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Barbara Kindle welcome to my podcast good to be here good to be here Barbara kle um I I'll do a slightly awkward
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introduction I won't do the whole thing though uh New Zealand Sports wom of the
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Year 96 98 99 2002 first New Zealand woman to to go to Five Olympics um and a rainbow of medals gold silver and bronze
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only New Zealand gold medalist from the 92 Olympics uh and that first woman in 40 years to win a gold 11 World
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Championship medals and 25 national titles it's quite a lot isn't it yeah
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and no the thing is with these awkward introductions for you that's just like
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scratching the surface like there is so so much more yeah that was my athlete life so when I look at I sort of divide
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my life into four years so every Olympic cycle and and that's how I remember it
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actually is by these Olympic Cycles but it continued after after when I retired in Beijing in 2008 I continued within
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the Olympic movement in lots of different roles and we've just got to the end of one in 2024 so yeah it's been
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a long career uh in sport yes so much edman including um the shift to mission for one of the games yeah so as was a
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shift mission for the Youth Olympic Games in bonis Aris in 2018 which was an amazing
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job amazing and kind of scary all at the same time because you you're dealing
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with 14 to 18 year olds and so you become liable for their for their behavior what does
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that mean oh so are you just like giving them a dressing down or expectation speech well you know you're responsible
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for them their parents sign their lives away sign their kids away and I become the mom or the parent of um we I think
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we had 65 athletes um for the for that Olympic games but they were an amazing bunch of Youth athletes and we had you
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know we had a few wobbles but um it was such a privilege to lead these these kids to the to the Olympic apps and we
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had a very successful games there fantastic um my first question would be how much of your life do you think has
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spent um waiting at um over oversized luggage counters at airports it's a it's
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a very inconvenient sport in terms of the gear you're traveling around it is
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it is and once I'd finished competing and I started um to serve the Olympic movement CU that's what they call it cuz
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it's a voluntary role and just traveling with one bag it was just like I think
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I've forgotten something I've forgotten something but you know it was interesting because one of the reasons I
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got into wind surfing at the very beginning cuz I could have chosen a lot of sailing Sports is because they
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supplied the equipment when you turned up to regetta and it was all One Design which was really easy so I would
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go to our first world championships all the boards were at supplied and I just flew with a bag this was when I was 16
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years old and and went to Scotland but then um to make a living out of it I had to I I I needed to compete in the
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professional circuit where it was customade equipment and you were competing in three disciplines and you had to supply
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all your own equipment so I went from traveling with nothing to traveling with six boards 14 Sals masks spoons gear
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bags wet suits um and it was close to probably around 250 kg worth of stuff and so you rock up to the um the counter
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and go hi yeah I'd just like to check on eight bags and say it really fast and
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then but you wouldn't show them where it is yeah they're over there where would
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you like me to take them I can take I can tag them for you but back then you could get away with it you know we had
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masks that were 4 and a half meters long but now they can't fit those into the
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airplane holds but yeah it was a it was there was a definite Talent who who were
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you traveling with who was giving you a hand nobody so in the early days when I started on the professional circuit so
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um I was the only New Zealander competing on the tour and so I was traveling as a young early early 20s
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late late tens around the world with 250 300 kg with equipment and then you'd get
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to the other side and um you'd have to rent a car and I had to get someone else
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to rent a car for me because I was too young to rent cars and so and then we'd
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pile all our care gear on top of the roof or the organizer would Supply a truck and we'd have to pack all these
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bags up but most of the time the guys never helped us the girls we would just have to teach team up and
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do it ourselves so it was it was really hard work so having um I suppose at the time you just did it and you didn't
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really think much about it but having um being the mom of two daughters who are now past that age that you were Did you
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sort of look at them at those ages and think how the [ __ ] did I do this oh totally totally I mean when we went when
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I went to my first world championships I was 16 and my sister was 18 we' both
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qualified to to go to This Woman's World Champs we'd never been on an airplane so we were we were flying to
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first cuz the Olympics in Los Angeles had just happened and there was a friendly American guy who had rented his
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house to the sailing team and so we went and stayed with him we went to Disneyland because that had been a
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childhood dream and then we had to catch plane from there to London then we had to catch trains to LS in Scotland I'd
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never been overseas apart from sailing our boat and we had no parents to help us you know find where the airplane we
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were to catch from the gate um catching the trains um tunning up at the train station and then figuring how to you
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know wheel our B we didn't even have wheelie bags but then carry our bags to
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where the hotel was never heard foreign languages um you know I was fresh off the boat and my mom and dad just let us
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go you know we had Travelers checks didn't have phones um yeah it's worth it
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hammering this point up Point home so 84 this is well well well pre- internet so
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um even a phone call back home to let them know you're okay was probably like
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15 bucks a minute or something well you had to remember go to the red telephone box you call the operator the operator
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would then call the operator of New Zealand the operator of New Zealand would then call the parents and say will
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you will you take a clicked call and Mom and Dad would say no because they had no
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money you know they'd spent all their money helping us girls get over to the
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world Champs they were like well we only want to talk to you if it's you know
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important and we have a motto in our family no news is good news oh my God oh my God we from Barbara
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for three months it must be good or she's dead yeah one of those but we did have a thing that when you were leaving
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a country to ring them up and when you arrived at that country safely to ring them up and that was that was kind of
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that was the expectation expectation so you're 5 57 now you just recently turned
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57 how are you how are you enjoying this this chapter this season of your life um
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it's it's frustrating way and the fact that you I want to be as good as I used to be
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you know and when you go sailing or I go surfing or I go foiling or um I've just
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got to wind it back because the risk of in injury um your brain thinks you're 21
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but your B's know it's 57 and so it's that that that Parts a little bit you have to adjust to that
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and the fact that I have nanps every now and then because I actually get really tired and um I think when for for women
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you know no one tells you and about menopause and you go into that you know sort of been going through the cycles of
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that over the last 10 years and that's a that really knocks you around because I
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just cruise through until I hit that uh the menopause and then your hormones go crazy which makes you go a bit cray cray
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um your brain goes a bit more foggy you need a bit more sleep you have to look after your body because your joints get
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sore all those sorts of things but I seem to have got that under control so life is actually pretty good but it's
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just that I think that age thing throws you around a little bit but also it's
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amazing having adult children now and living vicariously through them yeah are you and your husband empty nesters no or
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sort of hanging on hanging on to the free rent yeah yeah well I would too if I was them right you know my brother
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didn't leave home until he was 48 is that right Bruce yeah with two kids and
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and a wife and he finally moved out um and there's nothing wrong with it you
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know fun if you get on with your parents um and they're cool then it's the only
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way you're going to get ahead now I think if you're a young person is to you
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know flat mate with your parents yeah so your girls are How old uh they're now 19
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and 23 right and they both represent New Zealand and water polo and uh so my oldest is a New Zealand um water Women's
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Water Polo Squad and my youngest is doing Wind foiling and they both went to World Champs last year amazing amazing
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God you must be immensely proud how um yeah I don't know if this is something
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you've even like discussed or even thought about but um I mean it's a lot of pressure for
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them growing up with the Kendall name well interesting um they don't have the
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Kindle name so okay so are they bright yeah they're bright hb's name yes and
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that and I think I just I don't know when I when they when we they were born
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I like no they'll they'll be Samantha bride and Amy bright and so when they
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went to school they didn't have my name so people couldn't say oh you're a
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Kindle you know oh in the water yeah or get you into sport or whatever it may be
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and so they were they had their own identity my oldest daughter probably got a little bit more of it you know are you
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going to follow in the footsteps of your mother got a lot of that and so when she
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was about 10 I thought well I've got to teach her to Wi surf because that's my
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job and so I drove her down to Lake pooke and and she's a really amazing listener and I gave her the instructions
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of the basic tips of how you stand on the board how you pull the rig up the golden rules and so I go a verbal lesson
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got her down to the the lake threw her on a board she jumped on the board sailed out went round to Mark and sailed
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back and went oh yeah I can do that and I went wow that's crazy talented so gave
