Focus, Dedication, Resilience.....
It took Guy Leech 4hrs 30min to create history & overnight become a household name in Australia. The race created a professional sport that saw names like Grant Kenny, Trevor Hendy & the Mercer brothers – Darren & Dean – beamed into the lounge-rooms of Australians over summer for decades to come.
Guy dominated the longer ironman races over his 15-year career, never being beaten in any event lasting more than 2 hrs. A feat that no other ironman has replicated. During Guy’s professional athletic career, he won the title of Aust fittest athlete defeating sportsmen from a wide range of sports over a 10-event competition that was shown on CH9’s 60 Minutes.
He also won the World Ocean Paddling Championship in Hawaii at his first attempt – a race from Molokai to Oahu covering 55km, the channel is the third most dangerous stretch of water in the world.
The Code To Success
Guy’s journey into sports began at the age of 8, when the family doctor advised he get in the pool to strengthen his lungs after multiple bouts of bronchitis.
He got his first taste of victory at the national titles a year later winning his age group breastroke event. It was this win that became the drug that Guy has chased ever since.
Fortunately, Guy found his way to the pool of legendary swim coach – Terry Gathecole who was at the time, the head coach of the Aust Olympic Swim Team. The six-lane swim pool became Guy’s home till he turned 17. It was this high-performance environment that taught Guy at an early age, what he refers to as the pillars to success.
In that small pool, filled with the best swimmers in the county, Guy learned the meaning of focus, dedication and resilience. Any swimmer that graduated to ‘the fast lane’ - lane 6 represented Australia at the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics.
For Guy it became an obsession to get to lane 6 as quickly as possible. In reality It took five years. The lessons learned in that time served as the building blocks that enables him become the best the world – a world champion across several sports. Something very few people have ever done.
The Future Of Surf Lifesaving
At age 17, after watching a Kellogg Nutri Grain commercial featuring the legendary Grant Kenny, Guy exchanged the pool for the ocean and set his sights on becoming an ironman.
From the moment he joined Manly Surf Life Saving Club, Guy applied the winning code he learned in that 6 lane pool into the sport of Ironman, training 3 times a day, 6 days a week. The critical lessons of goal setting, workload, teamwork, intensity, brutal honesty, discipline, and belief couples with a perpetual sense of urgency were applied to this new sport.
Less than 2 years later, Guy arrived on the beach at the Gold Coast for the Coolangatta Gold & the rest was history. For the next 3 years Guy was unbeatable, setting a record that lasted 20 years and raising the profile of a sport, and surf life saving both nationally and abroad.
Winning was top of mind for Guy, but even at 20 he recognised the impact he was having behind the races, in attracting people to the service of surf lifesaving.
