Harry Garside is handling the inevitable questions with grace and honesty.
How is he? What comes next? Everyone wants to know.
The 27-year-old boxer went to the Paris Olympics with hopes for a gold medal so intense that he could feel it in his chest.
The last line in his newly-released book, The Good Fight, which left off as he was heading to Paris, radiated with Harry's typical positive energy: "Obviously, I want a gold medal, though. So let's go get it."
Instead, he was bundled out in the first round. Beaten by Hungarian boxer Richard Kovacs. His 20-year dream of an Olympic gold medal was crushed in nine minutes in a boxing ring in the northeastern suburbs of Paris.
There would be no standing on the podium draped in the Australian flag like his idols Cathy Freeman and Grant Hackett.
Garside's raw, real emotions at the time - "I feel like a failure right now" - and his refusal to not give pat answers to the media made everyone - not just Karl Stefanovic's mum - want to give him a hug.
In an interview right after the shock bout, sweating and shellshocked, Garside told a Channel Nine journalist: "I know sportsmen are just meant to say the right things right now and thank you so much, but deep down inside, mate, I fear for what the next couple of months looks like for myself and I'm sure there'll be some dark times."
Later, talking with Karl Stefanovic - whose mum told him to give Garside a hug - the young boxer was obviously in pain. But he spoke with such aplomb - about the reality of losing in sport, about life being full of knock-backs and about how his self-worth would come from being a good person, not a gold medalist.
He won more than a few new fans, among them parenting expert Maggie Dent who describes Garside as "such a bold man".
Dent, whose latest book is Help Me Help My Teen, was impressed by how Garside didn't deny his disappointment, how he still needed to process the hurt and how he knew he would come out the other side with the support of his family.
"We need to show his clips to so many of our boys who think they are a failure when something goes wrong," she said.
Just a month later, Garside is back in Australia, on a book tour for The Good Fight, talking about what has gone on over the last few weeks, and where he is right now in his heart and mind.
"I'm actually doing relatively OK," he said.
"I think I'm waiting for this raw, unwavering emotion to sort of bench me or put me on my bum, I guess to knock me down. But I may be waiting for something that may not come.
"[The book tour] has been a lot of fun and it's a big distraction as well. But once this is done, I'm just going to go into nature, on my own, for however long I need, no phone, no nothing and just create some space to feel some of that emotion."
If anything, the book and the tour has kept him from his own thoughts and his own self-criticism, something he's dealt with since he was a kid.
"It was like my biggest fear, losing the way I did in Paris. And I guess for that to happen and then to walk back into Australia into the book tour and just feel like I'm getting a massive hug from Australia, it's been really nice," he said.
There's been some positive developments in other areas, including having a new girlfriend. "It's very fresh but it feels very promising," he said. "She's actually living in London at the moment." And not an athlete. "No, she's not. Very creative. Creative mind."
In The Good Fight, Garside sets out from the start that he didn't want to be "another celebrity wanker with a self-help book telling everyone how to live their lives".
It's his story, a raw account of his journey through sport and what he's learned along the way. He includes academic studies that explain a little more about the human condition. Things that interest him. People who inspire him. How nature helps his mental state. He writes about relationships, with his family and himself. He's even included poems he has written, saying they're pretty mediocre but he finds it cathartic to get them down on paper - or more often his Notes app.
"I think these poems offer an insight into what it's like to be in my head. Brace yourself."
Garside was nine when he walked into the Lilydale Youth Club with his mum to have a go at boxing. The youngest of three boys, he was a bit meek. Soft. Gentle. Not like his "super masculine" brothers and father. The family lived in working-class Lilydale outside Melbourne. Dad was a roofer. His brothers were knockabout, fearless larrikins. Garside loved them all but didn't feel the same. Maybe boxing would make him feel tougher.
He had a natural ability as a boxer but was "rubbish for a really long time", losing 10 of his first 18 fights. At 13, his long-time coach and mentor Brian Levier even suggested boxing might not be for him. That spurred him on.
By the age of 20, Garside had won a gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which were held in 2021 due to the pandemic, he won bronze, becoming the first Australian boxer to win an Olympic medal since Grahame Cheney's silver at Seoul in 1988. Still not enough, he reckoned. Still a failure. He wanted that gold medal. (Garside lived in Canberra for a year training at the Australian Institute of Sport in the lead-up to Tokyo. In his book, he says making the decision to stay there over the 2020 summer when everyone else had gone home, during the choking smoke of the nearby bushfires, was one of his lowest points. But, don't get him wrong - he "loves Canberra. It's a really cool, outdoorsy place".)
