138 James Magnussen How The Australian Olympian Became The Face Of The Enhanced Games

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I'm Mark Boris, and this is Straight Talk.

40% of athletes said they were taking or had taken performance-enhancing drugs at the Olympic Games.

I'm yourself, James Magnuson. Welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Thanks, Mark.

I want to talk to you about the new Olympics that you're going to.

So it's called the Enhanced Games.

Essentially, this is a version of the Olympics without drug testing.

This is an exercise in pushing human ability, human physiology.

Are there other things on top of testosterone?

Yeah.

Testosterone, peptides, stem cells, some other growth hormone or anabolic type substances.

This endeavor can actually advance humanity.

You come on board, you break that world record.

The million US is yours, which was a nice upside because little did he know I meant a million AUD.

James Magnuson, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Thanks, Mark.

Haven't seen you for a long, long time.

It's been a minute, yeah.

I reckon you've grown about three inches.

You look taller.

Yeah, that's the first thing everyone said is-

I'm serious.

Yeah, I haven't been trying to grow yet.

But when I would have, maybe it'd be six, seven years ago.

How old are you now?

Yeah, 33.

So you would have been in your 20s, mid-20s.

Yeah, I think I was newly retired, just retired at the time.

Yeah, I think you just had, but you're still pretty fresh.

You're only young, relatively speaking.

I'm probably old enough for a swimmer.

Yeah.

How are you feeling about the Olympics coming up?

How do you feel?

Very excited.

I'm heading over for the coverage.

Oh, cool.

So I'm working for News Corp.

Yep.

So I'll be doing, I'll be writing and then doing a bit of stuff with Fox Sports as well.

So I'm pumped for that.

You're actually writing, as in journalist stuff?

So you'll be writing up the events?

Yes.

All the events or just swimming?

But all the events, all the big events, opinion pieces across the whole games.

Swimming, I guess I'll do a bit in the second week, but probably the games generally, you know,

events, the reaction of fans.

I think Matty Johns and I are going to be doing some alternate content in the second week.

That's a formula.

Yeah.

You and John's going to be serious?

What the hell?

Actually, he's a lot of fun.

He is.

And he's a massive Olympics enthusiast, actually.

And quite bright in that he would know from previous Olympics and previous Olympics.

He'll go back and his memory is crazy.

Yeah, he's got the history.

Yeah.

Crazy in terms of stats and information.

Not just on Olympics.

He's like on all sorts of stuff, music, whatever.

Like his category memory recall is crazy on so many topics.

He gave me some advice around, you know, working in the media and doing radio and all that sort of stuff.

And his methods for memory retention and information retention are pretty impressive.

Well, he's a bit of a fanatic when it comes down to prep.

So his prep process, he still writes notes.

Physically he writes notes, like old school.

Yeah.

He doesn't use a laptop or anything.

But he will spend hours prepping for something.

And it's all about preparation.

And it probably goes back to his footy career because he was never the most, Andrew will be listening to this,

but he was never the most talented footballer.

But he was a big prepper.

Yeah.

And which made him a great footballer.

Yeah.

I'm talking about natural talent versus being a good footballer.

And, you know, that old story, like so many people around the world with talent never end up doing anything.

But he, yeah, obviously.

Obviously he had talent, but he didn't have the same sort of talent as Joey.

But Matty's ability to prep was crazy.

And, you know, like his attention to detail was very, very good.

So you're in good company going off to the Olympics.

Yeah.

When you get, I mean, you're only 33, you're still young.

When you get off to these Olympics and, you know, you're in Paris,

I mean, do you sort of get a bit itchy and think, fuck, you know, like, you know, I wish I was there.

I mean, I know that you're older now, but, you know, like actually going in the 50 metre freestyle,

or something like that, do you actually, or getting in the relay with the relay team, do you get sort of a bit weird?

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Maybe less so this one because now I'm prepping for something myself.

But I retired at 27, not necessarily through necessity, but more I wanted to retire on my own terms.

That's, from the moment I debuted on the Australian team, I said to my parents and those close to me,

I want to retire on my own terms.

But also.

Just the sport generally wears down on you.

There's a lot of time left to your own thoughts.

It can be a very lonely sport at times.

And, you know, I was a professional for 10 years and that was enough.

I was going to drive myself insane if I kept swimming.

But physically, I still had the attributes to go on.

So, yeah, when it comes to the Olympics, that's pretty much the only time that I get itchy feet is when I watch that, that hundred free or that four by one free.

So I relay.

I just still think physically, I could probably still do this.

And that's the arena I miss.

I don't miss the training.

I don't miss the early mornings.

I don't miss being told what to do every day by a coach.

Even aspects of traveling with the swim team.

By the time I retired, I was 27.

Swimming is a young man's sport.

There's 18-year-olds on the team, you know, and a generation had passed since I debuted.

So some of my initiations to the team.

Um, with, you know, the guys who were around in the Sydney Olympics were very different to when I came on the, you know, went 10 years down the track.

Kids on the team, you know, it was much more about PlayStation and artistic photography and they have very different interests to me.

And when I went on tour, I wanted to do very different things to what these young kids wanted to do.

And slowly as those athletes, my age started to retire or were, were beaten, basically beaten out of the tennis.

Um, with, you know, the guys who were around in the Sydney Olympics were very different to when I came on the, you know, went 10 years down the track.

So some of my initiations to the swim team.

You sort of look around and go, ah, I don't have much in common with these other people on the team.

And I think partly it keeps you young, but also when you mature, it's, it's very different to other sports where, you know, football teams, you spend all year with the team.

So you have shared interests, you have a shared goal, all that kind of thing.

By the time I retired, I was pretty much the only professional swimmer left in Sydney.

And I was the only one on the team of, of my age.

And so it was.

Yeah.

A little bit lonely towards the end there for me.

Swimming is a lonely sport, irrespective.

I mean, you can't talk to your, when you're doing a 1500 warmup.

Yeah.

Looking at that black line.

Yeah.

You can't talk to the bloke next to you.

Yeah.

You can have a, have a giggle at the end of the 1500, but then the coach says, off you go again.

Off you go again.

Who is the coach, your coach during the Olympic, your last Olympics?

Uh, my last Olympics was Mitch Falvey.

So I was swimming here in Sydney up at Ravenswood.

No, who was, sorry, who was the Australian?

The Australian coach was, um, Jack.

Marko Vaharan.

Right.

From the Netherlands.

Um, and again, like he had very different methodologies, um, come from another country.

The, the, the whole scope of the team had, had changed a lot.

And, you know, society generally has changed in that 10 year time.

I debuted in, in 2010, retired in 2018.

You know, a whole different culture had emerged in that time.

Um, but I am old school.

Um, you know, I come from a football background.

Yeah.

Um, and my mentality was, was very different.

And by the time I retired, people, you know, he used to say to me, oh, how did you end

up with, uh, a lot of sponsors, a lot of limelight, all that stuff.

And I said, from the time I debuted to the time I retired, I was always a straight shooter.

If I was going into a race, uh, I always expected of myself that I would win.

And if, if you ask me an interview, what's, what's the outcome of you, what's your desired

outcome?

I'm here. I said, I'm here to win. And, you know, put a lot of pressure on myself at times, but

you know, it also gave me a lot of, a lot of limelight. But by the time I was retiring,

every interview was, you know, they're asking people, you know, what are you, what are you

here for? Or what? Oh, I'm just happy to be happy to be a part of this team. You know,

my dream was to go to the Olympics. Now I'm here. So anything beyond that's a bonus.

And I always used to sit there and just go, bullshit, bullshit. No one wants to come to

the Olympics and make a semifinal. If you're on the Australian swim team and you're at the

Olympic games, I, as a member of the public now have an expectation of you as an Australian swimmer

to be on that dais. We're the best swimming nation in the world. We're one of the smallest

swimming nations in the world, but we're the best. Make no mistakes about that. And I used to,

and I found it, found it tough towards the end of my career, you know, being amongst a team,

we're happy to be here. We're all friends. There was people on that team that I was racing in the

hundred freestyle and I'd rather wring their neck than say, I'm happy.

To be there next to them. But I'm, and, and I found that tough towards the end of my career

because I am very old school. Why do you think, or why do you say, I should say that swimming is

a young man's sport? What, what, what is it about being say 19 or 20 that gives that person an

advantage over someone who say 27? The main reason in Australia, particularly it's a young

man's sport. Basically you make it by the time you're 18 or you quit and go and find

work elsewhere. Whereas in America, you have the college system. So you might not be an Olympic

swimmer by 18, but you go into college, you get your education paid for and you progress through.

So by the time you're 23 and you're physically peaking, you're then making it onto the Olympic

team. In Australia, I think athletes and coaches and parents are acutely aware that if you don't

make it by young age, there really isn't the pathways into swimming. So from 13 years of age,

we're absolutely whipping young.

