Greg Rutherford - Strictly Gold

Full transcript: Greg Rutherford on London Real

5:28 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Greg Rutherford, Greg Britton’s most decorated long jumper who won gold at the 2012 Summer Olympics here in London, which I watched, and recently bronze at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. You’ve recently been cutting a rug on the wildly successful BBC show Strictly Come Dancing and having way too much fun doing it. Your new autobiography titled Unexpected, I’ve got a copy right here, talks of your rough childhood and the realities of being a professional athlete and an Olympic celebrity.

5:59 Greg, welcome to London Real. Thank you very much for having me, Brian. I really appreciate it. Awesome to have you here. We have to first talk about this tank that you were driving down Regent Street in London.

6:09 I mean, I checked your Twitter feed before you come over here and you’re literally on a tank. Is this what happens to you when you win gold medals? One of the most bizarre scenarios I think I’ve ever come across. Literally, we’re about to walk into a shop. I needed to buy a scarf because I was a bit cold.

6:24 A tank starts pulling down the road and I thought, I’m going to take a quick picture of this. I got my phone out. The bloke standing on the top of the tank went, Rutherford just pointed at me like that. And all of a sudden, he’s like, get on the tank. And I was like, oh, well, I’m not going to say no to getting on a tank.

6:37 I’ve never been on a tank in my life. And then he proceeded to drive up and down Regent Street on a tank. One of the strangest things that’s ever happened, I know that’s never happened before, and whether or not it’ll ever happen again, I have no idea. But what an incredible scenario to find myself in. I think that happens all the time.

6:54 Actually, I do get very annoyed if I’m knocked on a tank when I’m in London. It’s become the norm, yeah. I mean, you know, I picked you up downstairs, you know, the taxi driver has taken selfies with you. You know, is it because of Strictly Come Dancing, has that popped your way up there, or is it the culmination of a lot of the things from the Olympics? You know, people know who you are.

7:15 It’s a strange one, isn’t it? I mean, we sort of rolled the clock back just four and a half years ago and nobody would have batted an eyelid. Now, the sort of joint efforts of what I’ve done over the last four or five years, athletically, and then being on what is the biggest show on British TV, Strictly Come Dancing, that has meant that people do want to stop and talk to you. They do want to have a selfie with you and they want to have a conversation with you, which is still really weird, but really, really nice as well.

7:42 Nobody ever has an adverse thing to say to my face. I mean, sometimes your troll on Twitter will pop up and say whatever they want to say, but no, it’s a great thing to be recognised, but it’s a great thing for people to want to talk to you about positive things, because I think that’s hugely important in life. If you’ve got positivity around you, it makes you feel good, it makes you want to enjoy what you’re doing. And generally, that’s what seems to happen, and it’s really nice.

8:05 I really enjoy talking to people as well. Yeah, that’s real fuel as well. Now, we have a lot of Americans watching. Can you explain the phenomenon that is Strictly Come Dancing? And you guys had a show in Blackpool, in the Indian north of England recently, and there were like 12 million people watching, like 50% of the people on television in Britain were watching you.

8:25 But for people that don’t know, what is it all about, and why did you go on it? Strictly Come Dancing, I believe, was the original, and then Dancing with the Stars and whatever else is branched off into different countries all over the world. I mean, it’s been picked up in so many different countries now, and it’s hugely popular. It’s a fascinating prospect. Now, I was first asked to do Strictly probably three years ago, and I was thinking, I’m going to take a big break after the Olympics this year, probably just going to sit around and enjoy all the foods that I normally can’t eat during the season, get probably a little bit fat, and then go back to training.

8:53 So it was either do that or learn to dance. I decided to learn to dance, and I think I’ve been very, very lucky. I’ve asked a lot longer than I expected initially. What I found with dance was that I couldn’t pick it up quickly. And for someone like myself, who my body is my tool, it’s how I earn a living, when you can’t work it how you want to work it, and your brain is sending down these signals to do things, but it just doesn’t want to do it.

9:16 You have to overcome so many sort of markers on that route to not get too frustrated, not to get too stressed, and know that it will hopefully be okay in the end. It was something that I thoroughly enjoyed stressing my body about and getting to a point where I could become better at something that I’d never known before. You really have to have a lot of confidence to do these numbers, right? Yeah, and that became easier as the weeks went on, and the more you become used to the surroundings, the scenario, and what you’re doing, it becomes a bit easier.

9:44 And actually what I found was, as weeks went on, I was learning the dances quicker, which meant that I could put a bit more of me into it and a bit more of the persona of the dance, and I fully got into the character. I all of a sudden found myself acting as if I was doing some form of show or a TV program or a movie or whatever else, because I got so into it, and I got so into the dance as well, and it was amazing. When this started, that was the one thing I thought I could never do.

10:09 I’ll never be able to take on the acting role, and then a few, 45, 6 weeks in, I was acting, and I was really enjoying that aspect of it, because within my life, there’s never been anything that has meant that I could do that, because when I go out, I mean, yes, okay, I might say sometimes I’m injured at a competition, and I pretend I’m not injured. I’m not acting, though, because I still know what I’ve got to go and do. Run in a straight line, jump into a sand pit.

10:32 It’s very, very simple, especially when you’ve done it for 15 years. Now, the idea of trying to do what we’re doing, which is acting, that was something that did take a bit of time to overcome, and actually, once I got rid of the silliness, I really enjoyed it. What about the self-expression part, because, you know, as humans and then British humans, we don’t get the chance to kind of let our hair down very often, and, you know, you’re expressing yourself through wins and through doing these things, but did that feel good, a nice outlet?

10:58 It did feel good, actually, yeah, and that was something that I really did enjoy as that went on as well, and fair play to Natalie. She took it all on board every time and was very receptive to all of it, went along with it, thankfully, and I think we created some really nice moments, purely because she was up for doing that, but I had to come out of that show, and I had to understand that, actually, these sensations that I’m feeling and things I want to express, you just have to do. In the mode that is dancing, it seems you just have to go with it, and that was a lovely breakthrough for me and actually made the whole process a lot easier to enjoy and really got there and do something different, and you’re right, there’s never been a time in my life where I’ve expressed myself in that way, but I really enjoyed it, and I would definitely say to a lot of people, try those things, go outside your comfort zone and actually see what happens, because often it’s really liberating.

11:44 Yeah, it’s the original form of communication, if you think about it. Exactly. And so you’ve got to kind of embrace it. Do you think you’re going to be dancing after this? Yeah, possibly.

11:53 I’d like to. I think what will happen is, once I finally retire from track and field and I actually have time on my hands and I’m not travelling all over the world for that, I think then I could probably take on some, not some courses, maybe some classes with some people and see if I can continue to learn, because it was great fun, it’s hard work, it’s good for your body, and as you say, the expression side of things I think are a wonderful thing to do. Okay, now the show itself comes with lots of baggage as well, emotional stuff, people watching, and there’s the so-called curse, right, where everyone’s like, okay, what’s going on with the partners, and I don’t even know the whole history, but do people get married or people got divorced or like, is that also stressful at the same time?

12:33 I think probably if you go into the show without the understanding of that side of things, then probably, and do you know what, if you’re not in a very comfortable place in whatever relationship you’re in, or if the dancer isn’t, then maybe it becomes a problem. I think what I was very fortunate with, Natalie is engaged and getting married soon, I’m with a long-term partner with a child, we were both very, very comfortable with what we were doing. So it never became like that, it became more like brother and sister relationship between the two of us.

12:59 Actually, on this show this year, I mean there has been previous years, there’s been marriages that have been broken up, people have got together, babies have been born, et cetera. Whereas this show, I don’t think any of that’s happened. And the whole strictly cursing that people love to talk about, I think if you’re looking for that, then it’s more likely to happen. But if you go into it wanting to learn to dance and actually have some fun, then I don’t think that will come about.

13:21 But you never know, you might meet somebody that you think that you’re in love with or you do love and they’ve changed your life, then humans will be humans and that will happen. Is it true that you brought your partner Susie in there and you had to get her to stop looking at your partner? Do you know what? Susie came from a dancing background so she fully understood everything of how it goes and all this sort of stuff and being very close to somebody else.

13:46 And yeah, and she said after the festival, she was like, do you know what? Natalie is really, really attractive, isn’t she? She’s like, I find myself watching her more than I do you. Which was quite funny. But again, for me it was an amazing support system because Susie fully understood.

13:59 Getting into it after, again, the first week because she was like, look, you need to be quite sexy with it. You need to get involved and make it look like actually you and her are sort of having fun and whatever else. Don’t be so worried about everything. And to have that I think helped me hugely because I could completely switch off that worrying side of the brain that’s thinking, oh, am I getting too close or whatever? Because you don’t know, you might be going to dance and there’s your partner’s face right here and your something else is a bit awkward.

14:25 But it’s not to a dancer, it’s just a job. And thankfully for Susie, she knows what that world, that’s how it is. So it was never a problem. So for me I could relax again and act a bit like we were talking about because that’s hugely important. If you can’t fully relax with your partner, then it’s very difficult.

14:41 Yeah, that’s nice she supports you that way. Yeah, hugely. Because otherwise you would be like, oh, can I do that? And you’re selling this weird dream when you’re out there dancing. It’s like this couple, it’s obviously not real, but it’s kind of real and you’re kind of with each other and in the moment.

14:56 Yeah, when you’re telling a story, basically through the medium of dance, then it has to be believable. For it to be good, it has to be believable. And for me to have first of all an amazing dance partner who choreographed some fantastic dancing for us, plus a partner who loved watching them and was really supportive, it meant that I could fully enjoy the experience. So there’s never a point where I had Susie being like, oh, I can’t believe you’re doing this, whatever.

15:19 It was always do more, be better. And I think that’s really, really important. And I think that sort of transfers to every walk of life. If you have a good support group around you, you can really get the best out of people. And that’s what’s been brilliant for me, especially over the last three months and through my career.

15:34 I generally try and surround myself with people who are very positive, have the same common goal as you and enjoy the process of getting to that goal. Very nice. Just last question on Strictly. When it comes to the people on there, are there kind of head games being played? Are you guys supportive?

15:50 I know you came out recently and said, are you ready to give Ed Balls a bit of a break? Yeah. I mean, do you kind of feel like you guys are all in this together and that you’ve got to kind of look out for each other? Yeah, hugely. As much as this is a competition, now this was the really interesting thing for me as a sports person and a competitor.

16:05 Normally every competition I go into, it’s all about winning for me. That’s all that matters, me winning the competition. Whereas with Strictly, it was something more than that. It was nothing to do with me being better than people and winning. It was just about how much self-improvement I can have to last as long as I possibly can.

16:21 And I was out of my comfort zone, as is and where everybody else on there. So I understood what they were going through. They understood what I was going through. It is difficult. It is hard work.

16:30 So you become this big group, this big unity of different people from all different walks of life that are trying to achieve the same thing. And do you know what? If X beats me or I beat so-and-so, there’s not any animosity towards anybody. It’s purely, oh, that’s good. Well done, you.

16:46 You were better on the day. Fantastic. I will support you and go on from there. I was beaten by Claudia at the weekend in Blackpool. And fair play to her.

16:53 She’s a better dancer than me. Like, you can’t begrudge anybody who does well or has chosen to do well. It’s not their fault. And it’s exactly how I feel with Ed Balls. Ed is trying as hard as anybody else.

17:04 He’s working as hard as everybody else. And he’s improving. So I don’t think anybody can begrudge to the fact that he’s doing Strictly Come Dancing and getting better. That’s the whole point of the show. Yes, he’s not as good as some of the other people out there.

17:15 But, I mean, we would be a terrible politician compared to him. Or having the understanding of how the world works compared to him. It swings around about in that way. And if people are voting for him, fair play to him. If he wins Strictly, I think it would be brilliant.

17:27 And the reaction on social media in your life to the whole nine-week period, was it what you expected? Strange. Obviously, you get some haters in full, but you get some supporters as well. Yeah. What do you make of it all?

17:39 Mainly supporters. What’s lovely about the audience that watched Strictly is they all seem to be quite nice people, which is really, really lovely. Because, again, within track and field and stuff, I think it’s very difficult as a sports person, actually, because when you come across, and you know what, actually, actors may find the same thing. They’re portraying a role that people don’t like. They don’t like you.

17:56 And it’s the same thing with sport. If somebody looks at you and they see you looking quite arrogant or focused in a way that might come across that way, automatically people turn around and go, oh, he’s arrogant, or she’s arrogant, or I don’t like the way she is. But you have to bear in mind, when you’re competing at the highest level in the world, there has to be this level of you in your head that thinks, I will win this, and I will do everything in this competition that it takes to be better.

18:18 And if that means having a look on my face that people don’t like, so be it. But you find that some people will come out the woodwork and they’ll be like, well, I don’t like Greg Rutherford, for example. He’s arrogant. I’d like to think that when I’m away from the track, I’m very approachable and will talk to anybody and have a good time with everybody. But, yes, when I’m on the track, I want to win.

18:35 And you have the same with Strictly, because all of a sudden, somebody doesn’t like something you said in a VT, or somebody didn’t quite like your dance compared to somebody else’s, and they’ll turn around and go, well, you’re rubbish, you shouldn’t even be in this show. But then, generally, 99.9% of it is all very positive, how it’s affected people. Again, a bit like London, actually, how a couple of people cried when they saw certain dances or how they really enjoyed the partnership between me and Natalie.

19:00 It was a very, very positive experience and one overall that social media actually took a nice turn to, which is great from my point of view, not to have as many trials as I normally have. Because your social media following went, you know, through the roof after London eliminated. It did. It went from 6,000 Twitter followers to 100,000. Yeah.

19:21 And now it’s continued to grow, so you know what that’s like to get a lot of new people and a lot of good and bad exposure. Yeah, definitely. And you find it and you have to learn very, very quickly how to manage both, because when it shot up as it did after London, it was all completely positive. There was no adverse responses at all. And then all of a sudden you find you’re having normal conversations on your Twitter that you would have done, say, a week before.

19:44 Now there’s a lot more people watching and people will have different conflicting views to you. And from that flippant comment you might make about somebody on a TV programme or you watch a performance playing sport, now there’s a lot more people to have a go back. You might have had one person before that you have a little debate with and then it’s done. Then all of a sudden I make a comment about a football team or a player or something else, and all of a sudden you might have 40 or 50 people just throwing and hurling abuse at you.

