Lawrence Lemieux, Sophie Carrigill and Unlikely Winners

OJ BORG 00:00:06

Hello. Welcome to the Good Time Sports Club I'm OJ Borg

RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:09

And I'm Raya Hubbell

OJ BORG 00:00:10

Oh, she is! On the show today. We are joined by a man who's earned an Olympic medal that is neither Bronze silver, nor gold. What color might it be? It's one of Canada's finest Lawrence Lemieux.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:24

And we're joined by Sophie Carrigill, the co-captain of TeamGB’s wheelchair basketball team.

OJ BORG 00:00:30

Plus we'll, we'll get our rank on and rank our favourite shock winners of all time and the reason for that will become apparent in the news which we should do in just a second. But first Raya how's your week been in sport? How's your sporty week been?

RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:43

Oh, I was hoping you wouldn't ask me this cause it's depressing.,my back has gone again.

OJ BORG 00:00:45

No!

RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:46

Yeah, I'm, I'm actually devastated because I've just spent six weeks recuperating and it was better and I was back on track power and like cycling back up, swimming back, I was just starting to run and on the turbo on a race tonight, my back just totally went and I'm pretty devastated. There were tears, there was a call to the physio. There was massage. There was, you know, just general overall female dramatics, along with a back spasm. It's it's been, it's been terrible. How's your week in Sports

OJ BORG 00:01:28

I'm doing the second city divide, which is an off-road cycle ride, which goes between Manchester and Birmingham next week. So I've been hammering my cross bike around just to get back into it and make sure everything's working and I was going around some fields near me and it's actually near an old tip and we were going through the woods and we'd found all these new trails and stuff like that. And there was, I was following a mate of mine. Who's a lot more technically proficient than I am on a bike. He’s spent his entire summer riding mountain bikes, and I followed him through some trails and I sort of hunted him down. And then there was a plank of wood that went across what looked like a septic pond stroke river almost looked like there was like a thick scum on top of it. He got across it fine. And you know, when it gets into your brain, you're like, don't slip off. It don't slip off it. OJ don't slip off it. So I came down the Hill, I'm already panicking. Okay. Don't slip off at OJ. I spent so much time thinking about not slipping off that I forgot to lift my wheel to actually get onto the bit of wood smacked into the front of the word, went straight over the handlebars. And I didn't just fall into the water. I went in head first head first into the water.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:02:33

How deep was the water?

OJ BORG 00:02:35

Not deep at all, but it was horrible. It was like a greeny-goldy-bronzy colour. I'm hoping I've got some sort of special powers from it. So I leaped out of it and he was like, “Oh my God”, and I'm like, stood there dripping. It's on my, if you go on my Instagram, you'll see the picture. I'm still like dripping scum off my shoulders. When I got home, my in-laws were around the house, you know, that scene in Anchorman. So you know, the bit where he wears Sex Panther and they have to take them outside and hose them down and hit him with the elephant brush, the wire, the wire bristle brush. Basically my wife would not let me in the house until I'd been hosed down by my father-in-law, out of the back using the hose. So there you go. That's my week in sport. And I managed to break my bike in the process. So in doing some training, the bikes now, in the bike shop, which is getting fixed ahead of me doing this, whatever it is, 500 kilometer ride next week. So exciting.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:03:24

Best of luck with it, very exciting. Yeah. I'm glad you've de-mucked.

OJ BORG 00:03:30

Yeah, good job we're not in the same place because I probably still hum a little bit. Although, as I said, I'm hoping that I get some form of special powers from it. Let's do the news. Pierre Gasly won the Italian Grand Prix from Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll. He became the first French driver to win for 24 years It also marked the first time in eight years that a Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull didn't take the podium.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:03:52

And that wasn't the only big news in Formula One. Four time world champ, Sebastian Vettel will join Lance Stroll in the newly formed Aston Martin racing team in 2021. Exciting Formula One news.

OJ BORG 00:04:04

Yeah. Big, big news. And it's good to see Aston Martin back in Formula One as well, and UEFA Player of the Year Lucy Bronze is returning to Man City after three years playing for Olympic Lyonnais. But first though, let's go with Raya who caught up with sailing legend Lawrence Lemieux from his home in Canada.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:04:34

You are joining us from my place of birth Canada. Whereabouts are you

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:04:42

Lake Washington, which is about 50 Miles West of Edmonton towards Jasper.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:04:51

Beautiful. So not only are you from my home, my home country, but you are in pretty close to ski country, which is my first love in sports

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:04:59

Well, I ski raced when I was a kid, we did a lot of competitions, but when you weren't very highly ranked, you ended up skiing on dirt and gravel because the snow is all gone. By the time you've got a run in.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:05:12

I remember those days where you had bib number 264, and you would have to wait between 263 and 264 for them to shovel snow back into the rut before you can have your turn. So, I can see why you decided to move on to sailing.

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:05:32

Well, it was a natural progression cause, we had a summer cottage at Lake Wasserman, which is where I live now. And we just commute from the city. But my older brothers, I'm the youngest of eight kids,hey got into sailing. They just kind of mosey going down to the yacht club and said, “Hey, does anyone need a crew?” So they ended up sailing. And of course, as a younger brother, you always do what your older brothers do. So I just wish they had been hockey players or tennis players can make a bit of money doing those sports, but Oh, well sailing's a wonderful, wonderful sport.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:06:08

It's a beautiful sport. You mentioned your brothers were the ones who got you into sailing. What was your first experience in sailing?

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:06:14

When I was five years old, you know, my brothers would be out sailing, they'd come and into shore. They'd tie their boat up onto the dock with the sails down and uh, I'd keep bugging them, contact me for a ride, take me for a ride. And one day, one of my older brothers just said, well, you go ahead, you take it. So that was, that was a green light, unbeknownst to my parents or anyone else. So I went out and I read the boat and I went sailing by myself. And, of course I didn't weigh anything. So the first little puff of wind that came along at capsized, of course, I didn't have a life jacket on or anything. It was no big deal. I didn't care. I knew what to do. The boat floats on its side. You climb over, you stand on the center board and you right it. I knew how to do that, but I wasn't big enough to do it. So my elder brothers had to come out and rescue me. So of course my mother said, Oh, you're grounded for the rest of the summer, which lasted one day. You know what she can do. She can’t ground a kid at the cottage at the summer.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:07:10

At age 16 with the small laser class boat strapped to his car's roof. Lawrence headed down to Los Angeles to take part in a sailing revolution, but in the larger Finn class.

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:07:20

A whole bunch of us at the same time, a lot of American college sailors and whatnot who came out of college and jumped into the Finn class who were smaller in stature, but were a lot more intuitive, a lot more tactical. They knew a lot more about sailing in the old days, the boat like the Finn class, it was just whoever could grunt it out the longest, just going to straight line turn wants and go into the mark. Whereas there's so many other things, the wind shifts the waves. There's a lot of things that you have to take into account. And so the younger generation of sailors that came in when I did I'll have a better perspective on how to win a race, not just go as fast as you can. So it was very, very competitive back then.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:08:01

Canada hosted the 1976 Olympics while young Lawrence was competing in the world championships in Germany.

