Yarra Leisure Duty Manger, Ray Oo, has a remarkable story.

In 2020 he qualified as a swimmer to represent Myanmar at the Tokyo Olympics. But political unrest in Myanmar upended this dream as Ray opted not to be a part of the team on political grounds.

With a natural inclination to compete simply for pleasure and innate desire to train, there is nothing stopping Ray from taking on any high-level athletic challenge he puts his mind to.

Ray said he started swimming at the age of six. “I decided to keep swimming hoping that I could try to get into the Tokyo Olympic games,” he said. “At the time, I was swimming for Myanmar, and I was hoping I could be the first Burmese to have ever qualified for an Olympic swimming slot through the proper qualification standards.”

“I was 22, it was just after Rio Olympics, and I thought I would have a few good years of training to make it to Tokyo,” he explained. “I moved to Melbourne in about 2017 and started training at Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre (MSAC).”

To reach his Olympic goal Ray had to attend training sessions at MSAC Monday to Saturday.

“Monday, Wednesday and Friday we’d have doubles, so a swim twice a day, and gym training every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday,” he explained. “It was full on! Some days I would do four to five hours of training a day.”

After reaching peak Olympic level athleticism and then not racing, what was Ray going to do next?

Ray took up cycling and running during COVID, so the next logical step was to compete in a triathlon. With a year and half to prepare, Ray signed up for the Ironman New Zealand, held in Taupō.

“I competed in the New Zealand Ironman in March this year.” he told us. “I was already running quite a bit and cycling as well,” Ray explained. “I thought if I was going to do it, I might as well go for the highest most difficult triathlon.”

He said the ideal weekly cycling mileage would be around 300kms per week but with his fulltime work schedule Ray could only ride around 120kms on a good week.

“I was running maybe 20-35 kms a week and swimming 8-12kms,” he said. “It was the bare minimum to be honest.”

After the swim Ray was the 6th competitor out of the water out of approximately 1000 participants. But it was all downhill from there he told us, and rumour has it he is not keen to cycle competitively again anytime soon.

When asked what motivates him to train so hard Ray said, “I just want to have a high standard of fitness for myself so that if I did have an event, like say a marathon or ultra marathon, that I wanted to join at the very last minute, I would be able to do it.”
 
“I pretty much train by myself. If I have few hours I will just go for a run for a couple of hours. No special diet. Just protein powder and I eat as much as I can to fuel my energy requirements,” he said.

We asked Ray what he was planning to train for next.

“I want to do the ultra-marathon trail running event in Tasmania, Mount Kunyani. I’ll do that in 2 years. It’s a bit over 60 kms. I like running - I can run forever.”

A calm and focused presence on our pool deck, Ray is always ready for action.

We asked him what he likes about working at Yarra Leisure. “The people. It’s always guaranteed you will have a good time with the people that you work with, and the customers you interact with.”