20:11 So, for example, through my Twitter now, I choose not to talk about football. I might say some very, very small things, but generally I won’t speak about football because it invokes this strange response from people where it’s like a tribal animalistic view where they just want to attack you and be that verbally. I mean, in person they’d never do it. But you have to learn how to manage those sorts of things because when you are in the public eye, people will love to disagree with you.

20:35 And that’s been a really interesting mix. But again, what I’m very lucky to have is that people want to talk about good performances in athletics as it has been for me for the last five years. Shows like Strictly have been very, very positive. So the vast majority of people are very positive and that really is good for you because each day you have people saying lovely things to you. It can only help and motivate you to go on and do more good things.

20:59 Let’s talk about the book, Unexpected. Yeah. I was pretty much taken in from the beginning. Oh, brilliant. Those first three pages, you know, you start out, you’re at the Olympic Stadium in London, 2012.

21:10 80,000 fans. Normally you can tune the fans out. That night it’s just, you can’t tune them out. It’s charged. You got Jessica Ennis crossing the line on the 800 meter.

21:21 Little do you know, after you’re done, Mo Farah is going to cross from the 10,000. Yeah. Can you describe what that was like? It’s still very, very difficult. I think what was brilliant at the time was the fact that I couldn’t quite fathom the magnitude of the event because in my head, if you think about it, I watched Jess, sorry, cross the line and it was like, my friend is just one Olympic gold medal.

21:47 That’s amazing. I was like, I want a bit of that. And then I stood underneath the Olympic flame as Mo crossed the line and became an Olympic champion and I’d just become an Olympic champion. I was thinking, that’s brilliant. Mo’s just become an Olympic champion as well.

21:59 At that point, I didn’t realise actually what that meant, that within that 45, 46 minute period, winning three Olympic gold medals was something that Great Britain had never done in a single session of athletics and it was dubbed obviously Super Saturday. And for me, it’s so hard to put into words because the one thing that I’d always dreamt of from a young age was becoming the best in whatever sport that I could make it and I tried so many different sports to find what would work for me. It just so happened that running and jumping into a sandpit was the thing that I was better at than anybody else.

22:32 And in that moment, I achieved it all. I achieved the dream. And to put that emotion into words is the most difficult thing at the time. What I was dealing with, when I realised I’d become an Olympic champion, was I didn’t, I physically didn’t have an idea how to compute what was going on in my head because I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry, I wanted to run around screaming, I wanted to jump and crowd surf. All these different things are just sort of shooting in and out of my head of what to do.

23:00 How do you deal with the fact of, at 25 as I was at that time, I’d achieved the ultimate goal in my sport? What do you do? And bear in mind before that, I’d never won anything. And you’d had a tough time in Beijing. Yeah, I’d got ill in Beijing.

23:15 I’d woken up the morning of the final with tonsillitis, lung infection and kidney infection. I had to still deal with that, finished 10th. Nobody, I think, ever expected me to go on to win an Olympic title, apart from myself. And again, obviously my family, incredibly supportive, and the coaching set up that I had, amazing to get me there. But what you find with all of these sort of achievements is that nobody’s going to tell you you’re going to do it.

23:40 You have to actually go out and do it yourself. So when you’ve put in all that hard work, when you’ve gone through the stresses and strains that are professional sport, be that injury illness, getting into places at times where you think, why am I bothering doing this? So then all of a sudden have the holy grail, if you like, of achievements within your sport. It’s nearly impossible to put it into words, but it is one of the greatest feelings that I’ve ever had.

24:05 And to share that with the 80, 82,000 people in that London stadium and with two other people I knew was exceptionally special. And I knew at that point, never again in my career would I experience anything close to London. It was the greatest thing and the greatest moment. And I’ve tried within unexpected the book to actually get across how you feel. And again, the similar emotions as I’m describing now and the lead up to how I got there and then what transpired subsequently after that.

24:36 But it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever done. I think that the birth of my son is obviously far more important and to me the greatest thing ever. But winning the greatest thing as I see it in my sport will always be one of the greatest moments of my life. Is it a bit difficult to go from something where you just said the greatest moment you’ll ever have? I mean, to know that it would be very hard to touch that.

25:01 I mean, does that make it hard to live? Or for you, it seems like you’re like, I did that and now I can move on. Well, what was quite interesting with me again, I think because nobody expected me in London to win. It became a bit of a shock to people and people were saying, oh, wow, this guy’s managed to win. And then it turned to, as it very typically does in the UK, from, oh, wow, that was great.

25:20 They were like, oh, yeah, but it’s a one-off. It would never happen again. He fluked it. I mean, he shouldn’t have won, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it goes on, and it always happens in this country.

25:28 UK is key for it. You’ve probably seen it a million times in the press. A great sporting icon has one bad competition. All of a sudden, they’re terrible. Andy Murray has a child, and all of a sudden, he goes on, oh, now he’s had a child who never win anything again.

25:39 He’s sort of going, he must be tired. You go, hang on. Give the guy a chance. He goes on, wins Wimbledon again, currently world number one. The media will turn on you very quickly, and that’s what I found as well.

25:49 And I had to sort of go back to it and go, but you know what? I want to prove people wrong. The thing that I think I’ve been trying to do my entire life from a young age is prove people wrong about me. I think I came from that sort of area where I always wanted everybody to like me, which I know now is impossible, but as a kid, I never understood why people didn’t like me, and I’d try and change their view of me. And in the early part of my career, everybody believed that I was going to be the guy who would never win anything, and I’d probably fail at some point, and I’d go off into oblivion, and nobody would ever remember me.

26:20 But I was determined to go out there and become not just good at what I did, but one of the best ever, and that was what motivated me. So winning in London actually was a massive kick start for me to go, do you know what? 1-1, let’s win two, and then if I can do it, maybe let’s try and win three, and let’s win as many major championships as I possibly can. So my name becomes synonymous with the event of Long Jump in Great Britain, and that’s how I wanted and dreamt for my career to finish when it does finish probably within the next few years, maybe after the next Olympics.

26:52 So it really fueled you. Completely. And you said once that you had, quote, a ridiculous, belligerent belief I would be successful. Yeah. And do you know where that came from?

27:01 No. Is it genetic? You know, I think it is. I genuinely think it is, because I’ve met a lot of people who’ve been very talented in their lives, sportingly especially, and have never gone on to achieve great things. And I think having this sort of killer edge, if you like, and this desire that no matter what happens, you will go on and you will succeed is something that I think often you can’t train, definitely not in a sporting sense, but it’s something that you have to have in it, but you have to hone it as well, because there were so many occasions in my career when it looked like it was never going to work.

27:34 I had so many injuries, illnesses, problems. I had a few different coaches that it didn’t work out with sadly, and I moved on, finally created the perfect environment for me to train in, the perfect environment for me to thrive, but still nobody expected me to become what I became, but I did. It was just me. And again, I said it as an inherent belligerent belief. I always said I would go on and achieve great things in whatever sport I turned professional in, and as much as everybody told me I wouldn’t, I think I loved the idea of proving them wrong, and that’s where I got to and how I got to where I am now is, no matter what you said, and do you know what, even if I still hadn’t achieved anything to this point now, I’d still tell you if you’d have met me on the street that one day I will win something major in my sport because that’s how I approach it, and I do the things now that I know works for my body, alongside obviously what my coach knows and people around me, in order to succeed, and you win the first, everything else becomes not easier, but much easier for your head to fathom, for you to understand how to get there, how to do it again, and forever more I will always believe that even if you’re more physically gifted than me, on the day, I have a good chance of winning because I won’t believe that you’re better than me.

28:48 I will always believe that I have the ability to beat anybody, and I think that’s why I actually went on to win the five major championships that I’ve now currently got under my belt, and hopefully will go on to win a couple more. Do you think all great champions have the darkness inside of them that makes them, because you’ve seen talented people come and go, and they have the talent, and they just don’t know what to do with it, and they don’t get their stuff together, they don’t show up, but it’s sometimes the slightly less talented people that have that thing they’ve got to prove. You want those people to like you.

29:19 I’m going to show those. We heard Michael Jordan is still bitter about some of that stuff that he does, and you see a lot of great champions, they still have something like, I’m going to show those people. Do you think that’s what, is that what it takes to make a champion sometimes? I think to a certain degree, I think often what you find is, the better you become at something, the more people dislike you, which is a really strange scenario to find you in. There’s always a lot more that love you, believe me.

29:40 There’s, to every thousand that like you, you’ll always remember that one person that said that nasty thing to you, because for whatever reason, it resonates the side, and you’re like, I don’t want to prove that person wrong now, because again, they’ve said something, I feel that that’s unfair, why don’t they like me like everybody else? It’s definitely something I have, and I think the human brain will always interpret praise and adverse responses in that way. You remember the adverse ones a lot more than you do the praise, because especially if you’ve got, say, Twitter feed, and you’ve got 20 people said a nice thing, one person said a bad thing, you remember the bad thing, and that’s that inherent thing of keep believing and wanting to make people think that you are good, and often the people who are quite good get told they’re not good by a lot of people, and so this thing, it’s like a self-perpetuating scenario where somebody will say something bad to you, it’s like, right, I’ll prove them wrong now, and I had that within the media, some people who were meant to be experts within my sport, who said, oh yeah, it’s a fluke, he’s not doing the right things, he’s not good enough to go and win again, I was like, well, I’ll prove you wrong then, and I’d like to think that I have done, but still, to this day, people will turn around and they’ll say whatever they want to say to put it down, and that’s, it’s a very frustrating world to be in

30:49 When that’s the case, because it’s as if there’s nothing you can do to prove people wrong, but you have to get to a state and a stage, and I think I have done now where you accept that people aren’t going to like you, you’ve got to accept that not everybody’s going to love the fact that you jump long into a sandpit, it’s not exactly going to change the world, but you just go along with it and say, okay, fine, you don’t like me, but at least these people do. Do you think great champions ultimately compete with themselves? I mean, I’ve had people like Chris Eubank in here, six-time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates, and Dorian said to me, I said, what did you do when you won Mr. Olympia?

31:22 How did you celebrate? He said, I didn’t celebrate, I was supposed to win. I went back home, went to bed, and I started training the next day, because for him it wasn’t good enough, or for him he was supposed to win. Are you the same way? Yeah, I think so, yeah.

31:36 I mean, you were talking to me tonight about London and how you should have broke the world record that night and won. Yeah, the British won. Yeah, no, it’s one of those ones I think we always want to do better, and I think it’s a strange thing, isn’t it? You achieve something with anything and any walk of life that you go into, you achieve what you think is the best thing you achieve, but then a day later or even the night, you go, yeah, but if I would have done this, it would have been even better.

32:00 And for me, it’s always been like, no matter what I’ve won, there’s always been, yeah, but what if I would have done this? For example, in Beijing when I won the World Championships, I set a stadium record in what was the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium from 2008, so I broke the stadium record there. So it’s the longest jump that’s ever been done in that stadium, a really big thing. But I only took four jumps. I passed my last two, and I was in fantastic shape, and I was thinking, and I think to this day, well, if I would have taken those last two jumps in a completely unpressured scenario when I was jumping well, could have I jumped much further?

32:31 And could have it become a really, really exciting competition from that point of view? I don’t know. I’ll never know. The thing is, I jumped the second longest jump of my life and won the World Championships, the first British long jumper to ever do that, but still that was never good enough for me. Every single championship I’ve won, I remember more of the adverse than I do the positive from that championships.

32:51 But equally, that’s probably why I’m still competing, rather than just saying, okay, I’ve done it, I’ll leave it. For me, there’s always that perfect jump. I may never get the perfect jump. I may never actually fulfill what I believe I have inside of me. But I’ll keep chasing it until I’m physically unable to do so.

33:07 Because for me, yes, it’s been very successful. But until I get the jump that I deem is good enough, and probably it will never be good enough, no matter how far I jump, I will keep striving to get there. Because, oh, really, you want to look back at your career and say it was brilliant, it was great. As it stands, even with everything I’ve done, I still don’t allow myself to believe that. Yeah, and I can tell, and it’s in the book, and you’re hard on yourself, but I think that’s what makes a champion.

33:32 And again, like you said, it’s not always pretty when you see champions succeed, and we see it in fighting, and sometimes they have to be really nasty, but that’s all part of the game plan. And sometimes you have to have that game face or act in a certain way to get yourself in the zone, and maybe it’s the part that not everybody wants to see. No, completely. But it’s a reality. After 2012, your life changes.

33:55 You’re on more red carpets than you can throw a stick at. People are, come here, do this, hotel rooms. What’s that year like for you? Oh, again, very hard to put into words. It was so very full on all the time.

34:13 And for me, sadly, I don’t think it was particularly well managed at the time. The people who were dealing with the management side of it didn’t really know how to deal with it, what to do. So I spent the best part of three months post 2012 absolutely everywhere. And it was manic. And bear in mind as well, before that, I don’t think I’d ever been to a film premiere or whatever else in my life before I’d won in London.

34:35 Now I’m at every single major film going. I’m walking down red carpets. People want pictures with you. Life changed dramatically. And for me, at that time as well, I guess I didn’t really know how to deal with it because I never experienced anything like it.

34:49 My management didn’t know how to deal with it because they were borderline incompetent. And you get to a point where you just want to go back to normal, if you like. And it was great. And I loved it. And I had a fantastic time post London.

35:00 But by the time December came around, I was starting to think in my head, I need to go back to being an athlete now because remember all those people that told you it was a fluke. You still need to prove them wrong. You can’t have too much fun. You need to go out there and get back to it. So I started off 2013 basically traveling the world, trying to find the setup because what people didn’t realize after London for me, my coach went back to America.

35:22 My physio went back to Canada. The training facility that I used out of London was no longer as it was before. I had to completely recreate what I’d found to become an Olympic champion. So I set off on this epic voyage to try and find it. And that involved being in America multiple times, Australia, basically circumnavigating the globe in order to try and figure out what to do for me.

35:44 And eventually it found itself manifesting a training environment in America and actually being based there for long periods of time. But 2013 was incredibly difficult and we’ve had such a high as I had at the end of 2012 and the build up towards that because it was a special time for me. I started winning major competitions in the build up to London and I became the world number one. I became Olympic champion and then all of a sudden it all fallen apart again.