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her a bigger rig she did the same thing so then she just went as fast as she could and just practiced falling in
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because it was so much fun and then she looked him in the eye and she said mom don't get too excited or don't get mad
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but I'm not going to ever race on one of these like you did and that was the end
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of that why why she was bored or just no cuz she people were always come up to her and say you're going to follow in
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the footsteps of of your mom and she just sort of recognized that she didn't
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want to she'd never be able to compete reputational wise you know and she's
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quite competitive because you don't want to be compared to your mother um but but
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by the time Amy came along she grew up sailing with Russell coz's son and um so it's just like well Matas
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can do it you know I can do it and and it was very normalized and Russell and I were hanging around and coaching the
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kids when they were young sailing small boats and she just didn't really it didn't really compute she didn't really
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know what I'd done I had done through the years you know i' never really
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talked to the girls about everything that i' had done but they thought it was
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strange that all these people would always come up and talk to me they were like who's that Mom and I'm go I'm not
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sure they go why are they talking to you and I said well they know me said why M
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and I've said well I've kind of get recognized cuz I was quite good at sports so I didn't really tell them a
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lot and that's slowly that's been coming out over the years yeah when did when
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did they sort of get in get to that age where they had an understanding of um you who their mom was and what she had
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done not until they were teenagers really they kind of knew the Olympics but because I was an international
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Olympic Committee Member One of the benefits of that you could bring your kids to the Olympic Games so you know
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Samantha was went to Beijing London and Rio and it was in Rio they went oh this is pretty cool and and then they were
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disappointed they couldn't go to J Japan but um so they'd been in around the
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Olympic Games but they sort of it was normalized for them a little bit and then it wasn't
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until well for a my youngest one when she got into wind surfing that she started to realize that I'd been quite
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good and probably at the world Champs last year when um we were in Brazil and she was at the youth World Champs and
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she had a really bad first day and I knew it was happening because I'd been coaching her and I she was in a pit you
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know and I knew she was going to choke with too much press putting too much pressure and expectation on herself and
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she came back to the beach and she was crying and and I sat down with her and she goes mom you must have been really
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good because this is so hard I don't think I'm ever going to be good enough
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and I went yes it was hard and yes I was really good and yes you you know what you can
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give up if you want it doesn't matter because it's this is not what it's about
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it's and I said you are good and this is fun we're in Brazil you've had a really
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bad day because you put too much pressure on yourself how about you just go home have some really good food hang
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out in the pool with all the other kids come back tomorrow and see what will happen and just forget about today it's
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it is hard you know what it doesn't matter you and then the next day she came back and she won the day racing but
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she had a lot of bad results in the first day so she couldn't discard them but um yeah it was she started to really
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realize that I must have cracked you yeah right validation he it's a good good reminder mom was pretty [ __ ]
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good so you um yeah were you were you like how much of it was natural talent and
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how much of it was hard work with you um in the beginning I I have a natural talent I have a superpower for balance
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you know even foiling nowadays as a 57y old woman I like you know I can jump on a foil and surf the waves like I was
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this morning um W so so I did have it and I think that came from being a bit of a dancer and being very agile um so I
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have a really good balance and and then I have a really good feel to how to make
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things go fast so when I jumped on a wind Surfer or a boat or a skateboard or a snowboard or a whatever it is a
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natural talent for me easy but then I have a tenacity and a fiercely competitive Spirit um and drive and and
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I was born with that yeah because there's that saying that um you know uh hard work beats Talent if talent doesn't
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work hard so at that Elite level like Talent or natural Talent it's only going
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to get you so far right yeah and you um you you you and your brother and and your sister as well the three of you
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right you never had a chance did you like you're a water family yeah so my mom and dad met sailing at a at a
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regetta both of them just absolutely loved sailing mom wasn't competitive she
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was really she was really gentle um and really a real an amazing mother she was like the Rock and the Hub of our family
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but my dad was um was very competitive and but in a good way you know he just loved the challenge of of a sailing race
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because the Tactical the Tactical game it is it's like playing chess with Mother Nature and other people and he
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loved that and he also loved adventuring so he built a boat in 1975 and sailed all of us to fij when I was 10 my sister
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was 12 and my brother was 13 oh yeah I heard about this so I mean this could have been this could have been the fork
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in the road moment where totally where you were terrified of the ocean or terrified you what happened um so we on
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the way back a really big storm hit us and we had to hve to so in a sail boat that means pulling down all the sails
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with just the Mast up so you ride out the storm because if you put a sail up you could roll um or tip over and it was
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a little boat it was only 32t yacht and it wasn't an Oceano boat so it had very
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low sides on it um which meant that the spray came over very easily and it was so windy um we were still going six
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knots in a direction that we had no idea where we were going because Dad couldn't
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navigate cuz we only had a sex tunt for navig navigation there was no GPS's or
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anything like that nowadays he was also really seasick and we had to put a sea anchor out like a big drove behind the
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boat to slow the boat down and keep the nose or the stoon of the boat into the waves because if you go sideways there
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was such big swells out there the boat would have rolled we would have been demastered gone into a life rter no one
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would have found us cuz we didn't have e herbs and things like that you know that
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would have been a very sad story but we made our way home you know we survived it and that put Mom and Dad off
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oceangoing sailing and I think if we'd had a good time because Mom was a school
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teacher perhaps we would have got into a bigger boat and then started sailing around the world a lot like a lot of
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families do um and become boat people you know you were sort of burnt after that what what what are your like
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personal memories of that as a 10-year-old like did your parents did were you realize did you realize at the
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time how dire the situation was or did your parents manage amazingly enough like I I think you know when you go
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through a trauma well I know that when you go through a trauma a lot of it gets blocked out and you'll only remember
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certain things um and I remember Mom coming in after her watch and and she was shaking and I thought oh mom must be
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cold I'll give her a cuddle so I would snuggle into her and sing and I was naturally really happy um but but now
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when I reflect she was obviously obviously shaking because she was so scared and but they never yelled at each
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other like I was very sensitive to to conflict and mom and dad never spoke strong you know if they spoke strong
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words it was very respectful and yeah I just they weren't yeah when Dad tells the story goes yeah
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we were knocked over seven times so knock over is when the boat goes Road over into its side The Mask just about
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touches the water and you bounce back up and back up again because you have a a lead weight underneath oh my God so I
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don't remember that what about your brother so he he was on he as well he was so you were 10 at the time so he
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would have been like 13 he was 13 and my sister she loves the wild you know we called we we called her wild Wendy and
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she would she did a lot of the watches with my mom so it wasn't it wasn't it
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wasn't wild enough for her no she was out the back woohoo let's go you know
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yeah jeez that's it's like I've um I heard you tell the story on another
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podcast and um you you knew you were near land because you had like an AM transistor
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and when you could pick up a radio signal you realized you were but you had no idea like where you were in relation
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to land or what countries no we didn't so Dad um lost sight of where we were
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because he couldn't get a reading of the sun cuz there was no sun we were in a
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storm and we had a transistor radio and it was a cheap one that we bought in Fiji which was a prized item you know if
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you had a transistor radio that was prized but when you held it it would it would Pi it would go so he knew that it
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was picking up a radio Beacon somewhere and it lined up with the compass bearing
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that dead had which was what we had to try and stay on he he thought we'd missed the top of New Zealand and we're
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coming down the other side but it was uh we were lucky it was the poor Knights so
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we at poor knights was our Landing it's amazing you don't have any sort of um
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you know triggers or PTSD or anything like it's uh it's a that's a harrowing
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thing to go through um but but I didn't know that I didn't ignorance absolutely you know you don't you just
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think oh this is normal Mom and Dad aren't freaking out we'll just you know
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so kids are very resilient kids are amazing you know like they that's you know after being a parent and dragging
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my the girls around the world with us and and sleeping in airplanes and cars and all those sorts of things and they
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there if you're happy your kids are happy if you're stressed they're like
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little mirrors all of a sudden they get really stressed you know they it's amazing yeah but for your parents to put
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on a brave face and um you know hide their fear stress and fear from you guys in a a 10 m Long Boat I mean that's
