Grace Brown: Why an Olympic Champion Rides Toward Fear.

In 2024, an Australian cyclist became the first rider to win the Olympic and World Championship time trial in the same year. Her Paris gold came on a rain-slicked Parisian course where she beat her closest rival by over a minute and a half. Twelve months later, with no prior experience in product development, she'd launched her own TGA-registered SPF 50 sports sunscreen brand. 

What does it take to win Olympic gold and then build a business from scratch? Meet the Olympic gold medallist who treats fear and discomfort as a signal to move forward.

Guest: Grace Brown OAM. 2024 Olympic and World Champion in the women's cycling time trial. Founder, Sun Motion sports sunscreen. President, The Cyclists' Alliance. SBS expert cycling commentator.

Host: Brigette McGuire, Monash Business School.

© 2026 Monash Business School

Produced by Miniature

Transcript

Brigette McGuire 0:03

Watching sport is an emotional experience. Whether you're in the arena or you're watching your favourite player face their fiercest rival, the game triggers something deeply human within all of us, doesn't it? Our heart rate quickens as we feel the hair stand up on the back of our neck. Will they win or will they live to fight another day? And while sport is full of emotion and drama these days, it is also data-driven and deeply commercial. In Australia alone, sport generates more than $50 billion a year. Every decision made behind the scenes now shapes how fans watch, connect with and play the game. And how fans connect with the game in turn impacts how their favourite athletes perform and how their brands are managed. Welcome to Love the Fan, Win the Game. I'm Brigette McGuire. I've worked in sport for decades at all levels from grassroots to global advanced marketing to media coverage. I'm now leading the next generation of sports thinkers, marketers and leaders as Associate Professor of Practice in Marketing at Monash Business School. Over my career, I've learned that the contest can be just as competitive off the field, where executives balance growth, technology, and the responsibility they carry to fans who live and breathe the game. Each episode of this podcast goes inside those decisions. We speak with leaders who are redefining fan engagement, sponsorship, and the social impact of sport in a multi-billion dollar industry. My guest today is Australia's most decorated female road cyclist and the 2024 Olympic gold medalist in the individual time trial. Over her professional career, she has built an impressive Palmars, including World Championship Gold, Commonwealth Games Gold, victory at the iconic Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and multiple national ITT titles. So, how does a champion athlete channel their discipline and strategic thinking into a new chapter as a founder and an entrepreneur? In this episode of Love the Fan Win the Game, we're going to find out. It's certainly been a big few years for Grace Brown OAM, winning Olympic gold in Paris in 2024. And then late last year, she launched Sun Motion, a TGA-registered SPF 50 Plus sports sunscreen brand. Born from a gap, she identified in the market. Grace is an expert cycling commentator and podcast contributor for SBS and president of the Cyclists Alliance, a non-profit organization advocating for gender equity and professional development of women in cycling. In March this year, Grace and her partner Elliot welcomed their baby son into the world. Please welcome our first reigning Olympic gold medalist to Love the Fan win the game, Grace Brown. And not only Grace, but her beautiful baby son Stanley as well. So a very warm welcome to you. It's a big intro, but there's lots to talk about, Grace.

Grace Brown 3:07

Thanks for having me, Brigette. And yes, if you hear some squeaks or little noises in the background, that is my son Stanley.

Brigette McGuire 3:14

Excellent. And he is very welcome to have his own contribution and make whatever sounds he wants to. So it's it's wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for coming along. So tell me, let's start at the beginning. I know as a young girl, I got into sport because I followed my older brothers. I really had no choice. Sport was everywhere in our community, in our in our home. Tell me, how did how did you get into sport, Grace?

Grace Brown 3:38

Oh, I think uh yeah, through family, of course. I'm one girl with three brothers, so I had a very active upbringing. And yeah, me and my brothers were very competitive. We'd play all sorts of things, running races. Sorry, my son's making some noise.

Brigette McGuire 3:58

Absolutely perfect.

Grace Brown 4:00

And yeah, particularly the brother that was just older than me dragged me into a lot of a lot of games and running races and kicking the footy and all sorts of things. But my dad was always a bit of a fitness fanatic as well, riding his bike, running, taking us on hikes. So I just spent a lot of time outdoors moving my body. And once I got to school, I started wanting to win things.

Brigette McGuire 4:26

Okay, so there was a competitive younger sister streak coming out out there. So you've obviously got to school and then you've started competing in lots of different sports. When did you know that you were good at sport? When did that come through? There's clearly a competitive desire there. Yeah. So but when did you know that you were you were actually, you know.

Grace Brown 4:49

Yeah, I think I realized, you know, quite quickly at the primary school level that various various events I was quite good at. But then in grade three, I think we did cross country. And I just kept making it through the different levels from school, I won the school one, I won the the district one, and then regional, and suddenly I was at state, and I made the Victorian team to go to the national championships. And that's when I realized, okay, I'm I'm alright. I haven't really done much training for this, and I need to work out that side of things. But yeah, I realized I had some natural talent there.