36:09 And by the end of the season in 2013, I sit at home with a ruptured hamstring not making a world final because I’m injured. And looking back and thinking possibly, are some of the people that have written me off already, are they right? Was it a fluke? Can I not do it anymore? And the one thing that came from that major injury that year was this constant fear that possibly I could get badly hurt again.

36:34 And it was a very close to career ending injury, sorry. And could it happen again? And that’s always, in the back of your mind, there’s always a fear of that. And I think people who can go on to succeed again, you manage to suppress it enough at the time of when you need it in order to still succeed. And I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do that.

36:52 But there’s always this nagging sensation. If it happened again, maybe that would be it for me and my career could end in an instant. Yeah, because that wasn’t just a hamstring tear. That was a rupture. But anyone who’s ever done something like that, you never know when it’s going to come.

37:07 And the last thing you need is a seed of doubt when you know you need to push it an extra 5% harder that day because you need to get stronger, you need to train more, you need to go make another 10 jumps today. But then you’re thinking, but wait a second, if it gets ruptured again, it’s really all over. Yeah. It’s hard because you can’t really be conservative if you want to be a champion. No, completely.

37:24 And that is the big sign of it. As to be a champion of anything, you have to be a major risk taker as well. And putting your body on the line is something that anybody who does sport or anything that tests the body is what you do pretty much every single day. But alongside that, mentally, you have to be challenging yourself as well. And you have to work around the fact that there’s always, in the back of your mind, this little knowing that if it happened again, possibly that would be it.

37:46 Your career would end in that instant. But you have to somehow figure out roads of getting round that and not dwelling on it too much. I think a lot of people, sadly, and I’ve seen it a lot within sport, they have one injury and they’re never the same again because they can’t switch off that part of the brain, which is always telling them that something’s wrong or it could be wrong. I think anybody who goes on to win multiple championships, especially after an injury, I think I’m very lucky in this way that I know it could go wrong, but why not enjoy that ride until it does go wrong and do everything you possibly can to win until it goes wrong?

38:18 If it goes wrong tomorrow, blind me, I’ve not had a bad sort of four or five years and because I challenged myself, I still won. I have to find a new vocation in life as and when it ends for me. Be that tomorrow, be that in four years’ time. But you have to push yourself and do the things that meant that you became that champion in the first place to maintain it and go on and actually become better. That’s great advice to anybody in any field.

38:42 You have to keep pushing the limit for what got you there in the first place. And with you, I would think the success of Strictly Come Dancing, it’s in a weird way diversified your portfolio to where I would say you could go even more in on that next goal or that next championship because you’re like, I’m going to go hard on this. I know I can do other things, but while I’m focusing on this, I’m going to go big. Yeah, completely. And part of Strictly Come Dancing was, I think, a tester for me at new things because I am getting slightly older now.

39:09 When it comes to track and field, I’m now one of the older guys out there. I’m not one of the young guys anymore. I know within the next few years, I will be retiring. I’ll be finding a new walk of life for me to throw all of my heart and energy into as I have done with track and field. So giving something like Strictly Go meant that I would get a taster of that and get a taster of being behind a camera every day, being mic’d up all the time, moving around, doing things that become stressful at times, but equally it gives you an opportunity to experience that because for me, I would love to be involved with TV going forward.

39:39 I do enjoy that side of my life. And Strictly Fell this year at the perfect time. As I said, I was going to take a long break. I wasn’t going to be doing anything. Why not do something where 10 million people get to see, if they like you, brilliant.

39:52 Make a few friends at places like the BBC, etc. And when you do finally announce your retirement, hopefully you have this seamless transition into something else. And as I say, with the mentality I have and the work ethic that I like to believe I have, the next thing that I go into within my life, I fully expect to do as well as I possibly and physically, mentally can because I will always put everything into whatever I decide I want to do in life. And that’s why I became, I think, an Olympic champion as well.

40:21 And I wouldn’t advise this to everybody, but I sort of let schooling fall by the way so other things didn’t become important to me because I had, as I said, and as you mentioned, the belligerent belief that I would become greater at what I do. And that’s why I’m sitting here now. I took the risks, I took the gambles, I still do to this day. And I’ve been fortunate enough for it to pay off. So going forward, hopefully the risks and gambles again will pay off and I can win another world title.

40:48 And then depending on how my body is, maybe go through for another Olympics, who knows? You’ve had a few months to process it. What happened in Rio de Janeiro? Yeah, still a bit of disappointment for me. And funnily enough, I think strictly was great from the point of view of helping me not dwell on that too much at the time.

41:05 Was that engineered intentionally? No, I mean, the thing is, I knew going into Rio I had a good chance of winning again. And I was in great shape, especially early on in the season. I mean, blimey, I was in the best shape I’d probably ever been in. And I thought this could be the time, I could become that guy who becomes double Olympic champion in my event.

41:23 And I mean, I think Carl Lewis is the only person within the long jumping world to do that. So I thought, this is the year. And sadly for me, three weeks before that Olympic final, an injury struck and I tore an adductor close up into my groin. On the night, a few things went wrong. The fourth round was deemed a foul, which was then reinstated as not a foul.

41:45 So lots of things basically worked against me and didn’t fall into place as they had done in previous championships. So having strictly afterwards was very nice for me to not dwell on it. But it’s very, very difficult when you now go into championships, as I have done as, again, a previous five-time champion of different majors, being the defending champion of that event and then not winning it again. That was very, very hard for me to accept and take because what had happened in the years previous, even if people had challenged me, I’d always responded, no matter what, and I always ended up winning.

42:18 And all of a sudden I was in this scenario where I’m in the final round of an Olympic Games. And the borderline agony in my groin hurt so much. I know I don’t have much left in the tank, but I have to muster something to at least salvage a medal. And probably if I, and I won’t see it like this yet, and I know I can see it like this one day, but I won’t yet, when I look back at my career, depending on if it ends tomorrow, arguably the Rio performance is probably the best of my career due to the fact of where I was in my career.

42:49 The injury that I was sustaining, the pain and the feelings that I was having during that competition, and the fact that I kept responding still, no matter what happened, I still managed to win a medal. Probably the best performance I’ve ever had, but it will never be good enough because I didn’t win. And that’s, for me, why I do what I do. Winning is so important to me and succeeding at that level that when you don’t, it’s very, very difficult to take. And you have to accept it, you have to move on.

43:19 For me, again, if it ate me up too much, then I wouldn’t carry on. I wouldn’t be an athlete anymore because I wouldn’t be able to because it would just destroy me, as I’ve seen it do to other athletes and other people. But it’s hard. I believe if I wouldn’t have gone into that Olympic final with the issues that I had, I’d have had a very good chance of winning again. Did you have the inner ear infection as well?

43:40 Yeah, so early on in the season, I suffered a whiplash, which was so severe and I lost complete hearing. Has that happened when you were in the pits? Yeah, so I basically, I jumped three days before I jumped in Birmingham and in Rome, so I’d won the Rome Diamond League as well, jumped really well there. But I sort of developed a rather stiff neck coming out and it happens ever so often. I went to Birmingham for the next time and I was thinking, I won’t bother with it, I’ll skip it.

44:03 And I was like, no, actually, I have to. It was in Birmingham. I did it, one bad landing, severe whiplash, couldn’t move my neck the following day, lost all hearing in one ear. So I then had to deal with that as well and we had to figure out how to fix that and I competed in the European Championships. I managed to win the European Championships but I was in quite a bit of discomfort with my ear and trying to figure out things.

44:23 The most frustrating thing about that ear issue was the louder the crowd got, the worse it became for me. Because I love crowds, I love it when people get behind you. But the problem was, the more noise that was coming out, the more distorted this ear became, which then meant that my brain couldn’t quite process what was going on around me. So it was a really, really annoying situation to be in and we’ve sort of discussed it with multiple people. The turning point in the season of 2016 seemed to be when my ear went, because I’d had the greatest opening.

44:53 I broke the British indoor record earlier in the year, in February in Albuquerque, in America. I then went out, I jumped, opening competition, jumped to the best I’ve ever jumped. I then went to my second one. Again, the best second competition I’ve ever had, longer than the first one. Came back, won the first Diamond League.

45:09 Everything was going perfect for me. And then this happened. And then it never seemed to get back on track. And then the groin injury happened. And you’d get to this point where I’d had clear ears and I hadn’t been having these sorts of injuries and issues anymore.

45:21 I mean, the ear one was obviously a freak incident. Probably to every million long jumpers, only one will ever get something like that. But it just happened, it was me. I’d had appendicitis while out in America as well. I nearly had my appendix out.

45:34 It was probably about 10 minutes before going under and decided, now I’m going to skip this and go and see a different doctor for a different opinion. So many things went wrong in 2016. So, to break a British record, win a European Championships and get an Olympic bronze medal is probably good on one level. Yeah. But it would probably take me 30 years to realise that that was good.

45:52 The fact that you’re saying it, it means that you’re on the way to, I guess, probably accepting that. Yeah, yeah. The other thing is as well, which I think I’ve been quite good at in my life and career, is that I know I will be beaten at times because you can’t win every week. It’s impossible to do that. And the people that do that, it lasts for a very short period of time.

46:10 So, I know I’m going to be beaten at times and I accept it from a young age. And probably the fact that I spent the first five, six years of my career being beaten all the time, I know what it’s like. And I always know that I will come back stronger at some point. So, yes, OK, I finished third at the Olympics this year. I aim to win the World Championships next year and get back on track and go back to winning weights because that’s what I love doing.

46:32 That’s where my brain is processed and programmed to go towards. And I will be working incredibly hard to get back on track. How do you run down that plank when you got a torn adductor and not fall over or try to favor one leg and not be crying of pain? I don’t even understand how you could even jump, let alone get a bronze with that kind of injury. Yeah, adrenaline is an incredible thing when you want something and you’re telling your body.

47:02 Now, I do a really interesting thing. I talk to my body pretty much throughout every competition I do and I will it to do well. And it’s as if, it’d be funny, it’d be like you talking to a dog. I would talk to my body how I’d probably talk to one of my dogs and reassure my body. And it’s probably, again, it’s a mental trick for me, for myself.

47:22 But I remember after the fourth round, which was one of my best jumps in the Olympic final, I put a lot into it. It’d been deemed as a foul, which wasn’t a foul. But I went back and sat down again and I was like, okay, buddy, just give me one more big jump. One more and we’ll leave it there. We’ll say that out loud.

47:36 Yeah, I’ll say it because I sit away from everybody else and I’m sort of on my own. I’ll have small conversations with myself and I’ll talk my body into believing that it can do it. And it is as if I would talk to one of my dogs. It’s a bizarre thing to do, but it works. And then going into that final round, because round five for me didn’t go particularly well, going into the final round, I sat there and I was in a lot of pain and it was very, very painful.

48:00 And I just had a talk and I just said, look, this is one more jump. After this jump, it doesn’t matter. You’re stopping anyway. Your season’s finished. Just go out there and let’s try and win this still.

48:10 And no point was I settling for any other medal or still looking to win it. And I believed even up until the moment that 829 came up on the scoreboard that I still had a chance of winning the Olympic title because it happened before, I’d won before, I know I had the ability to do it. Sadly, my body just wasn’t quite in the shape. But it is what it is. It’s a bronze medal.

48:31 I can’t complain. The first Brit long jumper to ever win two Olympic medals. I’ve got that, which is not bad. And possibly a third in four years’ time, we’ll see. In Tokyo, perhaps.

48:42 I think it’s fascinating just to go through your mindset there and I think it’s interesting for people to see how a champion thinks. And I think that’s really valuable. Although I’m guessing that most people want to ease your pain. I’m guessing most people are like, okay, Greg, but look at what you did do and let’s move on. I’m guessing that’s the reaction I get from most people.

48:58 But hey, they don’t have to walk the line like you do. So I understand your mentality. Yeah, completely. And it is funny, isn’t it? Most people come to you and go, yeah, but you won an Olympic bronze medal.

49:06 That’s brilliant. It’s like, yeah, but I went for the gold. So it’s a disappointment. So I think, but the thing is, I had to also change my approach after the games. I was very, very frustrated and I was quite grumpy.

49:17 Within a couple of days, I realized that there’s other athletes looking at me and thinking, I knew in their head, they’re thinking, I’d kill for an Olympic bronze medal and you’re walking around with a grumpy face. So I changed it. Internally, I was hurting a lot. Externally, I made it look to other people that I was really happy with. This is three months ago.

49:31 It is, yeah. It sounds like this is three years ago. Yeah, yeah. So I used to be pretty happy with this progress. Yeah, I like to say.

49:36 Talk to me about being a role model and having to be on the front face of things. I mean, you hear a lot of American athletes say, I am not a role model. Yeah. Don’t try to make me one because I’m me, et cetera. Yeah.

49:47 You don’t feel that way, do you? No, I completely disagree with that. I think the thing is, like it or not, if you are the best at what you do in the walk of life, which means that you are exposed to the general public, I believe you have a duty to put across the best possible person to be as inspiring and I guess helpful to others in order to help them succeed. And you’ve got to bear in mind, in any sporting sense, it doesn’t last that long. Now, if underneath it all, you’re a very bad person, not nice, fine, go back to do that.

50:18 Do that in your private life. But I think when you’re on TV, and when you’re doing something for your country as well, because you’ve got to bear in mind, often for international sport, you’re jumping or running or whatever sport you’re doing, swimming or cycling, whatever it is, you’re doing it for your country and people will look up to you. So like it or not, you are an inspiration to a lot of people. So when you are on TV, when you’re going about your business, which is in the limelight and in the public light, I believe you should be as good a person as you possibly can and as well morally rounded as is possible within your fibers.

50:54 Because for every person that messes up and does purposefully the wrong things, people will copy that, youngsters will copy that especially. Or people who are not educated enough to understand that what you’re doing is wrong will then copy what you’re doing. And I find that very, very offensive that other people take the whole, I’m not a role model to anybody, I don’t want to be a role model. Okay fine, don’t do what you do then. Because like it or not, you are a role model and there is a moral responsibility to be as good a person as you possibly can be in the time that you are in the limelight.

51:32 Let me get your thoughts on some Olympic athletes. I’ll just throw some names out there, tell me what you think. Usain Bolt, you’ve seen him compete up close. What do you make? The ultimate showman.