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incredible yeah I mean there if people ask you know who are your Heroes and my mom and dad you know 85 they're
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now and they still go away in that boat sunlight oh really God I'd put the boat
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out to retirement after that they still go away for 3 months and then last last year in Cyclone Gabriel they were up in
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um fera Harbor right up the far north and I rang that I said Dad one of the biggest Cyclones of the century is about
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to hit I think it might be good if you and Mom make your way to a marina no I've been coming up here for 30 years
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we're going to ride out the storm and I'm like Dad you are at4 at the time you
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don't mom pulls up the anchor you're not going to be mom's not going to be able
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to pull the anchor up in 50 60 knots while you try and get yourself somewhere safe but they got in moing they they
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hooked up to the moring and then when the wind changed cuz it goes around in a circle they went around the point
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Headland and got another moing and they rode out the storm and mom was sending me videos of white SS and the boat just
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swinging and the you know swinging back and forth on the morning crazy oh that's
00:21:17
a wonderful Story That's great so so your brother Bruce um he he won a bronze medal at the the
00:21:25
84 Olympic Games in LA and so how old were you at the time were you still at school I was still at school so I
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remember um being in a math class so I was um sixth form fifth form yeah yeah fifth form I think it was six no six
00:21:38
form because it I ended up going overseas after that um six form I was in math and the math teacher said hey
00:21:43
Barbara your brother's on TV and it looks like he might win a win a medal um
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so I did you not get you you didn't get the day of school no we didn't have TV
00:21:52
oh so um so they pulled me I got pulled out in N class and I was able to watch him win the race on TV at school how do
00:22:00
your parents not get a TV if your son's competing at the the Olympic games um I
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don't know not a TV family no we're not a TV family because we I think we I
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remember we had a TV it was a black and white one and you had to have a license to pay to pay the to have the TV you may
00:22:17
not remember that and we never played their license because Mom and Dad you know we were we lived on the smell of an
00:22:22
oily rag so they didn't pay the license and if you didn't pay the license they'd
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come up and they'd plastic bag up your plug so you could couldn't use it but
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then you could just open the place and use it yeah that's I was thinking as you
00:22:33
were telling that that sounds flawed I know it was and then our neighbors had a TV so I'd go and watch their TV
00:22:39
occasionally but we didn't really watch a lot of TV we were we were busy doing
00:22:43
things how was that so um yeah what are your Recollections of seeing Bruce win that medal well I just thought oh that's
00:22:49
pretty cool I don't know I just he was he was away a lot you know cuz he was um
00:22:55
when you campaign you can't tell in New Zealand we didn't have the fleets so he
00:23:00
spent most of his time in America so he'd be away for five five six months in
00:23:04
America um trying to qualify New Zealand in this new class and this new sport um
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and so we never we didn't see him a lot and I I suppose because I hadn't watched
00:23:14
a lot of TV you know it was amazing it was at the Olympic Games but was just oh it's the Olympics I didn't have a fan
00:23:22
girl moment if that makes sense in a way and it was just like well that's cool
00:23:25
good on him and then I carried on with my little life you know bizar it didn't seem like a didn't seem
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like a huge thing to you or wasn't a moment that sort of inspired you to well
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he was talented he was extremely talented and I thought oh well you know good on him you know we knew he was good
00:23:42
how about that yeah how about that in the world he just got third he just got it you know and yeah and he was he you
00:23:48
know when he was 16 he he hated being in the boat with us CU we went we'd go away
00:23:53
in our mom and dad's boat and oh maybe yeah he was 16 and I was 13 and instead
00:23:58
of being in the boat he wind surfed beside the boat all the way down to teranga he's probably traumatized after
00:24:03
the FG thing yeah and exactly didn't want to be in the boat he wanted to Wi and so that was a really amazing
00:24:10
platform for him to be so when he started racing he was just so skilled and talented um he he was a he had a
00:24:17
gift as well so who were your um like Role Models Growing Up sporting wise who who was there for you well there wasn't
00:24:26
really any no I mean like Dame Susan maybe yeah but I didn't didn't really
00:24:31
know much about Dame Dame Susan until um after I'd won the gold medal you know I
00:24:37
because I was so I was overseas for eight months of the year competing on a professional wind surfing circuit and
00:24:43
and so I wasn't in and around New Zealand I didn't watch TV there was no
00:24:47
internet if you read the newspaper that was good but I was very in my own bubble
00:24:52
um and so it was really just My Tribe of people that were in my bubble where I was competing and my brother you know
00:24:58
obviously if it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have been I wouldn't have fast
00:25:03
trecked as fast as I did for for Barcelona yeah I suppose he was like a Trailblazer for you in a way he was and
00:25:09
I thought my brother's wi surfing he's he sort of like moldered my parents in
00:25:13
the fact that we're not going to go to college you know we're not going to go
00:25:16
to university and I want to do this too and there was a the professional circuit
00:25:21
had prize money and I was like I could make a living out of this and so that was the draw cut for
00:25:27
me I've got a photo here to show you this is you um on the podium getting a gold medal at the 92 Olympics how do you
00:25:35
how do you feel when you see that I was a bit crazy but you see you see photos of you
00:25:42
at the um the next two Olympic Games 96 in Atlanta and 2000 in Sydney um so that's 92 where you get to get a gold
00:25:48
then you get a silver then a bronze um the bronze ones a bit more subdued but the silver one is exactly the same
00:25:55
reaction as when you get gold you just you're very excited I was yeah I was I
00:26:00
was high energy so I had a lot of energy my you know my mom always wanted to have
00:26:04
four kids and then she had me and she decided three was enough so I was kind of like a high energy um and I was one
00:26:12
of those kids that when I decided I wanted something you couldn't stop couldn't stop and but I was really happy
00:26:19
so I was a happy ener energetic kid and so but I figured also out that if I was happy I always sell the best when I was
00:26:29
happy so I leared how to keep myself happy from a very very young age even traveling around the world and some of
00:26:36
the stories you know getting passports stolen being stuck in Paris no passport no money all my valuables gone and
00:26:46
picking yourself up you know after a weekend of hanging around in Paris and sleeping and strange places to wait till
00:26:53
the embassy open so you can get going again you know and realizing that that when I was vibrating at a high resonance
00:27:02
I was I was going to win so that is really just pure yeah from like do I did it do you feel like it when you see that
00:27:10
photo do you feel like the same person or does it just feel like so far removed no I'm still really crazy
00:27:16
yeah in fact we like crazy that's why I like having um you know being a mom of
00:27:23
my daughters because I could be I was the crazy mom and they're used to it now
00:27:28
and so we dance around the kitchen we skateboard around the lounge we hit the dance floor as soon as there's good
00:27:35
music we live you know we got to and that's what I I love hanging out with them because they I feel like I can be a
00:27:42
kid around them and just not grow up and be sensible just that youthful energy you I I put on Instagram that you're
00:27:47
coming here and did anyone have any questions and someone said I'm guessing it's someone that knows you and your
00:27:51
brother uh they said ask ask her about the parties her and Bruce used to used to always be the people throwing parties
00:27:57
yeah yeah because um it's not that we I didn't I didn't drink very much and and
00:28:02
we couldn't do drugs because you're in this chesting pool but when you put
00:28:07
music on I couldn't stand still and my brother was the same and I remember when
00:28:10
we were kids and we would go for a night out with our parents we would go to a DIN and dance and so they would have a
00:28:18
band at the restaurant that youd going to so as soon as we' finish your dinner
00:28:22
we would all get up on the dance FL and start dancing and it's so bizarre cuz
00:28:25
you don't see that anymore you know you have to go clubs but this something about music that that there's a vibe
00:28:31
that runs through your body and that would just come out of me I my first memories as a young kid was music and we
00:28:38
had the record player and now Lounge was the only tidy room in the house and we weren't allowed to go in there as kids
00:28:43
but I was only allowed to go there if I was playing music and dancing so I'd go
00:28:47
on there put the record player on kmen you know listen to um bolero and I would dance around the lounge at 3 years old
00:28:55
for hours hours and hours just to music yeah is that weird I don't know no no
00:29:01
from what I can gather like your first job was a dance teacher as well yeah and and somehow you only finished second on
00:29:06
Dancing With the Stars but we'll get to that later but I feel like that was um
00:29:09
if it wasn't if wind surfing didn't become a thing I feel like dancing would
00:29:13
have been the yeah it was you know it definitely was and so so Mom was like wow I really need to send her to dancing
00:29:22
so when I was eight there was a school that just formed called the Julie Cotter dancers and I went into that and was
00:29:28
just like this is me I'm going to be a dancer you know and and my whole life
00:29:32
was around dancing so interestingly enough wind suring is like dancing on the water oh that's something quite poetic
00:29:41
about that it is I mean it is it's like you have to be really agile you have to
00:29:44
feel the wind you've got the the wishbone which is the balance and it's just it is it's like it's like a dance
00:29:50
on the water okay so let's um yeah let's go to Barcelona so uh December the 23rd
00:29:57
the year here before um you're involved in a big accident um what happens a boat
00:30:03
runs over you or something yeah so we were skurfing so that's kind of what they you see a lot of people doing now
00:30:09
is toe you know weight boarding but we were doing it now they'd use a jit ski
00:30:14
but we were doing in an old dunger boat a wooden boat in the surf up at Mong and
00:30:18
where you pull someone and on a surfboard behind the boat and then you pull them into the wave and then they
00:30:23
surf the wave in and and Away you go so you don't have to pedal and then I was
00:30:27
spotting the W the boat got caught in a wave and usually the boat would tip but the boat tipped over washed me out and
00:30:35
then ran back over the top of me and um the bottom of the motor hit my wrist on my scaold bone and shattered it and when
00:30:43
it hit my wrist I went ow and then I felt the propeller go sh on my leg bang on my leg like I was wearing a wet suit
00:30:49
um and when I came up I locked at my wrist and there was a gaping hole and I went oh [ __ ] that doesn't look
00:30:56
good yeah so this is 2 days Before Christmas um and in 2021 so you're going into the Olympic here had you you
00:31:03
already qualified for the Olympics so you no no no so I you you went straight away like oh this is it my Olympic no
00:31:10
ref I never even went there with my brain I was just like oh better get that fixed quickly so I can get back out on
00:31:14
the water again and that's pretty much how no no no no sort of Shivers well that's going to hold me back a little
00:31:24
bit I didn't have a comprehension of what I'd actually done and then went to
00:31:28
the funger hospital and they just put it in stitched it up and put it into a cast
00:31:33
and then a wind surf wind surfing intern came in and said hey I know who you are
00:31:40
I've looked at your x-rays if you don't go and see a specialist I don't know if
00:31:45
your wrist will heal because you've um you've done damage to the scaphoid bone
00:31:50
which is the one bone in your body where it takes longer to heal because the blood has to go one way turn around and
00:31:55
come back out you know it's it's a flating bone and said you need to go and
00:32:00
see a specialist and so I rang the doctor straight away and he said don't tell anyone I've told you because I
00:32:04
could lose my job because seniority so rang my doctor got out of funger um we were able to get hold of a specialist
00:32:12
and he came in on I think it was Christmas Eve and he said um Barbara I'm not sure if you're going to be a to wind
00:32:17
surf again the nature you've shattered it so you um and if it's infected I'll
00:32:23
just have to close it up and that'll be it if it's not infected I'll be ask have
00:32:28
to screw and pin it and I'm not sure if you be able to win Sur again and I just
00:32:32
was just like I didn't really hear that um well you just didn't want to believe it no I didn't want to believe
00:32:38
it I was just like wow this this this doesn't happen to people like me you know this is I've got a lucky star so
00:32:45
refused to believe it for a start and kep myself really fit because I knew that the pending Olympic trials were
00:32:50
coming up in February and it was a trial where there was uh if you won the trials you got to
00:32:59
the Olympic Games and when they'd heard that I broken my wrist I like oh boy um
00:33:05
we can't really have Barbara not competing because she's The Benchmark for wind surfing New Zealand you I was a
00:33:11
world champion um I just got second in in an event in in America on the on the Olympic class board so I was I was right
00:33:19
up there and so they did a big big it was a big HOA and went to the courts and all sorts of things but they y New