Kids, 13 year olds are doing 10 sessions a week. They're starting strength and conditioning

training. They're eating right, sleeping right, recovering right. If you look at junior world

championships, junior world records, we dominate even more than we do at a senior level because

there's not that same rush or pressure for young athletes in America. Cause I know there's a system

and they'd almost, most of them would rather go through that college system than

turn professional at 18 and go to an Olympic game. So in Australia,

we're in, we're in a rush from the time where we're teenagers to, to make it onto that Australian

swim team. And then we do so much workload at a young age that by the time we're mid to late

twenties, our bodies are falling apart. It's funny, it's funny you should say that because

one of my sons was a swimmer and I've got four sons and that's interesting because he went into

the trials for the Commonwealth Games in Victoria. He was a butterfly and he was, and he went,

he was eight and he got in the B final.

Um, but I, I said to him, I said, mate, you're not going to make a career out of this. And, uh,

he was in year 12 and I said, you might as well, um, do year 12 and give it, give it away. You're

not going to be, you're not going to be in the Commonwealth Games team. And, um, and he gave it

away for a couple of years. And of course the butterflies who beat him, the older guys, they

then retired and they, someone said, we'd come back. What's interesting is he trained so hard,

like you're saying, for so many years.

And by the way, it's a fucking punish for me as a father, like 4.30, summer, winter, fucking,

you know, nationals in Perth and Darwin. Like it was, it is the toughest game. Like it's so hard

for parents as well as the kids, but probably hard, I think it's really hard for parents.

Um, but what happened is that they trained so hard when they're young, when you, like you were

saying, you know, they, they're all world-class top 10, all this sort of stuff, 13, 14, 15, 16.

The moment you stop the development,

physical development, development was crazy. Like he went from a lean, maybe 80 kilo, maybe even

less 75, 80 kilo, six foot one, sort of 17, 18 year old. Yeah. To a like 95 kilo, big, big legs.

Yeah. Yeah. Not fat, just this physique development. He got back in the pool and he said,

dad, I'm giving away. He said, it's like, I feel like I'm a dragon, a piano behind me. And he said,

a hundred butterfly or 200 fly like him. Oh my God. Yeah. And, uh, and that seems to be a problem

in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You're right. I mean, I've never thought of through like that. Um, it's like Australians,

boys and girls, I'm not so much about the girls, but the boys I've seen, they do give it away about

18. Yeah. It's really hard to get a career and maybe where our universities is that the university

system here in Australia doesn't do the same university system. We don't do it. Yeah. We

don't do scholarships. Um, we might do some, some partial scholarships at say a Sydney uni.

When I originally came to Sydney, when I was 18, I was on a scholarship at Macquarie uni and it was

$10,000. It was nothing. And I was trying to live on campus. Basically, if I hadn't made it on

the Australian swim team within that first couple of months, I probably would have had to give it

away anyway, because I couldn't afford to live in Sydney. So what do you think, what do you think,

what would you say to the government today who run the tertiary education system, federal government,

what would you say to them in terms of our swimmers, for example? I know, I know

rugby union kids, boys get scholarships. They used to at least at Sydney uni. I don't know about now,

but what would you say to, um, the government in this regard? Cause we want to win.

Yeah. I think there needs to be some sort of system set up for competition between universities

because that doesn't exist at the moment. And that's, that's the whole university, don't they?

They have a, they have a uni games, which is like schoolies 2.0. And the people that swimming at

those games aren't swimmers. They're going for a piss up on the gold coast. They hold it on the

gold coast every year, which speaks for itself. A lot of fun, but not real, not real swimming.

So, you know, they have the NCAA,

and all their divisions of swimming and competing in sports over in America. If we could even,

even get four universities, you know, one in Queensland, one in New South Wales, one in Vic

and one in WA or SA to have some sort of intercollegiate competition and provide scholarships

and, and motive and, and I guess, incentives for swimmers to further their education and their

swimming, it would be golden, but, um, proper, proper scholarships, proper scholarships. Yeah.

And for Sydney in particular,

we're essentially now, we may have one or two swimming out, out at home bush still,

but we've essentially got no swimmers left in New South Wales at that elite level because it's too

expensive to live in Sydney on a swimmer's salary. What about in Swiss and the, uh, all the various,

uh, Vic, Victoria Institute of Sport as well. But did, did they sort of play that role a bit?

So in Swiss now, the, the swimming, um, aspect of in Swiss has been taken over by Swimming Australia.

Oh, really?

And they've, they've redirected all their funding north.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So.

Up to Queensland?

Up to Queensland.

And that seems to be where they, the dominant swimmers are coming from?

Yeah, look, it's two parts. It's, it's a climate thing. You can swim year round out there,

outdoors. They've got a thousand 50 meter pools up there.

Yeah. That makes a big difference.

It makes a big difference. I'm running into the problem now here in Sydney of,

um, you know, I'm training and I'm looking for pools. The things I've run into now,

now not being in an institute, so I'm not allowed to dive.

Pools to, I've had that multiple times now at different pools.

Why?

City of Sydney here. They don't let members of the public dive off the blocks.

Dangerous.

Dangerous. Yeah, yeah.

Are you serious?

Yeah. So members of the public, so I want, you know, a rule for all, which is just lacks common

sense. And you can't take any sort of photos or videos at a pool for, for feedback on stroke

correction. So we've been kicked out of a couple of pools now in Sydney for either diving off

blocks or taking videos. Cause I need.

Feedback. I need to look at my stroke.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. What's my technique. And yeah, so that, that's a problem you run into, right? And that's,

that's just, uh, and you know, I'll stand there in my speedos while this, um, small lifeguard,

um, tells me what to do with, uh, an Olympic rings title on saying members of the public

cannot dive off these blocks.

And also you're, you're sharing a lane. I mean, you get, I guess you get into the fast lane, but

the fast lane is not that fast.

At the moment I've been doing my, my swimming at the moment, sort of.

Eight, nine AM of a morning. So most of the corpus is cleared out and, and, you know,

sometimes they're empty pools and there's a lifeguard following me around saying no photos,

no diving off blocks.

That's so crazy.

It's, it's a bit silly. It's a bit silly. It's like going down to the local oval and a member

of the council saying to an NRL player, you can't tackle someone on our oval because we're

not insured for it.

That's probably the case, by the way.

Probably is.

Probably is the case.

Probably is.

So, so, okay. And just one more question about the Olympics coming. Hey, I, I heard lots of

stories about.

About the Olympics. Because I'm, I'm good mates with Michael Delaney was in the, what

do they call the mean machine? What was that? They all shaved their heads.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To him and then a few of my, I can't remember who was in the team, but anyway. Who, by the

way, Michael's been quite ill. And Michael, if you're listening, mate, I'm, I'm, I'm glad

to hear your cancer's under control, mate. But he was a backstroke in that, in that four

by 100 medley team. And the, he told me that the partying was fucking out of control. Like

it was mental.

Yeah. And like, it was like seriously full on.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is that, is that true? I, I.

Pretty much.

Still, like you're a more, more recent Olympian.

Yeah.

Than him. He was back in the nineties or eighties when it was. Is it still the same today?

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. I, London was, was crazy because there was a heavy Australian

influence over there as well. Plus everyone spoke English, makes things a lot easier. Rio,

my Portuguese wasn't great. So that made things a little more difficult. But,

at, when you're an athlete, you find a way. And the, the big thing is, a lot of these

sponsors, a lot of the Olympic sponsors hold events, which are essentially just big parties.

But it's for, for you know, their corporates to mingle with athletes and the like.

And so there's the Heineken house is a speedo party. There's an Amiga party. All the major

sponsors throw big parties. And when you're an Australian swimmer you, you, you get great

treatment at all the, all the big parties.

So Australian swimmers are that much longer wimps?

lauded. In other words, the world knows who Australian swimmers are.

Yeah, big time, big time. And I think for the most part, Australian swimmers are quite revered

because historically we've been quite an insular team. We keep to ourselves, you know, even in an

Olympic setting, the Australian Olympic team as a whole, you know, we're all one team, but in terms

of expectations and pressure on that team, it pretty much all narrows in on the swim team,

right? And you often, you sit back and go, oh, this is awesome. We've got some gold medals in

track cycling or gymnastics or rowing or sailing. You know, that's, they're almost like a nice

surprise, but when the swimming's on, the focus narrows. There's an expectation. This is our

swim team. I seem to remember, what do you call the scud? The missile. The missile, that's what

it was, the missile. And what was that because of your size? I mean, what are you, six, seven,

six, six? Six, five. Six, five. The missile,

no one can...