51:42 We were talking before about how sports is entertainment and when people forget that, that’s when sports go down the tubes. And you know what, without Usain Bolt, I don’t think athletics would be particularly on the TV at the moment because he is a brilliant showman, exceptional at what he does and a fantastic human to boot and that’s very, very important. And we’re talking about role models and okay, Usain likes to go out and party. He likes to enjoy himself.

52:07 I think he crashed his really expensive BMW off of a side of a road at one point because he was speeding. But he tries to make sure any mistakes he does, he rectifies. And he tries to give across 99.9% of the time that he is a good person because I believe he is a good person. And he’s taken on the role of a role model, exceptionally well, has time for his fans, will interact with lots of people and will do the right things in order to succeed. And for athletics, one of the greatest things has ever happened to him because he’s not just a track and field phenomenon, he’s a sporting phenomenon around the world.

52:40 And I’m chuffed to bits to have been actually in the stadium when he’s broken world records and be able to say, I was there to watch that. And I was there to watch the greatest track and field athlete all the time, sort of rowing to eyes. That’s a pretty special thing to say. What’s it like to watch him? What do you see as a professional?

52:56 Because you see things that I can’t see. Yeah. Maybe it’s a timing or a look or the way something is placed. There’s just never doubt. That’s what I think is so, so very important.

53:06 And I see it with a lot of very talented athletes. And sometimes there’s doubt. And I’ve had it with me definitely within my career, this level of what if or whatever else. I look at Usain Bolt and I see somebody standing on the start. I’m thinking, I will win this.

53:20 I am about to win this. And it’s not a cockiness or an arrogance. That’s such a strong level of self-belief in his ability, his training load, his team around him. They have done the right things in order to succeed. And as soon as you lose that, that’s when you start losing the races.

53:35 And he hasn’t lost the races, particularly, not when it matters anyway. And that’s because he knows he does the right things. He works hard. And fundamentally, he enjoys every minute of it. I mean, how many Olympic champions are about to become Olympic champions?

53:49 Do you see basically doing a bit of a dance before they’re about to go and do it? Some people might say, oh, that’s a bit disrespectful to his competitors. Absolutely not. He’s enjoying what should be a really fun moment. Because being out in the Olympics is very stressful and you want to do well and everything else.

54:04 But if you can have the level of confidence and self-belief, you can fully enjoy it. What a fantastic way to lead your life. And I say, I think I’m very lucky to have witnessed you saying live, doing something so very spectacular. And it’s hard to fake that self-belief. You have to earn it, right?

54:20 Yeah. Through those years of training, through knowing that you’ve gone the distance, knowing that you put the time in, that’s how it comes, right? Yeah, completely. You don’t just… I mean, some will walk in.

54:29 And again, that is then when it becomes arrogance and cockiness towards what you’re doing. That’s people who don’t have a right to be able to say, I’m going to win this. Or not have a right, but don’t have a foundation in order to say that you’ve just rocked up and you say, I’m going to win it, and then you get knocked out straight away and you’re annoyed with that. No, no, there’s a process. And again, with Usain Bolt, I think our lives in one level have been similar from the point of view of we seem to have done things our own way a little bit.

54:55 And I think there’s probably a lot. I mean, I can’t talk for some of the other champions because I don’t know what they’ve done. But you read about how Usain trains and how he views things and how he tries to enjoy himself and do things that still keep him sane as a human as well. And he’s gone on to win many things. And I think that is a hugely important thing.

55:11 Something I tried to get across in the book is that to be the best in what you do, you don’t have to lead this monastic lifestyle where everything is fully controlled by what you do. If in your head you think going and eating a burger one day is going to make you happy, go and eat the burger. Because for every time you tell yourself, no, you’re going to want it that bit more. It becomes a thing. It becomes a problem.

55:33 That can manifest itself in so many different ways. Has to be a level of enjoyment. Obviously, self-control is very important because if every day you say, I feel like a burger and you go and eat a burger, it’s not conducive to sport. But if you’re leading a very good lifestyle and you’re training hard, you’re eating very healthily, but let’s say, you want a pizza, go and do it. Because for the mind and for the soul, it’s very, very important, I think, to have a level of normality in a world that often isn’t normal.

55:59 Be that you’re at the top of business, or the top of sport, or the top of whatever you do. I think we always need to stay in touch with what keeps us happy as well. And it might be the most silly little thing, but you have to do it at times. And that’s something that definitely Usain Bolt does. And I’d like to believe through my career, I’ve done a lot of that too.

56:19 You mentioned that self-belief, and I think, again, of Conor McGregor, the UFC fighter. When you see Conor, when he goes through a competition, like he’s calling the round, he’s going to do it. And now we’ve seen him do it about four or five times, and he did suffer a loss too, which is interesting as well. But you’d really believe that he actually believes it now. And I’m curious what you think when you see someone like him from an entertainment side, which is important in sport, and from that confidence side, what do you see in Conor, good or bad?

56:45 Because you were in Arizona for his first fight against Nate Diaz. Yes, I was, yeah. And again, a shock to think, as most other people, when he was knocked out, it was like a bizarre scenario to be in. I mean, you don’t expect somebody like that. And again, somebody bear in mind going in there, as you say, basically stating, I’m going to knock this person out here, I’m going to do this, I’m going to win.

57:05 I think when it comes to fighting, and because I’m not from a fighting background, I can’t obviously speak how highly, but you have to surely tell yourself constantly that you’re better than the other person. Because fundamentally, you’re stepping into a ring where the other person wants to hurt you. And maybe, I mean, like boxing, they always can say, I don’t want to hurt the person, I just want to win. But if we look at it, the idea is that you hit somebody enough times, or kick somebody, or whatever else, hard enough in order to stop them from having the ability to fight back.

57:33 So you win. So you are trying to hurt the person. Now, to have that mentality of going in there and going, I know this person wants to hurt me, but I want to hurt them, I think you would always, always have to tell yourself that, yes, I’m better, I’m going to do this to you. Because there’s a level of mind games in there, I think, where a weaker mind will falter to that. And then you will have that upper hand.

57:53 Because I guess for any fighter in any form of martial arts or combat of any sort, you don’t want to get hit if you can save it. You don’t want to get hurt. The idea is if you can talk somebody out of the fight before we’ve already done it, fantastic, because you’ll get rid of them quicker, and they won’t hurt you. I think it’s a fascinating way of playing mind games. And interestingly, I see it spill over into other sports, and often I don’t think it works.

58:17 I see it in athletics a lot. There’s a lot of athletes who try and do the same sort of stuff and get all up in your face and everything else. And I always find that really funny, because for me, the outcome isn’t somebody trying to hit me in the face. So I think I can laugh at it, because I know there’s no danger to me. Whereas how I would respond to another guy telling me he was going to knock me out in the second round, and I knew I had to get in that room with him, I don’t know how that would be.

58:41 I’m not a fighter. But what Conor also brings, which I think is very, very important, was really lifted UFC to where it is. Obviously, there’s other big names in there as well, but the entertainment side of it and the ability to talk yourself up in a way that people find it very funny, very fun to watch, that is so important to get viewers and get support behind the sport. They may hate you, but what the people who hate you want, they want to see you get knocked out, so they watch.

59:14 Other people love you, so what they want to see, they want to see you follow through with what you’ve said. I’m going to knock him out in the second round. I want to see him do that because that sounds incredible. So you create a massive buzz around something that I reckon deep down all of them have a level of fear. They must do a level of fear of, if I got hit wrong, this could be very, very bad for me.

59:34 But again, as I said with the injuries with myself, you find a way of building a road around it so rather than it becoming a big bump that you have to drive over every time and fear can turn from a bump into a mountain, you just find a way of putting it in a box, going around it and knowing that, okay, it might happen, but equally, it might not, and I might win. And I think that’s probably how we’ll fight to see it. With the showmanship that comes with it, I think is spectacular.

59:58 I think we need that across all sports. Yeah, and track and field as well. Completely. Yeah, the problem I have with… In press conferences, maybe.

1:00:05 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe a bit of trash talking, maybe a bit of rivalry that we haven’t seen in a while, because we don’t have it as it stands. And people, I think, are a bit bored of track and field. And it’s a real shame because sport is an incredible sport and I think if marketed correctly, people would love it again. But it hasn’t changed in 70 years.

1:00:24 It’s still run by the same people who were running it back in the 60s and 70s and things. They haven’t adapted because they’ve been very happy and comfortable with the way that they lead and run their lives and run the sport. But we’ve been losing fans left, right and centre. We need something to be brought in. Now, there’s street athletics, which I think is a fantastic idea and probably the future of the sport.

1:00:44 But there needs to be more to be done, create rivalries, make it interesting. Do you know what I think would be amazing? If you set up a 100-metre race, be it wherever it is in the world and said the winner of that 100-metre race will win a million dollars. Everybody would tune in to see that because they would turn around and say, you might have Usain Bolt and you might have Jessica, you might have all these other guys, but you put something like a million dollars on the line.

1:01:06 I guarantee you’ll see somebody come out there and push it who nobody expected because it’s life-changing and people want to see that. And I think also people will then want to aspire to be involved with that. Yeah, so new ideas, new branding, new marketing around it. Maybe Red Bull, grab that. Absolutely, yeah, I think that would be a great thing.

1:01:22 Again, a company that has done incredibly well with turning some sports and some sports that are amazing to watch. I love skiing and to watch what they do with the freestyle skiing, I think is exceptional. And like downhill mountain biking, they have Red Bull Rampage, which to watch is terrifying. And they have these guys who push the limits, and I think Red Bull is really at the forefront of doing that. And again, I’m not with Red Bull, I’m not sponsored by them, I don’t do anything about it at all.

1:01:47 After this moment, no, but it is one of those things that when I see a brand, a person, whatever else doing something that’s brilliant with sport, I think they need to be championed because we need that across sport, not just in the niche ones. Yeah, a couple other athletes, Mo Farah. It’s hard to put into words with Mo as well because he is arguably Britain’s greatest ever athlete. And again, I mean, look, obviously, you can’t compare him to a football player, you can’t compare him to a tennis player, blah, blah, blah.

1:02:19 But as an athlete, to do what he has done and to win as many times as he has won against some of the best athletes, again, within his field that have ever come about is unbelievably inspiring. And he’s, I think, led probably a different lifestyle to me where he has led that borderline monastic lifestyle. He moved his family to Oregon. He spends a lot of time in Kenya and all these different places. And he has pushed the limits of his body in order to get to where he is.

1:02:47 But I think probably within the 5,000, 10,000, that’s where you need to be, that’s what you need to be doing. And he is somebody that it’s been a pleasure to say that I know, a pleasure I’ve shared teams with, and for me, one third of the greatest night of my life. So, yeah, quite an important person to have around. And as I say, be lucky enough to have shared a team with. Yeah, because he was there in 2012 and then you see him down in Rio and it’s just like, no, I mean…

1:03:15 He just can’t stop winning. Right? But it’s inspiring. Even to somebody like myself, and believe me, I watch people who win at sports and I love watching it because first of all, I know what that feeling is and I love that feeling. But equally when I see people winning multiple things time after time, it fills me with that desire to keep doing it myself.

1:03:35 And I think that’s hugely important going forward. To maintain that fire in your belly, you’ve got to latch onto whatever excites you and me watching other people do well in sport excites me. It’s not in my sport because obviously I want to be the one winning that. But to watch people like Mo Farah is fantastic for me because it shows that it can be done. Carl Lewis, your buddy.

1:03:55 Oh, good old Carl. Oh, dear. Carl Lewis, I think somebody who sadly fell off the path of what he could have been, which is an inspiration to people and turned it into something that’s really sad to see, to be totally honest. The problem is with Carl is that obviously he was one of the great… He probably is still one of the most famous track and field athletes that has ever been.

1:04:22 84.88? Yeah. Quite a while ago. I think 84 was his first one. This was his last one, if I remember correctly.

1:04:28 He went on for a long time. Five long jumping gold medals. I think it was overall. But the problem is I think when people don’t actually help the sport and then turn against the sport, which fundamentally made them who they are, and then dig at certain people, organisations or whatever else, when he pops up, you’re saying, but I mean he had a pop-up me this year. I think it’s the wrong way of approaching it.

1:04:52 Now, we’re talking about a man who failed three drugs tests in his career as well and then was allowed to come back and do whatever else. It was ignored, moved on, whatever else. I mean, that’s a fact of life. Now, I talk about this thing that I’m very, very lucky to be able to do. Now, if my career finishes tomorrow, I have a young son.

1:05:08 I can look my son in his face and any children I have over the years to come and I can tell them, actually, with hard work, with dedication, everything else, you can succeed, you can win, and I believe that because I’ve done it. Now, there’s certain other people in the world who can’t do that because they know at certain points in their life, they’ve cheated the process in order to get there. Now, Karl is somebody that, to me, I think has done a lot of harm to the sport because he doesn’t have a positive thing to say about it.

1:05:37 He doesn’t have a positive thing to say about people and wants to turn it more into about him than actually as it should be. And I think that’s that desperate striving to maintain a level of fame that he would have had 20 years ago into the current period. And I think that’s a real shame because if he was actually a good person, then I think he could have succeeded greatly and been an inspiration to me, to many other people. But on meeting him, it’s sadly been a…

1:06:04 They said, don’t never meet your idols. And I’ve had a bad experience of that. Some of the darkness coming out and some of those champion mentalities, you see it sometimes after they retire and, yeah, they don’t have those highs anymore and sometimes it manifests itself in some lashing out. It does, yeah, and it’s bitterness towards it. And I think that what I’d like to think when I retire, I’ll appreciate the times that I had which were great, but understand that you pass the torch on to other people.

1:06:29 Okay, the next British long jumper who wins something might not be as good as me. I’m not going to turn around and say, oh, it doesn’t matter because you weren’t as good as me. I’ll turn around and say, I am so proud of another guy winning in the sport that I loved. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t, or they might jump further than me. Brilliant.

1:06:44 Like, you need to champion the people that are doing well rather than trying to belittle it and bring it down again. We’re in a time where my sport in particular is struggling and you have people like that who people listen to still, turn around and telling you that it’s a rubbish event, a rubbish sport, blah, blah, blah. They’re going to switch more people off. You’re not going to get them excited by the sport if the idols of yesteryear are telling you that it’s rubbish now.