00:33:27
Zealand delayed the trials and that gave me a little bit more time to heal They delayed delayed them till April I think
00:33:35
it was so it gave me a couple of months to heal and fortunately when I came out of the cast even though my arm was like
00:33:43
a chicken wing um I was actually able to hang on and put a bit of pressure through it and so I had then another 3
00:33:49
weeks or so and then entered into the trials and thank goodness I won geez was it was that a stressful time incredibly
00:33:55
stressful time I just had to really practice um mindset and not go into the rabbit
00:34:01
hole of oh my God what am I going to do if I can't win Surf and so it was actually really good time because in
00:34:08
that during those time I I you do a lot of reflection so sometimes injuries are a special time you know that
00:34:16
everything happens for a reason firm believer in that and it's a time to sit
00:34:19
down I was going like a headless chalk you know and and this was the last accident of a few of them that had
00:34:24
happened to me leading up and up until this moment and I had to stop and really reflect about
00:34:30
okay what does my life look like and what do I really want and and so I got engaged to my husband husband that
00:34:37
during that time because he was just like well he says I don't care if you can't win S I just love you for who you
00:34:42
are and I'm like wow you're a really nice guy you're a keeper we're still
00:34:46
married today so and he was my coach so yeah he was it was that was really cool and then we're like well if I can't win
00:34:54
s anymore the only other thing I can do is dance and I'm maybe I'll start up a dance school of my
00:35:00
own and so I started looking for industrial buildings to say well if I buy a big industrial building then I can
00:35:06
have any business I like in an industrial building that was my mentality so spent a lot of my time
00:35:11
driving around looking at industrial buildings and then I saw there was an old church that came up for sale and I
00:35:15
thought that is perfect so we bought a so I bought an old church I borrowed the M money off mom and dad because it
00:35:21
didn't have a lot and and thought well at least I've got something you know and
00:35:25
then yeah so it was a it was a good time cuz put Roots down put those roots down
00:35:30
which gave me the wings to really fly afterwards what did you end up doing with the building uh lived in it so we
00:35:37
lived in a church for a long time got um had our after wedding party there and then um we my sold it to my brother
00:35:46
actually and he still lives in it today oh amazing yeah amazing so so these big races like um Barcelona and then the
00:35:54
Olympics that followed like mentally mentally what were you like before these races like were you a bundle of nerves
00:35:59
is there a lot of pressure no well I had no pressure because um because it was the first time women's wind surfing was
00:36:06
in the Olympic Games so there was a blank canvas yeah but going into a World Champ oh well I was champ in a different
00:36:13
class it was a different class so oning is really complex because there's many
00:36:16
different things that you can do it's not just it's like cycling we can have
00:36:19
Road cycling track cycling Sprints pelaton well you know whatever the Kieran the Kieran all those things you
00:36:26
know all those name fancy name when surfing's the same so so I'd been jumping from wave Sailing sailing in the
00:36:33
waves and big waves slum racing where you're going as fast as you can downwind
00:36:37
course racing which you go around boys which is similar to the Olympic class but all on different boards so so I was
00:36:43
very multi-dimensional in what I could do and so I'd won a World Champs in in a
00:36:49
different type of board and then I had to learn the Olympic class which was a very difficult board to sell actually it
00:36:55
was a it had a rounded bottom on it and it it was very very Tippy so so it was kind of new and I
00:37:02
hadn't hadn't spent a lot of time of it because I'd been competing on the pro
00:37:04
circuit I need to earn money and i' allowed myself you know a year but that had been cut short um with the with the
00:37:11
rest and then so I had a very very intense buildup four months until the games and but I had the best coach in
00:37:19
the world you know well training partner of Bruce and and coach of Grant Beck who
00:37:24
would come and join us for for the big events to to be another set of eyes and then Aaron Macintosh was the training
00:37:30
partner so we were like a real tight-knit team that was traveling around Europe leading up into Barcelona
00:37:37
and it was full on you know I I I remember crying quite a lot but I'd like I'd go stop Barbara you know you're
00:37:44
really lucky to be alive crying because you frustration okay frustration with like I'm not getting fast enough um home
00:37:54
a little bit homesick you know when when things aren't going so well the first
00:37:58
thing you do is get homesick you know cuz you want to go back to your mom and get a big cuddle you know still do
00:38:03
that and and just um you know like we didn't have a lot of money so we had to
00:38:09
uh Bruce was really good at networking and finding people that would um accommodate the kiwis you know because
00:38:16
we didn't have money and so we'd we'd stay at different people's places so
00:38:19
sleeping on people's couches Lounge floors we never stayed in a hotel cuz we
00:38:24
never had enough money to pay for hotels sleeping on the car sleeping in the car
00:38:28
sleeping on the ground sleeping in sleep we always sleeping bags with us so it was intense this is an Olympic campaign
00:38:35
athletes wouldn't do that nowadays no so so it didn't feel like from your
00:38:38
perspective there was like the weight of a Nation on your shoulders or no because
00:38:41
there was no internet there was no you know hadn't been on television I'd been
00:38:45
under the radar you know they don't put our sport on TV um the only the only
00:38:51
weight was the fact that I wanted to be good enough so actually when I hit the Olympic Games I could be the best I
00:38:57
could could be for my buildup and and then it was just like you get to the Olympic goes and goes Olympic Games and
00:39:04
I go this is just fun I want to go out there and go yting you know because I'd
00:39:10
done this professional circuit where I'd been competing every month for prize money and if I didn't
00:39:18
get in the top five in the world and and place then I wouldn't earn prize money
00:39:24
that would get me to the next event and I'd have to come home and I would have
00:39:26
felt like I'd failed M see the Olympic Games was easy because yeah you're tough
00:39:32
on yourself aren't you yeah but I think most top top athletes are you know you
00:39:37
have to be tough yeah no but even like at this at the start when I said how do you feel about this chapter of your life
00:39:42
being 57 you're like oh you know I can't do the things like I feel like there's
00:39:45
still that fiery 24y old inside there I feel like I think I'm probably still
00:39:50
trailblazing in a way because you know like wing foiling for instance which is the new sport which is it which is a
00:39:57
small surf Bo with a big foil on the bottom and then you hold this Wing that's free flowing I think many people
00:40:03
might have seen that now cuz it's the fastest growing sport so I picked that
00:40:07
up four or five years ago just because it was like wow this looks fun and I'm
00:40:12
so I'm so much gratitude the fact that I was young enough to pick that up because
00:40:17
it's such an amazing sport to feel like you're flying above the water anyway I
00:40:21
entered into the Nationals um this year and I ended up winning the grand Masters
00:40:26
the Masters in the open God because there were no other girls competing okay well there was but most
00:40:34
of them had never raced before and they were just doing it for fun and then the top girls which was my daughter and a
00:40:39
few of the others like Jo Ali and stuff they were all overseas or my daughter had an injury so I was like so I was the
00:40:45
only girl racing in the race Fleet that could race um and I ended up winning all
00:40:50
three divisions to be fair all all the other competitors like if they turned up and they saw Barbara Kendall on the
00:40:55
start sheet they probably eras their own names but it's also yeah it's also a
00:40:59
sport that not a lot of women do you know and it's been like that ever since
00:41:02
I took up wiing you know it's a sport that um it's not easy you know and I
00:41:09
used to feel a little bit like well you know maybe that my sport was easy because you know easy for you easy for
00:41:19
me but but there was no one else no one really came through and behind you know it was very rare that we would have more
00:41:25
than four or five girls on a start line whereas if you're Runner or cyclists um there it's tough you know
00:41:32
but my sport I was like Lone Wolf for many many many many years and feels like a little bit still still like that now
00:41:39
yeah so um you so the the 92 Olympics so there's there's a bunch of races and so
00:41:45
by the time you get to your final day you need to finish in the top six in order to win the gold is that right I
00:41:52
have no idea yeah that's funny because people researched that and I had no idea
00:41:57
idea and and because for me it's the results are always irrelevant because you can you can my
00:42:04
brain would start oh you know I've got a second and a sixth and an eighth I wouldn't even be able to tell you where
00:42:11
I placed in this is how I compete anyway everyone else is different I wouldn't
00:42:16
know I'd know approximately where I was I wouldn't know what the points were
00:42:20
because my philosophy was I can only do what I can only do and I'm going to go
00:42:24
out there and race the best I can in every single race and and the rest is takes care of itself I can't do anything
00:42:29
more than that so there's no use obsessing about results that you can't control and we didn't have sports
00:42:37
psychologists back then you just figured it out for yourself you know and so you
00:42:40
just block out I just used to block out there and coming into the last race big deal for you know for the Spanish girl
00:42:47
um if she'd won she would have been given a million dollars you know and a pension a lot of them if they win a
00:42:54
medal you get a pension for life like the Greeks and and the French girl same thing she'd been been the world champion
00:43:01
for three years prior um so there's a lot of pressure and stress and I was just like man I'm just lucky to be on
00:43:07
the start line you know after everything that I'd been through and that was a
00:43:11
place where you can let go you know like and all the way through you know it's a
00:43:16
long a week is a long time to compete and every day you got to go out there and you got to pick yourself up and keep
00:43:20
going and keep going and keep going and I just cruised through and the whole noise of the Olympic Games didn't really
00:43:27
exist and so I just did my thing and got to the start line and all the girls for
00:43:32
some reason were really aggressive on the start line and a lot of them went over the girls that I had to beat so but
00:43:39
I didn't know that I just said no away I go and then yeah when I got to the Finish Line I'm like wow all the horns
00:43:46
going people are yelling I think I might have won and that was they was like wow
00:43:52
that's kind of cool oh so you didn't even um it didn't occur to you during
00:43:55
the during the race like if I don't if I don't mess this up the gold medal is
00:43:59
mine no you're just in the moment just in the moment I love and and they you
00:44:03
know when you start to look at Psychology and and which I've done a lot now over the last sort of 20 years or so
00:44:11
that's exactly what you should be doing it's you you don't think about the
00:44:14
future don't think about the past be 100% in the moment go wow look at that I
00:44:20
I think I might a winner might one for gold so you so then you're so you're in
00:44:25
the water um so you you you know you win the gold medal but you're you're on your
00:44:29
own for the until you how do you get back in you pedal back in you so no you I sailed back in So when you cross the
00:44:34
line um you sell back into the into the into the little Marina at Barcelona and there was like all these people standing
00:44:44
on the ramp and I'm going okay this is really weird what do I do now how what
00:44:48
happens now you know and and in the back of my mind I'm like I wonder how Bruce
00:44:53
is done because he just raced before us and he had broken his fin halfway through the regetta and it supplied
00:45:00
equipment usually if you break something then they'll give you average points for
00:45:05
that race and so I knew that he had to get into a certain place for him to meddle and he was right on the cusp and
00:45:12
so he was the first one that came down to the water and he helped me take my rig off my board and I think Ralph
00:45:18
Roberts at the time was get her on the board get her on the board we'll carry
00:45:22
her out of the water I'm like okay you ever seen that it's iconic footage
00:45:27
you s of being carried like a Cleopatra or something with a bottle of champagne yeah so yeah yeah do you do you remember
00:45:34
that moment like it was yesterday or I remember well there's a few things I remember so Bruce just sort of he looked
00:45:40
really happy but I knew something because I hadn't been able to talk to him how he' done and I think he might
00:45:44
have said to me Barbara just got fourth and I just went you know and then I was like oh my
00:45:50
God what is happening you know so it was a real Paradox it was this and it was that and I remember being on the board
00:45:57
and Lisa newberger one of my friends who I'd been competing on the pro circuit
00:46:02
with who was at the Olympics as well she had some crusan rum in this tiny bottle
00:46:06
bottle and she threw it at me and I'd got it stuck on my eyes and so I was like that's all I remember trying to get
00:46:12
rum out of my eyes and I had the champagne it was weird just those funny things you do remember yeah and then um
00:46:18
then then what happens when's the middle ceremony so usually nowadays they have
00:46:22
the metal ceremony very close after you finished yeah like 20 minutes yeah but now but those days I think they waited
00:46:29
till a few classes had finished and then they do a bunch of them together so I think I had a day off and then the
00:46:34
middle ceremony was the next day so after that because it was like the only gold medal that year all the
00:46:40
dignitary and and sailing was in the Olympic Village so the so the Olympic Marina that was built and the village
00:46:48
were all is one so it's only games where we were in the heart of the Olympic
00:46:53
Games so all the New Zealand team the officials the to missions the ioc members which I had no idea who any of
00:47:01
them were by the way cuz I was living in this world of being an athlete and then
00:47:05
I became one of them I'm like who are these people anyway and then you get dragged off for you know for for for
00:47:13
lunch with the um governor general of New Zealand I'm like who's that person
