Chris Gayomali

And it dawned on me that just like the mental load of being able to live like this, like that does so much for your ability to compete at a high level.

Just not having to worry about any of the other stuff of like, where's my dinner going to come from?

And oh no, now I got to cook for my kid and like do all this other stuff.

It's like a very privileged sort of, you know, almost like a college sports star existence again for as long as they want to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Andrei, he's a wonderful, wonderful dude.

He had to escape from Ukraine during the war.

And when the bombs started falling, he was like a very...

serene sort of calming voice among the group and it's an interesting dynamic because they're all competing against each other uh they're all trying to you know win money over the other person but they all are really pushing each other to be better like having uh the coach brett hawk told me that having this caliber of athlete uh in sort of the same practice it's

it's unreal.

It's sort of like a just rarefied air in there of excellence.

The second best guy is to your left, the third best guy is to your right, and it pushes you to train harder.

But when the bombs started falling, Andre was just like, oh yeah, I've been there.

He's like, do this, pull out some cash.

If you need some, I got some for you.

Have your IDs all in one place.

And he was just a real sweetheart to the rest of them.

Yeah, yeah.

So this lifeguard, I felt bad for him because it's like, you know, I think the metaphor I used in the GQ piece was it was like Frodo minding the Avengers during practice.

It's like, yeah, go corral the Hulk over there, buddy.