1:07:08 It’s the wrong way of approaching it and sadly that’s the way Karl does it and I don’t appreciate it. I know the other jumpers don’t appreciate it and a lot of people within the sport don’t appreciate it. You’re saying Bolt definitely doesn’t appreciate it as well after the things he said. So, yeah, Karl is a fascinating character that I would like to think should maybe keep it a bit quieter rather than speaking out so much. Talk to me about performance enhancing drugs.

1:07:32 You mentioned it there. You’ve come out and said that the IOC should potentially ban anyone in the sport forever, forever testing. You’re serious about this. Yeah, I couldn’t say. And I think even down in Rio, a lot of news came out about the Russians and this kind of thing.

1:07:46 Tell me why you feel that way, kind of what you’ve seen over the years and where you think we should go. I think the first thing to look at is if you decide to take drugs within your life in a sporting sense, you are cheating out many people from first of all the chances of maybe tasting success. In the process of track and field, X amount of people make it through different rounds. Now, if you were to find out that the person that knocked you out, say, 12 in the long jump final might go through, if you were 13 and didn’t make the final, but the guy in 12 then subsequently failed a drugs test, you will forever more wonder what could have been that guy that went on to win.

1:08:23 It changes lives and it ruins a lot of people’s lives. And I’ve felt it firsthand. I’ve been beaten in a few competitions back in, I think it was 2010-11. The guy who had beaten me in those competitions went on to fail a drugs test. We knew he’d been cheating and then he disappeared.

1:08:41 Now, you never get the finances back of what you’re doing. Never get the credence of being able to say, well, I won that competition because forever more, there’s a two next to your name because you finished in second or three or whatever it would be. It can destroy people and their chances of success. Now, if you did that in any other walk of life, if you were in the banking sector and you were robbing people left, right and center, you would get banned, you would go to prison and then you’d probably never have a chance to work in that lifestyle.

1:09:09 Again, if you were selling houses to people and taking a massive cut and got found out, there’d be a severe punishment for you. Any walk of life, if you were selling somebody a dodgy product which wasn’t true and it found out, there would be punishment for it. And the issue we have with taking drugs in sport is that the long-term effects of those drugs seem to be now proven to last a very long time. So if you took drugs for a few years, went away for two years, came back and still started winning again, forever more really, you’ve got to look at the side of it of, well, possibly I’m being assisted by what I had before.

1:09:42 It’s unfair. There are so many people in the world, we’ve got to get across as well. The vast majority of athletes don’t cheat, they don’t take drugs, they work incredibly hard and succeed, but there are people out there who are doing it. They fail, they go away, they come back, they carry on with the status quo. And in my opinion, that’s exceptionally wrong.

1:10:01 What happens when you see first world countries with major governments behind their programs, like what it looks like happening in Russia, and I don’t know if that’s happening in the U.S., I don’t know. But what happens when you see things like that? What’s really interesting about the whole Russia scenario is that systematic doping was known, probably by all the athletes, coaches, and management and everything else, for years. We all knew it was going on, but we had no proof of it really.

1:10:24 I mean, you had a lot of people failing tests, but nobody could turn around and actually say, believed it was government-led. And then it’s obviously come to light that now it is. So I think for most athletes it wasn’t a shock. So you just sort of said, well, we’ve just been waiting for that to happen. Now it’s come out.

1:10:38 Now we know. Everybody else knows. You hope more than anything else that the quarreling and the little squabbles that are going on between different organizations, be that WADA, the IOC, IFF, whatever else, they can figure it out just to stop what has been going on because it has been systematic doping. So a lot of people involved who are still involved in some sense in some of the organizations, they shouldn’t be there anymore. They need to be removed.

1:11:04 They need to be banned. The people who knowingly go into a training environment and take drugs and basically disregard everybody else who’s absolutely working their backsides off to succeed, you should be removed because you are cheating people. It is not fair. And it’s something that in my sport, which I would like to see, is the purest form of human ability. You jump the longest you win.

1:11:26 You throw the longest you win. You run the fastest you win. If all of a sudden you’ve cheated to get there, you shouldn’t be allowed to be involved. You should never be allowed to go back into it. Now, the flip side of that, what I always feel sorry for is the young athletes who are then influenced by coaches, by agents, by training groups, et cetera, to get involved with things that possibly they don’t know any better about.

1:11:49 Now, that’s then when it becomes very difficult because if you’re pressured into a scenario in any walk of life that you don’t really want to be involved with but the people that you look up to, be that your coach, manager, whatever else, are telling you you need to do this, then that’s then when I find it really difficult. So, what we need to have in place is the people that have facilitated people to cheat, they need to be removed as well. Band for life. If you’re an agent and you’ve had multiple people fail tests, I’m sorry, you need to go, especially if it’s proven that you’ve been involved with it.

1:12:18 If you’re a coach and you’ve had multiple people fail tests, you need to be banned for life because you have such a close relationship with these people, there is no way that they wouldn’t know or have an idea. Now, one or two, maybe. I mean, maybe one person decided with their friend who was the pharmacist who helped them out, nobody else knew, but when it happens, and we’ve had certain coaches that might have had 10 or 12 failed tests, they obviously know because they’re probably the people supplying it, so remove them, they need to go.

1:12:47 And you need to create a situation where somebody who cheats, if they’re caught, if you said to them, okay, we weren’t banned for life, but you can never compete in the Olympics again, they’ll stop taking drugs. Take the Olympics away from people, they’ll stop doing it because it’s not worth it because… That’s their payday as well. Exactly, your Nike contract, whoever you’re with, they’re going to turn around and say, well, you can’t compete in the Olympics, I’m not going to pay you.

1:13:08 Have you ever competed against someone who you were pretty sure was on drugs and you’re like, I’m going to beat you anyways? Yeah, all the time, yeah. I mean, there’s one or two, and I won’t name names, there’s one from a few years ago who had a period of doing very, very well. All of us were in the long jumping world, knew something was wrong. It’s not produced anything for the last couple of years now.

1:13:29 But my desire was no matter what, I’ll beat that person still, and I will work so damn hard in order to get there, put everything I possibly can into it to beat that person because I know what they’re doing is wrong. And this is the thing that I’ve inherently always had, a belief system that no matter what you do, if you go and take drugs for the next two years, I will still tell myself that I can beat you. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lifted some monster weight in the gym or you did a training jump which was absolutely out of this world, on the day, I will always believe that I can still beat you no matter what, and that’s something that I think has really helped me because there are more talented long jumpers in the world, I believe.

1:14:04 There are better people than me in this world. But it’s mindset, showing up on the day, technique, can potentially trump… Yeah, completely. For example, you have some people who turn up, slight headwind, it’s a bit of rain in the air, they don’t want to do it. With me, fine, I’ll crack on.

1:14:20 And that’s how I think you need to approach everything. There might be people better than you, but you have to believe that you can still beat them, no matter what happens. A lot of fighters say that when guys take it, then they’re never the same after, because they always think, well, I need it as my edge, I need it as my edge. And you do see kind of a history where guys have done it in the past, then they kind of go on this tailspin, because sooner or later you get caught, then you’re a little more cautious, now you don’t have the stuff that got you there, so you look at guys like McGregor and he’s just like, I don’t care what you’re on.

1:14:50 Yeah, I’ll beat you. Then you see someone like McGregor, and like you said, he’s got the belief. I mean, that trumps any anabolic, you would think. Oh, absolutely, yeah. As you say, because what’s often quite interesting, especially with the way drug testing now works, you know that the people who have probably cheated within their career, or maybe even within that year, haven’t obviously taken it on the day, because they’ll fail that drug test later in that day.

1:15:09 So I would like to think, for some of the guys on the day of competition, are they thinking, oh, I haven’t had any, I haven’t had my, whatever it would be, pipette of whatever, or whatever it is, a pill or whatever. Am I going to be beaten today? And equally, they’re always going to be thinking, even if I win, though, I’ve got to constantly be looking over my shoulder, because if I found that test, it ruins me anyway. Right, and they might test my samples three years later, or this kind of thing.

1:15:33 Yeah, so I think a drug cheat will never, ever rest easy. And actually, do you know what? Yes, if they beat me, if next year at the World Championships, somebody beats me who’s taken drugs, and in 10 years’ time it finds out they’ve taken drugs, I guarantee that 10 years, they haven’t fully enjoyed, because they’ve always been waiting for that phone call. And I can, I guess, take solace in knowing that the people who have cheated, they’ve not enjoyed the fact that they’ve won fully.

1:15:56 They might have had a bit of money, they might have gone out and parted a lot and done all that sort of stuff fine, but they know that what they’ve done is wrong, and eventually they’ll be found out. And actually, I kind of like the idea of people constantly looking over their shoulder, thinking, what if? And knowing, say, if I finished second to them, that I actually was better than them, because they know it. And that’s why I think it’s great when they finally get caught and get shown up for what they are, because a cheat is a cheat at the end of the day, and every walk of life has no place.

1:16:23 What do you say to people that point at someone, like a country like Jamaica, with a very small number of people in that country, and they produce these world champions by the bucket load? And they’re like, this can’t be, this can’t be. What do you say? Well, do you know what? And this is on a much smaller sense, and obviously not to the level of Jamaica, but I come from a town, Milton Keynes, which doesn’t particularly have any major sporting prowess.

1:16:46 We’ve got a football team now that was brought in as used to be Wimbledon, but we had this strange pocket at this time where I think we had four or five people make the British athletics team, the senior athletics team. Now, you’d never expect that from a small place, and all of a sudden, Milton Keynes became, oh, it must be something in the water. It’s great. Look at all these people that have made the team. Now, there has to be times and anomalies within the world where a nation or a small country, such as Jamaica, will produce it.

1:17:16 Now, you’ve got to think and look at Jamaica as a country as well, how they’ve changed over the years and become now a stronger country with more emphasis on the sport of track and field as well. It’s one of their main sports, if not the main sport. So there was always, I think, going to be an influx of athletes that came out of some of the Caribbean countries. Jamaica is a prime example of that. Is it kind of like the All Blacks come out of New Zealand, the small population, and they have a huge standard?

1:17:41 Exactly. Because that’s what everybody aspires to be. Exactly. The thing is, once a sport becomes one of the biggest sports in a country. Now, I remember I went to Jamaica in 2006 to watch a competition over there.

1:17:50 I was training, funnily enough, in Cuba, of all places. And that, again, was a massive eye-opener for me. And I went to Jamaica. And at the time, it was before Usain Bolt, but Asaf Apal was the big cheese there, he was the big king. There were songs on the radio about him.

1:18:03 He was walking down the street, and everybody wanted to talk to him. He was one of the most famous people in Jamaica. He was a hundred-meter runner. Now, that’s an interesting way of looking at it because if we had Wayne Rooney walking down the street here, he’d be mobbed. And just because he’s a fantastic football player, he’s played for England, captured his main night in England, whatever else, and he’s one of the best footballers probably in the world and has been at one point, he can’t then all of a sudden say, oh, yeah, but he’s from England.

1:18:30 Does that mean he’s taking drugs? But people don’t look at it that way because it’s football. It’s deemed to be different. Now, a small country like Jamaica where the national sport pretty much is track and field cricket as well as quite popular, a couple of the other ones as well. But it is one of the most major sports.

1:18:46 There’s more investment and more emphasis on that sport. They’ve had a few key figures come through. You see here, we have many more children that want to play football than they want to play anything else because it’s the big sport here, so it makes sense on one level. And I wish them only well because it’s always great because from that system, we found a Usain Bolt who has become integral to track and field being what it is to this day. And I think we shouldn’t frown upon that and we should sort of champion it as much as possible.

1:19:16 Now, obviously, if we went down a route and we found out that it was all done dodgy, then, yeah, it’d be terrible. But I think you have to err on the side of belief that what’s going on is just a very positive thing from a nation that loves track and field. You mentioned football. When are we going to see the drug test start coming in on football? There’s a strange one there as well, isn’t it?

1:19:35 I mean, I think a few years ago, it was reoffered and it ran off from a drugs test at Man United. I mean, we’ve had other people. I remember speaking to some footballers who said they never tested in their career. More recently, I’ve spoken to a couple of people within the testing world, actually, and they said, yeah, there’s a lot more testing going on within football nowadays. The culture has changed slightly.

1:19:55 The footballers may not particularly enjoy it and they might not be the nicest people when it comes to being tested. But it’s now becoming more prevalent within it, I think, which I think you’d be very naive to believe that there’s not going to be drugs in any sport where vast sums of money is on the line. I mean, if you think it’s just cycling and track and field, then it’s only because probably they’re small enough for people to be able to get caught. In the major sports, where it’s run by huge clubs, et cetera, and it’s a huge, huge world organization, we’ve seen how corrupt FIFA’s been, there will be a level of it.

1:20:30 And I’m not saying that certain people are taking drugs, but it’s a fact of sport. There will be a few. And be it only one person in all of the premiership or something is taking it. There probably will be somebody. And you’d like to think, again, within football, those people will be caught.

1:20:45 It’s going to play out in British football, American football, basketball, at some point in the next five or ten years, it’s going to come out. Because like you said, any time where people are trying to get an edge, where hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are on the line, then it will happen. Yeah, it will. And it’s just human nature. So it’d be interesting to see, as they step up testing, I mean, the UFC has done a pretty good job at the USADA now, much better than it was three years ago, where almost anything went, where there was testosterone replacement therapy, exemptions, where they had someone like Vitor Belfort going in looking like a cyborg, and you’re like, everybody knows he’s on TRT, and you’re like, what are you doing?

1:21:21 It was dangerous as well, isn’t it? It was dangerous. I remember having a show here, and I was like, what’s going on? He has these wheel kicks to the head, and he looks like a mammoth. Now he goes in, and he looks like a completely different physical being.

1:21:32 So yeah, I hope that plays out a little bit. I think it will. I think what we saw with the Lance Armstrong approach and the way that they sort of took people down and went for somebody that big, I think nobody within any sport is safe anymore. Yeah. And that’s how we need to make it.

1:21:45 We need to make anybody and everybody believe that, no matter what, you will be caught. Yeah, I think it’s good business in the long run to keep it clean. I think it really is. Yeah, for sure. Tell me a little bit about the darkness that makes Greg so successful.

1:21:58 Because you grew up in a strange environment, and you had quite a colorful childhood as a young man. You have a son now who’s two years old who I guess is celebrating birthdays and Christmas. But young Greg didn’t celebrate birthdays and Christmases. No. Can you tell me a little bit about going up and what it was like?

