Massey student off to the 'academic Olympics'

He might be retired from competition, but former Olympic swimmer Moss Burmester is still very much focused on the Olympics and everything it stands for.

The Massey University student will travel to Greece next week to take part in what has been dubbed the ‘academic Olympics’.

Every year the International Olympic Academy, the academic arm of the International Olympic Committee, runs educational workshops at its site in Olympia.

Mr Burmester will be attending the Young Participants’ Session with 200 other participants aged 20 to 35 years from all over the world. The programme runs for two weeks and includes presentations, discussion groups, art and cultural activities, and sport.

“This workshop covers the whole of Olympism, which is really meant to be a way of life,” he says. “For the Ancient Greeks, Olympism encompassed arts, culture, sport, and living healthily – and the Olympic Games was just a celebration of all those things. For me, going to Greece is really about learning about Olympism and how I can use those values to give back to the community.”

This balanced approach to leading a healthy life resonates much more with Mr Burmeister now that he has retired from competitive sport.

“Life’s changed a lot since I finished competing. I definitely have a lot more on the go – I’m not focused on that one single thing,” he says. “My main focus has been uni, but I have always got things on the side. And I spend more time looking to the future. I still don’t know what I want to do yet, but there’s a lot of potential options out there and I am really excited about it.”

Mr Burmester is now in his final year of a Bachelor of Business Studies at Massey University, but it has been a long road juggling study with sport.

“I actually started at Massey in 2005 at the Design School, but it was just too hard to travel with my drawing paper, so I ended up looking at business because I could take a textbook away with me,” he says. “I’ve tried to keep an element of creativity in my degree by doing a double major in Marketing and Entrepreneurship and Small Business. I am also working part-time as a consultant in the carbon industry, which was an opportunity that came out of one of my papers last year.”

He says, through it all, Massey has been both flexible and supportive – and he will be doing his mid-year exams one week early so he can go to the International Olympic Academy.

“While I was swimming, I always had the support of Massey, which was awesome. The University is very athlete-friendly, and it’s even better now as they have developed a programme for athletes with its own coordinator. I know that swimmers who went to other universities sometimes struggled to get time off, or assignment extensions, or to reschedule their exams.”

Mr Burmester will return from Europe just in time for the London Olympics, but he does plan to visit the host city to check out some of the Olympic venues. He says he is not sure how he will feel watching the event on television, but that he plans to watch as much as he can.

“I guess watching the Olympics and not being part of it is going to be very different for me. This will be the first major event that I’m not actually going to be at. Once you become an Olympic athlete it stays with you. I swam for 15 years and it really is a part of who I am,” he says.

“Every time I went to the Olympics I got a massive buzz and it still excites me now. I still follow athletes, I still support them, I’m a board member of the New Zealand Swimmers’ Association so I’m still out there backing swimmers and trying to make the sport better.”