You can trace back to who gave me the nickname. Basically in the last, I used to finish fast

at the end of the race. And in the end of my hundred freestyle at the 2011 world champs,

so an Australian had never won the hundred freestyle at the world champs. Not sure how

that eventuated. And the last Australian to win a hundred freestyle race was Mike Wendon

back in the late sixties. So we hadn't won a hundred free.

And you think about over the years, we've had great hundred freestyles, but it, you know,

it is the blue ribbon event. It's pretty tough to win. So that, the way that eventuated, you know,

there was a lot of hype around this race and the last say 20 meters, I took the lead and started

surging towards the finish line. And the commentator said, this is the part of the race

where he's earned his nickname, the missile. And it just stuck. And then once I got home

back to Australia, that was basically what people call me for the next decade.

The missile, that's right.

Cause I remember I kept thinking, was it sort of scud on a scud missile, but same, same deal.

So, and when you swam, when you, when you at your peak, you're six foot five,

how much would you have weighed?

Sort of hovered around say 93, 94 kilos.

Yeah. So for 65, for a six foot five guy, 95 kilos is not particularly heavy.

It's not big. Yeah. It would always be for us around power to weight.

Yeah.

But by the time you're racing, you easily sub 10% body fat. Like you are lean.

Yeah. And also there's a lot of emphasis on surface coverage. So quite wide, but not thick.

But no, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you could sort of plane, cause there is a lot of physics around speed.

There is, yeah.

And it's, and you don't want heavy legs because you don't want to be dragging them.

Yeah.

So generally speaking, you have not skinny legs, but not like not, not big legs.

Yeah.

So you could sort of plane a little bit.

Yeah.

Like a plan on the top of the, a lot different to the way Ian Thorpe was built.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was quite thick set.

Big thick set guy. He's a big guy. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I want to talk to you about the, the new Olympics that you're going to.

Just quickly explain what, what are they called and what's the, what's the thesis of the whole thing?

Yeah. So it's called the enhanced games.

So essentially this is like a version of the Olympics without drug testing.

Anything that's taken has to be FDA approved.

And prescribed by a doctor.

So there will be checks in place, but this.

So nothing dangerous, so to speak.

Nothing dangerous.

And it's monitored, I guess.

Yeah. Everything's heavily monitored.

This is, I think, this is an exercise in pushing human ability, human physiology and science.

Science plays a huge part in this, science and medicine and the advancements in this space.

But basically the idea of the games is to bring on athletes who can break world records,

current world records with, with enhancements.

So what, obviously it means like, that's like what would ordinarily be banned as a drug.

It doesn't cover every single drug.

So you're not out there doing bodybuilder type stuff.

No point for me.

Yeah.

Because you don't want to be too heavy.

No, no, no, no.

The things for me that are going to be super important, firstly, is it's going to be recovery.

Swimmers do a lot of workload.

And for the record, I'm trying to break.

I'm going to be doing a lot of work.

I'm going to be doing a lot of work in the gym as well.

So the record you're trying to break is the 50 meters?

50 freestyle world record.

But what is the current 50 freestyle?

20.91 seconds.

And who holds, who is holding?

Cesar Cielo, who I raced a lot during my career.

He broke it in 2009.

It's the longest standing world record in men's swimming.

And it was done in the super suits back in the day.

The reason being those, those suits, that, that one year they had those crazy suits,

the polyurethane suits.

The floating swimmers, they, you know,

every, I think of that world record in that world champs in rooms,

every world record was broken pretty much multiple times, most of them.

So this is the last remaining world record, and it's probably the truest

testament to human power and speed and acceleration.

It's the 50 freestyle.

There's no, there's no tactics.

There's no easing into the race.

Basically it's full bore from start to finish, athleticism, power, speed.

And so it's going to be the best example of what can these enhancements do for an athlete's athletic ability.

So just take me through the race.

So, you know, it starts off getting a good start, obviously.

But so I just want to know, just take me through the 20s, not go through, or you can go through the whole 20 seconds.

Um, it's obviously power from the start, like in other words, leg power to get out as far as you can.

Yeah.

It's, um, the ability to do whatever you do underwater because there's a lot of underwater.

These days.

Yeah.

Um, and then once you come up, up to the surface, it's about, um, well, do you take me through it?

Like, uh, what is it?

Yeah.

So essentially what, like what, what we're trying to do at the moment, we're trying to get the best vert jump in world swimming.

Um, so that dive off the blocks is pure explosion.

And it's probably the most explosive movement in any sport because you go from this little crouch down to position to horizontal in the air.

So triple extension before entering the water.

So you go from a lax to full explosion, horizontal.

Then stiffen up again before you hit the water.

It's.

So where do you need the power?

Well, I mean, which part of your leg from primarily, but it's your, it's your glutes and your thighs, right?

Yeah.

So, okay.

And then.

Once you hit the water, then you're underwater fly kick and that's all about mobility.

So hyper mobility through thoracic spine, through your shoulders, three hips, and again, a lot of power through that butterfly kick.

And how many, how many, how many butterfly kicks do you do on the water?

I'll do about seven for the race.

Right.

Yeah.

And they have to be super, super quick.

Then you break out, no breathing till the end.

So hold your breath.

So you come and take one breath or you, or you take the breath as you dive in.

Yeah.

As you dive in the last breath you'll take is just before you hit the water.

Then you hold your breath that whole time.

Because taking a breath actually takes a.

Slows you down.

Yeah.

It's that one little turn.

That's like that tiny, it might be whatever it is.

You might lose a stroke out of it.

Yeah.

And then it's head down.

Um, the way we swim.

Not head down, head straight.

Yeah.

Head down from a work ethic point of view.

Yeah.

Um, and, and the way we.

Produce power from swimming, uh, from freestyles, we go opposite hand to opposite hip.

So my right hand hits the water, my right hip connects to it and I sling across my body.

So I'm slinging down that pool.

My hips stay super sealed.

My upper body rotates quite drastically.

And then from, from that point to the finish, it's, it's all power.

And how much do you rely on your kick?

Uh, where, where's the kick in terms of contribution?

The kick is, it's probably 80, 20 upper body to kick.

The kick, the main focus, um, for that 50 freestyle is stability.

Keeping those hips nice and still, when you watch it on TV, you go, well, that's producing

a lot of power.

But if I took my arms out of that, for example, if I took kick out and swim that 50, I might

be 25 seconds.

If I took my arms out and kicked that 50, 30 seconds, 31 seconds.

So it's, it's upper body.

So you can kick it.

You can do 50 kick, uh, just kicking you beat me if I was doing anything, I'd be struggling

to do 30.

So, so, okay.

So then in terms of the physiology, um, and I get, get the parts that are working in terms

of the physiology, in terms of your exercise regime, apart from doing pool work, um, exercise

regime in the gym.

So you're doing power, a lot of power exercise.

Yeah.

Which is quite different to what I did during my, let's call it my first career.

Um, so Olympic lifting, like clean and jerks, snatches, a lot of plyometrics, jumping, broad

jumps, high jumps.

Throwing, throwing balls, throwing medicine balls, um, and then low reps, heavy weight

on your squats, um, some hip hinge movements, maybe not a full deadlift, but something like

that.

Um, a bench press and then all swimmers do heavy chin ups, like heavy weighted chin ups.

Like you mean with weight?

Yeah.

They still do like, like not for this event, but just generally speaking.

All swimmers do.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a big part of the swimming.

Yeah.

You also swim and get out of the pool.

They always have that sort of.

Yeah.

The V. V shape.

So, so, okay.

So I understand the, the regime.

Um, where does the enhancement fit in?

So how does the enhance, the enhancement, the drugs that you take, how do they enhance

that regime?

Yeah.

So basically I'm not going to, um, you know, use testosterone for the first time and jump

in the pool and feel stronger and feel faster.

What I'm going to be able to do is.

Are we talking essentially test, testosterone?

That'll be the test.

That'll be the first thing.

Yeah.

Are there other things on top of testosterone?

Yep.

So testosterone, peptides, stem cells, some other, um, growth hormone or anabolic type

substances, um, that, that will basically, you know, improve lean muscle mass and, and

output.

Is there anything that is not allowed?

Like you're like a, for example, a doctor would never prescribe like Trenbolone, which

is what.

Tell me what that is.

So that's what your average bodybuilder will use.

Right.

Is that an anabolic steroid?

Yeah, it is.

It is.

That'll put on the size the fastest.

That'll cause acne and back hair and shrinking nuts, all those sort of like really intense

side effects, really intense physical reaction.

We'll put size on the fastest, will increase strength the fastest, but we'll have severe

side effects.

That's, that's the most common one I would say in, in a gym setting.

Tren, Trenbolone.

Trenbolone.

Right.

