Ken Wallace

My biggest motivation is knowing what it feels like to win medals and thinking that I want that feeling again. It was incredible to succeed in Beijing and come home to your whole country behind you but, importantly, all your family and friends.

Making the Australian team is the hardest part, and going to the Olympics is the easy part. You're there representing your country - you're representing every single person in it, strangers you don't know - and there's a lot of positive energy, but you have to know to channel it the right way.

Before the last Olympics, we had meat raffles at the local surf club to get petrol money to go to training, to help out with the bills. But I know there are a lot of athletes worse off and that all athletes, at some stage of their careers, have made sacrifices.

I'm one of those people who is colour blind to a certain degree. And that doesn't mean I'm not acutely aware of race in our country and abroad and in the world. I know what's going on, and I'm very aware of it.

At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.