One of the greatest Ironman champions of all time, the Gold Coast’s Trevor Hendy dominated the sporting world in the 80s and 90s. But it was a shift in mindset - from winning at all costs to winning on all levels - that brought him the greatest fulfilment. These days Trev is all about motivating and inspiring others to reach their own goals.
WRITTEN BY ALISON BONE
For a supreme athlete, crowned six times as Australian Ironman champion and four times world champion, Trev Hendy is surprisingly humble. He is also seriously inspiring, which is why he thrives as a motivational speaker, retreat facilitator, life coach and personal trainer. Switching from Ironman events to kayaking in a quest to chase gold at the 2000 Olympics, Trev found the victories started to feel hollow. “I realised that I liked people more than I liked winning, and suddenly the gold medal didn’t mean anything,” he says. Retiring from professional sports in 1998, he never looked back.
The father of four, Trev still lives on the Gold Coast, with his wife Jo. His seven-year stint as president of the Surfers Paradise Lifesaving Club, a role that he describes as “a really beautiful opportunity to give back,” ended in 2023, but the club that he has been a member of for 48 years is still close to his heart. As is the Gold Coast itself, “It’s the perfect environment to live the type of life and lifestyle that I want to live, and to feel the feelings that I want to feel,” he says.
So Trev, your priorities have clearly changed since the days when you dominated the sporting world. What gets you out of bed now?
I often say that there are no ordinary moments, that life actually has magic available all the time, it’s just whether we're in the right frequency to receive it. It’s like searching for a radio station you know, am I tuning into it or am I in the static? I love waking up and going, what can I do today to get more of those radio stations lined up, and remove more of the static for both myself and for others. These days it all revolves around helping other people tap into the magic.
One of the ways you do that is through your Breath and Breakthrough Retreats, can you tell us about that?
I do a lot of personal development work, and along with Kane Johnson - former AFL captain for Richmond, and Mark Kluwer, a breath specialist who worked with Wim Hof for quite a while, we’ve been running off grid men's retreats. We help men get from their heads to their hearts, basically to get back from all their struggles in life, open themselves up and get back out into the world. We mostly do men’s retreats, but they have been so popular that we are now doing some women’s and mixed retreats as well.
So, what led you to facilitate men’s retreats?
When I was coming through sports everything was about mind and body. You know, if you can really train your mind to train your body, you can achieve anything. But I got to a point where my mind was so strong that I was kind of walled off. Then, suddenly my body was falling apart, everything was crumbling and I realised there were other things that I needed to learn. Like that it wasn't just about body and mind, it was also about soul. I had to learn to become vulnerable and when I did that, I had this incredible turnaround in my life and that is something I wanted to help other people with.
But what it ultimately came down to, was this calling with my two great mates, Kane and Mark. We could talk about anything and be super emotional with each other; and it's like, wow, other people don't have what we have. Other men don't get to talk about their feelings and release them and move on from them. In fact, a lot of them are self-medicating. They’re gambling, drinking, taking drugs, suffering with depression and withdrawal, and there's a lot of suicide. We hold a really good space, and have an amazing record of, I would say 100% of people going, ‘my life just completely changed’.
You have a mantra, ‘the conditions are always perfect,’ can you expand?
When I first started competing I saw that the winner gets the girl, the prizes, the respect. So I decided I'm going to have to be the winner. And it was amazing because that tapped me into a power and into my potential. But then I decided I didn’t just want to win, I wanted to perfect the Ironman race, so I needed to be able to do it in any conditions and in whatever order was drawn out of the hat. With that shift in mindset, I was able to say to myself, the conditions are always perfect, the order is perfect. That allowed me to embrace the conditions rather than resist them. In two years, I went from never winning a race to world champion.
And how do you relate that to life beyond the ocean?
By embracing what's happening, rather than hoping for things to be a certain way, you bring out the best in yourself. Sometimes it's beautiful here on the Gold Coast and it seems like paradise. Other days it's a howling cyclone, or whatever it is. But the conditions are always perfect, the only question is, what are they perfect for? So some days, the conditions in life teach you forgiveness, patience or determination. Or they may teach self-love, or to be selfless and look after someone else.
Ultimately, when I lost my way in life and got into some pretty dark places, the conditions were still perfect. Because I had to learn that it was more about the heart than it was about the head - it was about my emotions and the things that I’d suppressed and run away from. And I had to go back and look at that original feeling that I wasn't good enough unless I was the winner. From there, everything served its ultimate purpose, which was to teach me about what was really important in life.
For more inspiration from Trev, follow him @hendytrev, and tune into podcast Future Lab.
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