That's an anabolic steroid that, so you got, so in other words, a doctor won't prescribe

it because of the danger.

A doctor wouldn't prescribe that because for example, a doctor would prescribe testosterone

to most men, probably over 35, because if you do a test and you look at your testosterone

levels, most men will be at, in that low range because of age and lifestyle factors that

just is what it is in current society.

So whilst we'll have doctors who will prescribe above and beyond, it's not a drug that is

unsafe, untested, doesn't have any sort of history of use and of side effects on it.

So, you know, the first thing people think when they hear the enhanced games, they think

it sounds a bit sketchy, bit dicey, you know, science experiment, all these drugs are out

there.

All these drugs are being used currently.

Beyond that, all these drugs are being used currently by athletes in certain sports.

Well, I once spoke to a, I won't say who it was, but a, a, a truck and field person.

And that person said to me that he, he knew that all the best runners, not necessarily

in Australia, were taking these things.

Yeah.

I've probably had the same conversation.

I've probably had the same conversation with that same athlete, I think.

But he knew, and if he was in a semifinal, he knew he was probably the only clean one

in that whole semifinal.

Yeah, correct.

He was the only clean one.

And, and he used to get really pissed off about it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And, and, and it was because it was well known.

The funny thing is swimmers is-

Probably happens in swimming too.

I don't know, but I-

It does.

I'd say less so.

So that one of the statistics that the enhanced games spoke with me about when I first signed

on.

So the IOC, the International Olympic Committee-

Yep.

They did an internal survey of their athletes, a study.

And they asked those athletes under anonymity, have you ever taken, or are you currently

taking performance enhancing drugs?

The results came back, you know, and they said to me, what do you think the numbers

are?

I go, you'd hope not, but I'm thinking like maybe as much as 10%, 40% of athletes in that

survey anonymously, like you, wouldn't you just lie anyway?

But anonymously.

40%.

So they were taking or had taken performance enhancing drugs at the Olympic games.

And you go far out, you know, as Australians, we're so heavily tested.

This is Australians?

No, this is athletes around the world.

Around the world, right.

I'd say of that, I'd say Australians, if we had 1% of our Olympic athletes in Australia

on performance enhancing drugs, I'd be A, surprised, B, disappointed.

Because I know how stringent we are with our testing.

It's actually, I think it's an, it's an interest.

It's an interesting point around our testing.

So we spend quite a lot on our anti-doping in Australia, the ASADA.

With that money, we test, catch, and publicly shame our own athletes whilst other countries

in the world are doing everything they can to avoid getting caught, to avoid naming athletes,

to avoid publicly shaming athletes.

And probably actually assisting them to be.

Correct.

Do what they do.

That's the documentary.

You know, there was a state funded doping and the ones running it were the anti-doping

authorities in Russia.

So it's an interesting theory.

I mean, if I was in charge of that space, I would be spending all my funding on if we've

got international athletes in the country, boom, ASADA, straight out testing them.

Can we send those athletes to some countries?

Can we send them to some international meets?

Can we be catching athletes from other countries?

Because historically, our athletes aren't the ones doing this.

We're very clean as a nation.

In my entire career, I never once was offered a performance enhancing substance.

Never came across them.

And I was at the tippity top from a reasonably young age.

Never came across them at all.

But we've got people like Peter Boll, who we publicly shame, wrecked his-

Terrible.

I don't know if you can say wrecked his whole career.

It certainly wrecked that part of his career.

It took a period of his life away.

And any time, from now until infinity, any time you Google Peter Boll-

That's the first thing that comes up.

Yeah.

Which is bullshit.

But it's there.

Meanwhile, there was an article just came out that there was 23 athletes from a country

leading into the Tokyo Olympics who all tested positive to a substance in swimming.

It was hidden by WADA.

It was hidden by the Olympic Committee.

It was hidden by the World Swimming Federation.

And it only came out because of investigative journalism recently.

And again, it was just basically waived away.

And they're all still competing.

They're all still competing.

I think between them they won about five medals at the Olympic Games, including three gold.

And our athletes competed against them.

We had an athlete in one of those events who was a world record holder who was beaten.

So you're not promoting though, I want this to be clear and on the record, you are not

promoting the use of performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics.

Quite the opposite.

But you are taking part in this to see just what happens if you did.

What I think, and as you get older and you realize more and more of this is happening,

and you know when you're swimming that there's athletes that you're racing.

Now in retirement, when I heard that story, I look at those swimmers and I go, give me

what he's on and I'll fucking bury him.

Totally.

Yeah.

Because as Australian athletes, I believe we have something.

We have some of the best coaching, training, work ethic, like I said, we're doing it from

a young age.

We're still out there winning on a world stage, but we're not playing on a level playing field.

And so give me what they're on and watch what happens.

Which is what you're going to do.

Which is what I'm going to do.

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Is that the stack of what you're taking now?

So I haven't taken anything.

Nothing yet?

Nothing.

I've started speaking to-

When do you start to do this?

Yeah, so it's not far away.

So basically if you think of regardless and the whole way I became involved in this was the boys,

so I heard about Enhanced Games, you know, I work in the media so I saw press releases and stuff.

I thought very interesting concept.

And most friendship circles have said,

sat down around, you know, sat at the pub at some stage and said, you know,

imagine if, you know, what if we gave Usain Bolt, what if we gave Michael Phelps,

what if we gave the best athlete before, like what could they do?

Could we have superhumans on our hands?

It's just a-

Yeah, but it's a philosophical-

Yeah, philosophical.

Anyway, I saw the concept.

I thought very interesting, very, very interesting.

So Peter Thiel is behind it?

Peter Thiel is behind it.

Aaron D'Souza is fronting it.

There's also some other hedge funds backing it.

So-

So the most recent time I heard about it, right, it was right.

We've got multiple billionaire backers of this Games and we're pushing ahead with it.

And that's the first time I took it seriously because I thought, you know,

without the funding, it's all theoretical still, hypothetical.

So right, they've got the backing.

They named the sports.

They named swimming, athletics, weightlifting, and combat sports.

Probably a boxing and a wrestling, which is pretty interesting.

That's scary.

So they named the sports.

They named the backing and, you know, I went on their website and you see, you know,

that they're starting to accumulate staff quickly.

So I'm thinking, right, this is starting to take shape.

I had a chat with one of my mates about it and we were chatting and he said, you know,

are they going to be able to break?

Because the enhanced games of trumpeting, we're going to break all the natural world records.

And he said to me, are they just going to be able to bring on some, you know, young athletes,

put them on performance enhancements and they come out and break?

I said, absolutely not.

Particularly those pinnacle events, your 100 meters track, your 50 meters freestyle swimming,

like those events have so much skill acquisition, time under tension.

Like there's so much I've gone into to get to that pinnacle.

So I said, there's no way you could just get an average, say, college athlete and just get them on this program

and they become out and break world records.

It's not possible.

Because there's a whole lot of other stuff goes into it.

So much.

Years, years, years, years.

Making a start, right?

The reason they're not at the Olympics is they're probably not talented enough.

So that's the first point.

So talent is still critical.

It's critical.

It's genetics, it's size, it's ability to handle the workload of thousands of laps.

Years at it.

Years, years, yeah.

So he said to me, theoretically, could they?

And I said, no, not possible.

And he said, well, who could?

And I said, you'd have to get an athlete who'd either been there and done it before

or, you know, was, you know, mid-career right now.

And he said, well, could they get current athletes?

I said, well, it'd be tough.

You know, could you get an athlete and say, instead of going to Paris Olympics,

I want you to do this.

I go, well, you know, you can't compare them at the moment.

It doesn't have the history.

It doesn't have the tradition.

So he said, well, do you reckon you could do it?

And I said, well, probably, probably if it was in my events and depending,

you know, I hadn't done much research into the performance enhancement stuff.

As I said, never come across it.

I've never taken anything myself.

He said, do you reckon you could do it?

I said, oh, probably.

And he said, well, what would it take?

And I said, okay.

And this is the throwaway line that you speak to your mates.

I said, oh, a million bucks, I'd do it.

He said, yeah, fair enough.

And that was sort of the end of it.

Then the Hello Sport podcast ring me up and they're mid-podcast and they say,

hey, can we chuck you on the podcast?

Want to ask you something?

I said, no, no drummers.

He said, what about this Enhanced Games?

You heard about it?

Yep.

Can they break world records?

I said, again, probably not.

You need the right people.

And it just clicked.

They called me for a second.

I said, here's a world exclusive for you, boys, Tom Eddy.

For a million bucks, I'll come on board and I'll break a world record.

It's a satirical podcast, I guess you'd call it.

And they were very excited about that.

Anyway, hang up.

Forget about it.

I think I did that interview on a Wednesday.

They released the pod on a Thursday afternoon.

