Against the Current

This soliloquy (transcribed from an off the cuff and conversational delivery) preceded my guest, Oscar Chalupsky OLY ,?on Joseph Jaffe is not Famous on October 13th, 2022. You can watch it?here. Please subscribe to the show?here.

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?John Kenneth Galbraith is credited with the following saying, "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the reverse.”

Well, we can change that when we have good people in this world, when we have people that are prepared to swim against the current and that is the title of today's seated soliloquy dedicated and inspired by Oscar Chalupsky OLY . Oscar has been victorious swimming against some incredible waves and currents, literally and figuratively.

What about you? What kind of person are you? Are you a person that goes with the flow? Or are you someone who, at times swims against the current? Now the thing about swimming against the current is it's super hard. And it takes endurance and it takes strength. And if you constantly spend your life swimming against the current; raging against the machine, you are in danger - you will be in danger of running out of steam and drowning.

But in some cases, this is what inspires us. This is what motivates us. This is what makes us disruptors, or leaders, or visionaries, or champions or warriors, because we're prepared to stick our necks out; because we don't like it easy. Because we want a challenge. Because we know that without a challenge…what is life? What is the point in life? What is the meaning of life if we're not prepared to push ourselves to the limits, and maybe even a little bit beyond?

Not all the time of course.

Being even tempered and mild mannered and going with the flow can often be a good thing.

In fact, sometimes you need to go with the flow, in order to rest to recuperate; to recharge the Energizer battery, if you will.?

Like Oscar. He needed to be able to save his strength for the real challenge in life. Not so much the ultra-extreme marathons, the Molokai, the Iron Men battles, but ultimately, the battle against an enemy we all come up to sooner rather than later: Cancer.

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Excerpt from our interview:?Last year at age 58, I won a race in Brazil and the next guy was 28. A lot of my friends said, “why are you doing this?”

I said, “I love competing and I love taking on the people and I always want to beat them no matter what, even when I lose, I sometimes think I've won anyway, so they can't beat me. I've lost but I didn’t really lose. And by the time at the end of the evening, even people that are with me, after they've beaten me, they think they've actually lost, that's convincing I can get. They might feel bad, but it makes them better as well, I can assure you.”

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Few Paddlers hold a record comparable to that of? Oscar Chalupsky OLY . Beginning his canoeing career during his school years, his list of accomplishments include twelve time World Molokai Surfski Champion, multiple winner of the Umkomaas River Marathon and Olympic Canoe Team Captain & participant, representing South Africa in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

In 1979, at the age of 15,?Oscar?Chalupsky made headlines at the South African Surf Lifesaving Champs, winning the Junior and Senior Ironman Titles on the same day. In 1983 he won the storied?Molokai World Championships?open-ocean race for the first time. Since then, the now 51 year-old South African who’s well known for both his?on- and off-water antics, had this to say about winning his 12th?title at the age of 49.

“I wanted to lose weight,” Chalupsky says in?an interview with C&K contributor Joe Glickman, who points out that?Oscar?was resembling Santa Claus around Christmas time this past year, “and since I’m extremely goal oriented I decided to use Molokai as the carrot to get back in shape.”

According to Chalupsky, he started his Molokai training routine by waking up at 4:15 AM, checking his email and then running 3K to the gym. Then he would head to the sauna and do half an hour of push-ups, sit-ups and dips. To cool down, he says he would swim 1000-1500 meters, then take a 45- minute spin (bike) class and run back home. In the afternoon, he’d do a downwind paddle, or if it were flat, he’d do “a 45-60 minute technique sessions.”

“I’ve always maintained that age is more about motivation than anything else,” Chalupsky says later on in the interview. “I know you’re not supposed to go as fast at 49 as you did when you’re 39, but I feel that I’m capable of going much the same as I did and, in fact, my times on runs I’ve done for 20 years are much the same. The clock doesn’t lie. The stopwatch worries me far more than Father Time.”