00:47:18
you know and then dragged off to Media interviews and meanwhile all your family which is the winding family were all
00:47:27
hanging out together and they all went partying and then when I finished all my television interviews with homes and
00:47:33
don't get me wrong it was really cool but I just wanted to be with my friends
00:47:35
and celebrate and when I came back to the village that all gone and there was no one around and I'm
00:47:41
like well that sucks the loneliest Gold Medal winner in history so I crawled into my wardrobe and cried oh did you
00:47:49
yes did you actually oh B that's terrible yeah well have you have you ever told that before no that's the
00:47:58
saddest ending ever so when did you was it when you started doing the interviews
00:48:02
like with um you know the satellite interviews back home to the home show or you one news three news whatever is is
00:48:09
that when you realized the significance of what You' done like it was the first
00:48:12
gold medal by New Zealand women in 40 years or yeah yes it was I had no idea I had no idea of the significance of that
00:48:20
um until those interviews started but I really didn't know the significance of
00:48:25
it until he came home yeah just massive so um Evette Williams uh had won a gold medal for the long
00:48:34
jump 40 years earlier she was the first New Zealand woman to win a gold Olympic medal 40 years later you're the now it
00:48:40
happens that we're winning them left right and Center yeah there so many which is bloody brilliant it is and I
00:48:46
remember a vet came when I got home finally got home to my mom and dad's place she came around and congratulated
00:48:53
me and we we we compared medals and hers was just a tiny little coin if she has seen the medals today she would just be
00:49:00
blown away because they're you know they're this big hers was just a coin
00:49:04
without even a rivon her gold medal and we have this amazing photo um which I actually Treasure of her and I together
00:49:10
in our Blazers from our Olympic Games holding our medals yeah you became quite good friends after that yeah well she
00:49:15
grew she's imp she lived just 10 minutes down the road from where I did and she'd
00:49:20
coached my husband's family in athletics so it's a very small community so yeah
00:49:25
we we we and I went to funeral and she was an amazing lady beautiful unassuming humble woman but a real
00:49:34
Trailblazer yeah as as you are as you are and um yeah yeah massive so you you were the only New Zealander to win a
00:49:42
gold at those games so you came back there was like a ticket tape parade um that ticket tape parade was insane so we
00:49:50
just got off the plane we got taken in these buses we're in our summer Barcelona skirts and Blazers it's a
00:49:57
howling southwesterly it's about 10° with rain schools coming across we're
00:50:03
like oh my God it was freezing and then we got taken in buses to the bottom of Queen Street and put in these cars to go
00:50:11
up Queen Street and there was just people everywhere I was just oh that was mindblowing and all that you know the um
00:50:20
paper of people throwing the streamers I think that's the last one that they had
00:50:24
like that I might be wrong but because it was such a mess probably to clean up and the logistics of it and then we then
00:50:29
I got given you know had to as a spokesperson had got given a check of 25,000 from the New Zealand Sports
00:50:36
Foundation at the time which I had no idea that that happened either oh that would have been
00:50:40
a significant amount of money back then yeah but half of it had to go to your um
00:50:45
Sports Federation oh you're joking really mhm oh yeah and I was like really but that doesn't seem fair
00:50:53
yeah um how yeah how was this for you so you're at the time yeah I was really and
00:50:58
I was young you know I was a young 24 like the 24 we didn't have internet so
00:51:04
you didn't have access to all this knowledge and stuff and then having to get up and speak um I'd never done that
00:51:10
before you know I'd been a dance teacher years ago you know quite a few years
00:51:14
before never been a speech person and then and then ended up you know having to speak a lot it's a massive baptism of
00:51:23
fire right was it was it enjoyable though like being overnight um CU you were you were a household name
00:51:28
like I don't think we can emphasize that point home enough just what a big deal
00:51:32
this was everywhere I went people knew who I was and it was weird in the beginning
00:51:39
um but maybe because I was a dancer and loose used to being on the stage I just put you put on a presence and you just
00:51:46
smile and wave and and but people were so and they still are like I on the beach the other day um a woman came up
00:51:54
to me and said Barbara I'm so glad I bumped into you I've been wanting to
00:51:58
tell you for years and years and years you know you are an amazing person thank you so much for everything that you've
00:52:05
done and I just been like this you know and so it still happens like that now which is really
00:52:11
cool that that's that's especially now I'm removed from it and it's not so
00:52:16
confronting um it was really really awesome so yeah it was hard in the beginning but then you people are always
00:52:22
so positive and then I realized that I had a responsibility to be a role model and to encourage and
00:52:31
inspire people to just go out there and go for it hard in the beginning and in what way like from a pre perspective no
00:52:36
your privacy okay so I was crazy and then you've said this about half a dozen times not crazy in a bad
00:52:44
way but no just crazy energy yeah crazy energy and you just you get a bit maybe self-conscious you know a little bit so
00:52:51
you have to tone tone yourself down and oh cuz you just feel like people are watching you yeah you feel like you're
00:52:55
being watched whole time you know you're at a pub and you hang out with your
00:52:58
mates and you're having good town yelling and you're being obnoxious or whatever it may be and someone goes
00:53:02
yells across the pub hey I know you you're Barbara Kindle and everybody then
00:53:07
turns and stares at and you go oh you know so it was a little bit to get used to as a as a as a in young person yeah I
00:53:17
suppose especially if you're just a beach girl that likes hanging out with your brother and your mates doing yeah
00:53:21
and and I I had a really amazing circle of friends that were my mates that we're
00:53:26
all wind Surfers we're all all our tribe you know we just celebrated 50 years of
00:53:31
wind surfing this year and it got to um bump in we all came together and there was over 400 of us from New Zealand that
00:53:37
all wi surfed from over the centuries not centuries decades centuries will be too old and it was so nice all these
00:53:45
people that we'd hung out with in Maui and Hawaii when we've been living there
00:53:48
and people that I'd done campaigns with and it was just like it's your family
00:53:52
you know and I had this amazing bunch of people who were they just saw me as Barbara you know there was no stars in
00:53:58
their eyes um was just like Legend in her own lunchbox you know whatever and we carried on so it was kept you really
00:54:06
normal were there were there cool um commercial opportunities that came from it or was that not really a thing then
00:54:12
no not really a thing um it was still good for me like speaking I I I I was like wow I can earn that much from a
00:54:19
speak I'm man you know Count Me In you know um and you get over your nerves pretty quickly when you realize how much
00:54:25
those corporate dinners pay and then I was like hang on a minute I could probably make a little bit of money
00:54:29
which will help me if I decide to keep wind surfing you know cuz after every Olympics you're like man that's said I'm
00:54:34
retiring I want a normal life and then I was like oh I could earn a bit of money
00:54:39
and I could go back onto the professional circuit again my husband could come with me cuz I got married and
00:54:45
be my caddy which would be incredible and it's such an amazing lifestyle you
00:54:49
know traveling from Beach to beach all these amazing beaches around the world and competing and we competed in
00:54:54
swimming pools and and France you know with fans on the and do it with my best friend that' be pretty cool and and I
00:55:02
spoke at an event for Kmart actually and afterwards they said we'd like to sponsor you and I'm like really that
00:55:08
would be awesome so yeah that was my first real sponsor where that I paid good money and then I got a couple of
00:55:14
Television ads on a few things and and I was able to go and compete with a little
00:55:18
bit of budget and that was amazing oh it must have just made life so much more comfortable it was it was like well I've
00:55:24
got to do this again yeah I got to taste of it what were the what were the tv ads
00:55:29
I bet that's still on YouTube or somewhere um I did this one in a um I did one for a toothpaste I did one for
00:55:36
no that actually most that can't even remember one I did after I after i' had
00:55:42
kids that's when I became more marketable but before kids it was just like there wasn't a big market for women
00:55:48
Sport and then the um the 96 games in Atlanta um you so you were the flag bearer which is a huge honor when when
00:55:55
do you find out about that how long before the games so we you'd get asked by the chef to missioner who was Dave
00:56:01
Curry Dr Dave Curry at the time and he asked me and I no yeah that sounds like I'm I'm a I'm a yes person you know if
00:56:07
there's an opportunity that presents itself you say yes and then you worry about how you're going to do it later
00:56:13
and my n it was a it was a um something that's been passed on from my both my my
00:56:18
nan and my nanas my Nana said to me you know Barbara just say yes you know and see where it goes see where you go see
00:56:24
what happens um and so I said yes it happens about 2 days before the the team Gathering and then they announce it and
00:56:35
then you go up there you go up and you get the back then they didn't have the
00:56:39
um the cloak the cloak and things um and they just announce your name and you go
00:56:45
and then the flag and then they take photos and then you have to make a speech and then I'm like wow these are
00:56:50
all my peers I'm like leading my peers and who people that are just you know
00:56:56
who you respect very well this is actually a little bit of a responsibility in a way as well so it
00:57:01
put a bit of pressure on yeah yeah I wonder that yeah so you you were you yeah four years earlier you'd won the
00:57:07
gold medal um you're breaking this 40-year drought for New Zealand um then you're the flag bearer it's like really
00:57:13
underlining your name isn't it like the weight of that must have felt like the
00:57:17
the weight of the Nation on your shoulders it did it did and I had no way to express that like if you saw a
00:57:24
psychologist back then there was something wrong with you and there was nothing wrong with me but but there was
00:57:29
no acknowledgement of that and so I could feel myself getting Tighter and Tighter and
00:57:35
Tighter being the defending Champion you know second in the world Champs leading
00:57:40
up into it you know game on even though we were on a different type of board and
00:57:44
that opened it up to pumping so the first Olympic Games you know our class the class has changed and evolved and so
00:57:50
it was a different skill set much much more athletic where you're Fanning the
00:57:54
sale as fast as you can so it's more like being on rowing machine we became real athletes um and so that experience
00:58:02
for me was that it was frustrating because physiologically if you don't breathe properly or you're under stress
00:58:09
you breathe too high up into your shoulders and your neck and then that blocks the flow and the energy down to
00:58:16
your arms which is on a on a Meridian that goes across your heart and lungs it goes right across your chest so if
00:58:21
you're stressed or not breathing properly it can affect your arm and I had terrible arm pump up and it wasn't
00:58:28
couple tunnel it was an energy and it was a postural thing and that really inhibited my performance in Atlanta
00:58:38
which was a bummer but the Hong Kong girl she' been my training partner um in
00:58:44
Barcelona and we'd been training a lot leading up into 96 because her coach was
00:58:48
a really good friend of brucees he was a Dutch guy and so we we'd become good
00:58:53
friends and she'd just gone from not being an athlete at all to this superum you know they' started this
00:59:00
is when the the whole um Sports Science started where we were being late tested V2
00:59:06
tested and Hong Kong got into earlier than what we had it here in New Zealand and so she was just a machine
00:59:13
and on fire um and so I was really happy in the end just to win the silver well you as I said before you see you on the
00:59:20
podium and it's no different to four years earlier when you got the gold yeah
00:59:24
you realize when you're in it like oh [ __ ] you know I'm only I've got the
00:59:28
silver and then you take a day to reflect and you go wow I actually won silver got the with these limitations
00:59:35
you know with being out not being able to pump prop it's like having one arm
00:59:39
again so yeah it was really interesting and yeah and then then there was a whole
00:59:43
lot of interesting things that happened after that interesting things and um well it was because the day the Hong
00:59:51
Kong girl won the gold and she didn't have to didn't have to win the last race
00:59:56
and because someone else in the New Zealand team was about to win a medal up in Atlanta I can't remember exactly who
01:00:02
it was all the New Zealand press disappeared because Savannah was an hours flight from Atlanta so they all
01:00:10
went back up to Atlanta so when I won my silver medal there was no New Zealand press
01:00:16
and I can't there was no photos of me winning how was that was that was that
01:00:22
um there is not you go you Google it and you can't find any photos and so what
01:00:26
happened when they say oh barara have you got a photo with you men I went no I haven't so we had photographers come
01:00:30
around to the my home when I got home and I dressed up on my tracksuit and took some photos in were you pissed
01:00:37
about that I was like well I didn't know that until later and I'm like and then
01:00:42
another thing what had happened is the rest of the sailing team because we' had
01:00:45
so much success in Barcelona and we didn't have as much s success in Atlanta
01:00:51
um when I came back to the Pontoon there was no celebration um I said there's someone
01:00:56
said oh there's a bottle of champagne for you in the fridge but we're not
01:00:58
going to celebrate now because everyone else has to still compete I'm like oh
01:01:04
okay and then we back to the hotel room and that was it you went to wardrobe and
01:01:08
cried again well no because I was still surrounded I had quite a few friends in Atlanta were like oh this is still
01:01:13
really cool and um you know you don't think about those things until later you
01:01:20
know cuz you just you're sort of like cuz I'm very in the moment girl and I
01:01:23