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:08:12

I had just come from the laser worlds, in 1976, in Kiel, Germany where I finished eighth overall, it was my first world championship, my first time racing outside of the country. So I was pretty keen to get one of these Finn boats for that was the Olympic class. At the time, there was only one left and I had to write letters to the, it was called the Canadian yachting association at the time. Now it's called Sail Canada. I had to write them letters and say, look, I'd really like one of these boats, you know, can I have one? And after a long process, they said, yeah, we've got one laugh. That's in a bar and you're Kingston and you can have it. So I went to pick up the boat and, there wasn't any fittings on it. It turned out it hadn't been used at the Olympics. And so it just had a big plastic full of parts. And I had no idea how to put the boat together, but right after that was the US nationals in San Francisco. So it's kind of a funny story because I arrived and the boat still wasn't rigged. And I really didn't know what I was doing in the parking lot, piecing that together while everybody's out, getting ready for the start of the first race. And I managed to get there with just seconds to spare. And I came into the starting line, but the control line that holds my hiking strap came uncleated and I fell out of the boat. So now I'm being dragged behind the boat, coming into the starting line on for having to give way to all the other boats. And everybody's screaming at me and yelling and I'm so embarrassed. So that, that evening we get in from the race and we're in the showers. And I can hear some of the old guard, the old guys that have been in the class for years, they don't know I'm in the shower. And then I can hear them saying, “you know, there's some people out on that race course. They shouldn't even be there with us. You know, they need to go learn how to sail first”. And I know exactly what they’re talking about.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:09:57

I can imagine when you are starting in a sport, um, you've started from grassroots. You are begging and pleading from sail Canada or, or what, what it was called at the time. It's I bet it's hard to get into a sport which can be seen as quite elitist because of the finances involved to get in. How, how did you find competing professionally? Did you need sponsorship or was it, you know, begging and pleading to get kit? How did you progress?

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:10:30

In the beginning? I would work construction in the winter here. So I'd work construction during the day. And I was a waiter in a restaurant at night, and there was a time when I even at three jobs after the restaurant job, I'd go watch parts, fall out of an injection moulding machine because they weren't stacking correctly when they came out. So they needed somebody to stand and watch the machine. But what they didn't realise is the real reason I was there as they had a machine shop. So I rigged up a cardboard system. So the pieces falling out of the machine would automatically stack up and I didn't have to watch them. And then I would go use their machine shop to make parts for my boat. Now they didn't know that. So don't tell anybody.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:11:09

Okay, that'll just be me and everybody who's listening.

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:11:12

Yeah. It was only about 40 years ago. So there wasn't a lot of professionals in amateur sport back then, you know, everybody was balancing a career or going to school or whatever they had to do. And in fact, the group from North America, we became more professionals sooner than the Europeans did. And, uh, so we didn't have any money, but, uh, there was a whole bunch of us. We all had vans and we lived in our vans. So we would circle at the yacht club and there'd be, you know, probably a dozen of us sleeping in our vans and we'd all go out for dinner together, but we didn't have any money. So dinner was more like trying to find that happy hour that had the cheapest food, things like that. One thing that we used to make money on was, the best equipment at the time was made in North America. So, Vanguard boats made the boats that everybody wanted. And so what we would do is we'd buy, we'd get a brand new boat, we'd go over to Europe and race. And if we did well, everybody, of course, everybody assumes, it's your equipment. It's not you. So they would want to buy your boat. So we would sell the boat for a lot more than we paid for it and then go back home and get another one. So we did a lot of that.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:12:27

You're, you're setting a trend because nowadays living in a van is there's actually a hashtag called van life. It's people's aspirations to convert vans to be able to live in them. And you were doing it in order to get to go for finance reasons. I'm sure. So funding was, self-funded not through sponsorship. How did you get to the Olympics?

LAWRENCE LEMIUEX 00:12:55

The first one was 1980, but as you know, we boycotted that one. So it was, I actually, I named my boat just “pissing in the wind” that year cause we had left there, all that training. We had nowhere to go. So, it was unfortunate that year. I actually, I finished third at the world championship, but two guys that beat me were both Americans and there's only one person for country allowed in the Olympics. So anyway, I was really on an upswing and hoping to do very well there, but we boycotted. So then the next Olympics in 1984 in Los Angeles, although I was sailing the Finn class boat, one of the other classes is called a star boat and it's a two men keelboat and, uh, I don't want to get into the whole story of it, but I ended up switching classes just before the Olympic trials and ended up qualifying to go to the Olympics in the star boat. So I went to LA in the, in the Finn in the star. Then I went right away. After that, I went back to the Finn class at the stars, are really expensive. You mentioned the money, but to the single-handed classes are certainly a lot less expensive. The laser you can sale for, you know, you can buy a boat for six or $7,000 and you're good to go. Um, but a star boat, you can get up around $80,000, you know, by the time you get all the equipment and the trailers and you usually need two boats, cause you gotta have one in Europe and one at home and things like that. Well, I just couldn't afford the star boat. So, uh, you know, for the Olympics, I borrowed a boat, actually. I borrowed one off the guy who finished second in trials, so I didn't need to buy one. So I went back to the Finn class right after that and ended up going to the Olympics in 1988, uh, in the Finn class.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:14:52

Now you had a pretty amazing experience and probably not what you might have anticipated. Talk, talk me through what happened?

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:15:02

Well, it's funny. cause as you know, there's always a prelim. So you go, you, you go to the test event. Well at the test event in Seoul, the year before the Olympics, there was no wind at all. It was absolutely calm. In fact, the current was stronger than the wind. There's some funny stories about that, but it was just sometimes, um, when the current stronger than the wind, the mark you have to round is right in front of you and you can't get to him cause you just keep getting washed down. So there's a lot of funny stories among the boys who were struggling to get around these marks. Anyway, we anticipated, it would be light air and for the Olympics, well, it couldn't have been farther from the truth. It blew like crazy. It was really windy. And when you have current, a strong current, it flows between Korea and Japan. When the current's going in the opposite direction of the waves, the waves get really steep. So instead of having a nice, smooth wave you get really steep waves and they can start breaking right out in the middle of the ocean without anything to make them break and that's what was happening. The waves are so steep that the boats were just running right into them instead of riding up over them. So there was a lot of boats in trouble. There's 10 classes at the Olympics and each in order to spread out all the boats, you can't have them all racing on the same race course. So they have a three or four different race courses, depending on the logistics of the venue we were racing, the Finn class was racing on the same course as a book called the 470. So what happened is, one of the boats from the 470 class was in trouble. So, well there was a lot in trouble, but the problem is the race course is kind of a defined area. And uh, I had been winning, I had been waiting the race I was in, but, uh, the waves were so big that I couldn't see one of the marks and I kind of misjudged it and sailed a bit farther than I needed to. So I was in second place at the time, but we rounded the bottom mark, which means that's the mark that's downwind. And then we have to sail up wind. Uh, when I run, I went around the mark I saw the 470 from Singapore was upside down and there was only one person on the boat and I know it's a two person boat, so I'm wondering, well, “where's the other guy”. And so I was trying to yell, “do you need help? Do you need help?” There's so much noise that the sails are flapping and there's waves and wind and you can't hear anything. And there were about maybe a hundred meters away. So I just decided, well, I've got to do something. And then I saw the other crew member bobbing in the water, off kind of off the race course. And I figured, well, if I can't see a six foot high, four foot wide fluorescent orange marker in the water, nobody's going to find this guy. He's going to be lost at sea. It's just a head bobbing in the ocean. So I pulled out of my race and sailed over and grabbed him sort of as I was going by grabbing them by the back of the life jacket and pulled him into my boat. But it's a single handed boat. There's only room for one person and it's quite windy and wavy, as I said, so I'm wondering, “well now what do I do?” So I decided the best thing I could do is take him back to his boat because it's gonna float. It'll, it'll be okay. And somebody will find a boat. They might not find him, but they'll find a boat. So I managed to sail him back to his boat. And it turned out that the skipper who was holding on the centre board upside down on the boat, he had sliced his hand open and he was bleeding and it was kind of a mess. And the crew member I had picked up, he had hurt his back somehow. I'm not sure what he did anyway. I managed to get him onto his boat. And then the problem was they had lost the rudder, the rudder came off and they didn't, it was floating away somewhere. So I thought, well maybe if I can find the rudder and give it back to them, they might be able to write in their boat and continue and get into shore. So I started sailing up wind and actually I found the rudder. So I was taking it back to them. Meanwhile, the coaches and things like that, aren't allowed on the race course. You have to stay outside the perimeters. But the problem was the Korean rescue boats were sort of a military boat. That was, um, it has what you call a soft bottom. You've all seen these inflatable boats that could blow up. We call them ribs, but this one had no ribs. It was just a soft bottom where the problem was is without any kind of a keel or any way to stabilise the boat, they couldn't turn, they couldn't turn the boat into the wind. So these rescue boats, these Korean rescue boats are pretty much useless. So the race committee got on the radios and radio and said, “okay, all coaches, you're now allowed to go on the course rescue people.” Well, I'd been winning the race. So my coach was thinking when he saw the next rounding of the marks I wasn't there. So he knew something had happened. So he came on in the course looking for me and he found me just as I was giving the rudder back to this other boat, the Singapore boat. So he took over the rescue and I just continued to race. So I ended up, I think I finished 23rd in the race or something.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:20:02

