Apolo Anton Ohno: 8-time Olympic medalist – extreme training, discipline, pursuing perfection, and responding to adversity

**Peter Attia** (0:04)
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top-performing individuals in the world. And this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peterattiamd.com.
Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia. My guest this week is my friend, Apollo Ohno. For those of you who might not recognize Apollo, which I would guess is not many of you, Apollo Anton Ohno is an eight-time medalist in the Winter Olympics across three games, 2002, 2006, 2010, in short track speed skating, which is one of the most intense, crazy sports to watch. We're gonna have lots of videos of it in the show notes. And if that weren't enough, he also went on to win Dancing with the Stars, which sadly we don't get into in this episode, though I wish we did, because we were talking about it over dinner.
And it's simply another manifestation of the type of drive and determination that he brought to his sport. He brought to that show as well. He has a really unique upbringing. He was raised by a single dad, and his father, who was an immigrant, played just an unbelievable role in his life through the good times and the bad, which I know might sound like a bit of a cliche, but the level and the detail at which we go into it in this podcast, I think is quite inspiring. There is no question that, at least in my mind, that had Apollo been raised by somebody other than his father, it's very hard to imagine he would have achieved the success that he has achieved. His father's role in his life has just been unbelievable. And I think that's a common theme we see in the people who are the greatest.
One of the things that I didn't really fully appreciate prior to this podcast was how this entire nation of South Korea basically grew to hate him in ways that are almost impossible to describe following a very controversial race in 2002 We go into that in great detail, so I'm not going to go into the whys and the what's now, but the story is incredible both how he got to that point of being so despised by an entire nation and also how he basically went into the belly of the lion to confront this head on. And ultimately the finish to that story is as remarkable as how he got there.
Apollo has been known even inside the circles of Olympic athletes as having kind of a surreal approach to training and we're going to link to some videos, including one that is my absolute favorite with some of his training routines, but his discipline, his work ethic are legendary. Once that switch was clicked, he spent the early part of his career basically riding on talent and then just realized, nope, I'm going to go all in on this. I never want to finish a single race and have a single regret.
His determination character responds to adversity. I mean, they really, they're certainly inspirational to me.
And frankly, I think this is, of all the podcasts I've ever recorded, if I was going to say to my kids, I want you to listen to one, this is the one I want them to hear, at least of all the podcasts I've done so far, because this to me is really about grit. And I feel very strongly that that's arguably one of the, if not the most important, one of the most important things we want to be able to instill in our children is a sense of grit. So hopefully this will serve to give my kids a lesson on that and potentially for yours as well. The parallels between Apolo's life and Rocky Balboa are just amazing to me. And I can't resist making those comparisons a few times. And notwithstanding the fact that his name is also Apollo. And of course, Apollo Creed, though, spelt with two L's is the fictional character that is one of the most important antagonists of Rocky Balboa, that's not lost on me. But if I were to sum up one Rocky-ism that sort of explains Apolo's life, it's the one where Rocky Balboa in the sixth installment of that movie series is explaining to his son that it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. And obviously I love that as a metaphor for life, but I think it's illustrated here. Apolo's just a great storyteller and he's a beautiful speaker. And I think that's reflected in the fact that this interview goes on for almost four hours. It would have easily gone on for six or seven had we not already made commitments to do other things that evening. So I hope you find this interview half as interesting as I did. I think the show notes will have some really great stuff in them and there's gonna be links to some really cool videos that we allude to, including not just races, but some of the other stuff that goes above and beyond that. Lastly, just a couple things on some housekeeping.