don't reflect I'm just like oh this is okay this is interesting this is interesting and just away I went cuz I'm
01:01:28
like well it is what it is and Away you go and let it go it's not until you look
01:01:31
back and you go that wasn't right cuz I don't feel that that should have happened to a
01:01:37
silver medalist I need to say something about that and so that's when I found
01:01:42
out that um New Zealand had an athletes commission and I went actually I want to
01:01:45
hear my voice heard because I don't want to have other people um feel like they've lost because theyve won a silver
01:01:54
medal good for you where where did that come from that sort of um what's the word I'm looking for I
01:02:02
you know that sort of uh you you're not going to just just going to be a good
01:02:06
girl and sit in the corner um that probably came from being who I was when I was born
01:02:13
because my mom wanted to have four cids and had me you you know what I mean that'd be the easiest thing just to go
01:02:19
oh just I won't make a big deal about this whatever well that's what women
01:02:22
have done for a really long time yeah and I was bought up up to speak up and I was brought up I always felt like I was
01:02:30
like I was a boy cuz I grew up you know i' mostly being hanging around the guys
01:02:36
racing all the time there'd been no other girls and so I felt like one of the lads so it never really occurred to
01:02:40
me that on a lot of levels that things weren't appropriate or girls were being
01:02:46
you know oh you should be back in the kitchen you know as I was told later on um but yeah I was like actually male or
01:02:55
female this is something you shouldn't be made to feel after you won a midle I feel like
01:03:01
it' be an easier conversation to have now but uh 20 28 years ago whatever it
01:03:05
is you know um yeah you yeah they would be rocking the boat like Barbara Kendall
01:03:10
she's a troublemaker yeah exactly and and still sort I get that barara has very strong opinions and I'm going well
01:03:16
actually usually my opinions are attached to something that's happened yeah that says well maybe this isn't
01:03:22
right how can we do this better and then four four years after that it's the Sydney games where you win a you win
01:03:29
a bronze which oh no I retired after it 96 because we talk about this transition
01:03:34
thing you know when when when athletes retire you know after you've done Olympics you go that's it I'm done I'm
01:03:40
not going to win s anymore I'm going to get myself a real job and then I went
01:03:43
and coached did you for how long um six months that's the shortest retirement
01:03:50
ever yeah and then what then you missed it and well then I missed it and I and I
01:03:54
found I was a bit of training partner than a coach um and I was tra coaching the youth team and so I went to the
01:04:00
youth worlds with the youth team and and one of the young boys they got a fourth
01:04:03
and I went actually I'm quite a good coach and training partner and I'm going
01:04:06
quite fast perhaps I should try for Sydney because it's so close and this is
01:04:11
when the government started giving pigs grants so performance enhancing grants so we actually if we were top 10 in the
01:04:17
world you could get $10,000 that was big I think it might have even a bit be been more a bit more
01:04:23
back then and I was like wow for the first time instead of having to have my own sponsors we're getting supported by
01:04:29
the government to be a professional athlete in a way um and coaches were starting to get paid as well which was
01:04:37
amazing because coaches were never paid until Sydney so Sydney was like the first games where there was funding and
01:04:44
so you and you were still quite young early 30 I was early 30s yeah yeah I was 32 okay so you get a bronze for that are
01:04:52
you which completes the whole set which is amazing gold silver and bronze in that order as well um was that um yeah
01:04:59
was it disappointing or was it gratifying no was I was really happy with the bronze because Murphy's Law um
01:05:05
happened in that one where I was I won back-to-back World Championships leading up into that um Olympic games which no
01:05:12
one had ever done before so cuz sailing's random it's not like a distance that you run or a um a shop
01:05:18
putut that you throw or a kayak race in a straight line it's like you never know
01:05:23
and they can't control the weather you don't know where you're going to it's
01:05:25
it's random um and the so with Sydney the the Italian girl that bat me she was being
01:05:32
my arch rival for many Olympic Games and was very similar to me in the way that she sailed and it was her turn you know
01:05:38
she'd got a silver uh sorry she'd got the bronze in Atlanta and she went on to
01:05:42
do six Olympic Games actually and then the German girl who was super super light just had this amazing Lucky Star
01:05:50
and she was really fast and we had the same wind every single day and she'd never ever beaten me in a regat and I
01:05:56
think she'd only ever beaten Me In One race she ended up winning the silver and
01:06:00
I was like nothing I can do about that so I was really happy to have got the bronze in that rega yeah oh
01:06:06
congratulations and then um two more Olympic campaigns uh which took it to five um which is remarkable eh it's some
01:06:13
serious longevity yeah serious so um after Sydney I retired again yeah and then and then um you're the worst at
01:06:21
retiring yeah I was and then I was like all of a sudden maternal clock was like I want to have kids you know and it was
01:06:29
just I never even knew babies existed until then really we I didn't even know
01:06:33
that there was a whole genre of shopping for babies but you know and anyway had my first daughter who was just the most
01:06:39
beautiful amazing young woman and when she when she got put into my arms I'm
01:06:44
like oh [ __ ] what do I do now I don't know how to be a mom so I said to her
01:06:50
you're going to have to teach me how to be a mom because I have no idea we're in
01:06:53
this together and she's been like that ever since and still is like let's like
01:06:59
we're best friends in a way cuz I'm like I have no idea how to be your mother
01:07:02
let's do this together and then and and even now as a young adult I'm like how
01:07:07
do I do it how do I want how do you want me to do it how do you want me to help you the whole way through it just
01:07:11
amazing amazing woman must have been difficult for the first 18 months or so when communication's a little bit Yeah
01:07:17
but but she was a really good baby she was actually a really good baby and then I about 13 months into it I was like I
01:07:23
really want to go sailing and then knew the world Champs was coming up in Thailand never being to Thailand wanted
01:07:29
to go somewhere warm um one of the young guys I said to him John Paul toin find me some fast equipment because it's one
01:07:37
design I just want to come and do the the world champs for fun um I had no funding because they took away all my
01:07:43
funding after having a kid there was nothing left so I had I paid for it myself and for my husband and all of us
01:07:48
to go why not because you had a Cod yeah because that was it well they didn't
01:07:52
think that I'd about to come back and there was no I wasn't in the system
01:07:56
because I'd retired I hadn't really officially retired I just hadn't said
01:07:59
well I'm I'm going to have a kid and then they didn't say that's the reason
01:08:03
why they did they no it was unspoken sort of um and then when I won the world Champs was just like oh no now we're
01:08:10
going to have to fund her again because that qualified me for Athens here she is the squeaky wheel
01:08:17
again it's G some more oil squeaky wheel exactly but though actually y new Zeal
01:08:22
was pretty good because I said well you know I can't leave her at home because
01:08:26
my husband's a coach we have to travel around together and so and the funding
01:08:30
got better from the government I got good sponsors because at the end I said well I can't continue unless I get
01:08:34
sponsors and I was really lucky you know there's a whole genre of carry baby milk
01:08:39
and appliances and I was able to get good sponsorship that enabled us all three of us to go around you know
01:08:44
compete cuz you you're away five months of the year six months of the year to do
01:08:48
these campaigns properly and we couldn't sleep in the car anymore you know cuz we
01:08:52
had a kid so um Logistics a lot to think about yeah and then Athens um was yeah it was it was that was probably my most
01:09:01
disappointing games in in a away with results wise so it was 2004 yeah and then um your last Olympics uh Beijing in
01:09:09
2008 where you finished sixth as a 41y old M of two yeah um I mean six sixth place it's not on the podium but you
01:09:17
look back now 41 years old mom of two you bloody proud of that oh really proud and particularly I'd once got sick in
01:09:25
the two World Championships leading up into that so um I was right there and but I was tired you know and
01:09:35
and just the fight of everything I was like okay I'm really having to really
01:09:41
dig deep to motivate yourself to get yourself to the gym to sell the equipment and the equipment is a new set
01:09:47
that's one of the reasons I went back is because it was new equipment faster and
01:09:50
I'm like this looks like fun I quite like to do this my husband was an incredible training partner he was like
01:09:55
the fastest girl on the water so I had the best in the windy um he was terrible when it was light he was he was such a
01:10:02
good training p and and China was light a little bit light too but I felt like I
01:10:06
was my back was against the wall a little bit leading up into it um I was fighting you know for funding fighting
01:10:12
for my place in the team just everything was just a little bit more of a fight felt like a battle Yeah and then in um
01:10:18
so two years after that in 2010 year retire um yeah you're at peace with the
01:10:23
decision you oh yeah no I was well ready well this was the eighth time you'd
01:10:26
retired yeah yeah yeah um when I remember in the last second to last race I got around the top Mark and I looked
01:10:33
behind me and there was only one girl behind me and I went I don't even know
01:10:37
how that happened and then I just started laughing going I've done this enough I've spent you know 25 years of
01:10:45
my life sailing really fast around boys to prove that I'm really good at it and
01:10:49
I don't really feel like I need to do this anymore it was it was just like this this is it this is
01:10:56
probably close to the last race I'll ever do so there was no like post post sporting career Comedown or anything no
01:11:04
nothing that's great is it I know I I charged into the next thing yeah which
01:11:08
was what Strat edman coaching no I was a by that time I'd become an international
01:11:12
Olympic Committee Member so so speaking up as an athlete I got into the athletes
01:11:16
commission every year every Olympic Games the there is a vote of athletes that sit on the international Olympic
01:11:23
Committee as the athletes voice and i' put my name up for Sydney but really no no idea what it was for um but
01:11:31
but small sport no one was being vot you know um small country no one in New Zealand knew what it was didn't get
01:11:36
enough votes but in 2005 Susie O'Neal who' got voted on she didn't want to
01:11:41
finish her term because she was going to have kids and so I was the next highest
01:11:47
vote in Sydney and I got this phone call and I remember it really clearly from Tay Wilson who was our IU remember at
01:11:53
the time he said Barbara um would you like to become an ioc M member and I went sure yeah okay no idea what it was
01:12:00
for or how it even got this phone call it's like we were saying before it just
01:12:03
say yes and and he said well you need to come to you need to come to Singapore and you'll get signed in as an i member
01:12:08
and I was five months pregnant at the time with Amy I said well I'm about to
01:12:12
have a baby on that day and he says oh you you come afterwards so after was Amy Amy was born I went to my first meeting
01:12:19
um as an international Olympic Committee athletes commission member no idea what
01:12:24
I was in for but they gave me a first class ticket and I went this is pretty Swanky and then I'm like I had to take
01:12:30
my baby with me cuz I was breastfeeding and first class with a baby going looking at all these businessmen going
01:12:35
how do I keep this baby quiet she was a fussy baby and got to the airport and they picked me up in this limousine with
01:12:43
my name on the sign Miss Barbara kendle VIP and I'm like this is pretty amazing
01:12:49
and a Mercedes and then got to the Palace Hotel and Lan and Switzerland with the ISC is headquartered and it was
01:12:55
everything was gold and it was just five star amazingness he did it was just like
01:13:02
wow all my Christmases had come at once then I like cool I'm going to be hanging
01:13:06
out with you know these leader athletes like Sergey bubka um Frankie Fredericks Alexander popof all these big names and
01:13:15
um and I'm like cool so I rock up downstairs the next morning after a restful night you know baby brain best
01:13:22
freeding organized a babysitter in a t-shir and jeans and everybody is in suits and ties and I don't want to go
01:13:29
back to the room because then the baby will sork and I'm like okay I've got my
01:13:32
Cur t-shirt on my flare jeans and boots no one told me that that's there was dress code like I slip through the
01:13:41
cracks and turn up at this meeting and we're all sitting around a table like
01:13:45
this with microphones and you have to press the microphone to speak because it's all translated into six different
01:13:50
languages because you've got like all the you know United Nations around the
01:13:54
table and I just sat there just going oh my God and then having to go off to the
01:13:58
bathrooms to breast to pump milk because my boobs are exploding with milk because
01:14:03
she's only 3 months old and I'm it was a nightmare and then and then you get home and then we have a
01:14:11
president's dinner and I'm going I'm not paying 40 what was it $40 an hour for a
01:14:17
babysitter anymore because you're a volunteer I'm going to bring my baby to
01:14:21
the meeting with the president and I did I bought her in the push chair rocked her up and she sat
01:14:27
beside me in the push chair while she cuz she was asleep and I'm like but and
01:14:32
no one did that I didn't know this at the time cuz I'm like what else am I
01:14:35
going to do I have to bring my baby along with me and then at the end of it I said you know what this sucks being a
01:14:42
mother in a woman in leadership as a young mother there's no support you know
01:14:48
babies to be seen not heard but what I moment doing I don't have a nanny I'm
01:14:51
not rich enough to afford a nanny to fly with me a lot like a lot of the other members and at the time they're only 15
01:14:55
women out of 130 membership on the ioc and so I spoke up and now look at it it's amazing yeah also part of part of
01:15:07
that for you like having gone from being um an athlete and a very very successful
01:15:11
