So I kind of want to maybe hand it off to you if you want to first give us some idea as far as who you're handling and how you're involved in this battle.

Yeah.

So for those listening who may not be aware, I'm the head coach for Team Great Britain.

And so just our policy goes that whenever we have two lifters in the same weight class who are essentially really close and tight and, of course, vying for the same goal, which is to win and to place as high as they possibly can on the podium, then from an ethical standpoint, we believe that the most ethical thing to do is to split the athletes.

Right.

We feel like you can't play chess against yourself.

And so therefore, it would not be fair for me to be calling numbers for both athletes, because ultimately, regardless of how much integrity you have at the end of the day, in all likelihood, you're going to want to favor you're going to end up favoring one athlete over the other.

I want to give you a chance to kind of give our listeners maybe a little background of like, you know, before the days of social media, Instagram, how did you, Matt Gary, find out about powerlifting and what powerlifting is all about and got into the sport and got into coaching? Yeah.

so a little bit of ego boost for you there but he basically said you know in theory personal coaches are great for calling your numbers so maybe when it comes to building the subtotal they have got a slightly better eye in terms of what does my lifter have left but when it gets to those decisions around placing on the deadlift what you're pulling for what you need versus what you have that's where the experience of an actual game day head coach is really important and i guess i wanted your opinion on that you are the game day coaching man so

Well, I certainly appreciate the affirmations and the encouragement that people have said about me.

That's always nice to hear.

Yeah, I have literally and figuratively been on every side of this coin or every side of this cube, if you want to call it that, outside of being the elite athlete myself.

So, I've been a national team head coach.

I've been an assistant.

I've been a personal coach.

matter what sport you watch there are going to be people disagreeing with referees in all ways this year felt particularly worse especially i usually try and avoid talking about it i am a referee myself and i know when i'm in the chair things look different when they're on camera that is a fact you're not in the referee's chair you don't really get a valid opinion a lot of the time this year however with the new bench rule in particular there was just a lot of inconsistencies throughout the whole championships and i'm not going to sit here and say do you agree there were some terrible terrible decisions i'm going to sit here and say do you have any thoughts on i probably should have prepped you for this one do you have any thoughts on what can maybe be done i think the bench press is the easiest example with like the new upper body thrust rule and the inconsistencies there the depth rule do you have any thoughts on like productive ways for us to deal with it?