Now, you’re rescuing these guys, as you're in the middle of an Olympic games, no matter how much of a good person you are, there is that inherent competitive spirit in all of us that wants to do well, capsising in sailing must happen on a regular basis. What, what was it in that moment that made you decide to sacrifice your race, to help someone else?

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:20:33

Well, like I said, there was, it's a two person boat and it was only one person there. So right away the alarm bells go off. But when I saw the guy in the water and that was it, I mean, I knew that he needed help. There was no way he could swim and catch to the boat. The winds blow in the boat a lot faster than he can swim. And he's just getting farther and farther and farther away from it. At the time he was probably, I don't know, maybe two or 300 meters away from the boat when I found him. So he would have been lost at sea.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:21:01

Well, I mean, given the state of the injuries that you sort of found those sailors with and the sort of danger they were in, I think there's no argument that, you know, what you did was incredibly heroic and saved their lives. I mean, you had worked incredibly hard to get to the Olympics. You know, you'd missed the first Olympics due to boycotting. Was there ever a moment that you maybe regretted not, not finishing that race or not trying to compete and stay in second place to medal?

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:21:34

Well, certainly not at the moment at the moment, there was just no question about it. In hindsight though, it became such a distraction. It was really hard to compete after that, you know, you spend your whole life, training and competing and you want to get accolades for your results. And all of a sudden I'm surrounded by reporters and everybody wants to talk. And it was just such a distraction. I remember leaving shore and actually giggling to myself how ironic it was that,you do all this work and then you get the, all this attention for something that's completely not part of the program. You know, it was, you don't expect to have to do something like that. So it was a big distraction. And so in hindsight, I think that could've finished better in the overall results without the distraction, but I think I ended up 11th overall in the end when it was all over.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:22:24

Well, I think everyone understood that there was, it's not just about how hard you work, but when you sacrifice how hard you work, the Olympic spirit that is shown from a performance side that sacrificing your performance, not just in that particular race, like you said, all of the races subsequently that happened. So you were indeed awarded the Pierre de Coubertain medal. I mean, how does it feel to be an elite group of identified athletes like that? Not just, awarded for your athleticism and your ability in the sport, but because of the true Olympic spirit that you have kinda feels pretty cool.

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:23:07

Well, here we are. What is it, 35 years later still talking about it? So I guess, uh, I guess that speaks for itself, uh, you know, as, you know, a metal winners come and go and, uh, I'm coaching right now. I coached the laser class for our Canadian team and I'll mention names, you know, very, uh, famous names from the past. And these kids have no idea who I'm talking about. So it, you know, you're remembered during the time of your competition, but when the competition's over, nobody, uh, nobody remembers you anymore unless you're Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan or something like that. But for us amateur athletes, the names are forgotten pretty quickly, but, I guess this one just keeps going on and on

RAYA HUBBELL 00:23:49

The legend indeed lives on. Do you keep your medal close? Do you have it here?

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:23:55

Not really. Uh, it wasn't really, it was just a little porcelain jar kind of a thing. Uh, no, I actually, I don't really have much, uh, around, well, it was funny. There was one time, uh, we were going away on a trip, so we packed all the sort of valuable memorabilia things into a package and put it in a box and hit it somewhere. And it's still hiding.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:24:21

Yeah, it, it shows how humble you are when you put away all of the keepsakes and just leave them there because they're probably best left there. Keep bringing them back out

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:24:33

Many years ago, I left home. I, I had owned a house at the time and I left and I was actually ended up, I was gone for almost a year and my neighbours were supposed to look after the house, but anyway, it got broken into and they stole a bunch of metals and things that. And so it was kind of a warning for the future that you never know what's going to happen, you know, might as well hide it away.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:24:59

Yeah, definitely keep it safe for, you know, on that rainy day where you feel like you need a bit of a pick me up. Lawrence you've been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

LAWRENCE LEMIEUX 00:25:08

Well, it's nice to meet you and thank you for the interview.

OJ BORG 00:25:15

That's Raya there with Lawrence Lemieux from his home in Canada, and that medal that he won as I was listening to that, I looked at it at the Pierre de Coubertain medal, which is the true spirit of sportsmanship medal. I mean, it's an amazing story. Raya you're a competitor. You like winning. I mean, I'm a competitor as well. I never lose. I just, sometimes haven't finished winning when time runs out. Would you do the same? Would you give up, you know, you've spent full years training for something you've got a medal in your sights, whether it be gold, silver, or bronze, would you give it up to help someone else who was in trouble?

RAYA HUBBELL 00:25:43

That's exactly… I asked that exact question to him. I said, at what point did you decide to give up that silver medal and turn to help someone and to be fair, he turned around and went there were two people supposed to be in the boat. No two people were in the boat, they were weaving, shipped out to sea. And you know, I didn't do a sport that was so dangerous and involved other people, I don't know, like there's some, there's a part of me that competitive Olympic spirit side of me that feels like I could probably focus and carry on, but as I've gotten older and hopefully a little bit more sensitive and compassionate, rather than just competitive, I would like to think I could be that person. But I think it takes some really special person to be able to get out of that focused mindset to do something Good I don't know. Would you do it? I don't know.

OJ BORG 00:26:39

I like you. I hope, I think I would. I think morally you have to, I think morally, you have to. I think, I honestly think, I honestly think, I hope I would. I, I bet that he has. And I think we all heard, I think we'd all do the right thing and help want to help them out. But I think in the middle of the night, you know, you get hot elbows or you go, you're trying to go to sleep and you wake up and every mistake you've ever made in your child's life, you decide to play it out at two o'clock in the morning, you would have a moment of thinking, why didn't I leave them? Why didn't I go on to win that? I mean, if you look at it though, over the years, there's been a lot of gold, silver and bronze medals given out the Olympics, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of medals. They're not, you know, don't get me wrong. They're elite clubs, but there are lots of people around, you can find who've won gold medals from every country on the planet. That at this point when he won his, that only even four people before him who'd won the Pierre de Coubertain medal. I mean, there's more now, but he was only the fifth. So you have to look at elite of elite clubs. And I mean, I mean, if you were going to put something on your Tinder bio, you could put down, you know, Pierre de Coubertain. I mean, what a thing to put on it. Not saying I ever what put it on it, but you know, if somebody said, Oh, what's that? And you could go, well, I got this, I'm only one of, at this point, I was only one of five people ever to be so sporting. They gave me a medal.