Olympic Athlete to being on the other side on the edman side were you like what the [ __ ] like we you know we're
01:15:16
hustling with sponsorship we're hustling with funding we're sleeping on cardboard
01:15:20
beards and you guys are yeah did you I was like the irony of it wasn't lost on
01:15:25
you no oh God no I was like oh my God can I trade that f f in I'll fly economy
01:15:31
class and then I'll be able to use that money to help other athletes or to help
01:15:37
something you know but then I but then I realized that actually I needed to sleep
01:15:41
because I was some you know by the end the time I finished my term I was traveling every month for a week to
01:15:47
Europe or somewhere else to fly and just you need I needed to lie flat cuz when you're on an airplane that's when you
01:15:53
got to sleep so when you get there you could be shock up and on it and and and make good decisions you um what's
01:16:00
involved with being one of those members like one of those 130 members of the I what so you I you what you you get put
01:16:07
on different commissions and you advise you come up with recommendations where you advise the ioc executive board on
01:16:14
how they're going to spend their $3.25 us million a day in sport wow so it was
01:16:21
a big I had no idea how big the role was you know I had no idea that you you got
01:16:25
to vote where the Olympic Games were going to happen next you got to vote who's on the executive board you get to
01:16:30
um help mold what sports are going to be on the program for the Olympic Games the
01:16:36
amount of money that that that is floating around in federations and and how it's allocated to National Olympic
01:16:43
committees um scholarships um the environment women and Sport all these things I had no idea and it took me four
01:16:51
years to really understand how I was going to make a difference and there's a
01:16:56
lot of politicking around a lot of brown noosing where people come up to you and
01:16:59
talk to you and say we'd really like your vote and blah blah blah blah blah you know and there's just this whole
01:17:04
world of all the deals made in the hallways of of the movement yeah and I'd get the feeling you've got a real good
01:17:10
sort of B yeah very and I don't don't do it very well at all that's why I don't
01:17:14
wouldn't make a very good politician because I I was just like I straight talker you know and and new zealanders
01:17:19
are really well respected in the world of politics because we have incredible integrity um coming from New Zealand
01:17:26
like there's no briber and Corruption and and I'll Pat your back if you Pat my
01:17:29
back it's really like like actually who is the best person for the job whether
01:17:33
you're male or female you know that's where I came from and very transparent
01:17:37
with everything that you do just a thought so as someone that's been a very successful athlete and has
01:17:43
been on the Edmond side of the Olympics um what are your thoughts on ray gun that was a really interesting one
01:17:49
that one I um you know she she qualified underneath the rules and I think because Dance Sport was very
01:17:58
new to the Olympic program she kind of slipped through the cracks because Oceana we're only 17 National Olympic
01:18:05
committees whereas in Africa you got 55 so it's easier to qualify a continental
01:18:09
spot which is under Olympic solidarity to ensure all the continents are represented in each sport so she found a
01:18:16
gap qualified rightfully so and then got to go but there should be um it's just
01:18:23
like Edy the e you know or the eel in the swimming pool yeah you remember that I do that
01:18:30
Nigerian guy and African guy so she was like that that kind of entry in a way that we' got to have someone from the
01:18:36
continent and and away she goes so she qualified she was in the within the rules and she did what she thought was
01:18:43
going to be creative you know for for it so and that obviously showed a gap so would wouldn't happen
01:18:50
again plugged but um break dancing's not in dance Sports not in yeah the next um
01:18:57
oh let's talk I've got I've got a card here called bits and pieces some other
01:19:00
bits and pieces to the incredible barara Kindle story so what was this the surfboard accident in 2019 did you end
01:19:06
up with a bunch of stitches on your yeah that was me recreational surfing um out
01:19:10
at the outside of the barrier and it was a really big day and we were on boats cuz there's not a lot out there um and I
01:19:19
came off the back of a wave and you sort of do the Superman thing at the back of
01:19:22
the wave if you've had a really good wave but it was very very windy offshore
01:19:25
and the board got picked up and as I popped up bad timing the the board smashed me in the face um
01:19:32
right and I and I remember just going ow that hurt and put my hand up to my face
01:19:36
and my hands went inside my cheek and I went oh [ __ ] that's not good and there
01:19:41
was blood all over my head and I went okay I think I better go back to the boat cuz it's quite shy out there and I
01:19:47
was peddling and I was really tired because at the end of a hard week of Surfing and so every breath I took I was
01:19:52
like and every time I blew out but blood would go onto the board and I'm like
01:19:56
this ain't good um is it is it the scy yeah just here Jesus Jesus you're a s AR
01:20:03
you you like 52 53 I and I was like oh no I'm going to have to probably get this is I didn't I couldn't think about
01:20:09
what it was going to look like because I was like I might have to get plastic surgery you know this is quite gnarly
01:20:14
and when I went in into the um the doctor in it at the barrier he just I walked in he goes oh you're not
01:20:22
the most famous person I've stitched up he was he' been an all blacks dancer H
01:20:26
dancer doctor and stitching up the All Blacks you know faces and he says you won't need plastic surgery and you're
01:20:35
probably about to Surf tomorrow and I went oh that's a good prognosis so he stretched up my face
01:20:40
went back to the boat that night quite sore woke up in the morning and my face was like this and I had this huge big
01:20:48
because the face had swollen you know everything was spread out this huge big black caterpillar on my face and I went
01:20:53
I burst into tears that was another teary moment yeah wow that's um that's
01:21:01
hilarious that's quite great just you're not aging gracefully are you and no but
01:21:05
they say you know scars gray hairs and wrinkles are a good sign that you've lived oh and I I think um you you being
01:21:13
out there tearing it up in your 50s that's um that's goals yeah well I hope
01:21:19
I set you set like a a role model for like well if Barbara can do it I can do it you know that's that's what I'd like
01:21:25
to imagine has happened now you've got um a royal honor what what's your Royal
01:21:30
honor what you've got a so I've got a I got a member of the British Empire after
01:21:34
I won the gold medal services to win surfing and then I got a companion of the New Zealand order of Mer um for
01:21:42
leadership and why AR why aren't you a d very good question don't know the thing is you know I was maybe
01:21:49
before my time and williet Williams had got it they they actually told her just before she
01:21:57
died um and so that was really sad because she was a Trailblazer and I don't know I don't
01:22:04
know that who knows how all those things work it's just one of those things that
01:22:07
does it bother you sometimes it does I'm like oh that's a bit strange cuz I feel
01:22:12
like I've done a I mean I've dedicated my life since I was 16 to Sport and
01:22:16
particularly the last so I started in 2005 so 20 years 19 years as a pretty much as a volunteer
01:22:24
here cuz I got those you know being an ioc member it's it's a real privilege
01:22:30
but that's a responsibility and it's and it's a voluntary role and that I had to
01:22:35
sacrifice a lot of my maybe Financial you starting up a business or working for a big salary you know after I'd
01:22:43
retired I just carried on with the ioc and survived just like an athlete so yeah it was it sometimes it is I was
01:22:51
surprised during this research that you you you went today it's embarrassing
01:22:54
because a lot of people say oh Dan Barbara kendle and they introduce you and go well actually I'm not don't
01:22:59
correct them don't correct them in Future Let's I go I go I'm one below well can they um yeah can they
01:23:06
over I don't know you're not over B my it's not my because it's just an award
01:23:13
you know it's just a thing it's a thing that you put and but I think what if you
01:23:17
ask me what I'm most proud of I'd be proud most proud of my daughters and who
01:23:22
they are of because that to me as if when you've been you know they talk about leadership in women and you know
01:23:29
once you're a mom it's it it's very hard to be away from your kids because you
01:23:33
you're attached to them and you want to be for there I miss you know my daughter's first day of school cuz I was
01:23:38
traveling and th those types of things and then you enter menopause and you run out of energy to take on women's
01:23:43
leadership roles and so so my husband has been most incredible mother to my girls you know
01:23:51
he's he's been the the stay-at-home dad who's made the school lunches took them
01:23:55
to school took them to dancing took them to music lessons took them to netball took them to water polo and they are
01:24:01
incredible girls what's been the the key to a successful partnership successful
01:24:07
marriage communication lots and lots and lots of communication and you know like
01:24:13
sh my husband Shane's really allowed me to be who I am and hasn't been intimidated by a
01:24:20
strong opinionated woman he just loves it you know and comes along for the ride and away we go so do I I find it
01:24:28
inspiring yeah and so so we've been best friends since we since I was 19 you know
01:24:34
and we just is that when you met yeah we met and he just allowed me to be me and
01:24:38
just like today for instance and we were foiling in the surf and I'm like oh no I
01:24:43
have to get get in because you know time and he says leave your equipment on the
01:24:47
beach I'll D it and bring at home you go home and where you go so yeah you know
01:24:51
stuff like that yeah oh that's so special awesome he's he's a he's a he's a gold he's the
01:24:57
gold and you guys had a um a massive house fire R like 2010 yeah so what happened your whole house burned down no
01:25:04
no no no we were um we live we had got four acres in the bush and someone let a firework off at the bottom of our
01:25:11
section on on a road that had just been formed and strapped a few fireworks together
01:25:17
let off put it on the ground probably lit it caught the grass on fire cuz it was really dry at the time and there was
01:25:22
a hling Southwest and it just fan and up the um uper section cuz we had a lot of
01:25:27
toy toy and stuff and um I was driving home from swimming lessons with the kids and I went oh there's a firet truck
01:25:34
going up our road oh there's nine fire trucks up our road oh shoot that smoke
01:25:42
is coming from our house ran into the house and they were going and I and and the guy says you got 10 minutes to grab
01:25:48
what you want so that's an interesting question you got 10 minutes in your house to grab
01:25:53
things that you would like because the rest of it probably won't make it yeah
01:25:56
cuz that's a um yeah it's a question people ask for fun I like a dinner party
01:26:01
sort of question what do you gr well lucky I had my medals in the car because um the I'd just been speaking at a
01:26:08
school after that I bought a fireproof safe and I live in there cuz I'm like we
01:26:11
can't get another one um and I had I just bought an iPad and I oh that'll do you I suppose
01:26:19
back in the day you'd grab like old physical photo albums but everything's
01:26:22
on the cloud now yeah well but AR I I haven't transferred them but my latest
01:26:27
ones are but the but I have all these albums that I probably at some stage should get digitized was it just a
01:26:33
moment that you realize that stuff is just stuff yeah I very much like that everyone family calls me the chucker
01:26:40
ouer because I get rid of I'm getting rid of stuff all the time to minim minimize that's why I love going
01:26:45
overseas you have one bag yeah I don't need stuff and then um Dancing with the
01:26:49
Stars 2009 U this I know you like saying yes to things but this was a no-brainer
01:26:55
right like this is the reality show you were born to do yeah well it was when I'd seen it I'd thought oh God I'd love
01:27:00
to learn how to ballroom dance and I putting it in perspective so I was 42 at the time and I hadn't danced since
01:27:10
in a formal way since I was 18 so that's a lifetime and so when I started dancing
01:27:16
Borum and I'd never done it I felt like a beginner I was like oh my God you know
01:27:21
somebody else and getting into syn learning steps and memorizing them and getting spatial awareness and all that
01:27:29
sort stuff I had the Rhythm no problem at all with rhythm but I was just used to shaking it Loose you know so it was
01:27:35
actually it was super fun and I picked it up very very quickly but the reality is you only have
01:27:40
three days to to master something you know and I I like to master it so I could then enjoy it you never had a
01:27:46
chance to master anything you were just sort of like in this days of like being swung around the floor and hoping that
01:27:51
you remember your steps who who who else was in that season with you um we had oh
01:27:57
T te coffee he ended up winning um we had um all black guy Surfer um God goodness May Quinn no no
01:28:09
no no um bald hair not Norm hermit but it was um really fun guy he commentates sometimes oh he was on TV with ail
01:28:20
April J Josh coni I recorded a podcast with him a few days guy yeah I can't believe me that long to remember um yeah
01:28:27
so we yeah and we had a like um you know reality television programs the that group of people that you do it with
01:28:35
become your family because you go through you share an incredible experience and for me the exciting part
01:28:41
was you know when you got to say okay what are we going to dance today and then learning the dance and then turning
01:28:46
up to the dress rehearsal getting these frr costumes cuz I've never been girly
01:28:50
girl you know to wear all these things sexy costumes I'm like really um but then I didn't like the competition side
01:28:57
of it because it was just like you're being judged on something you'd never
01:29:01
done to told to ooze and I'm going I can't oo I'm my brain's going what does that even mean I know be
01:29:08
look sexy and I'm like huh you know but it was super fun it was such a fun Journey should you should you have won
01:29:15
it uh that was irrelevant that was irrelevant we you know raising 125 ,000 for the upside
01:29:25
Downs trust um and I still do work for them now um we just raised $85,000 a few weekends ago with a fundraiser with them
01:29:33
and meeting that group of people was was the gy um the judges it was really nice
01:29:39
to win the final night and get per perfect tens and everything like perfect scorecard and every single
01:29:45