I wake up Friday morning and my phone is blowing up deluxe.

During my career, that's never been a good thing.

Never.

My phone is blowing up.

But it was, you know, New York Times, BBC, Sky News,

like every outlet from around the world.

And Aaron D'Souza called me and he said,

I've got a million dollars in escrow, US, with this company.

You come on board, you break that world record.

The million US is yours, which was a nice upside

because little did he know I'm in a million AUD.

But.

The million US helps.

But can you just explain to me, though, is it you versus, will you be in?

It'll be a race.

Full final, eight people.

Yeah, okay.

So do they choose the eight people or?

People can apply.

Right.

Are there heats and stuff like that or just eight?

No, it'll just be a one-out final.

One-out final.

So there'll be a TV product that will basically be, I imagine,

by the time it's all said and done,

you'll go a TV product that goes, boom, 50 freestyle, boom, 100 track,

boom, heavyweight lifting, boom, heavyweight boxing, like action-packed,

not a three-week Olympics where you're like, all right, here's the archery.

Oh, good, the swimming's on next.

Ah, back to breakdancing at this Olympics.

Oh, good, back to the 100 track.

Like this is going to be action-packed and it'll be just a straight-up final,

eight men, all under the same guidelines.

The winner of that, I dare say, will break the world record anyway.

I know other athletes that are coming on board

and I know quite a few athletes that are going to come on board after Paris

that are going to be fresh out of their careers.

So you may well have to compete against whoever wins the gold medal in the Olympics.

Potentially.

I guess depending on age, on their risk appetite, on a number of things.

There's also, you know, Ridley Scott has signed on with Enhanced Games

to produce a documentary for the Games.

So there's also going to be a, what would you call it,

like a personality aspect that will factor into who comes on as the Games.

It's like talent.

Talent, yeah, because they're producing a documentary.

TV talent, yeah.

Yeah, there was a big difference, for example,

between Formula One Drive to Survive and the tennis breakpoint documentaries.

The reason being the personalities.

Yeah.

Formula One, those guys,

their egos, their personality was huge and it was awesome to watch.

Tennis was like, there was an episode on Kyrgios, which was awesome.

And then after that, it just dropped off a cliff.

Nick's the only one here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They may as well have done a full series on him

because he was the only one with personality.

Yeah.

I watched his episode.

I was like, sweet, I'm in.

I watched the next episode and I was like, I'm done.

These guys are boring.

Yeah, yeah.

So that'll play a factor.

But then, so what I'm doing.

But you've been chosen.

Hey.

You're in.

Yeah.

You're in.

But you just don't have the other seven.

Yeah.

You could have been, I guess you'd have an idea.

I've got an idea of a couple.

Yeah.

Any of your nemesis?

Not directly.

I would like my nemesis from the London Olympics.

I think that would be pretty cool.

Really?

Yeah, I think that would be pretty cool.

Or the current world record holder, Cesar Cielo.

He must be, say, late 30s, maybe 40.

But with science and medicine, who knows?

It would be cool to have him in the race.

How will they support you?

Like, so, okay, you get chosen and I don't know if the other seven

are going to be in secret or you're going to find it at some stage.

But how do they support you?

Do they put you through like a whole testing regime, et cetera?

Yeah, so they have quite an extensive medical team on staff.

Australian or American?

At the moment, they're based out of half out of London,

half out of New York, just because that's where the money is,

essentially.

That's where the backing is coming from.

But.

But once, there's still a lot to play out, as you can imagine, this is.

And I think when I accepted the offer from Aaron D'Souza,

it probably accelerated the inception of the Games even more

because the one thing they were missing was an athlete,

was a face of the Games, a credible athlete who had a history.

You're not a punter.

Not a punter.

Not someone who's.

Who's come in eighth or just didn't make the finals or something.

Yeah, and I think the country that that athlete came from was important as well.

Like I said, Australians have a great reputation, even in that anti-doping space,

the Australian swim team is as clean as it comes.

Like we've had some blips on the radar over the years, but as a whole,

you know, we've got an exemplary record.

Particularly relative to everybody else.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Big time.

So I think that was quite an important aspect for them.

So when I came on board and suddenly they had a face,

then things started to really ramp up and things have accelerated heaps even since then.

And, you know, I'm having meetings with them regularly and the updates

and the grandeur of what's going to happen and some of the people that are coming on

to get involved, countries that are bidding for the Games,

big name personalities that want to be a part of it.

TV coverage, the broadcast rights.

Yeah, the broadcast rights are going to be huge.

You know, I think there's 1.2 billion, I believe,

watch the 100 metre track final at the Olympic Games.

Anyone I speak to, whether they support these games or not,

you ask them afterwards, well, would you watch?

Totally.

So if the 100 metres track does 1.2 billion,

I'd be surprised if this doesn't do a billion views,

if they can package this into a weekend or a day or a two hour,

TV product, like this does a billion views, I believe.

And so the broadcast rights for that and the broadcast rights,

the broadcast.

It's like Super Bowl.

It's going to be like a Super Bowl event.

The broadcast rights and partner, you know,

will probably have somewhat of a say in timing of it.

So that's why that hasn't been set in stone yet.

They haven't done an auction for the broadcast rights yet.

But it's evolving so quickly.

So for me,

like people say, oh, it's not until late night.

Like, why are you training now?

And A, why are you training now?

And B, you know, are you taking anything now?

If not, why?

For the first point, I've got over a year to prepare,

but I may be preparing,

I may be racing against current athletes at the top of their game.

So as soon as I said that, I got straight in the pool the next day

and started churning out those laps, brought on an S&C coach,

got some advice around.

Around the swim training aspect and started training immediately

because I was acutely aware that I needed to get to the peak

of my natural ability.

And that enhancement part is probably the 1%, 2% on top.

It's the cream on top.

What do you think your age now,

what disadvantage would you put on your age in terms of time

against the world record?

It's a good question.

I mean, if I had to guess right now,

if I...

And I'm going to have the ability of the super suit as well.

Everyone can?

Yeah.

Okay, that's good.

Just enhanced games.

But also, he had the super suit on.

He had the super suit, yeah.

It should be equivalent.

That's what I said to Aaron when I came on board.

I said, if we're going to do this...

A new super suit or the super suit?

The same stuff that he was wearing back in 2000.

I'll be happy with the original one.

There's probably better ones.

They could have made advancements, but they haven't

because they haven't been able to produce.

So, who's to say that, like, NASA won't come out and say,

here's a better swimsuit for this enhanced games.

Who knows?

But at worst, I can have the same suit as Cesar Cielo,

which is a huge factor.

I would say right now with that super suit,

I would be somewhere between half a second and a second

off the world record.

That's now?

Right now.

So, if you do a time trial, you'd probably do a 21 or something like that?

21.

I would say.

With that suit, maybe 21.5.

Yep.

So, I need that last percentage.

But I'm grinding now naturally to get as close to that as I can

so the performance enhancing aspect tips me over the edge.

But it needs to have a lesser effect.

Yeah, correct.

I can't come off the couch and just go,

oh, testosterone is going to take me from the couch to the world record.

And I have to keep reminding myself and reminding other people around me

because the people that I'm training with,

the people that I'm with,

they're getting really excited

because my improvement has been quite sharp over the past.

I'm into week 12 of training, of hardcore training.

And my improvements have been quite sharp.

You know, in a gym sense, we call them beginner gains.

You know, when you start a certain program,

you start training for speed or power

and you get results pretty quickly

because you haven't done it for a while

and your body is quite receptive to it.

But then you platter.

Then you platter, yeah.

So, what I need to do is get myself to that platter.

Where is that platter at 33 years of age?

I'm not sure.

I haven't hit it yet.

But there's new training and new methodology

and different things I'm doing now

that makes me believe maybe that platter this time

isn't far off my peak as a 20-year-old athlete.

But then that last part to take me above and beyond

to make me be able to stack up workouts one after the other,

you know, swim super fast in the morning,

lift super heavy at lunchtime,

swim super fast again at night.

Like just that's what I'm being told by the medical professionals.

That's the difference.

At the moment, like I get up early and I swim hard balls to the wall

and then I go from there.

I eat and I go to the gym.

I get to the gym and I sort of, you know,

I've got to get myself going mentally and physically again.

Half an hour into my gym, yep, right, I'm going again.

And then by that afternoon, I sleep.

I'm done.

I'm cooked.

I'm doing four years, four hours of training as a 33-year-old.

You know, it's not the most normal thing for a 33-year-old to be doing.

But from all reports,

I'd be able to go again and I'd be saying, what's next?

You know, the medical professionals I've been speaking to have said

the biggest thing you'll have to do is to be able to at times tone it down

and it'll be a mind over body type thing

because physically you'll feel like you can go forever

and you'll keep pushing and lifting heavier and swimming faster.