MARK PAYNE 00:27:57

I was just gonna say, going to weigh in. So the difference between you and Lawrence Lemieux, Lawrence Lemieux, his is in a packing case and he didn't know where it was and you'd be putting on your Tinder Bio.

OJ BORG 00:29:05

Absolutely. I don't have Tinder and I've never been on Tinder, but if I was on Tinder, then I think it just be a picture of me and my medal and I, it would be a conversation style every single time. I'd be like, Oh, what's your medal. Well, let me tell you over dinner,

RAYA HUBBELL 00:28:21

That and the second picture would be you and your dog.

OJ BORG 00:28:24

Absolutely. I don't know. Have you ever tend to dated Raya?

RAYA HUBBELL 00:28:27

Oh yeah, there was, there was a time where I did attempt it.

OJ BORG 00:28:32

What was your picture? What picture do you use as your profile picture?

RAYA HUBBELL 00:28:35

There were, there were many variations over the years and I've never had a dog in my profile picture, but I saw many men with their dogs and stroking tigers. So unacceptable.

OJ BORG 00:28:48

Okay. Hang on. You, you dated Joe Exotic. Tell me more. I saw, I saw a great thing that the day, which was, it was a tweet saying, um, if all the people in the Tinder bios said they're into hiking, the trails would be fuller than they are. There'd be no room on the trails because as I say, I've never Tinder dated and, um, hopefully never will, but you never know. There's always time. Thank you very much again, to Lawrence for taking the time to talk to us. It's a fantastic story. Really good story. Now though, it's time to flip over to the world of wheelchair basketball with team GB. Co-captain Sophie Carrigill

RAYA HUBBELL 00:29:26

Let me ask before we get on to sort of how your basketball career is now, were you sporty growing up as a kid?

SOPHIE CARIGILL 00:29:34

Oh yeah, I was really Sports. I was, that was what I was naturally quite talented. The academic stuff did not come easy to me. So at school I was definitely that kid that couldn't wait for the PE lessons, even though I still managed to forget my kit, like every single time, which still still surprises me. But my mum bless her, would always bring my kit in. Cause that was the lesson that I just loved the most. I did everything after school, you know, netball hockey, tennis, athletics, I drove my parents, mad, doing every extracurricular activity you could imagine, but really set me up like for obviously the life I have now. But, I think I would have always pursued sport in some way, whether that be professionally or not. I think I always quite liked the idea of being a PE teacher or something like that. But obviously that life massively changed for me when I was 16.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:30:31

That's right. You had just finished your GCSE’s if I'm not mistaken, gone on a holiday to America back in 2010, is that right?

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:30:40

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So I've got family that live out there and I'd been there before and just absolutely loved it. I think I just loved the American dream, you know, that, I loved sport over there. Like it was just so different to what it is over here. Um, that whole culture is massively driven by sport. And I, I loved that. I just wanted to spend more time there. And luckily I had family that lived there, so, you know, it was just a flight and then I'd get to stay with them for a few weeks.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:31:12

And what happened on that trip?

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:31:14

Obviously I stayed there for a lot longer than planned, but not in a holiday. I stayed because I was in hospital. Uh, so I had a, um, a car accident, um, on the third day of my holiday, absolutely gutted, but I, uh, yeah, the guy driving just lost control of the car and went straight into a tree, um, at 60 miles an hour. So it's, you know, going quite fast and, um, straight into something stopped dead, you know, and I had my seatbelt on, but actually my seatbelt caused a lot of my injuries. Um, if I hadn't have had it on, I'd have, you know, gone straight through the windscreen and, you know, probably be a lot worse off than I am now. So, uh, but yeah, it was rushed to hospital. Um, I wasn't alive at the time. My heart wasn't beating. I was, um, you know, in a lot of pain and things. I mean, I don't remember it, thank God I think. But yeah, I went into hospital. I was, uh, had like lifesaving surgery, quite a few of them. and they rarely doctors over in America are quite cocky about how good they are, which, you know, I lo I love that. But they've said to me since like you came in with the most severe injuries that we've ever seen in a trauma situation, um, and we really didn't know if we'd be able to save your life. Uh, so actually they left me open overnight. So I tied to all this internal and every bit of my own, all my organs were damaged. Um, but they operated on them all, but left me open to sort of give me the best chance of survival. Um, but thinking really that I wasn't gonna make it through the night I did, which is, you know, amazing in itself, nevermind the life I've been able to live now. But yeah, I survived. And then every day since then, really I sort of, you know, go through recovery, go through rehab and, and get to the place where I was, you know, starting to live, what I called it, a normal sort of life. Really.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:33:13

What were the extent of your injuries? What actually happened? Cause it was, it was pretty significant.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:33:22

It was. Yeah. So as I said, just, um, my organs were really badly damaged. I was, um, bleeding internally from my liver, which was the thing that was basically killing me. Um, so I had blood transfusions, a lot of my other organs were damaged and then repaired later on. Um, but obviously the lasting injury for me was breaking my back and my spinal cord. And I said, that is now why I'm a permanent wheelchair user. Um, and you know, that's a permanent injury. Um, but it's funny because like, obviously I'm just telling the story and I don't mention that to begin with, which really people would think is the most important thing. But actually during that time, it was so insignificant because actually the internal injuries were, you know, the things that were stopping me, from being alive, they were the things that were, uh, you know, stopping me, stopping me and were causing me so much pain. So actually those things sort of overrode the fact about like breaking my back really, if that makes sense.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:34:24

Yes. Yeah, it does. I mean, I had a similar injury back in 2001 where I, again, broke my back. I was in a wheelchair for quite some time, but I hadn't severed my spinal cord. So not the same, um, extreme injuries as you, but that going through, um, hospital is very rarely about the broken back cause they put you on traction or they operate, it's the, it's the bruising of the internal organs and the injuries that you sustained that, that stop you from being able to eat. And therefore you do lose weight and also something which I think is very close to your heart is the emotional recovery that the psychology behind, how through something like that. How long were you in hospital for and how did it affect you? What was the process of going from hospital bed to nearly dying, um, through who to coming out the other side and deciding what you were going to do next? Yeah.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:35:27

