Mark Sorenson won two world championships by the age of seventeen. But at twenty, despite playing the best tournament of his life, his team lost the final.

Mike ‘Crono’ Cron spent 15 years with the All Blacks — more than 200 tests, two World Cups, and a reputation as the best scrum coach in the game.

90 minutes into a 1,367km swim down the length of New Zealand, Jono Ridler turned his head to breathe and saw a large shark a body length away. He got out of the water for 20 minutes, then got straight back in — and kept going for another 89 days.

At 8,200 metres on K2, in deteriorating weather and near the summit, Peter Hillary made what he calls a “bravely independent” decision: he turned around and descended alone into the storm. The rest of the group stayed together and pushed for the top.

Sir Wayne Smith — aka “The Professor” — is one of the most decorated coaches in New Zealand rugby history. In this conversation he opens up the systems behind decades of winning.

He found the cable-box switch that unlocked adult content when he was just five years old. For the next three decades, porn was Dr Luke Sniewski’s coping mechanism for loneliness, stress and fear - through a professional football career in Italy, a burnout that ended his training business, and relationships that all ended the same way.

Nobody is born good at hard conversations. Not even the people who teach them.

Dame Farah Palmer wasn't the most talented athlete in the room. She was nearly invisible at her first university orientation week. And then… someone from the rugby club noticed her.

What does it take to hold professional athletes to the highest standards - without ever raising your voice?

Rob Hamill is one of New Zealand's most storied and decorated rowers - a silver at the World Championships in 1994, the winner of the first ever Atlantic Rowing Race in '97, and a man who has lived a life most people couldn't imagine. But beneath the athletic achievements is a story that shaped everything.

He lost his dad to suicide, surfed for 40 hours straight and built one of Australia's most powerful mental health movements — one wave at a time.

Sarah Kessans came to New Zealand for a two-year postdoc. Thirteen years later she's still here - an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury working across synthetic biology, space research, and agricultural climate science.

Few All Blacks have ever been as loved as Andrew Mehrtens. Ask him why, and he'll tell you he was just the kid next door who got a winner's wish.

What do you do when Sir Edmund Hillary tells you your ambition isn't big enough?