WHY THE BEIJING OLYMPICS WAS OVERRATED

Q Still, not many fighters can put their hand up and say they’ve been to an Olympics. You must look back on that Beijing experience fondly.

AIt’s funny. Some people might disagree with me but I think the Olympics was overrated. I don’t look back on my amateur career that much at all really. The Olympics was many years of work and a lot of sacrifice. I moved away from Far North Queensland to the Gold Coast to train.

If it was in a more inviting country I may have felt differently.

I didn’t feel welcome there. I felt like the locals looked at Westerners differently.

The accumulation of the work to get there meant more to me than the actual event.

We went to Thailand for a training camp with six different other countries. Cuba, Ecuador and I think Venezuela were there. We were training in heat. It was so hot and humid. I strained my leg while I was there. I died in the arse a bit in the last round of my fight. I remem- ber the score was even at the time, so maybe some extra sprinting might have helped me.

But the whole lead-up was good. We went to Croatia, Spain, Czech Republic and Germany for a couple of months of training too. But I don’t even dwell on it too much. It only gets brought up when people mention it.