Massive journey really, probably about a year. I would say it took me to fully recover and sort of feel like myself again, but I was hospital. I was in America for two months and I couldn't fly home cause I'd punctured my lungs. So because of the air pressure, I'm sure my insurance company wanted me to get home as quick as possible, but I wasn't able to and the care I had there, it was just phenomenal. It was amazing and then I was in the hospital two months in the NHS, again, like I can't fault, them you know, I was so well looked after. And then I got discharged just before Christmas in 2010. So it was amazing to be able to have Christmas, like, although it was different and my life was different. It was amazing to be back home just before Christmas. and yeah, then after that really recovery is just, it's constant, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm still in recovery, but you're always, you know, you're always dealing with challenges and barriers and things like that, that come up that you've not experienced before. So to me, it's always evolving. Um, I tried to go back to school like pretty much straight away. I was, I thought, Oh, I'll just, you know, as soon as I get back from America, I'll be back at school, straight away. And like with my old friends and my, the same class and things like that, but that didn't happen. And I, I went back just sort of once a week or something just to like have lunch with my friends really and do like a couple of lessons just to like get back into the swing of things. Um, but yeah, it was kind of a mad year really, cause it flies by. But then at the same time, it's really slow. Cause I was, you know, still, so ill still so weak, like, like you said, like all those other injuries affect so much more of your life at losing weight. And I was like, half the woman I am now back then because I just wasn't able to eat a lot. So that recovery took longer. Um, and like you said, as well, like psychology and the mind is something that I'm really passionate about, I think just affects so much of your life, um, mental health and things like that. It's just so important to be talking about. And that for me was, uh, definitely the struggle early on, you know, adapting to a new way of life. Um, and, but honestly, like I wouldn't be the person I am now without like so cliche to say, but friends and family around me that, you know, made me almost fake it to prove that I was fine. And you know, obviously they didn't make me do that. I mean, people being around me, I was like, I'm going to just put on a brave face and I'm just going to pretend for a while that I'm OK. Um, and then everything will be, you know, everything, then it'll be fine eventually. Um, which was, luckily for me, I'm not advising anyone like, you know, push your emotions down and not talk about them. Obviously that's not advisable. Um, but for me it worked for a bit, you know, prioritizing that,

RAYA HUBBELL 00:38:18

But, but you have to, but it's great to share how it worked for you.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:38:22

Exactly. Yeah. Um, I had to prioritise other people cause I think it's so much worse for parents friends to see someone going through that and not being able to like cure it, almost not being able to do anything to help. Um, so yeah, I think that was sort of like my way of processing and way of like coping. Um, and yeah, just the mind I could talk about it all day. It's just so powerful, such a powerful tool, um, that can help you overcome things. And, and obviously for me then sport became a massive part of my rehab as well because I didn't know anybody else with a disability. I went on my life, uh, spinal injuries, they do like a session at Stoke Mandeville, which obviously the homeowner Paralympics. So there's a little bit that was about six, seven months after the accident and all little bits of inspiration that were happening around this time and made me realiaed sport was, it was definitely missing and it was a big part of my life. Um, and when I joined the wheelchair basketball groups as well, when I start to meet different people with disabilities and start to sort of embed myself into that society, which, and that community, which to begin with, like being really honest, I was really against, I thought, you know, I just want to be in my bubble in, you know, stay with my friends, everyone who I knew. And that's such a process of, um, it's a mental recovery process is, um, I'm a different identity now I can identify with different people, um, and sort of starting to Sports and getting into that made me come to terms with, um, probably accepting my disability a lot more.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:40:03

Not only did you accept it, but you then embraced it by understanding you miss sport, but needing to do it in a new functional way, to adapt, to this new way of life. Did you decide the basketball was your thing because it was around the corner from your house? Or did you have a preexisting love for it? How'd you get into basketball?

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:40:28

No, not at all. I never played basketball before, you know, being able bodied. I mean, we'd messed about, and it's school, gym or something play in it, but never properly, never played a game in my life, didn't know the rules. Um, so yeah, it just happened to be that, um, I've gone on a course called the backup trust, who are an amazing charity that helped people with spinal cord injuries. And I went on like an outward bound course in the Lake district and it just changed me completely just to make it made me who I'm meant to be. If that makes sense, got me back to the old Sophie, you know, pre-accident. Um, and it made me realise that I've got this competitive spirit. Like I want to be the best at everything. Um, and it just made me realise that again. So I just looked at like local disability Sports and Time, and this happened to be basketball was like 10 minutes from where I was living at the time. I think I was drawn to it cause it's a team sport. I dunno, I played a lot of team sport growing up. Uh, and I just went along. I mean, honestly I was terrible to start with like really bad. I think it's hard that people don't realise that pushing a chair as well as dribbling shooting, passing, catching is really hard. Like you run quite innately and then the other things that the things you think about, but actually the whole wheelchair thing was so alien to me that that was what I was thinking about more rather than trying to like pass and catch them the skills that I had. Um, thankfully I just kept going back cause I was really determined and it's quite a, some people call it stubborn, but uh, I'm determined and I just kept going back and thankfully got better at it. Um, but it took awhile and yeah, I think a lesson in don't give up, I suppose.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:42:13

Definitely. I also prefer the word of determined than stubborn as well. Um, cause they're pretty much the same thing. Um, determined you were, you, um, have become a bit of a superstar at wheelchair basketball. Now let's talk about your career today. What have you, what's happened? Where have you gone? What have you done?

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:42:34

It's been a whirlwind and because as I say, like in 2011, when I started, I was really terrible. So it was a quick succession to, into the GB squad. Um, and obviously the London games were happening and again, a bit of a cliche, I was definitely inspired by that. I, I didn't compete that, but I went to watch and I was involved in that Paralympic inspiration program and we've got to do a bit of like behind the scenes stuff, which was really cool. And I remember watching the girls play their final against Germany and they lost, and it was just like that memory sticks with me so vividly cause they were all really obsessed again, obviously. And the crowd was just electric, like throughout the whole game, it was just like, Oh, it was just on fire. Like it felt just amazing. I was able to play and that's what I want to do. Like I want to be on call when they next played Germany and I want to beat them and I want to be part of that team, like to help them be successful. It's still at this point, probably not really knowing a clue what I was really doing. You know, I sort of was winging it for a lot of my probably first year of my career and just like getting used to the sport and playing at that sort of high level. Um, and then it just sort of, as I said to begin with, I made every decision possible to make that dream a reality. So the team, um, were then going to be centralised and that happens in Worcester. And so I chose to go there and do my degree, which meant I could be a full time athlete as well. So we were training pretty much Monday to Friday. Um, we train at seven o'clock every morning and then we'd do a couple of other sessions throughout the day. I swear I did not have student life that you may expect. Um, my, my friends were getting in at six o'clock every morning and I was going out at six o'clock every morning. Um, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I've got such amazing experiences because of that. Um, obviously the Rio Paralympics being my first Paralympics and being selected for that team and then also, uh, Co-Captain in the team as well was just an absolute honour and one of the best experiences of my life today is waking up every morning and I literally could see the Olympic part out of my bedroom window in Rio. And that's just like a childhood dream. I used to watch the Olympics thinking, what sport can I do? That's going to get me there. And you know, obviously my life took a different path and it ended up being in the Paralympics, but equally as amazing. And you know, so what that, it took a massive accident. That's pretty traumatic to leave me that because that's, what's important is what I'm doing in the career and, and the level that we get to do at. Yeah. So that was obviously one of the highlights apart from missing out on a medal, we came forth. Which I think was probably about right for us at the time. but you know, it's that bittersweet feeling of we were successful because we made the semifinal and we'd never done that before as a team, but then we also missed out. So it was yeah, pretty sweet. Um, but then really we went from strength to strength. We had some funding increase, which really helped our program. We moved up to Sheffield, which we had at different facilities. You know, we were based out of an English Institute of sport, which helps with physio, you know, all that support around the, the sport itself and yeah, just went from strength to strength in the world championships in 2018, we'd come from a nine game losing streak. Like, don't ask me how this happened. But we went into that tournament having lost nine times on the trot and we lost out to the Dutch in the final. But we just came together as a team and it was just like, it just felt, I think when athletes talk about like being in the zone and like talk about flow, that's definitely what it felt like that tournament. Um, just, we were all together. We were all on the same page. We all knew what we wanted and we went out and got it and to be on a world podium,

RAYA HUBBELL 00:46:41

Exactly determined, persistent, but also hungry for more, you know, fourth at the Paralympics, things like coming silver after a nine, um, and get into the finals after nine game, losing streak, these sorts of things I'm sure have left you guys so much more passionate, so much more hungry to develop as a team, but also as personal skills. So 2021, now, because of COVID is your focus. I presume ?