And then you'll tear something.

Yeah.

So they said, you know, you'll have to,

rather than saying like my body's stuffed,

I have to mentally get up for this, it'll be my body's firing.

I have to mentally wind down so that I can rest and recover.

So is it a chance that given, particularly during your era,

there are a couple of people around your age,

and I'm thinking Kendrick Monk, for example, he'd be at 34, 35.

Yeah, he'd be a couple of years older than me.

So would there be people, do you think there's a chance

any more Australians would be in this group of eight?

Because, you know, like it's all very well to say,

well, let's get one from every country.

But like in the finals when you were in Italy,

we have a couple of Americans, a couple of Australians.

But quite a few Australians would figure it quite heavily.

In every event, in every event.

I would say Australia is almost the riskiest country

to put yourself out there and do this in.

Why is that?

Public opinion?

Public opinion, yeah.

It's the one thing, you know,

I had to have some tough conversations at the start with people around me

as to why I wanted to do this again.

And, you know, people in my life, I had a rollercoaster of a career,

high highs, low lows, you know, and people in my life said,

do you want to go through that again?

Do you want to put yourself out there and open yourself up to criticism,

to all that kind of stuff?

Do you really give a shit?

That's the thing.

Yeah, and that's the hard part I think for me is I learned at a young age

not to care about people's opinions.

And I honestly don't.

The first thing when I signed on to the games, I said to my girlfriend,

don't read articles, don't read comments, you know, don't read inboxes.

Like just don't do it.

That's what I do.

I don't.

And people said to me, what about the backlash?

I go, I don't know about it.

I don't read anything.

Like who's writing about you?

I don't know.

What are they writing?

I don't care.

What about the comments?

Don't read them.

It's pretty easy as once you understand that aspect to deal with it.

Yeah.

My family and those close to me always take it a lot harder than me.

And, you know, speaking to my parents, they sort of said,

do you want to do this again?

Do you want to open yourself up to this criticism?

You know, haven't you had enough of that?

And I'm a risk taker.

I'm a gambler.

I'm pedal to the metal with most things I do in life.

Well, it sounds sort of curious too.

Like there's a curiosity associated with this.

I'm so intrigued.

And this is the, you know, the crazy thing about it.

These games, like training again as an athlete is exhilarating.

It's like addictive.

Yeah.

And if you think about, for most people, if you think about when was the last time you

went down to your local park and sprinted, I mean, everything you've got sprinted, you

finish that sprint, you stop, you get your breath back.

It's a euphoric feeling.

There's very few moments in life where you can physically exert a hundred percent of

your effort, of your output.

And there's something about it, even talking about it gets me jaded up.

And I get to do that now every day.

I go to the pool and I just put the pedal to the metal and it feels amazing.

And I'm on a high for the next 24 hours till I do it again.

And I love it.

And so for me, it wasn't a big decision, but for the people around me, they're not risk

takers.

They're not gamblers.

They haven't learned to cope with negative feedback or criticism or, you know,

articles written about me.

And they're the ones that probably do it the toughest.

So how do you reconcile that?

I mean, do you feel like you're being selfish or do you think, oh, well, someone might think

I'm being selfish or, I mean, do you sort of beat yourself up?

Yeah, I thought about that quite a bit at the beginning because what I didn't realize

until I retired from swimming was that I did live a very selfish life.

And every decision I made in my life as an athlete was around, will this make me a faster

swimmer or will it not?

You know, someone asked me to go to their birthday party, it would be that black and

white for me.

Is that going to make me a faster swimmer?

Does that interfere with my training?

If it does, I'm not going.

I didn't put any deeper thought into, you know, how will that person feel or, you know,

and that it's such a simple life as an athlete.

Will this make me the fastest man in the world?

Or will it not?

Then I go for option A, fastest man in the world option.

But then you retire from swimming and you start to support, you know, a partner.

You start to think more about your friends, businesses, business partners, family.

And...

It gets more complicated.

It gets life so much more complicated.

People say, you know, you have to sacrifice so much to be an athlete.

It's such a hard thing.

Being an athlete is the most simple job in the world.

It's the biggest privilege in the world.

There's huge pressure, huge expectation, but life is simple.

As long as you're prepared to be selfish.

Yeah, correct.

And I don't mean in a sinister way, but sort of just thinking about my outcome.

Correct, yeah.

A better word, single-minded.

Single-minded, yes, yes.

Not selfish.

And that was something that I was really good at, you know, in terms of even now,

like when I kick-started my training, I said, I'm not drinking for the next eight weeks.

I'm going to kick-start this thing, eight weeks, and get my training on track.

My birthday fell in that eight weeks.

Three of my other best mates' birthdays all fell in that eight weeks.

Brushed, brushed.

Brushed.

All of it brushed.

Yeah.

And people are going, you're mad.

Like, it's your birthday.

Have a drink.

Just one drink.

Have a drink.

No, you know, I want to be the fastest man in history.

They go, yeah, but you know, I go, nah.

No.

And I've got that ability to switch it like that and just say, no,

to anything.

And people around me find it incredibly frustrating.

I don't know if it's the fact that they can't sway me or they don't understand

that ability because, you know, so many people go along with things in life

and do things in life just to appease someone else's feelings or sensibilities.

But when I set my mind to something, and what I'm thinking at this point

in my life, Mark, I'm thinking this opportunity, beyond that million dollars

for the race.

These games themselves, the exposure, the documentary, the things that are going to

come off the back of this, this anti-aging space, I believe this space is becoming quite

big in the US.

Globally.

Globally, yeah.

But in Australia, it hasn't hit in earnest yet.

We're not seeing anti-aging clinics pop up.

You know, there's still a taboo around, a stigma around testosterone or, you know, men taking

things.

There's a lot of stigma attached to it.

Oh, well, because we live in a very critical society.

Yeah.

And it's a bit like being better than somebody else too, by the way.

Like in this country, you're better than someone else.

You get taken down.

Yeah.

You've got to be the same as everybody else.

Yeah.

And if you think you're better or you are better, then you've actually got a target

on you.

Yeah.

And that's an Australian thing.

Yeah.

It's actually an English thing too.

It happens in England and Ireland and Australia.

New Zealand as well.

It's not an American thing.

No.

It's the other way.

Yeah.

And so you dare not stand out in the crowd.

Otherwise, you're fair game.

You're fair game.

Could I, if I said this to you, James, if I said to you, I'm just interested to hear

your response and you might need to think about it.

If I said to you, I'll pay you a million dollars not to do this.

I think this opportunity-

Would you still do it?

I think this opportunity far outweighs that million dollars.

Yeah.

Far outweighs it.

And what I think I'm...

Why?

What is it about, what is it beyond the million dollars that is important to you?

Is it the experiment, so to speak?

Like, or is it more about how can we live a better life?

Both.

The part about, so even at the age of 33, I was starting to research some of this stuff.

I'm watching you, Andrew Hugh Burniman.

So I'm watching you, Joe Rogan.

Bitter to you.

Yeah.

I'm hearing them talk about this side of things because I don't want to, I don't want to just,

for lack of a better term, just age gracefully.

And just accept the status quo.

Yeah, I don't want to accept that.

I don't want to get slower.

I don't want to get weaker.

I don't want to lose vitality, libido, all those things.

You know, all those aspects as an athlete are character defining for me.

My athletic ability is intrinsically linked with who I am.

That's how I identify.

I've been-

So you don't want to lose what defines you?

No.

In your own mind, yeah.

Yeah, I've been the athlete my whole life.

And I see other swimmers, they retire, they blow out, they get depressed, they turn to drugs.

It's such a common cycle.

Yeah, I've seen it too.

And I know exactly why.

I've seen it.

It's terrible.

A million times.

So I retired.

And the day I retired, I started training again.

You know, in the gym, running, doing different things.

I started training.

I entered the race up circular, the center point tower.

I did the city to surf.

I did Tough Munner.

I just started entering things and training and keeping myself in shape.

And at any given point in those last five years where I've been retired,

if I let that physical activity slip or that active lifestyle slip,

my mind slips quickly with it.

So your mind, the stability of your mind or maybe the happiness of your mind-

Yeah.

Relies quite a lot on your physical output.

A hundred percent.

And perhaps even the competitive.

Yeah.

Being a competitor.

So because it's hard to do a high level of physical output unless you've got an objective.

Correct.

Yeah.

It just is.

Yeah.

I mean, by the way, as you get older, it gets harder.

And it really does.

It gets harder and harder.

And like when I hit 65, like I started, it just really hit me hard.

Like I still go to the gym every day, but just the intensity of training.

Yeah.

Without an objective.

Yeah.

I mean, when I was younger, it was about looking good and all that sort of stuff and competing.