1:22:19 Absolutely. So I was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness. My parents were both baptized. My grandparents, well, my granddad was an elder until he died, sadly, in 2008. So I grew up in that environment.

1:22:30 And as I think a lot of children do, when you see pretty much all of your friends who were from different sort of Christian backgrounds in general, you see things like your birthdays, your Christmases and things like that, and you want to be involved with that. And for me, I think I have this fiery personality. I’m quite outspoken, always have been. And what I found as a youngster, because I couldn’t understand what was going on, as all children are the same, you’re a child, so you don’t get really the reasons behind things.

1:23:02 I wanted to have what my friends had. So I guess on one level, I started to rebel against my parents. But the fundamentals of coming from a religious family, I think, often you develop a moral compass which is really positive. And I think even though I went off the rails quite a few times and did things, you know what? Probably a lot of people have done.

1:23:22 I don’t think I’m any different to quite a few people. I’ve done some silly things, but probably a lot have. There may be don’t speak about it as much. This is why within the book in Unexpected, I wanted to get across actually that you can make mistakes. You can be a bit of a wally at times, as I’d like to put it, but you can still come back and succeed.

1:23:39 Now, the background that my parents chose for me as a child, as you follow your parents, was, again, unconventional, if you like, because there’s not as many Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world. But I don’t regret it, and I don’t see it as a bad thing in my life. I know that part of the reason I rebelled was because of it, because as a child, I couldn’t fathom why a religion would stop you from doing certain things, but I didn’t understand the scriptures. I hadn’t been taught enough, I guess, at that point.

1:24:08 So I saw it from a very simplistic way rather than actually, this is a choice that my parents have made. They stick with that choice. They believe that choice. Fair play to them. Absolutely fantastic for them.

1:24:20 But I think it had an aspect in my life that it meant that, you know what, I’m going to be different, and I’m going to butt heads on my parents a bit, if you like, and I’ll do what I want to do. And it’s probably a very selfish thing, because actually what I think I would have done in that period is probably create a lot more stress for my parents, that meaning to, and not in a non-malicious way, but just to get what I wanted out of my life. And that’s why, to this day, I’m not particularly religious now.

1:24:47 I have a belief system of my own, which I keep to myself, which I’m really happy with. But I think being a generally good person is important. And I think actually having that religious start in life helped me understand that and helped me build to what I am now. You probably had more in common with some Muslim kids down the road and everybody else. Yeah, completely.

1:25:10 And that’s the thing. This is what I found really interesting. When the book came out, one of the biggest things people said, oh, you were so nervous. It must have been terrible. And I was like, hang on.

1:25:18 But there’s, what is it, a billion and a billion and a half Muslims in the world. They don’t celebrate Christmas. It’s not that alien. It’s not a terrible, terrible thing. We had a different set of beliefs to normal Christianity, if you like.

1:25:33 And that had a shaping on my life and actually as a reason to why I am who I am to this day. So I felt very important to talk about it. So everybody got a real view of me as a person, why I am who I am, how I’ve become who I am. Not just the training that I did. I didn’t want to dictate within the book each training session I did because it’s boring.

1:25:57 Right. And the thing is, is what you find with people who are looking into the professional sport world, they want to find reasons to why you succeeded and they didn’t. And if you start listing off all these hard training sessions, they go, well, I couldn’t do that. That’s why I’m not an Olympic champion. Whereas, in fact, you build towards those moments in life where training is incredibly hard.

1:26:16 You’re doing freakish things. Yes, I’m obviously naturally gifted towards what I do. But there was this long, long journey that got me to where I was. And it could have been very, very different. I could now be a 30-year-old man doing a very boring, mundane job because I let my schooling fall, by the way.

1:26:33 So I did lead this lifestyle up until probably really my early 20s, if you like, that was not conducive to professional sport. Thankfully, I met the right people and I made the changes myself in order to go on to succeed. And that was that belligerent belief that I would succeed in sport. And that’s what always motivated me. And the point of this book is that you wanted to tell people that all these Olympic success stories aren’t like I was doing track and field when I was 10 and when I was 12 and when I was 14 and I did this and I did that.

1:27:03 Because you talk about crazy things here. Car surfing, drinking Malibu rum before going to school, staying up all night, throwing punches at people, almost getting arrested. And it’s interesting because there’s a quote in here and you say, as a sport star, it’s drummed into you that you should try to be a role model. But I want to be honest about my past. I’m going to quote this exactly.

1:27:24 You can be a total dickhead, yet still succeed. If you make one mistake or even a hundred, it doesn’t mean you screwed up for good. Which is interesting because you’re having a lot of incidents there. A lot like a lot of young men do. You probably took it to another level, a Rutherford level.

1:27:38 And like you say then, you quote, you can make mistakes in your life, but then you have to endeavour to become better. And actually, get across now, at that time, obviously, I wasn’t in the limelight. I wasn’t a big figure within my sport. And nobody was looking at me for guidance, I guess, as young athletes would do now. So the mistakes I made in my youth have helped shape me to the person to want to be a better person now as well.

1:28:04 To actually let people know, do you know what, I am very similar to a lot of people who go off the rails a little bit. I have done those things and I can relate massively. But you know what, you don’t have to keep doing them. You can actually make yourself a better all-round person and go on and succeed at whatever. It doesn’t have to be sport.

1:28:19 Sport is just the avenue that I was able to take to get myself out of the scenarios that I was putting myself into and was falling down on what would be a slippery slope for many. So when I do speak in schools or speak to other people, try and get it across that obviously your childhood is to make mistakes. You should make mistakes in your childhood. But if you get involved with the wrong people, the wrong crowds, do the wrong things, it doesn’t mean that that would define your life.

1:28:43 And I would like to believe that I’m testament to that because in the times that I was just Greg Weatherford, the young athlete or the young person, I made a lot of mistakes. But then when I became me as I am now, it was a conscious effort to change. I would like to think that I can show to people that you can be a role model and you can have had a bad past as well. Because there’s lots of people. Some people make mistakes in their life.

1:29:10 They might go to prison. They come out of it now. I never did anything that severe. But in 2009, you punched the guy outside of KFC and you said it could have gone one way or the other. Yeah, it hit me first though.

1:29:20 Of course. And that was seven years ago, right? I mean, that’s amazing. Yeah, I guess that’s what, three years before I went on to become an Olympic champion. No, it’s not like at that point though, I’d also tried to make a change over my life to not…

1:29:33 I was never someone I wanted to fight and that sort of stuff. Now, I think at the time I was quite lucky because I’m quite powerful due to what I do. At that point, it helped me get out of a sticky situation. But it was a terrible situation to be in anywhere. And I’d hate to be in that scenario again.

1:29:48 I wouldn’t condone it to anybody. Basically, we had a bunch of lads who’d gone out to pick a fight with somebody. It just happened we were the unlucky three that somebody picked a fight on. And that was the wrong place, wrong time. If I’d have gone home rather than nip to the KFC for a quick bite at 2am, then I never would have gotten in that scenario and it would never have been an anecdote in my life.

1:30:08 But equally then, what it actually did, it showed me that at that time, going out didn’t appeal to me as much anymore. Because you do have these idiots out there that want to invoke trouble and create problems for you and they go out their way to do it. And they’re just bad people. Now, I never wanted to be in that scenario. And actually, from that moment on, I became much more cautious.

1:30:28 I think when I went out and who I was mixed about, where I was seen, etc. Because I didn’t want to be in that scenario again because it’s not fun. I didn’t enjoy somebody trying to punch me in the head. It was a horrible scenario to be in. But they had it in their head that that’s what they wanted to do.

1:30:42 And I was the unlucky guy that got involved. As I say, I was lucky enough to have a relatively strong punch back. Dana White might be calling your neck. Stranger things have happened. The UFC.

1:30:53 You never know. Is it true? Is it true you used to have issues with your body? Yes, hugely. Now, this is a big thing, I think, as well, which people never really expect.

1:31:03 Because when you do professional sport, I think everybody expects you to be in incredible shape, to look amazing and have all these wonderful things going on with you. But in actual fact, for me, for a long time, probably up until 23, 24, I really struggled with the way my body looked. And that was because I was surrounded by people who were in fantastic shape. They were looking amazing. They did have these incredible bodies with rippling abs everywhere and whatever else.

1:31:24 And I used to look at myself and think, I look nothing like that. And that was, again, knowledge of my body, knowledge of nutrition and everything else and training. And it wasn’t until I joined Dan Path, my current coach, where everything started to change for me. We trained properly. My body changed in the right ways.

1:31:40 And I became much more confident within myself to share that. But, yeah, I had big body confidence issues for a very, very long time. And even now, the thing is what I find, when I’m not training like I’m not at the moment, I look at myself and I go, Cory, you’re getting fat. And it flips into it. I’ve never, I mean, I’ve been very lucky.

1:31:56 I’ve never had eating disorders. If any of them aren’t eating disorders, I eat too much all the time whenever I eat. And I feel terrible for people who get into that really dark place in their mind. And I can understand how it happens as well, because at times I’ve looked at myself and thought, just maybe there’s no just not eat. Just because it’s, you’re looking a bit fat again.

1:32:13 And I think when you are surrounded by other people, but again, it’s knowledge. It’s understanding why people are like that or why you’re not like that. And do you know what? Some people in this world aren’t meant to be rippling muscles everywhere. That’s just how it is.

1:32:26 You have to accept that. I’m very good now at 30 in the last probably five, six years. I’ve been very happy to accept me as I am. And I can get in very good shape when I need to. Equally, I can get very much out of shape.

1:32:37 And I embrace both things because I think you have to in life. Yeah, it’s interesting because you’re an Olympic athlete. So when you’re at your best, you are dedicating all of your effort to making that body a high performance vehicle. Yes. So you get to see that when most people don’t get to see their bodies that way.

1:32:53 And then when it’s slightly out, then you’re probably like, oh, it’s not what I remember it was on game day. Yeah, it’s exactly that. Talk to me about the Americans because I know you’re hooking up with Dan Path. It was a big moment in your career. You had to go ahead and leave your trainer at the time and go to America.

1:33:09 And now you’re going to be spending time out in America training with him again, I believe. What is with the Americans? Do they have more knowledge? Is it just that they have a bigger population and certain people that just get it better? How do you explain it?

1:33:23 And did you get some heat from the Brits when you go there? Yeah, I did, yeah. Do you know what? It’s not just America. There will be coaches in all different countries all around the world who are probably exceptional at what they do.

1:33:34 But what I found with the American system, which I actually love, is the fact that winning and success is championed from a young age. And actually, sport is incredibly important, be that in high school or college or turning professional. It’s very important because it does showcase how far a human body can push itself in a physical way, which I think is a brilliant thing to champion. As much as it’s brilliant to champion somebody who’s incredibly bright and can go on to cure cancers, be it in a scientific way or help run a country, these are all things that all need to be equally championed.

1:34:06 In the UK, sadly, we don’t champion sport half as much. Actually, not even 5% as much as they do in the US. So what we find from the US system of doing things is much more professional. So there’s then jobs on offer. So people, if you want to become a professional coach, you can get paid to become a professional coach.

1:34:25 In the UK, we have next to no professional coaches because it’s basically guys and girls who go to work all day, they then come home and in the evenings they dedicate some time for free for people to better themselves within the sport. So we have to have a drastic change. So someone like Dan, who is not my opinion, I mean, well, it is my opinion, but it’s not just my opinion. He is one of the greatest track and field coaches of all time, but not just track and field.

1:34:52 One of the greatest understanding minds of how the body moves works and adjusts to certain scenarios. So he’s worked within tennis, he’s worked within golf, he’s worked across probably all the American sports going and worked some of the biggest names because he understands how the body works. I watched a three-minute video on YouTube and I was like, man, this guy knows what he’s talking about. And he was talking about how the hips rotate and on the shoulders go back when you’re running like down the track and how you have to be keeping in mind of where they’re positioned and the oscillation and if you’re pronating your feet, it’s going to go up the food chain, go up the adductor chain and then you might have lower back problems and you have to be aware of that as an athlete of what’s going on.

1:35:32 I mean, in two minutes I can see why you value him. Yeah, and for me it has been so very valuable because I had so many injuries, so many issues and he managed to completely and utterly change that for me because what I find fascinating about Dan and what is truly amazing, he might watch you run past at whatever speed, in my case, 11 point whatever meters per second, which is moving quite fast and he will see all of the little problems that you’ve got, all the little issues and he’ll tell you about it and then he’ll say, go watch it on the high speed film to get an idea of what I’m talking about. You have to slow down high speed footage and every single thing that he’s just pointed out you can now see because it’s in slow motion, but he sees it in real time and what he also has, which is so very valuable, there’s not just one way of fixing something, he has so many different avenues and so many different approaches to how to change you to make you a better person that if one thing isn’t working he’ll go to plan B, if plan B isn’t working C and it will continue down the alphabet until he writes his own alphabet because he will always find a way of making you better because he will look at you as the individual, he’ll use his 40 years worth of knowledge and he will develop something that will make you better and I feel genuinely privileged to have him as my coach because without Dampath I would not be an Olympic champion, that is for sure.

1:36:51 And he’ll even lay hands on you if necessary. He will. Which blew you away because usually, strangely enough, when you did physio you would go to someone who’s off-site, doesn’t even know how you’ve been trained and then they would try to fix you whereas when you’re with him he’s like, okay, let’s make an adjustment here. Yeah, what was great about Dan is when he came over to the UK he developed trackside therapy which was a phenomenon to coaches and medical staff where the physio should be trackside watching what you do because as the athlete you don’t know enough to go in and say, oh, there’s been a bit of a problem with this bit of me.

1:37:23 They have no idea what to go, they just treat whereas small adjustments during a period of training can be so, so valuable in order to keep you on the straight and narrow, to keep you able to maintain a level of training rather than going, oh, I hurt today, I can’t stop, I’m going to have treatment, go home. The amount of sessions that I managed to complete due to the fact that Dan first of all treated himself so he gets very hands on with you and he’s one of the best therapists I’ve ever been treated by as well but will equally bring in people that he knows are exceptional at that aspect of your body and will keep you going. It was so, so valuable and something in the UK sadly never caught on and when Dan, his team and a few other people left, that system left with it and I’m afraid to say that the British system of coaching and therapy has taken steps backwards again.

