Ali Day

Yeah, how good.

Joey, it's a tough sport you're in, and you mentioned Ali Day.

He's been a leader for many years and now retired, but you look at you guys when you're doing it, and you've got all the different skill sets, right? So you're good at the border.

You're good at all of it, right? Yeah.

I slap myself sometimes, and there's definitely a couple of things that I do that show that I'm nervous.

wow but I've always found that they everyone would get nervous

right 100% even your veteran like an Ali Day he still

would 100% he definitely would have techniques to work on it and I've done a bit of breath training now and I'm hoping to implement that this season maybe not quite as much sprinting across the sand and slapping myself across the face that might still be necessary I like it Joey I like it a lot

Mm.

Because the Ali Day effect is gone.

Mm.

I believe that for the last five years, everyone in-- especially come the Coorong Gold, but even on the other side, everyone has been training and racing to beat Ali at his game because he was-- he's so good, the only way you beat him is if you beat him doing what Ali does-

He's not there.

Mm.

We see-- I think we see very different tactics and different, different strategies from a number of athletes, not only in the Gold, but I think across the entire scope of the season where Ironmen are no longer racing the Ali Day way-

Mm

Like, there are people who are amazing and they seem so fast and they're so amazing.

But Ali Day wasn't a nipper champion and he's the best.

The majority of our surf sport athletes that we speak to on this podcast will tell you that they were not the front of their pack.

They were not the winners.

I get what Ben's saying.

It is good to see when someone's wearing 27 next to Ali Day's number one.

You go, oh, he's having a good race, but that's kind of the only purpose they serve.

You're like, oh, okay.

And I'll name drop here.

And I beat the multiple Australian champion, multiple New Scotland Ironman champion, Ali Day, up the beach that race.

So he's a pretty incredible human.

And he's only just retired this year.

But as an endurance athlete, I get how hard that sport is.

And Oliver is from New South Wales.

You know, he, he was influenced by great sports people and like Kai Hurst, for example, and, and he was so proud that he was, got to race against people like Ali Day and, um, uh, amazing.

And also had a, a real great influence from his dad and dad was resilience.