquatic Centre and you see people still doing laps and you've got the people who have kind of like gone up to the nosebleed section and it's obviously just having a sneaky look at the cars as they're going around basically. It's just a different... It's hard to imagine when you're there and if you didn't know a Grand Prix was held around those streets, just how they manage it. It's insane how they can turn that parkland into a world class Grand Prix circuit.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, it seems to take me about a month by the side of it to set it up and take it down. So, you know, it's like three months or two or three months of the year where it's just a bit of a hassle.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, you guys right now are loving the fact it's been cancelled two years in a row. You're like, sweet, great, extra months so we can walk around. You know, screw the Grand Prix.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Grand Prix is great to have, but yeah, it's some, I suppose, small quirk.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. If you could have lunch with any one person, who would it be?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Um, well, I think asking me about that now, I'd probably say my fiancé, because I haven't seen her in five and a half weeks.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's a solid answer. Five and a half, wow.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: So, you know, it's not as long as some people go on between seeing their family with the pandemic. So, you know, I've had it easy again in that respect.
BEN WATERWORTH: Do you have virtual lunches with her, like every single day? Like I'm going to call you right now, and we can eat a lunch together.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, we've been calling each other basically every day. Even when I was in Japan, you get like a Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp or whatever, you can still do video calls. It's usually more being like dinner rather than lunch. But yeah, it's not quite the same as in person.
BEN WATERWORTH: We've seen all the videos recently of all the swimmers finally returning home. So is she going to be waiting for you like at the airport? I think it was, um, Caitlin McEwen had a dog waiting for there at the airport. I mean, if you, I mean, your cat, they can find the cat. She can bring it, you know, to the airport. There it is waiting for you as you arrive.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I'll have to put that out in the community Facebook.
BEN WATERWORTH: I want to see it.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I suppose Melbourne's in lockdown at the moment, so I'm not too sure what it'll be allowed in terms of whether it's a permitted reason to leave home, to go and pick up an Olympian and take them back to their house.
BEN WATERWORTH: Happens once every four years.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: We'll see. Hopefully, if I can't see her at the airport, I'll see her at home.
BEN WATERWORTH: Hopefully, yeah, hopefully. Now, it's kind of follow up as mentioning before, you mentioned about the jam, so I don't know if this will fit into this question, but what is your favourite sandwich?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Um, yeah, may as well just say crepe apple jam sandwich, hey?
BEN WATERWORTH: That works. That's a good one there. Second bit of homework, if you want to do it, there's a drawing here of what the coolest Olympic medal would look like. And the athlete I'm using here, it's a bit of a strange one. But anyway, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, that's a challenging one, isn't it?
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm thinking cat-like reflexes, just on the other side, to be like...
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I don't know, I don't already have cat-like reflexes. Actually, if I had cat-like reflexes, I'd probably be in a ball sport or a team sport or something like that. So, that's how you know. Yeah, I think for me, probably something like being able to turn invisible would be pretty cool, but yeah, I don't know what I'd do with that.
BEN WATERWORTH: You could work in the race walk, you could just kind of like hide, you know, 5k from the finish line and there I am. And you're in the lead.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Just hide in the pack.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly, they would know. They've got no video evidence or anything else before then. So, yeah.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: But then there'd be questions like, where'd you come from? You weren't racing, you weren't in the pack.
BEN WATERWORTH: Was that woman, was it the New York or the Boston Marathon in the 80s or something like that? They found that she caught a train halfway through or something along those lines. She was an unknown and a controversy there.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, that happens in a few marathons. Usually it's not one of those big city ones and usually it doesn't end up feeling like someone.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I'm a five-time winner of the Hobart Marathon. I just show up at the finish line. Hey, I won. There it is. What is the best candy in the world?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: It's pretty hard to go past milk bottles, I think.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh yeah, that's a good one. They don't get answered enough. I like milk bottles. Go for the milk bottles. Good answer. As a kid, who was your favourite sports team?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Favourite sports team?
BEN WATERWORTH: I like to ask the tough ones here on Off The Podium, really get people thinking.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, I thought you said these were fun.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, apparently I'm discovering they're not that fun.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I don't know. I mean, I suppose watching the soccer rules was pretty good. So I might go with that one, like especially in the Oceania glory days.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, yeah.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Chalking up like 26 nil, 31 nil, just absolute floggings.
BEN WATERWORTH: Archie Thompson scoring about 15 goals against American Samoa. I mean, come on.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, it was pretty good to win a World Cup match. It's not the same as winning like 30 nil.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. And that just leads us to hate the Italians all these years later after their diving exploits in the round of 16 in Germany, right? So we're still not going to do that.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, exactly.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, everything in Italy is great. But when it comes to their soccer team, I'm sorry. I just can't, you know, I'm a Ferrari man, but I can't not, you know, overpass the fact that they cheated, arse of a quarterfinal spot in the 2006 World Cup. Screw you, Italy. Um, your favourite sports movie?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Ah, hmm, probably Semi Pro.