Over the years, Garside had worked as a roofer with his dad and as a plumber with his brother, and dabbled in professional boxing in his early 20s. It was easy money. His reputation grew, even beyond boxing circles. But his heart wasn't in it. "It felt more and more like a business than a sport."
It was while he was on the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, filmed in the jungles of Africa in early 2023, that Garside decided he'd walk away from professional boxing and give the Paris Olympics a red hot go.
He finished second in the show (after retired netballer Liz Ellis) and his dad was flown to Africa for a tearful reunion for the cameras. Father and son flew back to Australia together on a high. Garside, whose flight was paid for by the show, upgraded his dad to business class. They luxuriated in the "warm hand towels" and pyjamas that were "soft as clouds". Two working-class blokes living the dream.
Then, it all came to a shuddering halt. Garside was arrested at Sydney airport and paraded by police in front of a waiting media pack. His former partner had accused him of common assault. It was bewildering to him. He was scared and confused.
A year later, the charge was withdrawn. Outside the court, Garside said he'd been vindicated. His powerhouse barrister Sue Chrysanthou had passed on recordings and communications to investigators "that gave the police a full understanding of what happened - clearing me of any wrongdoing whatsoever", he said at the time.
But the damage had been done. Garside had been abandoned by friends, suffered panic attacks, lost half a million dollars in endorsements.
In The Good Fight, he talks about the whole episode and how he's not sure if he'll ever fully recover from it. He says now the only good thing about that time is that it has put Paris into some perspective.
"What I went through last year, that's real pain, that's real struggle," he said.
"My soul was shattering in that moment [of the arrest]. Like my earth felt like it was crumbling in front of my eyes. I guess after moments like that - losing a match in boxing or losing a sporting match, it's just like, 'Is that real pain? Is that real struggle?' Like, the sun does come up tomorrow.
"Maybe what happened last year is helping me get through this [post-Paris] moment as good as what I'm doing right now."
Garside is someone who has never conformed. He got an "almost hysterical reaction" from people when he painted his nails at the Tokyo Olympics. He wanted to wear the Olympic ring colours on his nails. End of. But how did that gel with him being a boxer with a mullet?
He's also used ballet as a way to train for boxing. And has cast aside any thought that the sport is about making him tough. He now regards boxing as something beautiful, "a poetic dance of movement and technique". He feels like he is a mix of masculine and feminine energy. And, again, he's not about telling other people how to live.
"I'm not saying that all boys should suddenly wear nail polish or be more feminine or whatever. I'm saying that boys can be whatever they want," he says in the book.
He's also got some unexpected views. He worries that the world right now "celebrates victimhood" and that young people especially "feel excluded from society and their peers if they don't have something to be a victim of". He hates the term "toxic masculinity" and says masculinity can be "hugely positive. It's what allows us to be strong and stoic and resilient. It's what empowers us to provide and to protect".
And, in case anyone was wondering, he's heterosexual. Not that it matters either way. But it's been a thing.
"If I had a dollar for every time someone had questioned my sexuality, I'd be writing his book from my mega yacht moored just off the coast of Monaco, on a computer made from solid gold."
In the end, he wants to live an authentic life without regret. He's discovered he and his dad have more in common that he thought. Fatherhood will be in his future.
And so to more questions: Will he box again? Will he return to the professional realm of the sport? Will he try for the next Olympics, in Los Angeles in 2028?
"It's really hard to make a decision on that," he said.
"I'll always train, I'll always stay fit. I love boxing so I always try to do it a few times a week, especially in my off-season. But I've said to myself, after I do that time in nature and create some space to feel some emotions, then I think I'll have a bit more of an answer about what's next.
"It's like, boxing has a shelf life. And I'm the type of person, I don't like to be a puppet in anyone else's game, I like to be the master of my fate.
"So, whatever it is I just know that I'll try my best and move with pure intentions and listen to my heart or listen to that inner kid."
Garside says he is working with his manager on coming up with a way that he can share his journey with more people, including by connecting with schools.
"My whole life has been so self-focused, you need to be so selfish to achieve, but it's not fulfilling anymore," he said.
"It served me for many years but life isn't about us as individuals, it's about the impact we can have on others. If I can try to impact people in some positive way, I think I will feel more fulfilled than I will winning a gold medal or winning matches."
- Harry Garside The Good Fight is out now through Simon & Schuster ($34.99)
