"Crazy Coast to Coast Guy"

Steve is highly motivated to succeed in a variety of endeavors, and has studied and tested how to turn this motivation into winning reality, giving him the knowledge to be a natural motivational speaker.

Combine this background with his eagerness to share his knowledge and his true-to-life honesty, mixed with loads of integrity, and you get a highly enthusiastic, entertaining, and motivational speaker.

Steve Gurney, well known as that “Crazy Coast to Coast guy" won the Coast to Coast 9 times, in a row. He invented a bike with wings, has been poisoned by bat dung while racing in Borneo jungles, nearly died, and then fought back to win the Coast to Coast six times more.

He travels a couple of times a year to compete in Adventure Races which are the most enduring of endurance races. Traversing jungles, swamps, rivers, seas, deserts and mountains as a team, the athletes navigate their way through the course by foot, horse, raft, kayak, bike, and sometimes camel. For 8-10 days continuous they sleep only when they dare. As you may expect, Steve Gurney has interesting tales to tell that will make you cringe, cry and laugh.

He was voted 1991 and 1998 Canterbury Sportsperson of the year. In January 2004 he received a Order of Merit in the new Year's honours list for services to endurance sport.

Steve Gurney speaks passionately on themes from his sporting experience in a format that allows parallels to be drawn to business. Apart from his content about determination and his race winning formula, Steve’s speaking is embellished with anecdotes from adventure, horror stories, and humour from his travels. Team Adventure Racing in extenuating circumstances has given Steve interesting insights to share on team dynamics.

Steve has successfully competed in numerous multi-sport races around the world. His life is an adventure. If there's not a mountain to traverse, a river to kayak, swamp to slither through, or bush to negotiate, then he's not altogether satisfied. While no longer a full-time athlete, he still competes in selected events...even on Television in 'Dancing with the Stars'.

Obstacle or Opportunity?

Life is full of obstacles and opportunities.  The important thing is to appreciate that the obstacles themselves are commonly opportunities when viewed from a positive angle.

During the Raid Guloises Adventure Race in Borneo, Steve was infected with Leptosporosis by bat dung as his team raced through the Mulu caves. Steve suffered circulatory collapse and pulmonary oedema followed by renal failure while being dragged through intensive care wards in Malaysia and Singapore.  

He came very close to death. It is Steve's fight back to winning form (winning 7 Coast to Coast races in a row afterwards) in just 2 years, in the face of medical professionals' skepticism and doubt that spawned many requests for speaking engagements.

Learn how he turned this, and many of his other life's large obstacles into a winning opportunity.

Obstacle/Opportunity topics

• Hey! I'm not dead yet! How to stage a come-back.
• Success is a skill
• Turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones

Fitness and Sports

Steve jokes about his ‘lucky legs’ ("so scrawny, lucky they don't snap off and poke up my bum"), his diminutive stature, and the fact that he always came last in races at school.

Steve was so determined to win that he searched everywhere for advantages, learnt new techniques, trained harder and more thoroughly, invented new equipment, and cunningly outmaneuvered the competition on race days.  In his talks, and his book (Lucky Legs - see the bar on the right), he generously shares his strategies for success that can be used by anyone, in any field - be it sport or business.

Among other techniques, he has figured out how to incorporate fitness training into his everyday life's routines, and is excited to pass on this knowledge to make others healthier and happier, and through these techniques, helping to make a cleaner, greener society.

Presentation Topics Include

• Turn obstacles into opportunities
  
• Escape the “Bubblewrap”
  
• Living a life to die for!
  
• The science of success
  
• Develop bulletproof resilience

Testimonials

By blending real life achievements, experience and methods Steve was able to engage our people in honest and challenging conversations about “lifting the bar”. Steve has a no nonsense and honest approach to conversations and change that people respond to, he’s engaging and entertaining and challenging. We’ve already booked him for our next session.
Commonwealth Bank Grp Australia

Steve was inspirational, a real catalyst for positive change throughout our team. We look forward to him coming back next year.
Air New Zealand

“FANTASTIC!”, “a perfect, perfect tonic at the end of the day for that particular audience”, “couldn’t have been a better match”, “he was just so lovely”, “fun” and “he was just part of our whole day”. 
Harcourts Real Estate NZ

Your personal accounts of how you obtained and sustained peak performance have contributed to advancing the development of sport in New Zealand.
New Zealand Olympic Committee

Love Steve’s energy. Totally approachable and seems genuinely interested. The sports/racing stories really add to the lessons – making them real.
HR Coach, PeopleMad Ltd

Provided a great insight to the way of the mind and how to achieve what you want in a simple and fun manner. The course really opened my perspective to NLP now I think I’m hooked! It’s fantastic!
Sports Coordinator