Oscar is a 12-time world Kayaking champion, with an impressive career spanning nearly three decades. He won his first world championship at the young age of 20 and his 12th title at 49, demonstrating remarkable longevity in his sport. This extended period of excellence showcases Oscar's dedication, skill, and ability to maintain peak performance over time.
Despite his athletic achievements, Oscar faces a significant personal challenge. He has been diagnosed with an incurable form of bone marrow cancer known as Multiple Myeloma. Throughout his battle with this disease, Oscar has reached stage 4 on three separate occasions, highlighting the severity and persistence of his condition.
Drawing from his experiences both as a champion athlete and as someone living with a serious illness, Oscar now dedicates himself to teaching others how to overcome adversity. He uses his unique perspective to inspire and guide people through their own challenges, sharing the mental and emotional strategies that have helped him navigate both his sporting career and his health struggles.
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Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer. 00:58 Introduction. 06:04 Long day of treatment, travel, and work. 08:13 Fought illness, raced, won at age 58. 10:18 Interest in diverse diets; resistance to change. 12:17 Interest in South African food, accessibility in US. 16:01 Kid's stubbornness about veggies, now used medically. 18:13 Nurses unconcerned about patient's eating after chemo. 21:46 Tim Noakes promotes investigating collective wisdom of crowds. 24:19 Daily exercise routine to fight cancer. 29:19 Maintaining weight for racing: eating carefully, limited alcohol. 30:49 Carbs cause acne, eat right, avoid weight. 33:11 Ocean racing can be lonely but exciting. 37:32 Challenged coaching, changed technique, improved paddling speed. 39:37 Never took a break, always playing or training. 42:18 She follows my diet and exercises with me. 44:57 Carbohydrates not essential for high-level athletic performance. 47:19 Adaptation takes time, especially with nutrition. 50:28 Grateful for the conversation, looking forward to meeting.
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and I had a tumour in my spine and the doctor said listen I'll give you six months and you've got and you can imagine my wife was thinking extreme and she ride like crazy and scared a bit and after a minute I stopped myself. I've done an after 36 years most people don't do three or four last times out. I've had my feet while the next day I put the reservoir raised a big race of 350 people who Brazil over 120 kilometers there before days and I won that race again at age 58. The guy came second was 28. The record and I always like raking records. The record for the longest surviving multiple while I'm a patient is 33 years so I'm gonna try and beat that to make sure I began really strict, vulnerable and strict postings. In the hospital I wasn't without any visitors so she slipped in the chair next to me for 21 days while I was an hospital having treatment so that was a kind of second of ours that she's made. All right so I have with us today Oscar Cholupski correct me if I say that correctly. I think you will Sean don't worry. Got it all right Oscar and you've got an interesting story you are first of all world champion in in kayak correct if I'm not mistaken on that that's an incredibly challenging sport I've known some guys I've done some competitive rowing stuff so there's some level of similarity there and I know there's takes a credible amount of power to do that to thank you for a multiple time world champion. You are I guess you grew up in South Africa. I can hear that my mother's South African just by the way. She's actually with me right now she's visiting for the week and she grew up in a little attack called Bononi which is probably very well I did my Olympic training in Bononi Lake. She'll know Lake Pyramid. Yeah. What was the name of Lake? Lake Pyramid. She'll know it very well. Okay I'll I will relay that to her and so I guess we'll just start with you had a cancer diagnosis and you're I know you're currently fighting that. Just tell us a little about yourself tell us a little bit because you got an interesting story. I started very young at the age of 14 and basically went to new sport and I made the national team at age 14 the senior national team so my lap to be about sport or my lap and I mainly on water sports but when everybody's threw out a challenge I did like a great rugby for provincial rugby as well and from so that you wouldn't know about that and so I did everything that the highest highest level I went to the Olympics was the the basic captain with the main guy at the 1992 Olympics and we were let back in so I did a lot of my races apartheid era where I had a sneak in that of the Germany, Belgium, France and all those things but the big thing happened at HD and when I won the junior senior Ironman that's the original Ironman which is soonly paddling or running and one more day I got gone telling one in Australia so it took me five years to race this kind of and the race that we basically got together which he had won four years of era is the Molokai Channel from Molokai you probably know it to a walk which is 52 kilometers, 32 miles because the Tahiti Channel the biggest channel in the world and I won my first one when I entered that age 20 and took a long story so it was 8.49 and you keep on saying how you can pick fire or logic by just training and eating right and doing things like that at age 49 well 50 years after the first one and the guy kept singing for the Olympic gold medalist one at two or three times and it'll be about 12 seconds over three hours 23 minutes and I think and that what laughs about is that all these things that in the past you think they're making mass until on the now sitting yeah as I stood there I was sitting on the 20th of November 2019 and I had a tumor in my spine and the doctor said listen I'll give you six months and you've got and you can imagine my wife was sitting next to me and she ride like crazy and scared a bit and after a minute I stopped and I said I've done an after 26 years most people don't do three or four left times and that's what I asked and I talked everybody took them each day and that's what I mean being so we party it running up on the 25th of November 2023 they said no call your family you were two weeks so that's unfair that wasn't hospital and I said no way I said you could have been kidding me I'm not ready in fact they bought the priest I said you've got to be kidding me and along short of it I said no bug you I'm not gonna eat for 21 days I fasted I'm very much afraid with the guy called Professor Tim Nokes and I'm very much followed the cheater and quantity war doc on 15 16 years before everybody so in 2012 when I won my fourth world title of day 49 I'd really steady over these things and worked at all that because understand that it's 49 I wouldn't do one pull up you see you can do all