dance that was the one it wasn't about who was going to get the silver ball yeah I mean what are you going to
01:29:52
do with the glitter ball trophy anyway you got a safe full of Olympic medals there was you know everybody was a
01:29:57
winner that went on that show yeah oh nice and so tady coffee won that one um coincidentally he's just been on
01:30:05
Celebrity island cele island which you you were also on a few years ago yeah so I went 2019 yeah now you have to forgive
01:30:11
me I didn't I didn't see the season but um I did some reading up about it um
01:30:15
were you the villain apparently well I was probably very opinionated right and so I I I fell into
01:30:23
C captaincy from day one and so you sort of set a tone and a um and a and a Manar
01:30:30
T of what you want how you want to survive this weird situation and luckily we had an incredible team of us that had
01:30:37
been in a competitive environment and were really chilled out so we had Moses McKai who's quite competitive even
01:30:44
though he's an opera singer we had Gary Freeman we had um um boxer oh Shane camon Shane Cameron um and so we and and
01:30:54
then Lana [ __ ] Lana who was a runner so she was sort of athletic as well and so
01:30:59
we had this we were really chilled and um and one of the competitors wanted us to get into strategy and I'm like when
01:31:09
you get there you just go hard you don't need to strategize about who you're
01:31:12
going to try and save you know let's just go out there and do what we have to
01:31:15
do it was a really funny time who yeah who who did you have beef with was I was m m got all sensitive that's right
01:31:23
there's a there's a qu from That season I don't need to prove myself to Barbara
01:31:26
kindall what was the um what's the back story with that oh the back story was
01:31:30
you know I wanted to keep I said strong guys meaning physically strong guys because there was a lot of lifting
01:31:37
things and holding things and physical challenges and so I didn't want to get
01:31:42
rid of Moses and um Shane because they were like strong and I was coming down to like um and that's what I was meaning
01:31:51
but it got like anything on those reality television program they take everything out of context and so when I
01:31:56
said mad he said well the first thing I I don't want to get rid of the strong
01:31:59
competitiv and he instantly went oh I'm I'm not strong but it was physical but he is
01:32:05
strong you know he was a really fast runner he was super fit he was a really good swimmer um but when it went under
01:32:10
competition sometimes his brain like he had one job on one thing to UND a tap and he couldn't find the tap but it was
01:32:17
right there so when people go under competition your brain's go into fear mode and then you can't think straight
01:32:24
but with athletes because we we're in Fair mode the whole time you learn how
01:32:28
to just sink into it lean into the pressure lean into the pressure and go and so he took it really really
01:32:35
personally personally and yeah so that was quite funny but no one has to prove themselves
01:32:42
to anybody you prove it you know it's like what it is it's like Sir Edmund
01:32:47
Hillary it's not the mountain that you co conquer it's yourself you know and
01:32:51
that's what those those reality programs it's not everyone else around you it's
01:32:56
you because it's just a reflection of you what you're experiencing yeah I
01:32:59
messaged um Eric Murray this morning oh yeah he he was on the same season um I said you got any bab rindle stories he
01:33:06
said he was on a different team so he didn't have much to do with you no but
01:33:09
he said um he thinks she hated it she was sick all the time yeah well I got I had no food and I got I ate a rancid
01:33:17
coconut which gave me diarrhea and um I couldn't get rid of it because I had no
01:33:23
food to soak up the stomach they keep giving me anti- diarrhea pills but we needed food and then when we finally did
01:33:30
we win food there was tins so that's not very good for someone that's had
01:33:34
diarrhea for a week and I lost 5 kilos in two weeks so and then what happened is I lost the cognition to my brain
01:33:41
because your brain is the first thing that goes physically I was good but your brain went and we played a memory game
01:33:47
and and I went I have a usually good memory and went oh I can't remember anything and and went okay this is this
01:33:55
has not good its time for me to go and you um yeah you love saying yeaster things but if you got asked to go on
01:34:00
that again no if they if well if they if we got food like you knew you were going
01:34:06
to get food not tim tams and actually the first one we ran they gave us a couch and a bottle of wine and I'm going
01:34:12
can you give us some crackers with the wine we going to do with this we hadn't
01:34:16
eaten for a week you know yeah we'd had rice and so yeah it was just one of those things I'm like and but what's
01:34:22
really good now is that I spoke up about it and I said that's not safe and nowadays you get
01:34:29
hungry but you don't get hungry like we were um they they have a lot more food
01:34:33
in everyone which is really good to see and I hear you you your your daughters were really proud like that have viewing
01:34:39
parties every week it was on and yeah well that age where they were they understood what was going on so we'd had
01:34:45
friends come around and we'd watch it and we'd laugh and laugh and laugh at it
01:34:50
it was it's a bit uncomfortable because you don't know how they're going to
01:34:52
betray you um in the in in these games um and that and your reputation is sort of everything I wasn't there to be
01:34:59
entertainment I was there to sort of have a bit of fun and meet people and and try and win some money yeah yeah
01:35:06
were you um were you s scared by the experience or a little bit a little bit yeah a little bit in the end because it
01:35:12
was just just because I was disappointed in a way that that I'd got so run down
01:35:18
from having not enough food and and then um you know the reaction of mie to to he
01:35:26
he said it in Good Humor but he meant it you know obviously when I'd said we want
01:35:30
strong players he'd taken it completely personally and so he sort of had a bit
01:35:34
of a grudge yeah oh God is he still long-standing beef with you two no no no no not at all I mean he does what he
01:35:42
does I do what I do and you know and he doesn't need to prove himself to you
01:35:45
damn it no and then and then when he said take that Barbara Kel when he want it I'm just like really oh did he yes
01:35:52
did he so so you you'd gone been gone for weeks and weeks or yeah and then I
01:35:55
had the woman's weekly ring me up and said would you and Mary like to get to I
01:35:59
said oh for goodness sake would you find something that's much more newsworthy
01:36:03
than that I was just like really yeah anyway oh God I know but that's that's
01:36:08
the world we live in you know and that's the world that I try and not live in
01:36:12
because it's like actually I'd rather just I don't do drama don't do drama at
01:36:17
all when you this sounds like a morbid question but it's but it's actually not
01:36:21
I had had this guy on the podcast called um Allen who's actually in Barcelona at
01:36:25
the moment with Team New Zealand okay and he's like a coast to coast multisport Legend and he did one of
01:36:29
those um overnight Adventure races and Richie mcco was one of his teammates and in the the Dark of the night when they
01:36:34
were climbing up this this hill um Richie played a game with all his teammates and he said um uh you what
01:36:40
three words you would you like to be bounced around the roomed at your funeral um so what would they be for you
01:36:48
well mine would definitely be definitely be something around trailblazing mhm you
01:36:56
know really Paving the way um cuz that's that's you know that's your that's why
01:37:01
we're here is that you make a path for the others to come through and it's
01:37:05
easier you know and it's and they're more Wise from the wisdom you know they
01:37:10
still have to make make their own mistakes but there's a wisdom there that you that that makes it easier for them
01:37:15
to reach self-actualization or whatever it may be nana or whatever you know when
01:37:19
you get into Buddhism um the second thing is um something in in and around um positivity
01:37:28
and happiness you know Joy joyful laugh good energy good vibe good Verve and then
01:37:37
um it' be around loyalty something around very loyal I've always been very very loyal yeah that
01:37:45
great words right that's awesome and I wouldn't like people say oh you'll be
01:37:50
remembered that you were a competitor and I'm like but I wasn't competive
01:37:54
against people I was just competitive how far can I take this you know I get the feeling you're still like that now
01:38:02
yeah yeah yeah that's tring you know just trying your best everything you do
01:38:06
because 100 peren ISM has always been and that's what I've really tried to
01:38:11
drill into my girls you know when you do something give it everything that you've
01:38:16
got because you don't know how good you're going to get if you don't you
01:38:19
know and just push the boundaries and see where you can go with whatever you do I love that that's a great message um
01:38:24
are you proud of yourself oh yeah yeah yeah I really like how I am really um and but you know when you it feel sounds
01:38:33
like I've had this most and I have most this incredible life um but the real
01:38:39
character comes from when you've had to go deep you know from things that don't
01:38:44
go so well you know you have to go really deep and go right how do I pull myself out of this one and and then work
01:38:50
out how to do it quick yeah so that resilience so so dealing with adversity and learning
01:38:56
resilience is crucial as a human what's been the biggest adversities for you
01:39:01
well I reckon you know that the injury in my WR that was nothing compared to you know the
01:39:07
last it's been quite tough over the last four years with covid and um parents
01:39:11
getting older health issues in and around the family um my daughter got really sick when she was overseas and
01:39:19
she was in America doing a water polo scholarship those really stressful stuff so doing an Olympic campaign is easy
01:39:27
when you start to have to deal with emotional stuff and um you know other life things that happen on your journey
01:39:35
and a lot of mine has been you know had this beautiful pathway and a lot of it has been plopped into the last four
01:39:41
years it's tough It's been tough yeah I'm I'm in the same position
01:39:46
as you and that um both my parents are still alive and well um but they're not
01:39:50
getting any younger no um so yeah you and both we're going to have a [ __ ] to
01:39:54
deal with over the next 20 years that's what life is meant to be you know it's
01:39:58
meant to be like you know the good and the bad they're all good because we're just
01:40:04
humans you know and you you're just having all these experiences as a human and you have these amazing experience
01:40:10
I've had like huge amazing experience I just go I can't believe this it's very
01:40:14
surreal I always go into very third person when I have these experiences cuz I never buy into the ego never try not
01:40:21
to I sometimes do but very go wow look at that happening to me this is really freaky you know like having dinner with
01:40:29
a shake of Q8 in in Monaco or um christening a cruise ship um the Pacific Pearl and and being the bottle Smasher
01:40:38
and you know having a giraffe named after you in the in the in the zoo and you know stuff like that weird [ __ ]
01:40:45
random random stuff it's so awesome and and you know or going to being a vice
01:40:49
president of Surfing and going on a jet ski and being at the mouth of chopu where it's spitting out way spitting out
01:40:56
as it's barreling and a surfer pops out and you're right there looking at this
01:40:59
going I can't believe this is you know this is my life and then you have these
01:41:03
other moments in life which are really emotionally traumatic you know and um and then dealing with the fact that
01:41:11
you've got no money in the bank and you're having to pay rates at the age of
01:41:14
57 you're just like what the hell how did I get here you know stuff like that
01:41:18
because it's choices that you've had to make and and coming through so it's
01:41:22
colorful you know and you just deal with it yeah and it is frustrating to hear that that you can you be at the uh the
01:41:29
absolute your peak in the world and your chosen sport for so many years and not have sort of Financial Security at the
01:41:34
end of it it's disappointing well it it isn't yes or no you can be asset reach
01:41:39
rich and and cash poor and that's what we've got to you know we're asset Rich
01:41:44
um so we own our own house you know um don't get me wrong we've done this
01:41:48
amazing thing but it's just been the last few years been really really tough
01:41:51
just as you sort of transition and and into the next thing and and so we could sell but then that's that's sort of like
01:41:58
the next stage so it's just sort of managing all those life managing life in
01:42:02
the different ages and stages that you go through don't got that's why I'm crazy I
01:42:08
like being a kid CU you don't have responsibility you don't have to like
01:42:12
you know grow up and pay you know all those things I just I just want to be a child again yeah but you you find every
01:42:19
um like every every sort of chapter or season of Life comes with its own sort of expected challenges I'm I what I am
01:42:25
enjoying Now is slowing down a little bit and I'm really good at sitting on the couch now and watching
01:42:31
television I don't know I'm calling [ __ ] on that you you st me as a lady
01:42:36
that is um going to continue to live life at 100 miles hour yeah well I think that's how you do it and then and then
01:42:41
when it's time to go you go real fast that's what I'd like just you know I
01:42:45
wouldn't wish you know like not trying to send it out there but not manifesting
01:42:49
I won't be a very good patient you know what I mean an impatient patient yes yeah well Dame
01:42:56
barbar Kendall we're manifesting a touch what I don't really what would what
01:43:01
would that do well I don't know well it's deserved validation would it mean
01:43:08
anything would it change you no but yeah anyway it's you know I like if I was you
01:43:13
it would hurt me if there was someone that I in my mind I'm not going to name
01:43:17
any names but got you know got a nigh Hood ahead of me when I thought I deserved it more but anyway yeah I don't
01:43:22
know it's all different you know I I'm it is what it is ages and stages and in
01:43:28
in different phases in in in in cultural awareness and all that sort of stuff so
01:43:34
there's there's different reasons well title or no title you are a kiwi Legion there's no doubt about it
01:43:40
it's been so good to meet with you today thank you so much for your time yeah
01:43:43
thank you it's been it's been it's always good to tell a story I love a
01:43:46
good story yeah is it nice to reflect yeah it is it is actually um and there's
01:43:52
some things you can say in some things she can't so yeah it has been good