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:47:09

Yeah. Hunger. You talk about like, that's what I have, like a paralympic medal is the one that we don't have at the moment and it's definitely the thing that we're chasing. So we've all been keeping our heads down, working hard through lockdown, um, making the most of the situation, cause you know you've got to turn it a positive cause if not, it can, you know, it gets a bit ugly. So we're back on court now, which is great. Like, uh, our team British wheelchair basketball, done a great job in making sure we're back on course safely. Um, and hopefully things just progress. And uh, and you know, we'll be back competing soon, which is ultimately what I enjoy doing. Don't get me wrong, like going out and shooting on an outdoor court. It can be fun for about half an hour, but really my, my passion is to play with other people.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:47:59

And also we live in the UK. So now that it's September, we have exactly 14 more days before it is categorically unacceptable to play outside.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:48:08

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We've had some days like why and June, you know, where it's not okay to go outside. It doesn't make sense as well.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:48:20

I can only imagine that setting your sights for a Paralympic medal in 2021 is the ultimate goal because I believe that the future of wheelchair basketball post ‘20 or ‘21 is potentially in jeopardy.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:48:37

What they've done is IPC have had rules in place. I think, I think since 2015 was when they start talking about the new changes that we're making. And I think they came in place in 2017. So the IPC and the Paralympic committee, and then I WPF is the wheelchair basketball sort of Federation that looks after our sport on its own. So, and these classification rules at the moment, Oh, pre-Tokyo when it was meant to be didn't align. So WPF were allowing people with minimal disabilities to compete and the IPC was saying, you need to have one of these disabilities in this box of 10. Um, I think it is, uh, but if you don't have one of these, your ineligible to compete, um, which is difficult because obviously there needs to be some sort of classification process in place cause it needs to be fair. But it's sad because wheelchair basketball's always been such an inclusive sport. And I think that's why our Federation has really tried to possess and keeping their rules the same and challenged the IPC. Um, but unfortunately they've not been able to do that as of yet. Um, and they've had to align their rules to the IPCs rules. Um, but it's just such a shame because you miss out on, um, you know, people with disabilities who are registered disabled, being able to compete in the sport. And it's just, it's a shame. It makes me sad because obviously I get so much enjoyment from the sport and I know other people do that play. And now I've been told they're ineligible for me. My thought process has always been, if you can't play the able bodied version of the sport, you should be able to play the disability version. You know, it's, it's an umbrella, but if it's to go to a Paralympics really, or to go to it, you know, to play it, you Club, you need to see people who look like you doing those things at the highest level to be able to aspire to be like those people. Um, and that's what I think we're going to miss out on looking at. We're gonna probably isolate a lot of people who then don't fit into any category. It's like, well, I can't play the disability version and I can't put a date, a body version cause I can't run. I can't walk. You know? So I'm just worrying for even grassroots. Nevermind just the Paralympics, you know, cause it's got the Paralympics is massive motivator for people to play sport. Um, and if people aren't seeing other people like them, I worry for the longevity of the sport and you know, the amount of people playing

RAYA HUBBELL 00:51:15

I recently saw, um, a really, um, very emotional, but very, very fair, um, statement that you made on Instagram about this and it, those sorts of things were making sure that inclusion matters. I love that. You're promoting that. So thank you.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:51:29

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's what it takes. You know, people to talk about it, it's a difficult subject, of course, and you're going up against people who are, you know, big companies probably. And when it's important that people speak up, it's like everything in life there's so much going on with it, people need to be educated on, and this is just another one of those, those areas

RAYA HUBBELL 00:52:03

Sophie I think you're incredible. We made it through the interview without crying. I wish you and the team all the best for Tokyo in 2021. And also for all the hard work that you clearly need to do for wheelchair basketball in the future to be thank you so much for your time today.

SOPHIE CARRIGILL 00:52:17

Thank you. It's been really great.

OJ BORG 00:52:19

Oh, Raya she sounds amazing. Absolutely amazing. And you said at the beginning, you weren't going to get emotional during the interview and you didn't.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:52:26

No, I didn't. I didn't. I did just after we stopped pressing record because I was just, I had been thanking her for how much I enjoyed interviewing her and how she's recovered. And that got me emotional. Cause obviously I've sort of, I've been through a, quite a similar accident, similar experience to her. But we obviously recovered really differently. And so mentally I, I, I struggled to understand the concept of, of how she's grown as an individual. I just, I it's, for me, it's incredible.

OJ BORG 00:53:01

Yeah. It's one of those stories and you hear them all the time. If, if something like that happens to you or happens to me, I hope I have the, the, the personal fibre is not the way of putting it. I hope I have the moral fi I don't know how to put it. I hope I'm as good as her. If something like that before, it's me, I hope I can deal with it in the way that she did. That's the honesty. I mean, obviously I hope it doesn't, but if he did, I hope I could deal it the same way she can.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:53:26

Yeah. Now last week we did, um, a whole load of comebackability. These are people who'd come back from their careers and been successful and we worked out, they come back ability right Mr. Mark Payne Captain Payne, what are we doing this week?

MARK PAYNE 00:53:36

This week, we are doing, uh, unlikely winners following on from Pierre Gasly these emotional win at Monza. We just thought we'd go through the people that nobody really expected to win, who turned up to an event and absolutely caned them. So I thought I'd go through and start at the top with possibly the most famous upset in boxing ever. James Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson in Tokyo. Obviously at this time Mike Tyson was undefeated. I think you could get shots of 42 to one, which is, bearing in mind there's only two people in the ring at any point is incredible for a Buster Douglas win. And also the betting was not on whether he would win, but on what round he would get knocked out in. So who have you got for that?

OJ BORG 00:54:21

Yeah. I mean, you gotta, you gotta look at that Avenue. If you're Buster Douglas to this moment, what you're confident is like your confidence is like, when people are betting on what rounds are going to get knocked out. And there was another, there was a fight in the UK as well, where somebody who was so expected to get knocked out The Sun sponsored the soles of their shoes, because at some point it was gonna be laying on his back. I can't remember who it was. The thing is though. So Buster Douglas in this fight. He amazingly, won it, was it a knockout, he won it by, did he, did he knock Tyson out?

MARK PAYNE 00:54:50

So he was leaving on the cards and then he knocked him out. I mean, there was, it's incredible when you watch it. Cause you think heavyweight boxing, you can always get knocked out, but if you watch the fire, he's on top for most of it. And then he knocked Tyson now, after being knocked down himself,

RAYA HUBBELL 00:55:08

You know, there comes a point where actually, I think PR and publicity plays so much to your favour because he had nothing to lose. Nothing. Everyone expected him to fail miserably. So all you had to do was go out with zero expectations and do what he did best, which is box and also the mental ability to sort of forget that you're fighting. Mike Tyson that's the bit I love about it. Nothing to lose and just go out and give it everything.

