Who is this Kurek Ashley character? He’s the man who played a big part in changing my life. And he did it by changing the way I see things, the way I see myself.

In a nutshell, Kurek is a peak performance and success coach. He works with people from all walks of life: CEOs, multi-millionaires, elit...

“Your body is a garage to park your soul. Treat it with respect.”
If you’ve followed our progress, you would have noticed that in Atlanta I was much heavier than I was in Sydney—by eight kilos in fact. I’ve got skinny arms and legs (so my mother keeps telling me), and I tend to carry any extra weight...

An average year followed the Atlanta Games, but something had changed forever in my mind. I’d vaguely begun to realise I was on a journey, and hadn’t reached a destination, but now I was more determined than ever to make the journey itself a success.

People ask me how I knew that all these internal...

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses–behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights” – Muhammad Ali

At that team meeting, Steve told us to concentrateon Barbara Fontana, and then proceeded to tell us that she didn’t have a weak shot!...

Realisation has come to me slowly, via a series of sparks, each one brighter than the one that preceded it. Everyone has an ‘aha!’ moment, when they come to an understanding that had previously been buried somewhere in their unconscious mind. If you’re ready, and receptive to it, it will come. The q...

Back in 1996, if you’d spoken to anyone who knows me, they’d have said I was never short on self-confidence. I had a belief in my ability, but I didn’t know what it meant to really believe in myself. My self-belief was all superficial, and soon cracked under certain types of pressure.

I later reali...

I’d put myself through a thousand deaths before we finally got to the first game in Atlanta, against the English team of Cooper and Glover, but we had a great game plan, and it ultimately got us through those first-round nerves. We won relatively easily, 15–4. Our four-point plan went pretty well:

Physiotherapy was put on hold, and has been there ever since. I don’t know that I’ll ever return to it, but I learned a lot about physiology and how systems work, and have maintained that interest, in various ways, ever since. In 1995, Anita and I decided to go our separate ways. I teamed up with Ke...

Back at school, during volleyball training sessions, I’d hear my coach chant a familiar refrain: “You’re not focusing!” I didn’t understand what he meant, and neither did any of the others. “What are we supposed to bloody focus on?”, we asked each other. The goal was defined this way: pass the ball ...

When I was seven years old, I was sitting on the floor watching the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games on the television when I saw Lisa Curry standing on a podium, receiving a gold medal around her neck for winning the 100 metres freestyle. I said “I want to do that!” At about the same age, I was wat...