1:38:07 Because they really did not value Dan when he came over because again this whole, I’m better than you, oh, what do you know just because you’re an American coming over here telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about. That was how the British coaches saw it. I think it was a massive, massive shame. Now not all of them, obviously some took it on board in Britain but sadly the majority of them didn’t. Even with Dan, even with Dan, it sounds like he’s really speaking.

1:38:28 They all knew it as well, he basically unraveled some of the problems that they had within their training environments and proud people don’t like hearing that. It’s hard, you see that in the martial arts community in America, kind of pre UFC, it’s just like these guys, they’re in these dojos, they’re teaching these katas and then it’s their business and then people call them sensei and then they get protective and don’t want anyone else in and I think that happens and then people don’t even realize what they’re doing. They don’t want to hear new ideas because it makes them realize that what they’ve been teaching might not be.

1:38:56 Yeah, exactly and I think a lot of people always remember that one person that it worked for. Now if you’re lucky enough for that one person to go on to say win a world championships or an Olympics or something, then you will inherently believe that what you do is completely right. Now the fact that that person was exceptional could be completely different, but my body will be completely different to yours, be completely different to lots of other people’s.

1:39:15 So we need to train differently, we need to train correctly for our bodies rather than just saying one trip pony, that’s it, you just do that because I did it on so and so and it worked. That’s such a narrow minded view of training in the human body and that’s the beauty of someone like a damn path who understands every aspect of it and as I say privileged beyond belief to have him as my coach. I’m just curious if there was one incident that kind of got you back on track because we’re glossing over it but from 12, 11 and through your teens there was a lot of nonsense going on and you didn’t know what you were doing, getting in trouble.

1:39:50 I mean was it the fact that you just slowly started finding success in something and you’re like I can be good at this? Do you think you grew out of it? Because there’s a lot of people listening that are maybe in that same situation and they’re like yeah I know Greg but I can’t seem to get out of this self-destructive pattern. What do I do? Do I try a sport? Do I try a different practice?

1:40:10 Do I try to find out what I’m passionate about? What do you think it was? I think I was always seeking people that enriched my life as well because I think that’s hugely important. For me I often would try and be the leader in the wrong way but often when things were being very bad and I was going down the real wrong path then I was following others and being a bit of a sheep towards it and that was something that put me in these really bad scenarios basically.

1:40:36 So again part of just growing up I think and becoming a bit older and a bit more worldly I think and I think I was very lucky that I started to travel a bit I started to go and meet other people and other people within my discipline as well of track and field and there’s certain key figures within it who were hugely important in shaping me I was always seeking good people I think even though I was being a bit naughty myself I was always looking for those certain individuals that really enrich me in a way that nobody else ever had because as much I knew when I was doing bad things at times it was a part of my brain that was always telling me you shouldn’t be doing this so finally when I was able to remove social groups and certain people that had been leading me down the wrong way and latch on to other very good like-minded people it started to change things for me but I think you have to make a conscious effort to do it because it’s very difficult now I removed social groups, friends, other people I just stopped spending time with them you have to you have to because the other thing you’ll find as well I mean you come up with an idea and you’ll pitch it to somebody it might be one of your long-term friends and you have a great idea and if their response is to turn around and go that’s rubbish, that’s never going to work then often a lot of people go oh yeah you’re probably right rather than thinking actually do you know what

1:41:51 I think it’s a good idea you succeed, amazing, if you fail, you failed at least you tried it but so many people get stuck with people who will just constantly deliver this level of negativity towards everything you do and everybody has these people in their lives you have to be willing to slowly remove them and actually in my case quickly remove a lot of them actually and realise that what I’d been doing was stupid I’d put all my eggs in one basket I’d said that I’d become a professional sports person but I was out drinking, I was roaming the streets I was getting into trouble and doing stupid things so the part of my brain that wasn’t stupid realised that I had to make a change and it’s hard, it really is very difficult but if you don’t do it you’re stuck on the path that you’re at and it’s only you to blame at that point there might be other people getting you involved with things that are wrong but you still have that ability as a human to walk away and say I don’t want to do that anymore so you find the people that give you what you need be that moving towns or not hanging out in the same streets that you were hanging out with before finding something that you can sink your teeth into it doesn’t have to be sport, it can be absolutely anything doing that and enjoying it and finding people like-minded to lead you away from the things that are actually going to eventually cause harm to you and others Yeah and travelling is so good

1:43:10 Because you get to see how different people live and then as you go into that sport all of a sudden you’re like wait a second there’s the guy that always wins look at his game, wait a second he’s going to bed early he’s doing these practices, he’s training like a man and he’s eating right he could go out to party tonight but he decides to just go to sleep I want to be like him and I respect him and he carries himself like a person that he’s probably proud of himself I’m sure you see that as well No you see that a lot and I saw that with some of the major factors and major players within my sport and I went to emulate them and as I say I always believed that I had the ability to win and part of that was learning from people who were winning to why they won and following suit with that Next five years for you what do they look like?

1:43:51 You want to get back on the winning streak next year and Tokyo may be there or maybe the Winter Olympics Tell me, what’s this all about? I’ve dabbled with the Winter Olympics In 2014 I went to Lillie Hammer in Norway and I gave the Skeleton Bob a go This sort of desire to have a bit of danger in my life has never gone Is that the single? Head first Head first, luge or whatever they do So luge is feet first Skeleton Bob is head first So when you’re travelling at 100kmh down an ice track head first with just a helmet on it’s quite exhilarating to somebody like myself and I loved it I found it so exciting How did you do that without training?

1:44:29 Can you make it down in one piece? Yeah just about I did hit my shoulder a couple of times but no I went along with the British Skeleton Bob training group that was out there Basically they’re telling me I did a load of these youngsters and I basically latched on and we filmed it for about 3 days that I was with them and we built up towards it I did a few runs So I went in from turn 4 rather than running from the top Basically I had a guy holding onto my legs and then said, are you ready? And obviously my initial response was no because at this point I’m thinking while looking down the ice track what on earth am I doing?

1:45:06 And then he let go of the legs and then you very very quickly speed up It’s very hard to explain It’s very quick It’s ice and you’re just on a metal tea tray basically and you’re hurtling down an ice track with turns the g-forces that force your head into the ground because I don’t know how to obviously work because I’ve never done it before but the overriding sensation when I got to the bottom after something like 34 seconds of sliding which did feel a lot longer but you get to the bottom was get me up there I want to do that again It was an exceptionally exhilarating experience and I loved it But the problem I have now is age I mean I am now 30 I still want to achieve a bit more within my own sport A lot of people older than you are thinking You’re not at all But I guess Yeah, in a sporting sense though That’s the thing I know I’m into the last decade of my sporting life and not even decades Probably five years If I was to push it I’d probably have five years at most When I started off when I turned professional 18 I knew I had potentially 18 years worth of sport I don’t have that anymore I’m at the back end I still would like to achieve a bit But do you know what as well I’ve dabbled with other sports as well I had this notion at one point that I would go and join the NFL Yeah, you toyed with that, didn’t you?

1:46:23 I did Well, the guys in America, you all know who it is Tim Tebow was training out of Arizona And he wanted somebody to just help him catch I’d never caught an American football before And we got to this point where I have this amazing video of me catching a Hail Mary from him When I nearly outran his arm And then a coach at UCLA at the time was like Would you like to come and have a look around? And basically I was having the whole recruitment thing going on I didn’t really realize at the time And Tim at the time said If I told you in two years you could be playing in the NFL Would you believe me? And I laughed it off And then he said, no, I’m serious You could do it But this is another thing that I love in the States This positivity Somebody sees a little tiny spark of something And they’ll run with it Rather than here If I turned around and I said this I said to other people I said, I’m thinking about other sports And the abuse that I got of people on Twitter And whatever else I said How dare you? You’re already an Olympic champion The long jump Why do you think you can be the best at something else?

1:47:20 It’s not that It’s I always believe I can physically push my body And again, American football was something that I considered for a time And you know what? I’d love to still go and give it a go I’m going to try, possibly And get into the combine at some point Because I feel like certain aspects of what I could do What’s the combine? The combine for the NFL So going out there and doing the 40 yard dash The broad jump and some of the other skills And everything else The vertical jump or whatever Because I think I could actually do quite well in that What I love in America is that Stat based findings lead on to people Actually doing quite well in sport Which is very different here It’s about making your mark and then people taking you serious Whereas in America there is a level of you can do it And even if you fail you fail to go okay you failed But you win and they go fantastic And that’s what I love about it We don’t have that here Yeah, I thought about this lots of times I think it has a lot to do with the geography And the way the countries evolved and were born And I think in Britain Just because it’s an island nation And I think there was always limited resources And things were kind of passed down through family lines Whereas in America it was like If you want it go west There’s tons of stuff There’s opportunity If you make it happen it’s yours So in our limited 200 year history We see the winners And they didn’t have anything more

1:48:37 They didn’t have a family name They didn’t have a lineage All they did was hustle and risk taking Exactly And so for us it’s just normal That people have these audacious goals Because there’s always been like surplus of capital Yeah Just go that way There’s farmland There’s rivers Go for it Go and win It’s still in our culture now I don’t know 500 years I don’t know if it’ll be like that But right now It is that kind of Let’s do it I love it And again Sort of going forward for me Like something And I think probably being in the States again Helps me want to follow through with ideas I’m developing again with sort of my team Like an online platform at the moment for fitness Called Take Flight So we soft launched that yesterday Congratulations I want to hear about it Thank you Yeah it’s like a really exciting idea Again me and Andrew Who again I talk about in the book And still heavily involved in my life Manages me nowadays actually My best friend has been for a long time Okay We are those sorts of people that will sit around And will go for a dinner somewhere And we will just hash out ideas What could we do?

1:49:36 What could be brilliant? What is missing from the market? And we saw this sort of We saw this whole in the fitness market Where we sort of said Do you know what? Over the last 12 years of being a professional athlete I’ve developed and had contact with Some of the greatest minds in what I do Be that Dan Be that other coaches in the US I’ve watched and been lucky enough to see The likes of Usain Bolt How they train What they do And how you become The best at what you do And how you improve physically And I thought Would you know what?

1:50:05 Most people don’t ever get access to that They look in They see I wonder what Greg Rutherford does I wonder what Usain Bolt does I wonder what the sorts of people That they get to mix with In order to succeed And I thought Well we thought Why not create A level of programming towards people Who would never have an opportunity To experience that Who maybe try a fad diet for a little while It always fails And then they go on and go Well I tried it It never worked It wasn’t for me The major thing with fitness Is that it’s a lifestyle choice And this whole thing Me and Andrew actually did a couple of podcasts Called Life and Performance Because as I’ve said throughout the book As I’ve sort of said tonight as well There has to be a level of enjoyment in your life And you have to make changes within yourself In order to fully buy into anything that you do So what we’ve done now with Take Flight Is create a platform where basically You can pick and choose to a certain degree When you train But I will then show you Through the years of knowledge that I’ve developed What has worked And what will work For many people getting involved And it has videos It has tutorials It gives you an idea On nutrition based things as well We’re going to be bringing in Some of the people that have helped transform my life And bring them on board to say This is what you need to do This is what will help you Because I think too many people as I say They’ll go

1:51:30 Alright I’m going to become I’m going to do the Paleo diet for a bit Oh it didn’t work for me that’s fine Oh I’m going to go and try Atkins Or whatever it was years ago And the idea of things like a diet Is that it will end And you will go back to normality The idea with something like Take Flight Is that you have an initial three month period You learn You develop You get better And then from that You then move on And you carry on with that Now there’s been some other things that have come out over the last few years Where people have been sending out things like PDFs And you learn from that a little bit And then there’s nothing else You do three months You’re done The idea is with Take Flight Is that you can come on board You can learn You can use the knowledge that I’ve got I’ll be interacting with people A lot with this as well And hopefully showing that The performance and lifestyle choices that you make Can go hand in hand To be good or better You don’t have to lead a monastic lifestyle Like I’ve proven in the book as well And we can hopefully Revolutionize the fitness world a little bit I love this idea Because like you said You’re walking around with all this intellectual property in your head From being with these great trainers Watching athletes at the top top top of their game Like you said Mo Farah, Usain Bolt And yourself And you know what works And what doesn’t work But And I see this all the time Because we have similar IP in our heads here

1:52:50 And it’s called productizing your IP And we’re big fans of that Because you’re busy You’ve got things you want to do And you can’t go around and personally train all the people in the world Although you could But it would just not be a good use of your time So you’re putting it into a product And I’m going to say one thing even more than this Is that you inspire people, Greg And that night in London And reading your book They’re going to be like Man, this guy means something to me And so here’s what I’ll tell you They’ll be more likely to go through your three-month plan And stick with it Because it’s you You know what I mean? And so they have a connection to you Which will give them more of a success rate So why not, in a way, give back a little bit Yeah, completely To those people And so, yeah Exactly And again, I think the big thing is When people look in They’ll never truly understand What it takes in order to succeed Or just to get a bit better Because look, at the end of the day Not everybody is going to become an Olympic champion But I think everybody can better themselves somewhat Be that physically, mentally Or enrich their lives in a way that actually gets the best performance Be that of going and working in the bank Or your local supermarket, whatever else The idea of Take Flight is that it works for every single person It doesn’t matter your level of ability It doesn’t matter background, whatever else It doesn’t matter where you’re based

1:54:01 Because the beauty of it as well Is that you can do it in your front room You can go to the local food You can do a bit in your street if you need to You don’t need things You don’t need to go to this sort of entity That is a gym that a lot of people end up turning against Because they turn in there They see so-and-so running on the treadmill And doing 50 miles And going, blimey, I could never do that They see Tommy in the corner there Lifting these outrageous weights And they go, oh, I never do that They get switched off People need to be enriched in the right way And hopefully my people who have been there Haven’t done that With the knowledge base that actually, you know what? You can become better I can help you become better Get fitter, get healthier And lead, hopefully, a fun lifestyle alongside with them Yeah, I love the fact you’re doing this I think more athletes should do this More UFC fighters But unfortunately a lot of them only understand A few games in town Which is, I got to get an endorsement Or a sponsor Or win some prize money And then they use your retire broke And blah, blah, blah Yeah, exactly And yet they’re walking around With all this intellectual property in their head And what I’ve found Because at London Real like we produce videos But we also have this whole academy behind the scenes And so we teach people how to accelerate their businesses But most people walk around And they don’t think what they know is special