OJ BORG 00:55:39

Oh man, I love it as well. I would say though, at the time, I mean, I I'm slightly busking it cause I don't totally know, but having known Mike Tyson's life and the wild man image that he did and how young he was and the lack of gusta motto in his life and Cus D'Amato passed away. And I, you know, as I say, I'm busking gets my mind off my timelines here. Do you think it was dope that less than Buster Douglas managed to beat Mike Tyson that Mike Tyson beat himself because there was the Lennox Lewis loss, Lennox Lewis lost to

MARK PAYNE 00:56:03

Hasim Rahman

OJ BORG 00:56:04

Hasim Rahman, but Lennox Lewis beat himself, you know, Lennox Lewis said himself, but that's the reason he lost that fight. So do we think that less than it's a unlikely winner, more that Mike Tyson beat himself because he was just living this non, non frugal lifestyle. He was hammering it basically

RAYA HUBBELL 00:56:28

Without a doubt that can absolutely play an impact in an, a fight like this or, or the outcome of a game for sure. The amount of times where I've turned around and said, ah, you know, I lost that race. It was, it was, it was everything for me to lose and I psyched myself out or whatever it may be. But then at the same time, the person who was fighting against you in the ring took that to their advantage and were able to capitalise on it. So yes, I think there's a huge argument for that, but Good on James for taking advantage.

OJ BORG 00:57:02

Good on him. What we right now and then give me your rating.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:57:06

I'm going to go for a seven.

OJ BORG 00:57:09

Okay. Mr. Payne, let's go on to the next one and I believe we're going speed skating

MARK PAYNE 00:57:19

Indeed. Now you might have seen this story, when it happened, it was one of the most remarkable things that has ever happened in winter sport. If only for the fact that a man from Australia won a speed skating medal, but that's not half the story. The fact that he got through to the final, because everybody around him kept crashing. That's not half the story. The bit that often doesn't get told about Steven Bradbury winning an Olympic gold medal in 2002 is that he was an elite speed skater once upon a time. He had two horrific injuries. His leg was cut by a fellow competitors skates so badly that he needed 111 stitches lost four litres of blood, tore all the muscles in one part of his thigh and had 18 months on the sidelines. He broke his neck in a training accident and it was basically considered to be completely finished.

OJ BORG 00:57:58

Hold on, was he taking part in speed skating or was he part of the Running Man? With those sort of injuries, I mean like, wow, we're not far away from climbing for dollars with that sort of thing. I mean, don't get me wrong. If people were running round with lethal weapons on their feet, it's a sort of thing I might watch as a film, but my God anyway, sorry.

MARK PAYNE 00:58:18

Mark just before on Lethal Weapon, just before he was about to say he "was too old for this sh..”, he came back and did one more event and he literally got to the final because he had this tactic from the semis. He realised he wasn't quick enough to get into the top two and qualify, so he hung back and waited for the chaos to unfold, to the point where in the final he was hanging back expecting to get a Bronze so when the front three took each other out and he has this incredible look on his face. Like I've won. Like he can't believe it.

OJ BORG 00:58:47

So I've got analogy for that. So that's basically like playing Mario Kart, playing everyone, red shelling everyone up front, and then just tootling through to take the winning. That what you're saying pretty much

MARK PAYNE 00:59:01

Pretty much, I was gonna say in Australia, the fact that he did this and it's such a unique event, you can't think of many other examples of someone doing this. It's called “doing a Bradbury”

RAYA HUBBELL 00:59:08

Brilliant

OJ BORG 00:59:08

I love it. I feel in some ways I've felt in some ways my entire career has been based on “doing a Bradbury”. Where I’ve never really been at front, fighting it out for the big honours. I've just pootled along at the back and I've just cleaned up the scraps and I seem to still be, I love it. 10 out of 10. I'm all for Bradbury.

RAYA HUBBELL 00:59:32

The fact that he has a saying, like doing a Bradbury, I’m right there with you, it's gotta be a nine, nine and a half 10.

OJ BORG 00:59:40

Here we go into the next one.

MARK PAYNE 00:59:41

Okay. So if you're going to go from unexpected winners and then we're going to look at someone that fought someone even more dominant than Mike Tyson is prime, right? This is the story of Aleksandr Karelin no, I didn't know Aleksandr Karelin was until I started researching into this, it's kind of hard to find anyone that was more dominant in any sport at any time in history than him. He came into the Sydney Olympics on the back of 887 fights of which he'd won 886. He'd won nine straight world championships, three straight Olympic goals. It won 10 straight European championships. He had been undefeated for 13 years and hadn't conceited a single point in six. So it's fair to say. He was an overwhelming favourite when he came to the Olympic final, he was fighting. And then I love this. A man from Wyoming who grew up and trained by wrestling cows, literally what he did, right? The guy Karelin had a PhD in defending the suplex not a joke. He literally had a PhD in defending the suplex he's up against the fat guy from America who wrestled cows and amazingly the fat guy won, um, purely because basically you just Karelin just couldn't lift him. You couldn't flip him, you couldn't move him. And it was incredible.

OJ BORG 01:00:15

Hang on, are you doing the plot to Rocky III here? Is that what you're doing? So you've got behemoth, Russian taking on a guy who's wrestling cows. I mean, what a great story. I mean, it sounds great. I've never heard of either of these people, but what an amazing unlikely winner well done Rulon Gardener

RAYA HUBBELL 01:01:18

I can imagine the end of a movie when you know, you're doing this life story of this incredible wrestler and the end is this just finish where he can't pick the guy up and it just finishes there. It's like almost the most depressing anticlimax you could ever have.

MARK PAYNE 01:01:40

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's so much more to that story. I mean, we've told like the fact that that is incredible enough in itself, but the more digging I into it, the more incredible it got lucky he'd won the Atlanta Olympics with one arm. Cause he dislocated a shoulder. He was that dominant. He could win with one arm. And the fact that after that fight, he retired by leaving his shoes on the mat and then came back and uh, you know, Karelin was there when Rulon Gardener retired when he did exactly the same thing that his shoes on the mat as a sign. But then incredibly so Rulon Gardener does the talking circuit and then shortly afterwards has his like basically lives out final destination at a snowmobile crash into a Lake in Utah was left alone, lost a toe, had to be rescued and then crashed a plane into a Lake. So I mean, and he's still go in.

OJ BORG 01:02:28

Amazing. Well done, everyone. I'm going to give that a nine out of 10 just for the sheer leaving your shoes on the madness of it.

RAYA HUBBELL 01:02:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean for me, but only because the story just doesn't seem right.

OJ BORG 01:02:45

I mean make a film out of it. I'd watch it. I'd watch it. Where are we off to next

MARK PAYNE 01:02:51

I was gonna say the next one. I think they are actually turning this into a film. So if you don't know their story, um, if you don't follow American football, it’s just started again, I'd recommend getting in on the ground floor and watching it from the start because it's one of the best sports to watch for storylines. I don't think in the great history of the NFL, they've had a better storyline than the 1999 St Louis Rams and they came into the season as the big underdogs. Hadn't won a title since 1951, which was 16 years before the very first super bowl. Hadn't had a winning season for a decade. The last four seasons they've won progressively less and less games. And then they feel like they’ve solved the problem. They get this expensive quarterback is going to solve all their problems. First preseason game, they play, he dislocates his knee. His season's over. They have to look onto their backup and it's a guy who's 28 is bounced around the league. He's spent time working a night shift. Stacking shelves in a local supermarket, playing indoor football. He's played in Europe and other lesser leagues - a guy called Kurt Warner who ended up becoming the league MVP, winning the super bowl, go into the hall of fame, doing nearly doing the same again, 15 years later when he was at the end of his career and has an extraordinary performance and one of the greatest comeback stories of all time.