Yeah.

But yeah.

So like it's sort of an interesting thing.

Vitality is quite an interesting topic.

And if, and look, we're one big ball of chemistry.

Yeah.

And physics.

Yeah.

Everyone stop talking shit like soul, mind, fucking divine.

Yeah.

At the end of the day.

Yeah.

We are a whole lot of chemical reactions.

Yeah.

And if our body is not producing certain chemicals by virtue of things not working,

as well, you know, your balls might not be producing the same amount of testosterone when

you're, you know, 60 as they were when you're 20, obviously, because they've been going

for 40 more, 40 fucking years extra.

Yeah.

You know, that makes sense.

You know, just like a car or whatever.

Yeah.

There's mechanics involved.

Yeah.

As a result of that, you don't have the same level of vitality.

Vitality being, meaning, you know, the same amount of chemistry floating around your system.

Correct.

So there might be a dosage.

Yeah.

That might actually help you get back some of that.

Most of what Joe Rogan and I talk about all the time.

100%.

I mean, Australia, by the way, is not that environment.

No.

US is that environment.

Yeah.

And I don't think Joe Rogan or whatever, I don't pick on Joe, but I don't think those

people are doing it because they want to win a world title or because they, you know, Joe's

a jujitsu guy because he wants to beat everyone in the jujitsu gym.

Probably everyone he's competing against is doing it as well.

I think it's more about just having a better lifestyle, being able to do more things.

Yeah.

For a longer period of time.

Instead of just accepting the status quo, when I turn 65, I'll retire.

Yeah.

I'll just go out quietly.

I'll mow the lawns and over a period of 20 years, I'll cark it.

That's just bullshit.

Yeah.

It's bullshit.

And I'm not suggesting, by the way, James, sorry, I'm not suggesting, say, I should be

doing what you're about to do.

I'm not suggesting it for a moment.

But what I am suggesting is this is something that people should pay attention to.

Yeah.

How we live a better life for a longer period of time.

Yeah.

Without the danger.

Yeah.

Without putting ourselves at risk.

Yeah.

And when people sit back and say, why are people backing these games?

Why has this got billion dollars, billionaires backing it and so much funding and what's

the outcome?

That's your outcome.

Yeah.

If we sit back and watch a documentary at the end of this,

produced by Ridley Scott so obviously the highest quality documentary you can produce we sit there

and we watch these athletes we watch a 33 year old athlete come back to their former glory swim

faster than any athlete in history which physiologically shouldn't be possible at 33

go through the process see behind the scenes of the the testing the the medical enhancements all

that stuff and see a lack of or no side effects we're all going to sit back and go oh I thought

you know when people said testosterone I was thinking of the guy down at the gym you know

getting stuff out of his boot and you know ended up with a hairy back and a big adam's apple it's

the stigma attached to it can be taken away and this this this endeavor can actually

advance humanity quite a lot and quality quality of life yeah quality of life for men and women

around the world and I sit back and think about that and think I could play a major role in this

huge

huge project and be almost a centerpiece of it and you sit back and you look at that and you go

ah million dollars like yeah whatever like you know you work hard enough in any industry over

a period of time you can you can earn a million dollars but to be a part of something that alters

history very rarely and it may not it may not alter history you might not break the world record but

you've got to do these things in order to find out what's going on and you've got to do these things

in order to find out whether you can or not yeah you can't say well I might not therefore I'm not

going to try I mean great adventurers one thing about human human evolution one thing we're good

at is trying things that helps us evolve ahead of everything every other species yeah and this

might sound a little bit outlandish what you're doing but I think it's a it's not me doing the

experiment but it's you but at the same time it's an experiment that I have a great deal of interest

in I mean I'm I'm going to be really curious about it and I'm going to be really curious about it and

I'm going to be really curious about it and I mean I definitely would watch that times that

that production the TV production because I'm actually curious about what are the net side

effects what what you're going to experience and I presume they're going to document this

sort of stuff and really say how I feel or maybe I can't sleep or I can sleep or yeah I sleeping

worse or better I'm or I could you know maybe you become aggressive you don't become aggressive you

know I'm just actually really interested to hear about all this stuff yeah particularly since it's

going to be titrated to you so you're gonna have doctors making you know you're going to have doctors

making you know you're going to have doctors making you know you're going to have doctors making

sure that this is perfected for your physiology yeah and that the basic what it means is that you

don't have to go and become one of these gym guys who turn out looking like gorillas like over a

two-year period because they're taking all this mad stuff mmm you can actually just be have a

normal normal athletic physique yeah yeah anything you're worried about yeah the reputation thing I

don't care about I took that on board pretty quickly sat down had to do some thinking about

reputation and then I thought right well when it boils down to it what is reputation at the end of

the day and it's people's opinion of you for the most part that you don't know so whose opinion do

I care about quickly thought about that you know and then spoke to those people and beyond that

people can think what they want that doesn't affect me the side effects that the only thing

i'm worried about um is fertility i'm 33 i don't have kids yet but i'm getting close to the age

is he does that mean you can get some sperm frozen or whatever the case may be yeah is that a thing

yeah yeah i probably will freeze some sperm just in case yep but therefore management yeah so risk

is something in these that can be managed yeah yeah correct correct that's that was the only

thought and and the main one from from my partner um you know she's she's brought that up straight

away my parents brought that up straight away that was the only one from a medical perspective

because people keep saying to me these things are untried they're untested they're not they're

actually not they're created for a reason they have a medical purpose but they've been they're

being used there's there's sports in america right now that um the athletes are using these things

as we speak and you know there's athletes in some sports playing well into their 40s

everyone goes oh they're freaks of nature they are they are

in terms of talent they are in terms of talent now but their longevity in the sport is is enhanced

so to speak yeah for sure and it doesn't mean it's fake no just enhanced yeah correct correct

and so these these things are already out there that it's far less speculative than people first

thing you know they think you're you're doing things that you know the that were being done in

the the 1980 olympics by flojo or you know things have progressed a long way who by the way you know

unfortunately passed away

correct early yeah because obviously they they were not doing it in the proper way because she's

trying to beat a system to hide it to probably using too much at the wrong times like that

that's why this is all the wrong things and the wrong things yeah that's where this is it's so

transparent and i'm i'm in the process at the moment talking with my own team and people

i was saying the other day i'd like to just employ a videographer in-house full-time um

document it yeah to

follow me around but imagine like going to a medical clinic and documenting it and then me

saying to camera today i took 100 milligrams test and i felt like this in the pool you know i woke

up with a hard-on like a 16 year old in the morning and i cried myself to sleep i don't know

whatever the side effects might be but um but just be completely transparent it's never happened

yeah yeah it's never happened and i think that's the awesome opportunity i have at the moment

and it probably fits my personality and i think that's the awesome opportunity i have at the

moment

where you can run a youtube series yeah yeah sometimes to a fault i'm too honest

about things and when i speak publicly but it kind of suits my personality to yeah be 100

transparent with this and just tell people this is what i'm doing this is how i'm doing it

this is how i'm feeling and here's my performance do swimmers do vo2 max

we do it's pretty tough to do because you're in the water and now did you get on a bike or get

on a running machine and do it there's a version of it swimming is it that we can do

yeah that we've done previously um i think i've done the bike one i've never done the treadmill

one it'll be interesting to see your vo2 max like if you take a like do a benchmark now like

yeah start it now yeah yeah yeah and then just watch it and then watch it as you progress in

your training maybe every month or something like that yeah you probably should document this like

as you say like video videographer but then when you get on the stuff um then start to see how

how your vo2 max changes yeah the companies i'm speaking to are all the same they're all the same

i'm speaking to an america we'll do testing on that as well because they want that for their

own records as well but um yeah it'd be awesome to be able to do it all in australia but i just

don't think we're progressed enough or we haven't got our heads around it enough to do the full

process here in australia yeah so we were you when i mean no doubt this is not going to happen

until after the olympics because they've got to pick some people out of the olympics they want

to put on the program yeah and um and then it's going to happen sometime next year will you move

to do your training and everything else i will do i'd say camps you know you do like uh like a

fight camp yep do like a fight camp in the us maybe a 12-week period yeah yeah eight to 12

weeks with doctors with facilities being allowed to dive off blocks being allowed to film at a pool

shout out city of sydney council um just yeah with a bit more freedom to to do things to move around

um

and to have access i mean theoretically doctors could prescribe all those things in australia

i just don't know if they would um i think there's too much stigma

look they probably get nervous that they're going to get uh cancelled yeah effectively by

their own profession yeah i mean and you know look look what happened to charlie tear you know

like you know obviously he's a good surgeon and uh but basically he went against the grain and uh

that doesn't work that well in australia yeah so there's too much risk and there's also you get