those things I couldn't do one forever but we could do 10% but I was beating God bring into a thousand pull ups and a thousand presents using my head and every device available to me and I think that's what's up about you could find a different way a better way a lot of stuff there that's the same so rugby for the transvall is that the provincial team you're playing with I was back on the top because I didn't I didn't know that I was the top the shocks you probably it's a proud ball of the shots you really know it's so happy I've been one any time like I said my mother grew up there and we had some relatives that lived in salt rock they brought up that we're doing an adult here exact that's an issue yeah it's an interesting my I've got somewhat related to this family called the Hewlett and their big sugar people which is interesting because I don't know if you don't ask any people about me and so never you'll probably do the same thing and be able to yeah yeah interesting so I've got that's sell Africa is obviously a country where meat is considered normal it's I think it still is I'd you're in Portugal right now are you now residing in Portugal or are you just they're back and forth so that's another long story so now we're just at Africa and then they get the women and the 25th of November with 10th out of hospital 26th of November they said no we can do the people in South Africa it's awful we've exhausted all the medical scheme that we've done South Africa and they've been in Portugal so I actually looked at these far backwards and forth every week from Portugal to South Africa because there's a lot of motivational folks helping people overcome adversity and then I come back and I've just actually finished walked out there but they're at 7.30 now five o'clock just walked out of my chemotherapy session having it think about bills and they're going to cut growth but I think it's just basically about six hour journey that I have and then tomorrow again I plan to fly back to South Africa okay time and I'm getting to talk to the big bank in South Africa and look forward to it I just haven't given up because I want to try and give my expertise and and you'll see when you read the book everything is about helping other people and it's a whole thing no matter where it comes to guide family business and you read the book I'm sure you're gonna enjoy it when you this and this is a book here it's well let me see I can get on the camera there it's no return surrender and I look I do look forward to it's looking at it because it's talking to you it sounds like there's some interesting stuff in there the diagnosis of cancer you had you said you had a tumor and show what's the name of it what is it what is it it's I didn't know because they said this is a secondary cancer suck went back to Clutter skill hospital men's could be but we'll start up again around the world now that's the first heart transplant and then we're going to operate on this chip on my spine and eating away my spine and just before they found out that they said no we think you've got a thing called bone marrow type of cancer multiple modeler makes one of the only can't prove there's no to it but having said that I don't believe it and I just keep on from the fact that it's been a really tough cancer because it keeps on coming back it just doesn't want to go away and I'm never not on current I'm always on chemo always having treatment which is a pain in the arse but again it doesn't really affect the end of the day I have to help people and I show people the person that have to get a picture again do a lot of the bits of it are passing lots of time and all of the long past as well so you can overcome and I speak to a guy called doctors on the seat read me probably heard about the auto times got it yeah I've interviewed him a couple times and I've got and you mentioned Tim notes you have also met virtually many times and as an athlete you know myself I'm an athlete as well and I just I can't imagine not just not doing it it just are you still active I don't know what you're able to do with the can are you still out there swimming and lifting and doing it and it's an interesting story because I've got it and then I had a step-sell first plant which is they basically both are a task part and then it went into not remission but I was on current chemo up through one day and I was at age 58 through one day I've had my keep my next outfit to Brazil and raised a big rate of 350 people who Brazil over 120 kilometers we have before days and I won that race again at age 58 the guy came second was 20 what I've done is I have to watch my heart but at the moment basically my my fat you that makes my oxygen for going around the night is completely shut that's like running at 20 percent so when I went today they said no even anemia and aren't you feeling tired and I said I don't know what tired feels to summon athlete yeah but um I can see if I just walk if you'll agree say the short if I just walk like on the boat was on my heart but we'll go to 140 normally if I walk my heart record to cookie so nothing at the bottom 140 so after watching so I went through when I do everything I've just got to be a little bit more careful at the rest on things like it because I just cannot do it because I'll have a heart attack like that I was at this but not an oxygen running around my my black wrist my my muscle my loma is a tactic in fact when they said I had no chance me at 5% of the oxygen people that I normally have with that I know it's important yeah it's it's amazing you'd had or she said the the priest was called in to read the last rights type of thing and you're like no I'm not quite ready yet and you're giving an interview and still competing and that's amazing what you're saying that you said years ago you discovered nutrition how to change nutrition you've been doing low carb ketogenic carnivore diets for many years what led you on that path as an athlete because that's not typically we hear most high performing athletes are carbohydrate based and I know Tim Nokes has been pushing back on that as a weight over the last decade or so since he was the authority on running for many years and now he said wait a minute this may not be there how did you get steered that way it was very interesting with this and it's a very long story because as athlete you always point to find the next thing you can remember you a little bit younger than me by Dr. Robert Haas and then all these bad diets and tarian and vegan and all this other all of it out of all of it then all is just a thing and this is not going even with the carbohydrate thing I said no no I don't I'm not changing my diet but I tackled Dr. Eric Orr as a radiologist in Michigan he said Oscar I said I'm onto the knee thing he says and he's a radiologist and that a very good one and he said he talked nose mark and he said I think the way forward is a no-cog diet getting it to ketosis and at the stop and I was one of them very very first and I actually told Tim Nokes this before he even changed over and he said I had to believe that he changed about two or three weeks later because what did you refraze that top athlete also made a great amount from those days they know she's on it and it's working very well and from that day on number one your weight stays constant and you've got energy all day and I take it to the next degree so in my 12th race if I both win at age 49 racing against these youngsters I also don't eat anything and drink anything for three and a half hours because I understand what I'm thinking and I'm reading the chapels and books that was up what I really believe in sure is that we can we're all getting older believe in me but we should be all getting wiser and we don't eat that we don't listen don't go out there and research for ourselves and I'll work it up and if I don't eat my bodies my every muscle my body is very near to make me cross that pretty shit around faster than that classic drink water I know it's going to use that energy so I try and do the whole race three and a half hours and a midday sun away with no water and no food and at that game they posted the part of the logic no but it I've seen people negative split things like marathons drinking because they actually did they has way so much less and so they're carrying less mass across the finish line so they actually find that they go faster as they get lighter as they become less and less I guess waterlogged I think Tim wrote a book called waterlogged but not mistaken but so so it's interesting to see that that you discover that and of course South Africa I can remember as a child the first time I I had the build on there which is I just think it's just fantastic and it's it's a shame we don't get that in the United States or it's very hard to come by there's a few places a few South African butchers that I think make a little bit but it's not common like it was there so is that was that something like what did you what was your diet I assume you're training and so that we're eating a lot of that built on and things like that yes 100% again I'm very much only eat once a day but when I do eat it neatly and if I have a snack if many drill and build up and obviously mecculane and that's and I'm very strict on that and that thing and then I'll always treat myself so like my brother's to 60 it was very good actually two days ago so I said I had some champagne but then I went to have the taxi app alcohol and then if I do have alcohol this had a little bit unlike before I used to be graced on 10 or 12 years before race with that when you're young and stupid then you don't know this but days I also had a total population at age at age about five and again the doctor told me to listen you mustn't go you put one down you must do it okay and then from that day on two or three days before race I have no alcohol but now with the cancer lens and of specialty carbs so now that time for months I mean no alcohol just doing time keep the cancer at bay yeah but again you hundred percent right books on your my favorite thing you can shut the road you're so arrogant because in 14 we put but lots of kilos all the time and that's the thing you can live on very easy very easy with the cancer and the chemotherapy one thing I've seen and I've run into a number of people now that have been dealing with cancer and chemotherapy and have done it with a carnivore diet and they've often noted and their physician has noted how well they tolerate it whereas other people get very sick and they have all kinds of side effects what has your experience been obviously if you're racing the next day you're obviously feeling oh reasonably good no this is an interesting story is that they're winner but this diagnosis of Brenerman what is innocent my cousin's but the same the easy when he had the chemo he was so sick that he walked and tripped over the zip that book is back in tall places i said what that's maybe god would hear what the hell that i straight away worked it out i said listen the other way you can get sick is you do it something in your stomach so i felt that day before i even heard about it and before anybody even talked about it i used to foster it before i had my chemo i'd have my chemo and i had i think i had my one my cheat very ketogenic diet but the only thing i was teaching when i was my one and i had it a little October and so you couldn't go anyways understand this and and now it's become medical research to say listen number one the chemo looks better if you don't need it because you've got nothing there number two how can you get sick you've got nothing in it so and again obviously it's sure it fits a bit okay as well i just don't believe i'll get sick and i don't believe i're gonna get tired it's very important your mental attitude and and again that that comes from i quit you doing trying to do a thousand squats so that it has heroes you know thousand pounds so those are kind of things that that's sort of you know he's fat to scat so what does that do you need but the most important thing you need is it's strong red if you don't feel like you that you're sick you won't be sick and again i just fit it yep i am i think i've got a little bit of action now i'm feel good i'm not as good as i'd like to be i'd like to still be winning but that is the most important you just keep upbeat and then following people like you the following people that they are the positive that no it's a fact i know the fact you cannot live on vegetables but me it's funny my mom was regaling my wife about how stubborn i was as a kid i'm refusing the vegetables as she said i would very polite about i was just refused to eat them and i would sit there at the table for three four five hours until they gave up finally i was not giving in so i had a kind of a stubborn side to me but i guess it works well for me today because i don't eat them as far as so yet multiple myeloma one of the ways we diagnose multiple myeloma there's some urine protein we'll get these so called dense Jones proteins but there's uh skeletal surveys we used to do and you just take a blanket x-ray the whole body and see what's going on so where has this you mentioned your spine has it has it been diffusely spread in all across your body or is it localized but up to lesions but mainly on my spine and connect with myeloma that's you're gonna take back another lesion and then we radiated and then again same again i just made sure i began very strict vulnerable and strict for things yeah so we are and are we measure capillat chains and to give example when i got it in 2019 my capillat chain level was at one thousand four hundred and it went all the way down to the hundreds and then to the fifties and fives and then last year when i had had a tube in my spine but that it's all back actually from pedaling for these years thousands of them i worked out sort of pedaling three times around the world pedaling so that went a long way and then my whole cartridge is completely gone on my L1 L7 A8 and then when i had that x-ray that's when i found the next human then my capillat chain went again from one hundred to one thousand four hundred and seventy and i don't know if i didn't pass between one base would never come down because it only came down and there wasn't a thing called Velcade that supposed to last years it had lost four months and after a while over turned it over and said thank you very much and then it went all out to five hundred lesbian numbers most people are on their death day at two or three hundred with it five or six hundred and then it went up to six hundred and then hopefully now it's coming down right there and i guess you've got a team doctors in portugal treating you do they have any thoughts or concerns or are they surprised or are they concerned about your diet or do they discuss the diet at all it's interesting they were all nurses constantly they said what did you eat well they're nothing when you went to the last time i had two days ago okay and then he worried about it's a different way and then again they are pretty surprised we'll just finish my chemo normally jump on here and decide every year which is called the routine i was flying and i can give a sneak and then fly all the way back because i have my treatment wiki and they are surprised but he's known me for a while now he's it's quite a good doctor he's realized what i say what i'm going to do and i said listen i've got a still work i'm young i'm not giving up and i don't want cancer to rule my life so i want to laugh and yes i know you have to make sacrifices i've used to do that and last sacrifices are that i don't have to help out for a while which is tough and then i won't have any cause for a while then i've got a long time so those are the kind of second parts that i'm making i didn't talk about it i'm also on some ultimate stuff i try you might know ten benders all which is the other nectin that's in benders all i'm using it again you've got to try everything and then i know i'd love to hear you know i'm trying totally the outside cds it's going to outside solution which basically what's more oxygen in the water he just drink it during the day there's no side of it and all the cost you take his chips and again i've done research and and that's the whole thing that he could be all fine we're showing you funders which rabbit hole do you go down and which is the telly the tooth and which is absolutely nonsense and my general feeling is that nobody's making money out of it then it's cool pushing it and i think that it could be something in it so that's uh sort of just a way and like i said good for you for for doing what you're doing most people can't imagine being in this situation where you're you've got this disease it's trying to kill you and that you're fighting everything you can to stop it and you can't fault for somebody for trying various things because a lot of times when you talk to the state or oncology people it's pretty grim they look like you said we're gonna call them the priest and you're like no i'm not ready yet so good for you on that what is oh with all the fasting what are the concerns around cancer is kekexia a lot of people this kid emaciated are you maintaining your weight okay obviously you're still like able to very good in finding out one of our own colleges but the diagnosis for the reason one thing you do is always keep the weight up because it'll always come down because that's what happens i can and it's interesting to see that even when you do these long fast yes you lose it in a way but it's not as bad do you think and again i always say oh you do start using muscle now also don't believe that as well because on these long fast you're doing a few exercises you put your body at that's very quicky sir i do watch my weights i don't try and get too loud and i stop again i've got it to be at 95 and now i'm at that you know and but i watch it but i don't force it for me it's being a state of ketosis i never have to eat i'll eat basically socially like people drink socially that's when i eat i eat with my own i've got friends family and i think and the whole thing about that's i think which is that something wrong is that people should be talking more about it from each other with so many people keep it quiet and don't tell anybody to me that's nonsense because you probably learn you didn't learn from other people i can teach other people and other people didn't teach me but if you keep it to yourself terrible so that's why i really have and you see my social network i'm always telling people what's going on and it's good or bad that you've got to tell it because that's what you eat yeah i mean i'll refer to your friend Tim Nokes again i mean he talks with the wisdom of the crowds but i mean we have it always perplexes me that i see people that put disease and remission and sort of the medical community this says that's interesting and ignores it and i i seem to think why don't you investigate what these people have in common instead of saying multiple sclerosis has a five percent remission rate and just what do those people have in common what are they doing why why aren't we looking at every little aspect about that because it seems like it's relevant but it just doesn't seem to stimulate the thought maybe because it's as a physician you only encounter a few of those in your career but collectively throughout the world there's hundreds there's not thousands of these people out there and when you come together you can start to see i did this and you get some level of as you mentioned there's a lot of nonsense i hear a lot of nonsense stuff out there that i'm like i don't think there's anything to it but sometimes you get surprised by that but probably a lot of it is what obviously you don't know how much time you have what are your sort of goals at this point you're still looking at competitive goals in the in the athletic world or is it just mostly inspirational things or what are you trying to do at this point i'll suggest basically again this is sort of a creep up on the tech the one i still want to be very competitive without the guy at school they're very fast and my boat failing and number two is i think the 50 or the stronger you are to fight this cancer the record and i always like breaking records so the record for the longest surviving multiple while i'm a patient is 33 years so we're trying not to eat that and again you see what my whole boat run at the moment is just a little longer than i was i know that party works but it's not working well for multiple my life and you probably know this so i've had friends that had it and that it was and they didn't last four five months so the longer i'm on this proper illness fulfills the mid and then i hoped once my cancer's work that this treatment is going to go and then i'll go to to custom ed and to close it might be two or three years but then i'm sure karti could be in the right lane it's very expensive and obviously it's something in the right direction that they they must be making great trees and that's my goal so every time when i'm being down and and then quite often when you have been cancer is it do you sort of think i get you what to get the next year and the next week and the next thing and that's that's right right it's right he's sitting his little rolls too too cheap and then and a lot of pay get to tell i love my boat i say a lot of both but i don't know how to get bulk as well and then i love i know me soon so in normal day if i'm not bad and i'm only wake up very early in a circle for an hour hour for an hour then go to work and then do crossfit every three times a week and then pedal between 30 and 40 kilometers and then that's thought of my bad and then i always do but if you're being exercised and push up so it's all the things you can just eat in front of the tv every day so that's my day my day is there to just time the fit to life to fight for cancer and then and again i'll catch enough and also don't use too much weight when you're doing all these with us i do a lot of math or math return maybe probably known good friend of Tim i do a lot of math training at war a lot of two low heart rate study stuff that's where i paint 180 but if you age basically it's a simple thing that i could do and i'll do i'll walk to the end and i have to do that actually because it goes through the roof i used to run quite fast now i can't talk and i think well it's my heart rate is so hard and hopefully you drugs that great bad cells will come up and i'm a hemoglobin when somebody told me today i speak to doctor banea and she said eight point two of you hundred kilos that is ridiculous i wouldn't be able to stand up i said i'm afraid i don't feel like that i'll i can feel that i'm down on fire at eight point two you've been looking but it doesn't affect my transfusion when you get around six or something like that it's what let me ask you because back to your training what would that just for perspective obviously world champion kayaking most people have no concept that what goes into that but what would a training cycle for you be when you're training for world championships for like when you're yeah uh normally i understand i've uh uh i specialize in the ocean the wind blows down wind so mark i do i lose 32 miles with big oceans well 20 to 30 feet wind was 50 to 60 miles an hour and that's a classic a lot so number one you need skill understand with my age i do technique training in my kayak on flat water six or seven times a week an hour every day so that's number one that's i'm going to speak to you because there's no way at fucking nine you can beat somebody at 29 and you have no power you're going to do one put up do you have to use your brain that you use technique that's number one technique and i still do it now 50 years later your technique is one of the most important thing and most people they just go out there and train they don't wonder why they don't get any faster and then if the wind blows if the wind blows and i'll do 40 to 60 kilometer paddles downwind and between that are always some must something is to keep my full skull was he's sitting in like a bicycle he's always looking forwards you want to do hard big steps and then all those things are always some one to three kilometers every day one of the important things with my back is so swimming really helps you a lot and then i'll do prospect just for the time to training just to get a little bit of power in my body which i have much better than all day so then one of them being four to five hours a day and a little bit on a big day six or seven hours a day of training but mixing it up nicely up because that's about there a variety and having fun so everything i do i love i love my techniques i love my downwind vision to play you crazy other day i did 80 kilometer downwind 8.0 that took four hours 37 minutes i took no to no i think and i averaged just on 12 miles an hour for 80 kilometer but you can do it and again i do it for fun and i love it and i think that's where the people make this decision it should be fun i see it when you're doing your way so you're doing it yes it's that but you're enjoying it and if you're enjoying it you'll do it often in terms it's hard but it is fun i really i feel like that's when i'm most alive is when i'm physically active and moving and your heart rates up and you just feel like that's what life is about in many ways and so nutrition i can't imagine the caloric expenditure so how when you were obviously not fasting for cancer but when you were just eating to train how much food would you go through in a particular life on a low carb situation like how much would you have to eat and that's very interesting because that is what happened was that race would always have made on the first of March i would lose away in my peak i used to stop drinking for the whole month with social drink if i'm not a guy and i would always lose between 18 and 25 kilos so i wanted to be eating so i'd be at like 260 pounds and i want to get it to to down below 200 pounds so that's how much pounds i use because i'd find easy to construct five or six or seven kilos in a week my most of it in a week is 10 kilos and it doesn't affect the limit because i'm i'm putting the right food back into feeding i don't eat the cars who picked back that and i'm drinking water i don't do any energy brings by the way okay and that that helps again if i possibly have completed practice it in the morning i have to start eating a lot but my body i want to reuse it all the time when i'm racing i really want to get out and i do bark you know that to the better hundred then what's that i didn't want to eat wow pound around there so that's what i try and get to and then i just pay there and i can basically eat it but i just i eat when i'm hungry and i eat the right food and i think that's important thinking oh again i'll have a cheat one or two days but not often when i'm in training and then again i won't drink any alcohol two or three days before the race and then my final meal is normally like but in late afternoon all the race that starts the next morning so and then that's normally just meet with a little bit of carbs but they everybody tells me if i put a little bit of cost i just and have a little bit of carbs which will might be i'm not big on carbs at all i don't i know how when i race you know you said somewhere around a 360 so 30 kilos ish or somewhere close to that what are you doing to get to that what size because is that requiring more carbohydrates or how do you get that that that must walk yeah no it's mainly drinking drinking the rest is thing is it tests alcohol but double whammy so if you go to island and drink in dennis all day and you drink 15 denises a day believing you put away it's so fast and you can see dogs does it yeah farms that really gets me people don't realize that in my school having the clubs i'm the perfect example yes parks for three or four days it's straight away breaks out and acne take the call the way acne gone all this reactant and and all that kind of stuff and meantime just very simple eat the right food and often goes uncle and it eats bugs into the way you might eat it to the community and goes on cause of that now with you some people are worse than our beef and you've got all the people that don't eat anything and they always stay thin but they won't tell you being a doesn't their visceral fat is the worst kind of fact that the guys look in and then we had in paddling only have with family community i age 50 55 we lost six people that all look like you but the one guy used to drink coke and pick an eye coke and biscuits and do the thousand products but again he had the short bed heart attack all the matter heart takes it at 50-50 five of us watching what they eat because then they never put on any weight that's what happened and this has happened to a lot of people you've got to have chicken and i think that yeah it's surprising we there's been some recent evidence showing that some very high level particularly endurance athletes have a relatively high risk for cardivascular disease was interesting in some people so maybe it's the training itself maybe it's the diet that leads to the training and some people will eat a lot of carbs so they can train harder and maybe that's that's causing issues. One of my races was when they said before the race when i had the USA doctor said no you've had a heart attack i said are you getting you can imagine i'd have that plate on my brain. I found my cardiologist at that after you i know very well i can just find them up and you see these is not a way they these people don't know you're going at least heart which is to exercise and it doesn't perform like anybody else and from that day i have always had a medical check that from that day like 20 years ago i made sure because you don't want anything in your brain saying oh you could be having a heart attack you could this is your chest feel and you can imagine i'm your own chest feel a bit back so that's why you do it every year in fact themselves in Portugal and Germany you have to have a medical test before you can do any sport uh competitively which is fantastic and i think every sport should do that because you never know you can't tell and that you have tests do you obviously when you're on the water is this is mostly a sudden a solitary sport do you have training partners that you sometimes train with is how does that work. Yeah you've got a good question because it's a lot of the time in the ocean even if you went out in the group you don't see anybody for 30 or 40 kilometers or three or four hours because you can be 50 meters next to the next guy you've got a 20 foot wave and you don't see anybody so it is very lonely and and up there but it's so fun because you're in with nature but when it's racing my brother is one of the fastest if not the fastest pedaling in the world as well so we wish to race and then i actually go and make sure actually watch where he is to make sure that i beat him so then you there's a sort of different strategy but we you can't see five or six boats you can see one or two that's only you can watch because it's just so rough out there it's all over the place you can't see anybody's but you've got to assist the opposition and obviously the older you get like i did negative splits in in 2012 where a half way i was lying 10 and at the end the one 12 seconds negative splitting watching where everybody else was all the time because i only want to win i don't want to break any records especially at 49 you're not going to break any records but funny enough i was very close to the record at 8.49 at four at three hours 23 minutes for 32 miles what just from a pedaling standpoint where's the best in the world is it where the best pedaling is coming from it always the southern hemisphere is Zealand Australia Tahiti and South Africa so at the moment if we looked at the Molokai's the winners probably 50% is Australia and then there's a one good Tahiti and in South Africans that's the sort of that it's all southern hemisphere there has been good American plate as a guy called Greg Barton won two Olympic gold medals at Seoul black water kayaking most guys doing flat water kayaking will do thirsty panning so it's a good crossover so Kim Robinson who came second to me and two or three Molokai championships he was a Olympic gold medalist in 1992 at the boss at olympics at hours at the way i was like beating so badly by this guy and when i raced in the surfskia i used to beat him and at 10 he dropped and realized hey when i was training myself and looking off to myself and how my gut feel are beaten but when i was listening to Hungarians and Swedish and Russian coaches telling you what to do and not thinking it through a lot so from that day on in 2022 i kept on winning all the time it's such an old edge is there with you you mentioned flaut because i remember seeing some of the olympics stuff and what it seemed like was on rivers or flat waters it's different one slalom goes through the slalom gates and i don't want the swimming pool like you've seen rowing so you've got a 500 a 500 and a thousand feet to one which is one kayak k two two main kayak and k four main kayaks so i was in the four main kayak in 1992 and got beaten and again 50 opportunity and i learned from there when i got beaten so badly the curvature of the earth i realized there's a different way of doing it than it always is a different way i see and what is the physical is there there's sometimes body prototypes for people that are excellent it's their way as it tall is it i don't know what the kayak is i mean i know it's have to be tall you can't be a small right that's why they've got the weight classes and paddling it's also quite good to be very tall and big but the boat's only five point two meters long 19 feet long so they're very short so you're you're the big two bigger guys think into the boat too much so it's one of the sports where you have tall guards and short guys you just got to fit in and and again it's a power to weight ratio sport using everything and mainly using legs which is something that really thinks oh the paddle like this you don't use it actually paddle like this you can see that i'm not even using and it's all coming from your legs and your core there's no arms as we get better but all the beginners will do this it's the same thing right do you use your arms instead of just using the legs you'd mention you had refined technique is that something you had modeled after someone else or did you just develop it yourself and turn out and all completely riveted and when i first did it that's that's a joke there i was all my footies beating everybody that's because it's full surf ski and these guys were at the heart of the Olympic career and they couldn't beat me and i said god because i sat there and i understand my training sessions are three or four hours long in the ocean i said work it out what's gonna make me go faster and the problem with and in coaches they just tell you what you do and you follow like sheep that's why you never change anything so i change everything change the feather angle change the lengths changes change everything i went away from using my arms and i created my legs and core and now everybody some 20 years later a relative he would ask would say 20 years ago it's actually working and now they're all pedaling closer to what i pedaled 20 years ago but again i don't listen to people even though you beat them they still don't listen and that's what happens in life again but all these different people telling you different things on diet and training everything and you just don't know which one to follow but they don't wear out on their my passion is to make people better and my passion is to help people but they always think gee why is Oscar telling me because i don't care i want to help beat anybody that's out there even if they are taught them when you say you want to help people or help people get better is this primarily athletes you're helping or is it just a general population what is because you got in inspiring stories this could be yeah you see when you read the book you'll see that it's like i mean i had a person that said this and i was near suicide i've read your book and it's helped me so much and i feel so strong and and again you get it all day and i'm sure you get it all the time people asking i've just got diagnosed with this i've got diagnosed it and then anybody everybody i'm always replying to say try this trial i'm not a doctor but try this is what i've done so i do the whole time i would i do that people at least for business people and for for people it just stuffy gets that both of them people deserve it but thank you very cancer now what do you do how so you said 14 year old kid you're making the national team which obviously has to be unusual and i don't know how old you're not how old are you right now how scary you're 161 i'm born in 1966 i'm about four years older than you i think 61 i'm 57 and has there ever been a time in your life where you have not trained because i i have i mean since 13 years of age i've never stopped training i mean you the same way you just never take a break no i never take a break at one good time i took a break is uh you'll see and i put that i went uh changed from i got banned from painting racing the monarch out to seven in a row i got banned and then i took a both so that's the the least amount of training i ever did was that you where i went from 24 to a scratch golfer to become a pro golfer so that's the only time i but again i was playing golf five six seven eight hours a day and on weekends 18 hours a day so there's no time that i ever not thank you and a big difference and very similar to me is that i've never been a professional at it there's never been a time where i could wake up and i had money in the bank i was always working so that's the whole thing and uh let's get Alex balancing your sport your family time and your exercise time through your life and it changes all the time you get married i mean married i mean together with my wife for 43 years married for coming up next week for 30 years or 38 years so it's a long time but you have to make sacrifices for them so that marriage to work and the same thing like my sport i had to do it a lot if my kids are 34 and 30 and you're gonna make tough and you said that's being a not a special sportsman you couldn't do it you had a really fidgeted insides to do golf at 4 30 a.m i in my heart of telling is to wake up at 3 a.m to go to a paddling session get to work back at 8 o'clock in the morning so those are the kind of things that capacity you have to make when you're not a professional at it and i race all these times against a lot of professional athletes so that's i had to be clever as smarter and pretty much planned you have to plan at otherwise you've got no chance you'd mention your band from Molocha after winning it said well why why do they band you? because of apartheid i won in 1983 and then i kept on winning and then i got banned because they said you know we're gonna have olympics and you could say olympic really said you quad race we know that the train is that i'm gonna say you out so it banned me then i took up golf and then in 1991 a big event happened inside out there Nelson Mandela was released so i met Nelson Mandela for the olympics and i went to the olympics and got my ass as i say it literally kicked but i learned from it he learned from everything like it went back paddling and things i can and i haven't stopped so yeah so yeah the band was due to the south africas apartheid policy that they put in of course you're so you said you've got a spot and she have any sort of athletic is she because my spouse is she's fit and she's not competitive she's competitive she's not as competitive as i am i'm like these weird guy like to compete at everything i can't anything i'm doing i'm trying to compete at it it's almost like a madness but you just do it this is who you are is your wife but you're she's obviously supportive but does she do any of this stuff the end of the day she follows the same diet as me and then we'll walk together and run together she used to run pretty fast she she did the 10 kilometers in under one so that's so competitive but she's not competitive so she hasn't got a competitiveish i'm sure your wife if she wants to do well and break 10 cases like they're being competitive but she's always keeping fit always watching her way but she has to make huge sacrifices like when i was in the hospital or wasn't allowed any visitors so she slept in the chair next to me for 21 days while i was in hospital having treatment so those are kind of sacrifices she's made and then getting me up to go the toilet and all those kind of things she was doing and no no she's been doing it and good support and again that's what laughs about having the support and having friends and having family out there helping all the time and they don't until then appreciate how much they are doing for you and just you being out there telling people about kind of a doubt helping a lot of people and you don't hear from them all but you know that you're doing a good job and that's what i try and do and here every day when i'm like a post the people love it and to put a smoke up mask to help other people but it's sure it just it can just help one person it's lovely i started as a life savers so my life has always been trying to save people's lives from eight years old and when somebody's drowning and i've done any cardiac sin and lost a lot of people funny enough hurting the skills the basic skills of cardiac massaging and that's talking about love because you can help somebody yeah because you mentioned yet you have a couple kids in their thirties i think like that did because i i often say that your kids will they'll use use an example what you demonstrate for them is what really gets through it you can tell them whatever but unless you can live it and show them are your kids relatively healthy are they like a such very my son is there but they will follow the right rights and they all follow a way of being kept living having fun work time and i think that's having sort of balance in life again the whole story coming back to the balance my son is the second officer on the super yachts as huge 180 foot yachts so he's very right up there becoming a skip and my daughter works with London in a property company and they all walk and they realize you've got to have exercises in there and again they're great supporters but also they tell other people what i do and help their friends so that spreads around brings the word to help more people what you mentioned your belief is that carbohydrates are maybe not essential for high-level performance obviously they haven't been for you i would echo i don't think you need them i know i've performed at a quite high level breaking some various age-related world records and stuff where do you think the future of nutrition and athletics is going there was an ISSN paper the International Society of Sports nutritionist came out talking about ketogenic diets versus car-based diets and they said that they're either neutral or slightly negative but the main difference was the negative was often because you tend to under eat protein and calories which is what maybe the most issue and i just tell people it's got to eat enough where do you see a shift i know Tim Nokes has been banging the drum for a number of years now do you think you see more and more athletes that are following this path i think i think that if anything we go to per example you really just go to Italy per you have a drinking eating pasta and just like a normal person they look all good and they've all got this blood subtitaneous book everyone they'll take quite fit but they've got this basically looking like a chip or not a chimpanzee i think the ship has to go there and i always say who's making money when you do fasting who's making money when you're doing fasting so it was then they always sang on carbs and carbs at a time no carbs then we had those ketones that you could actually buy with fortune i don't know what color or you can actually buy that ketone mix i don't remember what it was called and they said oh and again i tried it people don't realize it takes a while it doesn't take one week or two weeks or three weeks to change over to properly to become ketosis and to be 100% reliant on fat and protein and i think that's the mistake that most of these guys do they do it for two or three months if they are no it's not quite breaking away but i'm saying it's actually you can see that when i see the guys eating before the tour de France it's our eggs and bacon and ever before it was all this everybody have bought our pasta and things like that i think it's changing it has to be this way as i used to be sponsored by satter max and all those companies i know what is the best but on army there's no downside for it and so many people these beaten drinks have that high and then they bonk it's amazing yeah something i believe the more i've seen this is it does take a while to adapt and i think you perform best what you're chronically adapted to and most people they grew up as kids eating carbohydrates and they spend their early training years of carbine so they've got two or three decades by the time they're at the peak of their athleticism and so they're like they're just so used to carbohydrates i think it takes six months a year maybe even a couple of years to fully it's like training it doesn't you didn't become a world-class rower overnight or paddler overnight it took you many years of adapting your body not just learning the technique but the physiology and then the adaptations that occur so i think it's a slow it's an adaptation it takes many reps for sure exactly as they the old ten thousand hours but uh what's his name i think it takes every takes about ten thousand hours which is a lot of hours depends on how many half when you do it you've got it you've got to change so you've got to change and you can and lots of people i just have people out of their street they say hey i'm going to 30 kilos or wait what's my view i said okay this is how we start we start turning out breakfast and there is the cut out lunch and heading out cobs is a given it works every single time and i've got and again people up the street at least and i say if you want to exercise just walk off to dinner or just walk and you're gonna do better you've got to exercise i still believe in exercise and having particularly no car cars Oscar we're running out of time unfortunately so this the book here is no retreat no surrender where can people go to get the book where can people go to find out the audiobook which what i've done is that i've got a proper narrator the narrator half and after every chapter so you've got a difference in voice telling you the mistakes are made in life what they suggest you do so it's a very people love the audiobook because it sounds like a zerapping car and then i come in after every chapter giving the last lesson because i want to do this book is about sport all about helping other people overcoming the odds overcoming adversity so that's why i've got put the last lessons and then a portion of my uh royalties goes to campaigning for cancer because it's so expensive just to give you an example of pre-war it listens at that the current drug i'm on costing 32 000 euros so 30 30 000 or 35 000 dollars a month yeah i'm like money you die basically so you have to have money so i'm trying to raise money all the time for less privileged people and self and you do the same thing that's important so i'm giving back through the book yeah goodness and you you have a website or i know you're on social i know you're on twitter at least or x now that's what it's called but work people find you there Oscar chips come on on all the thing i'm on youtube youtube channel so i'm always giving free chips on paddling on diet or anything give out more than i get them but again hopefully it'll come back on when the wheel turns as they say so i'm on socials instagram and if they're to answer questions and help other people well Oscar thank you for so much has been really enjoyed i look forward to reading the book now and now having talked to you and continued good luck in in beating this cancer and continue to inspire other people and maybe we'll talk again hopefully maybe in South Africa i know they're trying to get me down there and maybe we'll run into each other you and which part of South Africa you and yeah hang around Cape Town and do it but i'll go if it's so cheap and we love need to take you in a paddle a proper paddle where the wind blows a hundred miles an hour and i'll fix it on the right of your life on the right of goodness that might be i don't know i might be dead weight in the boat though we'll see anyway the day to break because i say that's where my skill is and it's a 12 kilometer paddle it's called a millage run and and and the wind blows like you've never seen when you cannot be better say it goes to a hundred miles an hour all the time sounds like it sounds sounds like a thrill for