OJ BORG 01:04:03

Interesting. It is interesting now. And I do like American football. I'm a fan of American football. The reason that I am tempted to not give this a high mark on unlikely winners is to do with the draft system in America. Now I believe this has happened a couple of times recently where teams intentionally, if they look like they're doing badly in a season, we'll just have one bad season. It's got a name, a comment. What is it called?

MARK PAYNE 01:04:23

Tank

OJ BORG 01:04:23

Yeah, tanking the season. Because that means the next season. You will be first pick on a load of drafts and you can basically reboot rebuild your team. So rather than have a mediocre season, have a terrible season. So I would think the ability for teams in American football or fat to any American sport, where you have a draft system, the ability to have a terrible season to then be followed by great season is fairly high. I'm not saying this is not a great story because everything around it with Kurt Warner the rest of it. I'm just saying, I'm not sure I rate it as highly as the other unlikely winners. Raya

RAYA HUBBELL 01:05:00

Yeah. I tend to agree with, especially Sports that are North American focused you've got that one. There's a huge amount of politics too. There's a huge amount of strategy at play, but three there's just so much money involved. So much money involved that, um, it sometimes takes away from the incredible stories. And NFL has seen some incredible stories, incredible stories. And I guess I can see why this would be turned into a film because you go from stacking supermarket shelves to being the MVP of the entire league and super bowl. So I can see how it works, but I can totally understand your gripe, but I saw is the same and yeah,

OJ BORG 01:05:47

Less a gripe. It's just, I'm looking at it through that prism. The other thing is they only play about eight games a year. When you look at the American football season, it's insanely short.

RAYA HUBBELL 01:05:58

That is because the games lasts so long because there's so many timeouts that it's nine innings of baseball for a 90 minute game. That's crazy.

MARK PAYNE 01:06:09

In defence of the NFL, the guys, it's such a brutal sport, it's bigger. And it's just the impact. If they played a 38 game season. They'd have one player left at the end

OJ BORG 01:06:15

Well, yes, I'm not saying I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying, the point I was trying to make, I'm just trying to put mitigating factors again so we don't give all of these unlikely winners, like 10 out of 10, the mitigating factor would be, if you had to play a 30 game season and you had to get lucky in each one of these games, it'd be very difficult to do it over 30 games to do it over. What's an NFL season, including postseason games. It would be 19 games. 19 games get hot. You can fluke 19 games fine. I'm going to give it a seven just because of the aforementioned factors. But yet it's still a great story, but a seven me,

RAYA HUBBELL 01:06:54

Oh, I'm going to give it an eight because I love that. That feel good. Supermarkets, stacking shelter.

OJ BORG 01:07:02

Oh God. Yeah. I mean, it's the American American dream, right? Let's do one more.

MARK PAYNE 01:07:06

I was going to say the rights had been bought by Disney. So we'll be hearing about it soon...

OJ BORG 01:07:09

Oh, hang on a second here. There's going to be a genie in a lamp talking tiger. I'm in, I've changed my mind. 11 out of 10.

MARK PAYNE 01:07:15

So now there's going to be a whole list more on the website. So I'm tossing up which one I go to next, but it seems obvious to me that we're going to go for one that's slightly different. I know we did tennis last week with Monica Seles and her come back, we're going to do the unlikely winners and it's Goran Ivanisevic. Now Goran Ivanisevic. If you hear the name and you look at his record, you think it's not that surprising that he won Wimbledon, he was a successful player in the nineties. He looked like he was going to, it was destiny. It was going to be there. He played in an era though, where he had the likes of Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, who was just unbeatable at the top. And he'd got to the point in 98 where he basically just emotionally lost it on the court. He lost the third Wimbledon final. Against Pete Sampras and he said he described it “as literally the worst moment of my life” collapsed on the court in tears. He whole career fell apart. His fell apart three years later in 2001, uh, he's not made it to a single grand slam for the rest of the year. This is the third one. He's not got past the quarter finals. Since that, that final he's, he's just completely thereafter fallen to number 125 in the world rankings, which means he's no longer entitled to an automatic spot. When would it take pity on him? Give him a space. He then goes and beats three, future number ones the fastest man serving on the planet and Tim Henman who at the time was, you know, had a huge home advantage in the semifinals and then goes and beats Pat Rafter in the final. One the most emotional comeback ever seen

OJ BORG 01:08:56

Raya.

RAYA HUBBELL 01:08:57

I really feel for tennis players because not only is it a game watched by so many people around the world, but it is you and one other player in a stadium full of people, the pressure that tennis players are under is like a microscope. And also I feel like their lives are quite well documented, more so than a lot of other sort of athletes out there, particularly in the UK where we live. So I can, I really resonate with that pressure and the sort of career's going to pot, but, um, because of the pressure that they're under and having to compete against the likes of Agassi and Sampras who were, like you said, totally unbeatable. It is an amazing journey, but he had, I sort of feel like he always had it in him somewhere. Like you said, he he'd had an incredible career. So it was a comeback rather than a winning. Yeah,

OJ BORG 01:09:56

Exactly. The, I think you almost gotta make last week's let's rather than this one. Um, I, you know, I remember this for me, this was the heyday of, of me watching tennis. Unlike a lot of people, there are certainly fans, which transcend the sports if you're not into the sport, you will like it. Anyway, for instance, the Tour de France, transcends cycling, cause people watch, if you're not into cycling the, uh, the Superbowl transcends American football. I remember watching this year and I was very much into his story and I loved it. And even though I'm British, I don't tend to be particularly gender jingoistic. I like Henman, but I didn't, you know, it wasn't necessarily that I wanted him to win. I loved how into it was. I loved the drama for me. It was the high point Wimbledon. So I'm, I'm right on this, even though I feel it's more of a comeback story than an unlikely winner, both rolled into one. I am giving him a full on nine

RAYA HUBBELL 01:10:40

Oh yeah. I'm going to go write one below you an eight cause it is great.

OJ BORG 01:10:45

It is a lovely story. Make it a film. That's what I say, make all of these. As Mark said during that, that will be more of these. This is all gonna be a big old article on the website so make sure you check out the website, which Mark is…

MARK PAYNE 01:10:55

ShockedGiraffe.com/GoodTimeSportsClub

OJ BORG 01:11:02

Thank you very much. You've been part of another Good Time Sports Club. Raya

RAYA HUBBELL 01:11:10

Lovely as always as always, hopefully next week you can tell us all about your sporting prowess over this 500 mile race.

OJ BORG 01:11:18

No, I'll be doing it just the day before we leave. But my, I've ordered my, bike packing bags late, so I'm hoping they turn up. Otherwise, literally I'm going to have my clothes and my tent tied to my bike in plastic carrier bags, as it's looking right now, if these bags don't turn up, but you never know that's the joy of it. Good Time Sports Club is a Shocked Giraffe production was presented by me. OJ Borg

RAYA HUBBELL 01:11:40

And me Raya Hubbell and, a very special thanks to our guests. Lawrence Lemieux and Sophie Carigill today.

OJ BORG 01:11:47

Indeed. The show is produced by Mark Payne with additional production support from James Watkins we'll see you next week. Goodbye Raya

RAYA HUBBELL 01:11:52

Take care.