Episode 603 - Nikhil Alleyne Interview

[upbeat music] Nikhil, welcome to Off The Podium.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

I, I am excited, mate, to have you on the, on the show, because fun little background, uh, I, I met Hamish, who works for Trinidad & Tobago, uh, Skiing Federation, on the ground in Cortina.

I was literally getting my photos taken with the Olympic rings, sort of, uh, near Italy House, if I'm not mistaken, and, uh, we got talking and we ended up sort of spending a couple hours together and, uh, learning about each other while we're there in, in Italy and all that kind of stuff.

And he was telling me about yourself and Emma and kind of just this history that you two were creating.

So I love these kind of ways that I can connect with people to then get people like yourself on the show, because I'm sure you're, you're getting a lot of attention yourself in terms of just this history that you created earlier this year, and has life kind of calmed down a little bit for you? We're recording this a few months after the Olympics, but I mean, has things sort of settled back now into normal life, or is it still all buzzing from the Olympics at the moment?

Yeah, it's definitely calmed down.

Um, I definitely had a lot of attention, more than I expected, I guess.

Uh, but since then it's, it's calmed down kind of to normal, I would say.

And you're just sort of back in California now, kind of back into it.

Are you sort of back into training, uh, already, or do you kind of allow yourself a bit of time off before sort of things get back into skiing mode essentially?

Um, I haven't, uh, I, I've kind of decided not to ski as much, um, at the level I was before.

I, I would definitely do it for fun, but I, I haven't competed yet and, um, I haven't decided whether I will continue to compete.

Right.

Um, so I guess it's also a calm time for me, like, after a lot of skiing where I can decide kind of what to do next.

It's, it's always that awkward question to ask a, an Olympian after an Olympics, will you go onto the next one? And unless you're sort of absolutely gung ho, you know you're going no matter what, it's kind of always a, a time for, for reflection.

But it's also, I guess, it is a moment where, as we're discovering from a lot of our returning guests and, and guests from Milano Cortina, that it also allows a, a bit of time to, I, I don't wanna say relax, but, uh, given how intense a lead up to an Olympics is, at the end of a regular season you probably don't get as much time off as you do.

So even before you kind of, sort of working out what you're doing with skiing, did you find yourself, uh, you gave yourself a bit more extra time than a regular season that you've been doing to relax a little bit?

Yeah.

Like, I definitely feel like, uh, I have relaxed and the leading per- leading up period, uh, to the, the games was a lot of training, which I really enjoyed.

Um, but now I, I feel like I'm at, I'm at the point in, in my career where, uh, I'm not sure if it justifies to keep skiing, uh, considering I wasn't at a World Cup level or anything like that.

We'll, we'll get into sort of all that and how that progression started.

But you started skiing when you were two, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah.