I will never forget the day we got the first television in our little house in Botswana, it was so exciting. Although I had watched TV at a friends house on the odd occasion, and had also watched it on the occasional trip back to the UK to visit the grandparents, it was super exciting seeing those multi-coloured lines show up (anyone older than 30 knows what I’m talking about, no auto-tune and Hi-Def on these puppies) in our own home. We spent the first night watching it for hours, realised it was crap and boring, and got back to what made us tick… being active. I was 8 years old at the time! My parents held off from getting a TV long enough for us to realise what a wasted of time it was when we could be outside doing “stuff”.

Botswana was a truly wonderful place for a rug-rat to grow up; our life was focussed on being outdoors and active and, with mum’s businesses going from strength, we were truly spoilt. As I mentioned previously, we spent a lot of time in the swimming pool trying to stay coolish (the pool water itself would have hit 30C regularly); we also spent time in swimming lessons, diving competitions, doing swim survival badges and competing in school galas. Mum has started sending me some of the things that she kept from my childhood and I was surprised at the number of swim badges (that’s right, everything was recorded in those days including the first 100m swim, 500m etc. right up to 3000m which I apparently completed at the age of 7), first place certificates (more through the other swimmers not being fortunate enough to have their own swimming pools at home and swimming like “Eric the Eel” than any brilliance on my part) and medals that she had kept.

Having so little competition at a young age (other than from my older bro) led to me being pretty confident in my own ability and thinking I was a good swimmer for many a year. I ended up in Lanzarote (Canary Islands, just off Morocco) in 1998 training for an Ironman. I happened to ask one of the pro tri-athletes there by the name of Ben, who I worked with, to come down and give me some tips on swimming… I was 23 years old by this stage and training for my first ever triathlon. Although I thought he might help me improve a bit, in truth I thought I would impress the hell out of him. He asked me to swim a straight 2km so he could watch my stroke and when I got out the water 35mins later I was thinking “who’s your daddy, how good was that?”… At which point he said “Mate, that was so bad I’m not sure where to start!”.

I was crushed to say the least, but it was at this point I started learning how to swim and will ever be thankful to Ben for being so brutally honest. Without his help my day out in the Ironman a few months later would have been more hellish than it was… more about that when I’m old enough to tell you.

Outside of swimming we were fortunate enough to have parents that were sport nuts and wanted nothing more than the 3 of us to get involved. Looking around at kids nowadays I realise just how lucky we were to have parents like that and how much those early years still play such a major part in my life. I remember having tennis lessons for years (sometimes being forced to go even though we didn’t want to, although once we got there we loved it) and eventually playing in the under 8’s tournament against Zimbabwe… there was no money in any of the tennis clubs in Botswana but by this stage mum had set up an importexport company that went on to become the largest in Botswana before being bought out by a major South African company when we later moved to South Africa… I will never forget the name of the company, Capricorn Agencies (as we lived in the tropic of Capricorn), as once mum was making enough money she sponsored all the tournaments and made sure that everyone involved got trophies, prizes and Capricorn agencies T-shirts!

At this age, and for a fair few years to come, I may not have been the best loser, actually the term “a little shit!” would probably be more appropriate. Even at the age of 7 I ended up breaking a couple of my tennis rackets on the ground during competitions and could throw away an entire match by getting pissed off to the extent I couldn’t play a normal shot, I would have to slam every ball and keep getting angrier as it either hit the net or the back fence; it is a characteristic that stayed with me into my late teens. To this day I still have the same desire to compete although I have learnt over the years that the competing is the important part and sporting equipment is too expensive when I’m paying for it.

I remember liking one of the girls in the Zimbabwe tennis team and was really keen to impress her. On one of the competition days, while I was planning my move and how to be “the man”, one of my friends was stopping me from getting to the toilet and making me laugh any way he could… unfortunately, as I wasn’t going to fill out and put any real muscle on for at least another 10 years, he was big enough and strong enough to keep me pinned down until eventually I wet myself laughing. He then proceeded to go and tell everyone in the tournament that I had just wet myself and I got chased around by about 20 screaming kids who wanted proof… they finally caught me and she was in the group of 20. This may not have been the highlight of my tennis career but it certainly has stuck to this day!