BEN WATERWORTH: Ah, yes, good one. I like it. I always seem to ask this now, sort of with some of the sports we've had on recently. I mean, we've obviously touched on Kath & Kim, Malcolm In The Middle with Race Walk. Has there ever been Race Walking in a movie or a Race Walking movie that we should know about?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Ah, not that I'm aware of. I think I do recall that there was like a show in Canada that Bill Nye, I think it was, was, I had like a few sketches where he was a superhero called Speed Walker. I'll have to go look that one up to refresh my memory, but maybe if you ever speak to Evan Dunphy, you can ask him about that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, well, we're trying to get him back on the show. I mean, he's a busy man now, a bronze medallist, he's getting all these sponsors for the Kraft Dinner and everything. He might be too big for our show now. I don't know. We got him for a long time.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, he's got his own face on a box.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Pretty impressive.
BEN WATERWORTH: Where's your sponsorship deals for the macaroni and cheese in Australia, Rydian? I want you on, actually no, cat litter, probably not the best sponsor, but I mean, you love cat, with the whole cat sitting thing, you could be on a bag of that.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I just have to start my own jam brand, I think.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, there you go. Rydian Jam, coming soon. The last one, if you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I mean, I'd suppose I've had the option to, or chance to move and live elsewhere, but I do really enjoy living in Melbourne where I am, particularly in my suburb in Forkney, it's just a really good community around. We've got a great community garden on an old lawn bowls is green. So yeah, I'm pretty happy if I had spent the rest of my days there, to be honest. I think I could live in a lot of places, but yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: No place like home, that works very well. Rhydian, it's been a pleasure to chat with you today, before we let you go, anywhere people can snapchat with you, social media, websites, anything like that, you want to sort of plug that people can follow you on?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Well, in terms of social media, yeah, I'm on Twitter, Instagram, I've got a Facebook page. I think it's about, you know, you can tell my age because I don't have like a TikTok or anything like that.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's what I always say, it's a Kesha song, right?
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yeah, what's a TikTok? Is that the sound that a clock makes?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, those biscuits, remember those biscuits? That's what they are.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, those ones. But yeah, otherwise, like if you're interested in, like what athletes are doing on sort of sport and climate change, then you're following people like Sports Environment Alliance. Eco-Athletes, there's another group run by David Pocock, the Wildebeest player and his wife called Frontrunners. They do a lot of good work as well. Those are some things that you can check out. I'm also doing some work for a charity called Fairshare who's having a fundraiser in October. They're the Australia's biggest network of charity kitchens. There's lots of people doing it tough right now with lockdowns and maybe they don't necessarily have work. It's important to make sure that people have got food on the table and not just any food, like nutritious food. Being able to support that and food security, I like a good social cause as much as anyone else. If I can do a little bit to help people make sure that they can get through these tough times, I'm all for that and really happy to be supporting that initiative as well.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: So that's fair share, it's spelled F-A-R-E, share.
BEN WATERWORTH: Perfect.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: I suppose fair isn't like food, instead of fair is in like fairness.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, we'll help people get directed there. Rhydian, as I said, a lot of fun. Keep up the great fight out there with all the causes that you are involved in. We look forward to seeing you return in Paris in 2024. And we also look forward to more cat pictures once you get one after your wedding, because I'm sure your fiancee will cave and you will get a cat called either Tokyo or Ben. I'm going with Ben, but if it really has to be Tokyo, I'll have to get two, won't I? Yeah. We'll bombard you, we'll remind you.
RHYDIAN COWLEY: In the meantime, as long as Melbourne is locked down and I'm working from home, I can just keep an eye out the window and take photos of any passing cats.
BEN WATERWORTH: And a big thanks to Rhydian for his time there, a lot of fun. And I really do hope that his fiance lets him get a cat come after the wedding, or anytime soon. So there you go. And for those maybe listening outside of Australia who have never seen Kath & Kim, just maybe YouTube Kath & Kim Walking and get an idea of kind of their take on the great sport of race walking. Very funny stuff indeed. Plenty of stuff still to come your way. We're gonna continue on the athletics trend in our next episode, Matthew Denny, discus thrower, fourth place in Tokyo, also competed in Rio. And a very interesting athlete, because not only is he a discus thrower, he's a hammer throw thrower. I think that's the correct terminology. And kind of had to choose between the two, but actually won a silver medal in the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in hammer throw. And one of a very few group of people to compete in both hammer throw and discus at world championships or Commonwealth Games levels in the same event, basically. So very fascinating chat with Matt and I'm sure you're gonna enjoy that one. So stay tuned for that one coming your way next. In the meantime, remember to hit us up on all the social media channels. Simply search for Off The Podium. You'll find us all on there. And also hit us up on all the podcast channels. You can subscribe and stay up to date with all the latest episodes. Go through our backlog, back catalogue, I should say, the backlog of the back catalogue and find all our old interviews and episodes that you may have missed along the way. And we're enjoying bringing these to you as we hope you also are enjoying them. Let us know what you think. Leave us some feedback. We'd appreciate the comments to let us know what you're thinking of the show. In the meantime, thanks again to Rhydian. Thanks for you for listening. We'll speak to you next time on Off The Podium.
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