THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME | Jan Frodeno

I can definitely tell you that pressure is a privilege. I work hard for it, it's something I've fought very hard for and something I love. I've always needed pressure. Most people push to do sport because they push themselves out the door, they push themselves to get off the couch. But I'm pulled in by sport. It makes me feel alive. I'm at a point in my career where I do it for the challenge, I do it for the nerves before the race and the absolute deep places you go to during the race. It's a point where you are with yourself and you make a decision. And that decision is whether you pursue and extend yourself a little bit more or whether to back off, which equals giving up. Of course, for everyone, it's the easy decision to back off but it's a price I have to pay for months. Even in training, if I back off, I'm pretty hard on myself. It's something that takes me a lot of time to digest and I know it's no good, I know it's no use. I always compare it to being in the sauna and you want to get out but the door is locked. It's very uncomfortable but your body goes in waves, it comes and goes and you end up, you can feel better. If you're at that point and you're making that decision, there's nothing else in your mind. You're not worrying about anyone else. It's so pure. You're focused on seeing if you are capable of doing what you think you're doing and getting the most out of yourself. It's a fine line behind the scenes. Everybody always thinks I'm this Teflon guy who rocks up at the start line and everything's gone super smooth. It's quite chaotic at times. I probably struggle most with balance in my sporting life but therefore, I look for it in other parts of life. When I come home and I close the door, it's completely private, my kids are there and they don't care, they don't care who I am, they don't care what I do and I love it. I was fortunate enough straight after the Olympics in 2008 to learn from some people who are much smarter and much more experienced than me who taught me that if you invite the world in on the elevator up, you can't ask them to leave when the elevator goes down. I've seen the laws of sport and I was fortunate to have a circle of really good and solid friends around. I don't know how many times I received the whole Rocky DVD set but a lot of my friends seem to think there was a part of it that I needed to see. Doing well in sport is something that's expected but when I'm home, I'm also expected to be a dad and it really is a good balance because otherwise you're just in this endless hamster wheel that never stops and I think that's toxic over a long period of time. Evolutionarily, we are made to move. And we're just getting to a more and more sedentary lifestyle which has pros and cons totally but I do think that the whole oxygenation of the body, all that kind of thing, serves everybody well. Even if you don't enjoy the 30 minute jog you've done, you can't tell me the beer afterwards doesn't taste better even if you're Joe Soap off the street. Sport does allow you to be with yourself. A lot of people manage to avoid that very successfully all their life. Before I had this family life, I was living out of a bag for 17 years between training camps and hotel rooms and all this kind of thing and it never bothered me because I think the motivation for sport that I have is very different to what a normal person has. A normal person does sport for a balance or to switch off. It pulls me, it pulls me and I have to do sport in order to feel myself, in order to feel good. The consequence of not doing sport for me is that I go into, I wouldn't say a dark place but this kind of gray cloud and area, I really needed to think clearly. This wasn't always like that. I think it took a pretty big injury to realize that this road isn't endless. There was an incident a few years ago where I almost got killed by a truck. I sat on the side of the road and called Emma afterwards and we just had Luca, our first born child and this guy, he thought I wasn't worth the air I was breathing because I, I don't even want to say it on camera but anyways, he didn't approve of my Lycra clothing and yeah, it was pretty full on and I had to deal with that for quite a long time because I realized that it can hit you anytime. Like life can be over, can be over tomorrow. It really can just be that quick. I asked myself why I feared this moment and what else I want to do just in case that anything comes over and it changed my attitude a lot in life and in my relationship and relationships in general and how I deal with people. I came to the realization that man, I've had a kick-ass time, like it's been good and there's not too much more that I'm thinking like, wow, this, you know, twice as much is not twice as good. The one thing I do fear at this stage is that if it were all over tomorrow, I'd want my kids to remember. I want to make it even more clear that every time I do Kona, it could be the last Kona and that's why I care so much. That's why I'm like, I'm not giving up until I'm like, I'm done. And just because I don't publicly say as many times that I will go home on a stretcher or anything like that doesn't actually mean that, you know, I, yeah, I genuinely care. Every training session of my attitude towards it, I'm happy at the end of every day. I do think the common thing triathlon offers to everybody is freedom. It forces you to engage. You can't cheat your way through it. You get a lot of return for what you put in but you have to put it in. And that's something that keeps you very honest and it really allows you to live that freedom in some of the most beautiful places in the world because triathlon now is global, it's everywhere. I guess my greatest accomplishment is still being around after so many years. I really hope to keep my fire alive within me. It's a moment that I know will come. It'll come one day, I'll wake up and I know it'll be gone. That'll be a scary moment. Just to keep reigniting the fire and finding little things, finding projects, finding rivalries, maybe sometimes even finding a comment of somebody who pisses me off. And it just adds to the fire again. It just keeps things going. And of course in sport, it's generally time-capped. I can't do this until I'm 50. I really have come to appreciate the process of getting there and the process of getting better. And I think once you enjoy that, the excellence is the result.