THE Ambassador’s speech is always a highlight of Breakfast in the Park and this year was no different with former Olympic boxer Rick Timperi a hit.
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He attended with his wife and two children before heading off to the equally successful Pool Party.
Rick, who hails from Croydon in Sydney, told the gathered crowd “I believe the real Australia is out of the city”.
“If the major cities are the skin of Australia, country towns are the heart and the bloodlines,” Rick said.
He talked about how he came to Australia at the age of four with his parents and sister, moving from Rome, Italy to the town of Hartley near Lithgow.
“I was fully imported at the age of four from Italy,” Rick said.
He had a never-say-never attitude to life when he was young.
“I always thought if someone said something is hard then it would take a bit of time, if they said it was impossible then it would take a bit more time,” he said.
When he initially thought he might be interested in boxing, Rick was told he was the wrong body shape and type but he knew better.
“I was five feet 10 but had an arm-span of six feet two,” Rick said.
This gave him good reach which he worked to his advantage in the ring.
He started winning a few bouts and within 10 weeks of his amatuer boxing career having started he had his first national title.
People then started telling Rick he could be a contender for the Olympic Games (only amatuer boxers are eligable, professional boxers can-not compete at Olympic level).
“When people said to me ‘you can go to the Olympics’ I was like the Olympics is what you watch on TV, I can’t do that,” Rick said. But, he did. He was there at the opening ceremony with all of the sporting idols he grew up watching and he was one of them.
Rick’s career saw him ranked in the top 10 in the world in amateur boxing in 1992 and 1996 and between 1990 and 1996 he held the Australian Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion title.
He was captain of the Boxing Team of the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
Also in 1996, Rick won a gold medal in the Oceania Championships and Liverpool Multi-Nations England Presidents Cup.
In 1995, Rick won the Light Heavyweight division at the Australian Championships, fighting at 81kg.
In 1994 he was selected as the male representative for the International Olympic Academy in Greece.
He puts his success in the ring down to belief.
“If someone said to you can you swim 100 kilometres you’d say no, right, however if you were on a ship which went down 100 kilometres from shore you’d find a way - and if there was a shark you’d find a way to swim even faster,” was the analogy used by Rick at the breakfast to talk about what is possible when you believe in yourself.
He received a resounding round of applause from those gathered at the breakfast after his entertaining speech.
Rick was then presented a traditional basket of local goodies from mayor Jim Slattery and the Ambassador’s Pin from Woolworths representative Emma Jones with Woolworths the major sponsor of the ambassador program.
