RYAN PINI: I was born in Papua New Guinea in '81 and I lived there most of my life. I moved down into Australia to better my training and I've been here for seven years so far. This is my parents' place that I'm staying at at Kangaroo Point here. And it's very convenient to me. The pool's only about 10 minutes away.

My height - I'm six foot four, six foot five - in between there. My foot size is a 14, so it helps in the water. Same with my hands. I've got big hands. It all comes into account. The...even your wingspan. I think the Australians did a study on wingspan compared to the height and if you've got longer arms, the better chances of you becoming a good swimmer. So I think my wingspan is about 15 centimetres longer than my body. There's so many reasons why swimming in Australia is a lot better. There's, obviously, a pool that's open. They've...from what I understand is they've closed the 50-metre pool in Port Moresby. So they're training in a 25-metre pool at a school which is...it's just hard. It's too hard to try and... 'Cause you've got, you know, other school members that want to swim as well and to be able to maintain that and keep swimmers in the water is very difficult.

I train with Andrew Mewing who's actually on the... ..he's been on the Australian team for the 200 freestyle and so there's him and I that train very closely together. And we're very competitive and that's...it keeps you... ..it's an incentive to keep training harder and try to beat them by, you know, 0.1 of a second if you can. And it just... it improves your swimming and readies you for racing. 'Cause in Papua New Guinea, when I go back up there for holidays, I'm training by myself, basically, and it's very hard to keep motivated.

Well, I do nine sessions of swimming a week and they range from an hour and a half to two hours, so that's fairly intensive and it takes a lot out of you. I've got two gym programs a week and I have pilates. Then I've got one or two massage and physiotherapy things I go to as well. Usually by the end of the week I'm pretty worn out and just wanting to spend Saturday just... ..Saturday and Sunday afternoon just completely doing nothing, just relaxing.

'99, the SP Games back then, that was the first gold medal I won for an international competition. And winning that was, you know, a huge experience back then when I was in high school. Ever since then, you know, you go away to overseas competitions. You may not be winning gold medals, but you're sort of improving your times to standards which you never thought you'd get to. And being able to do that gives you a sense of pride and wanting to better yourself. Every year after that, I was bettering myself by a good second, I know, in the 100 fly, just dropping my time down. And then, I don't know, it was sort of just a goal of mine to be able to sort of make it maybe into the top 15 Australian, top 10. And then, you know, coming into the top 10 in the world, I was just, like, "OK," you know. It's just a... You sort of don't expect to be able to get there, but you just keep pushing yourself to make sure you can. And, yeah, it's just an overwhelming feeling to be in the top 10 in the world for something that I love to do and, you know, I couldn't change that.

I just love swimming, either way. Commonwealth Games last year, 2006, it was just amazing to win gold for Papua New Guinea. That was one of my biggest achievements. It was a lot bigger than what I, sort of, even thought. At that time when I won the gold medal it was just, um, you know... Hearing the national anthem was pretty incredible, but arriving back home into Port Moresby, seeing thousands of people there welcoming the team back, it was a huge emotional feeling and it was very, very honourable. It's given people in Papua New Guinea someone to look up to. Hopefully, that I can, you know, give someone that incentive to keep training or maybe the government... you know, they have put a bit more funding into swimming and the rest of the sports, which is really good. I guess, you know, it's an achievement in itself to be able to give that to Papua New Guinea and hopefully better the sports in Papua New Guinea, get better facilities and things like that.