1:55:14 Completely And I’m sure you know all the guys you compete with on the track They’re probably like, ah, I’m just a track and field guy Yes, exactly But in fact, they have this specialized piece of knowledge That could help, like you said, all these people That want to be inspired to train in a different way Yeah, completely And do you know what? It can be on such a low level I mean, so I remember last year I filmed a show It was a channel full of time crashes And for the two weeks We were completely taken away from civilization From any human contact from the point of view Of phones, internet, everything else We just lived in these different parts of history And there was one of the people on there Who’s a TV presenter Who has now gone into British triathlon As a veteran age And we had nothing to do So I said, well, I’ll coach you a bit A little bit I’ll watch a bit of your running Now, I don’t have a coach and qualification as such But what I do have is 12 years of professional sport And being surrounded by the greatest coaches of all time And I watched the way she run And I said, the reason you have an issue with your ankle At the moment is because you’re doing this And she was just hitting her toe pretty much Every time on the floor I said, think about a better running position And I showed her what to do It went through it Very, very simple She knocked five minutes off of her tri-run time The injury that she had got a lot better

1:56:26 And it has been much less impacting it And these were just fundamental basics of movement patterns And if I wouldn’t have come into contact with Dan Then I never would have learnt this myself And if I wouldn’t have been around like-minded people I never would have had the ability to pass on this knowledge And if I’ve managed to help one lady in her 40s Who was having a lot of pain running Then I feel like we can help a lot of people in the world Become better and enjoy them Not have as many injuries And actually enjoy the process of fitness and training as well Yeah, I love it So it’s takeflight.online Yes, at the moment What we’ve got for a landing page Because we’ve just done a soft launch at the moment So we’re only at the moment except in the first 100 And I think we’re pretty much closed on that now For the initial process But if people go to takeflight.fitness forward slash London Real Then they can sign up and then have the pre-sign Then e-mails will get sent out to them And then once it opens again Then everybody will have a chance to get involved Nice Takeflight.fitness or dot online Oh, that’s very impressive now Takeflight.online slash That’s good that you’re knowing and I’m now not knowing The landing page went up literally about 20 minutes before we That’s nice, we’ll put the link Please do, yeah Because I think it will be something that will be really, really, really useful But I love this stuff and I love to see people

1:57:43 Like I said, I call it productizing their IPs And like I said, I just took a class of 100 people Through our program of 8 weeks And I had a guy that actually People from all over the world are on this course And we had these live calls And I had a guy actually that makes UFC cages in Minnesota And he was productizing that IP And I had someone, I had a doctor, I had a lawyer, I had a Wall Street trader They were all selling these products And 20 of them got revenues in the first 6 weeks They actually sold like a tutorial And so I love this and we know media and online media So we teach them how to get the message out on YouTube, Facebook And to really engage with people Absolutely And again, do the internet marketing side Which a lot of people don’t understand why e-mail is important Completely, absolutely So our next course is in March, I’ll let you know Perfect, we’ll be in March I want to ask you just a couple of final questions That being said, when you guys do finish a meet, you go a little crazy The book talks about people getting a little, the orgies start happening Because people do go a little monkish at the end with the guide and the discipline

1:59:08 And so when you guys party, it does kind of go a little crazy Yeah, it goes hard And you’ve got to think as well, for some, especially the youngsters, maybe you’ve turned 18, 19, or whatever else They might have been training for 5 years or so to get to the point of doing well Or even just getting to the Olympics They’ve got there, their event is finished Why not have fun? Now this is the other interesting thing I think when people see, let’s say, a professional soccer player, a football player, do whatever else They forget that they are only human But equally, they may have to perform the following week Often in the Olympic scenario When you finish, you’re finished, possibly for the year So why would you not go and enjoy yourself? And we have to look at it as well There’s a village full of, what, 8,000 people A large proportion of them are in fantastic shape, look wonderful And have had a very stressful life up until that point They want to have a bit of fun So going out and drinking, having fun with other people It happens Best party you’ve ever been to You know what, the worst thing for me was in London I sadly had to come out of the village Well, say sadly, I was doing so many things because I’d just won I didn’t get to enjoy the party as much as I probably would have liked to have done And then in Rio, I flew straight home again for Strictly Come Dancing In Beijing, I got flown home early because I was ill

2:00:14 So it seems every time I could have had the party in my life But especially, my European juniors talk about it in the book It was quite wild My first experience of competing for Great Britain in a championship sense I had a lot of fun there What happens at these parties? Well, I think the thing is, you’ve got to imagine Young people, again all of age, drinking lots of alcohol generally That seems to happen And then letting some of their inhibitions go Leads to people having fun, if you like And young people will be young people They’ll experience things and enjoy themselves And as I say, if you’ve been building up to this one moment for years And all of a sudden somebody says, well, you’re done for the year now Your default is I’m going to now try and enjoy myself in every way possible And that does mean that people might be jumping in bed with each other They might be going out and drinking and doing things they’ve never done before Because you’re young, they’re switching off They’re trying to enjoy themselves because they’ve been stressed for a long period of time Right, and they’ve sacrificed probably a lot of their puberty years When everyone else was kind of getting out of their system Completely, so then when you give people free reign on these aspects of their life They will have fun And you’re away from friends, family and whatever else You’re going to go a bit wider in some foreign country somewhere

2:01:23 Why not? In an Olympic village where you have basically a boy and a girl from every country It sounds like they engineered that party just for you guys And then we’re just there to watch Absolutely Is it true in 2017 there’s going to be a match-up between you and Tyson Fury? That would be a very one-sided fight, wouldn’t it? We’re thinking about getting in the boxing promotion business, by the way Could you imagine? Because I’ve got Nigel Bennet in here tomorrow and we’ve got Chris Eubank’s a good friend of the show So we’re thinking about putting together that fight And we could put together your fight on the same card Your call It could possibly be the fastest knockout in history Or I would run away so very fast It’d be the fastest exit to a ring in history I know we could give you a bucket of KFC before That’s when you get in the zone Ah, dear, yeah Well, again, that’s a prime example of somebody who, in my opinion, didn’t take on the role modeling the correct way And, yeah, caused a few problems But no desire to ever meet or spend time with Tyson Fury As I imagine he would knock me out so incredibly fast It wouldn’t even be funny Right, but you refused to share the stage with him at that awards program last year You’re very outspoken, Greg Like, you know, look, a lot of people would say that’s not the best career move, you know But you don’t care You do it anyways Yeah, arguably speaking out against the World Heavyweight Champion is not a good idea when you’re me

2:02:50 This skinny ginger bloke from Milton Keynes No, look, I have strong views He obviously had strong views and has strong views But as I said earlier on, I believe there’s Well, when you are in the public limelight And, you know, when you’re well-traveled and you’ve experienced the world You’ve seen other cultures, met many different people To still have views that can be very harming to others And to voice those very openly and publicly To a lot of people that will listen It’s a very dangerous path to be on And what I wanted from when I spoke out again was I didn’t want people to think that all sports people are just boring And will let something like that go by If everybody else was in uproar about what was being said I was in uproar, and I know the other sports people were But they were too afraid to say anything For me, I spoke out because I felt like I should Because it really struck a call with me And I basically, yeah, got a bit of a verbal with the World Heavyweight Champion And I’d like to believe now that Tyson Fury has bettered himself And he’s obviously dealing with some horrible demons himself now Which, again, can’t be easy at all But I’d like to think now that he’s started to realise Some of the things he said were wrong and were harmful And has actually, hopefully, moved on with his life a little bit more You can learn that And again, you do make mistakes in life I say, I think once you are well-rounded

2:04:12 And you’ve travelled the world You shouldn’t really be making mistakes But he has And hopefully now, he realised that they were mistakes And he’s bettering himself as a human Because he’s got a really tough battle on his hands now Well away from the boxing ring And as a human, you hope he overcomes them And goes on to become a better person You guys might be friends one day Stranger things, right? No, stranger things have happened And as I say, who am I to say that he’s a bad person or whatever else He said some things that I disagree with Now, he obviously disagrees with other people as well I’d like to believe that in the world that we live in in 2016 The views that were aired aren’t particularly prevalent with a lot of others I’d like to believe that But sadly, I know there would be a few people that would have listened to that And maybe followed through with certain things because of it And that’s where it becomes risky as a role model Yeah Greg, I always ask everyone a question at the end If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Greg Rutherford Give that young man a bit of advice I don’t know if he was car surfing Probably got over that I was starting trouble I don’t know what you were doing But if you could literally talk to him right now And tell him a few things Or give him a little advice What would you say?

2:05:24 Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? And if we did have that ability, I could possibly change a lot of things Do you know what? I think I would tell myself to actually speak out more often as a youngster Because I think at that point I was very happy to just go along with the status quo I feared a lot of things, be that coaches or people involved in my life Why would it be liked? Yeah, I wanted to be liked As we now know, not everybody’s going to like you And things will be said to you and whatever else And that’s fine But I would like to say that Do you know what?

2:05:57 I think if I would have been, say, based in America from the age of 20 I may have won an Olympic medal in 2008 for sure I actually believe that would have been a year, 18 months before that Olympics I think it could have done If I’d been working with Downpath at that time, almost certainly It’d be great to be able to go back and feed my 20-year-old self with the lottery numbers So I could be incredibly rich at this point But no, I think what I’ve taken the last 10, 12 years to develop In speaking out and having opinions and airing them I think hopefully in a positive way Obviously not everybody sort of agrees with you But not fearing the repercussions of what come out Now, I would talk with friends and family about things I disagreed with when I was a bit younger And I wouldn’t air them But I think when you are in a privileged position where people listen to you If you generally have a strong moral compass And the things that you believe in aren’t, in the general consensus, correct Then air them, speak to people about them Don’t fear repercussions of words of other people Because fundamentally, words are said by so many different people In a really negative way that if you dwell on them They can become a horrible thing Don’t worry, because it’s forgotten anyway That’s the other thing If somebody says something to you, you remove that person You don’t have them involved in your life anymore, you move on As long as they’re not coming around and hitting you with a stick or something

2:07:14 Then it’s never going to cause any long-term damage So don’t fear that Not everybody’s going to like you Speak up for what you believe is right And go on and look forward to the times where you’re going to win Second part of that question, best advice you’ve ever received Could be personal, could be training, could be from Dan What was it? Dan Paff, Newton’s fifth law of physics, fat don’t fly That was something that Dan Paff said to me quite early on When I turned up to training looking a bit like the Michelin man Because I’d enjoyed my period a bit too much Funny enough, do you know what? We talked about body image issues and whatever And for Dan to say something like that to me We had a level of understanding between ourselves That I didn’t see that as, oh no, I’m fat Dan’s having a go at me He was pointing out a basic fundamental of life within my sport That actually was really really important And the fat don’t fly part And I’ve heard him say it multiple times to other people as well It’s not just talking about you’re eating too much It’s actually about the lifestyle choices that you’re making within your sport He said that very early on in our relationship When I was still coming out the back end of probably doing the odd silly thing And it resonated with me really strongly And I just thought, yeah, do you know what, he’s right actually I need to take a conscious effort to improve certain aspects of my life

2:08:40 I need to eat better, I need to do things better And I need to get myself in shape, get myself in order My head, body, everything Because obviously he saw something that could go on to win as it did And something as small as fat don’t fly I think was very important in my life Multiple meanings there, yeah That’s nice, and he probably said it just like that He did Fat don’t fly, that’s what he said Okay Last part of this, there’s 20 year old out there right now listening to us They might be an aspiring Olympic athlete, they could be in China or the US or South America What advice do you give to them if they want to grow up and one day be like Greg? If they want to wear that gold medal and be on that podium, what do you tell them? I think if anybody has the ability to go on and succeed in sport especially The one thing you can never forget is the reason you got involved with sport in the first place And for every child that gets involved with sport is because they love doing it They enjoy it, they’re having a lot of fun And there’s been key parts in my career where I’ve realised I’m not enjoying myself anymore And that coincided massively with me performing very poorly So you have to make sacrifices, yes you have to train well, yes you have to be smart with that sort of thing But as soon as you lose the enjoyment factor to why you’re doing a sport it becomes a job When it becomes a job it doesn’t become fun anymore

2:10:03 Then you don’t perform to as high a level as you possibly can do So whatever it is that makes what you do fun Which I’d like to think that in my life I’ve managed to find a lot of the time even when it’s been quite bad Hold on to that, keep it, do it If you’re surrounded by people who aren’t making it fun, remove them Fun and enjoyment is the fundamental of performance So keep that in there and you will maximise whatever potential you’ve got You said after 2012 that you were misunderstood And I think you are misunderstood sometimes But I think after tonight I don’t think it will be the case anymore But I think when they see you as a man who’s outspoken They see that part, they see your game slash mean face on the track Taking care of business They see you making choices like going to America When maybe they’re being, why isn’t he being loyal And they don’t understand what you do, especially in the tweets And I think with Strictly and with things like this where they can just listen to what you’re all about I think they’ll start to get you and then appreciate what it’s all about Because this is a classic, amazing British story And you really go deep here about a lot of stuff that’s not nice And you didn’t have to go through a lot of that stuff And like you said, you didn’t want this just to be another sports autobiography And you said that from the beginning and that’s why I kept reading Because we’ve all read the ones that it’s just the glory stories

2:11:27 And I don’t think anybody wants to hear that anymore Because everybody has darkness Yeah, absolutely And I think when they see it as someone like you They’re like, okay, but now he’s taking it He’s not beating himself up for it He’s using it when he needs to use it And, you know, it’s part of life So thanks for coming over No, I appreciate that, I really do appreciate it And talking to us about this stuff Can’t wait to see, you know, how the next few years go with you competing Business-wise, I can’t wait to see you in the NFL And then Americans are going to love you man It helps if I remember my own website as well That’s always the problem when you’re doing a thousand things in a day And you’re trying to make sure you get enough information across to people But you know what, I think we’re in a fantastic scenario for me And I think going forward it’s going to be really exciting for a lot of other people as well Who get involved with whatever we do And be that watching me try and make a fool of myself in the NFL Sliding down a nice track Or trying to help people improve their fitness levels I think it’s going to be an exciting 10 years in my 30s And I cannot wait to crack on with them Yeah, it’s great stuff And you obviously enjoy embracing those challenges, you know Absolutely Like strictly and all that stuff And I think when you get online You’re going to love teaching people Because I think you do like teaching and seeing them improve