dragged into it so you're probably better off out of sight out of mind type of thing i think so

and do you do do you do it like like in a you don't take it every day for the next 12 months

you do do you do it like in a period like so that's our current that's that's the current

discussions at the moment trying to reverse engineer from the games when they'll be yeah

because so much needs to unfold after the paris olympics i'd say the announcements will be made

early next year around

um

the athletes locations broadcast partners host country all that kind of stuff would be sort of

early next year but i need to reverse engineer like what's the optimal amount of time and

probably to know some of those things i need to do testing and um understand where my body is at

physiologically now um you know where is my testosterone level now where is you know all

my hormone levels how's my recovery so yeah i'm still i'm still split in

an opinion like let's say a cycle is 12 weeks 16 weeks do i do one cycle leading into the game so

i'm peaking at the game so i've done a full cycle is that enough do i need to do a couple of cycles

or am i going to be doing really low level dosages where i can just do a six month period of

progressive like every day every day yeah yeah who's going to advise you on this is pretty

scientific so you're going to have to get a scientist or some sort of person yeah so it'll

the medical team from within the enhanced games and my own personal um advisor in that space

do they give that person to you or you have to find the person i'll find someone anyway because

i wanted a second opinion after russia they've been doing it for a while they know a few tricks

yeah but yeah i've been speaking to some people at the moment and and the people i'm speaking with

have worked with those names we've mentioned the andrew humans the joe rogans um over in that same

part of the states so you know i've been speaking to some people at the moment and and the people

you know i'll probably get myself over to austin uh meet with them and and just go from there

it's funny it's sort of it feels like every tradition traditional format of sport golf

tennis boxing um perhaps now olympics the live the live type stuff you know disruptor the disruptors

you know these are all being funded a lot of these are being funded out of

by you know super rich people out of saudi arabia but

you know there's plenty of super rich people in america who are probably thinking the same thing

let's disrupt what's always happened and let's just see where it lands it is divisive it may

will be let's you know make a silly hypothesis half the world hates it yep but it doesn't matter

if half the world loves it yeah that's a big audience yeah and at the end of the day you can't

make everybody happy yeah in whatever you disrupt if if you can get i mean it's a silly example but

if you can get half the world to support it

it's actually quite a good commercial proposition for deal and and his you know cohort um from a

business point of view but i'd say what goes well beyond that for those individuals i think they're

probably thinking a bit like live um in terms of golf are there people who want to see a different

format i mean kerry packer was the first to do world series cricket like yeah how do we challenge

cricket correct and a lot of people criticize the hell out of him but now it's the format

yeah one day is it's just it is now the format it's just it's just a different format it's just a

format and perhaps i don't know but perhaps there might be in parallel and you might be part of it

you know because the you know and you remember the people who you probably won't be probably

too young but you wouldn't have been born actually but the um you know the the the

you know the world series cricket one day individuals one day cricketers um the names

that he had to drag in yeah yeah well-known people like you are when i look at those disruptors

the end beneficiaries i believe are always the athletes because options create increased funding

um there becomes a bidding war when you look at super league um live golf one day cricket

um whenever there's been disruptors the athletes they generally that the world equalizes eventually

and you see live golf and pga now trying to come to terms super league and and um arl

can't

come to terms um one day cricket and test cricket came to terms i see craig jones is doing at the

moment so he's got the uh in the jujitsu he's got the cg the craig um cj games or something like

that where it's yeah taking on ufc yeah yeah yeah and uh and i actually heard dana white being

interviewed about and he just said oh it's a great idea um even though it you know it's sort of having

sort of looking at competing with um ufc i guess but it's a million dollar prize yeah the million

dollars helps but i think imagine for the lifespan of of

olympic athletes uh let's just use swimming as as an example so most swimmers are done by late

20s let's say 27 as an average let's say they they they complete their olympic career they get to 27

that they're a little bit beat up they've got some injuries they go i can actually now go to

the enhanced games for more money for increased medical support i can heal up these injuries i

can feel better i can race faster and and i can prolong my career and provide for my family

and the people that's made sacrifices to get me to this point of where i am currently because

you know as a as a current olympic athlete it it's not that financially rewarding unless you're

you're tippity tippity top so i think the biggest benefactors in all of this again will be the

athletes we're going to show for the world you know these these new methodology that can be used

in everyday life and that's exciting but for athletes and i know a lot of athletes that i've

they're sitting back watching this very closely thinking is this my next move final question for

you how much of this is exciting to james magnuson because he's the sort of guy who just doesn't like

being told what he's how he's going to live his life what to do yeah huge part yeah huge part

that's the first thing that's very australian by the way the first thing um you know so a life

the other day and i was swimming and he said you can't dive on the blocks and he walked away

and the first thing i said to the guy i was swimming with i said fuck i hate being told what

to do that's me it's funny you know and i've always been the same type of person i remember

when covid was on and um i remember one day i walked you know like you wouldn't let it go

anywhere yeah i walked i used to go up to the botanical gardens because my office not far from

there and um i just i thought it was a nice sunny day it was the middle of winter i thought i'm just

the sun be nice because my office was across the road and a dude walked up to me from the

gardens there and he said to me you can't sit there i was amazed no one here is it like joints

empty yeah he said you can't sit there i said why can't i sit he said because of the covid rules i

said what are you fucking talking about like covid rules yeah and i said i'm not moving i'm staying

and he said uh well no i'll i'll call security right so if i can call whoever you like i didn't

give a shit yeah yeah yeah yeah and i i for a moment there i thought i don't have to fight a

but i i got a head of steam up because i just think it's an it's part of the fabric of us

australians yeah we don't want to do what everyone else in the world has done like we that's how

australia started you know all our forebears were people who were probably still in love for bread

because they were because they were starving to death or they're irish living in uh liverpool

because the the famine had been an island they'd gone across liverpool to get a job trying to get

something yeah you know i look back on i've looked back on my mother's side of the family

one of our one of her um descendants or people she's descended from got sent to australia for

stealing a coat in the middle of winter from a policeman was a bad move but but still yeah that's

what the person got convicted of and was sent to australia yeah on one of the ships as a convict

but the person was just trying to stay warm and we are and i think

cova is a great example we were being told i'm not having a crack at vaccines or anything like

that i'm not an anti-vaccine don't get me wrong but just being told what to do all the time without

enough evidence to back up whether or not it's actually the right thing to do yeah or the wrong

thing to do as well yeah um and what you're going to participate is in something that's going to try

and perhaps solve that question what is the right level what is the right dose can we do it can't we

do it does it make us um have more vitality yeah

i mean it's it's it's worth a crack and and by the way it's an individual's choice

yeah at the end of the day yeah and it's not even being non-conformist it's just saying i got the

ability to make a choice yeah and i'm going to make that choice and if you don't like it that's

okay by me too yeah that's it and i'll cop it sweet yeah whatever the outcome is the outcome

is my body my risk i'll do it i think it's right for me and it's not and as long as it's not

dangerous that's okay yeah so i reckon that's fucking awesome i keep saying to people is

you know people whether they say you know i hate it i love it or whatever the reaction

just be patient on this one sit back let it roll out yeah you're not taking any risk sit back

watch it unfold watch what happens and at the end of this process sit down watch the documentary

watch my race then give me your opinion yeah because now it's all hypotheticals you know i

think this is bullshit this you know why just relax sit back watch it let it unfold

let me take the risk i'm the risk taker i've done that my whole life i love that shit i live in that

world let me take the risk you sit back you watch and then make your opinion at the end of it some

of the greatest discoveries in medicine today are and in fact we have two nobel prize winners

out of west australia who took a bacteria the heliobacter pylori bacteria ingested it themselves

to see whether or not they would cause

an ulcer in the stomach and they won a nobel prize because it didn't and they realized that

stomach ulcers largely i mean apart from taking nasaids and sort of some chemicals that might

cause your problem stomach ulcers are largely caused by bacteria which they ingested themselves

to prove the point and if they hadn't done that we would never have got the answer to why we get

stomach ulcers yeah and therefore and we would never have worked out what the remedy for stomach

ulcers are as an antibiotic

and as a result of these two dudes won nobel prizes yeah and i'm not putting you up in the

nobel prize category certainly not but it's sort of that's part of the process i mean and we don't

discover things about ourselves unless someone a person or persons are prepared to take a risk

all that the difference is here is is it's it's been made it's a bit hollywoodish and that has

been made a there's gonna be a tv series made out of blah blah blah blah yeah and there's a games and

you know calling it a games probably is you know it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's

sort of offended a few people but it is part of an experiment and and we'll never know unless

someone tries it yeah so good on you james magnuson i'm gonna call you the scud missile

the missile thanks very much man and good luck to you thanks man if you've been listening along

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