Brigette McGuire 5:30

Yeah. And so the system was starting to reward that natural talent and you know, that desire to to you know, to really push yourself and see and explore how how you could, you know, how far you could progress. So it sounds to me like there was a high performance mindset there from the beginning that you were open to exploring what could be possible. So this originally, if I'm correct, happened in in athletics for you originally.

Grace Brown 5:56

Yeah, as a runner, I yeah, from that moment in primary school where I started progressing through the levels, I realized I was good. I was on the state team, I think a few years, and then suddenly I had a year where I didn't make it. And I realized I'd just been doing it off sort of my natural talent up until that point. And in the meantime, my competitors had started seriously training. Right. And that's where it sort of switched in my head that okay, I need to actually be a bit more strategic about this and put some work into it. And yeah, I started training. I got a coach and made some changes and and worked my way back into that elite level of racing and making the team to go to nationals again, both in cross-country and in athletics. I was racing 800 to 1500, but 1500 was sort of my sweet spot. Sweet spot.

Brigette McGuire 6:59

Okay, okay. So very, very strong. Middle distance. So there's there's clearly an endurance capacity that you have there. And tell me, I'm very interested in the participation of girls and women in sport. And often, as we know, if we think of cycling, for example, I always go back to, you know, one of my happiest days of a child was when Santa brought uh a bike for for Christmas, you know, and off you go and you start riding and you have all of that independence. And the stats show that for under nine-year-olds in Australia, it's 50% of boys and 50% of girls will be riding a bike and participating. But once you hit teenage years, as we see in so many sports, that participation of girls drops off. So, in your experience, you're in athletics in a serious way at teenage years. What was that were you seeing that drop off? Or and how did you continue to to move through in those teenage years as a girl?

Grace Brown 7:58

Definitely I I felt this tension, I think, between my desire and what the rest of my female cohort were doing. I remember even in grade six, I had a PE teacher that would sometimes take me out for runs at lunchtime. And I remember my best friend, she would find my running shoes in my back and hide them so I couldn't go. Um why? Because sh she wanted me to hang out with her at lunchtime. Okay. So there's this, yeah, there's that aspect where no one else is doing it. You you sort of feel a bit separate from your peers. I remember also I used to ride my bike to school and suddenly I decided that that wasn't cool. Okay. So I stopped riding my bike, yeah, maybe at around like 11. So cycling sort of went out of my life for all my teenage years. But yeah, there was also, I think what kept me in the sport was that my parents never pushed me. It was always my own, my own motivation to be good at this thing. And despite the fact that it was a little bit different to what a lot of my friends were doing, and there was that pressure to step away, I felt like I had potential that I wanted to meet, and it was self-motivated. There was no never anyone saying, Okay, Grace, you have to go to training now. I decided to do that myself.

Brigette McGuire 9:33

So very much a self-starter.

Grace Brown 9:36

Yeah. And also I so for my last four years of school, I was at boarding school and I found a real community at the club that I went to, which was Box Hill Athletics Club. Right. So that was also a bit of an escape for me from being in the boarding house and that environment. I got autonomy and independence to leave and do my training. So I think at the same time it was an outlet.

Brigette McGuire 10:05

Yeah, great. Somewhere where you could go and have another community that were like-minded in what you were trying to pursue. So tell me what happened when you then changed from athletics to to cycling. Tell me what tell me. Yeah, we're pursuing so we're pursuing athletics and we're obviously a very accomplished middle distance runner. So tell me, tell me what happened.

Grace Brown 10:30

Yeah, I think with athletics, like I obviously had natural talent, but I got to this point where I was trying to increase my training and get better and move to that like really elite level, but my body just wasn't wasn't taking on the training well. I couldn't increase my mileage. I kept getting injured. Uh, I had multiple stress fractures. And eventually, I think at 23, I had a stress fracture in the head of my femur, and it was just the last straw. I was done with the recovery process, and I went to my coach and I said, No, I'm not coming back after this. That's running done for me. And immediately I knew that I needed another sport and probably an endurance sport because that's what my body and mind were used to. So I my dad actually had been trying to get me into cycling for a long time. He'd been saying, you know, I reckon you're you'd be a better cyclist than you are a runner. And I had this thing from from a teenage years where I was like, no, cycling's lame. I don't want to do cycling. Really? That was your that was your perception of the sport. But yeah, then I was that because dad did it?

Brigette McGuire 11:56

Or probably I'm just thinking as a teenage girl, you know.

Grace Brown 12:03

It's just like the helmet and the lighter and everything, it just looks a bit daggy. But cycling's had a bit of a renaissance, and there's there's, you know, the cool crowd in cycling now. Maybe outsiders don't see it that way. I've probably been brainwashed.

Brigette McGuire 12:20

Well, definitely the mammals are a thing, aren't they? That's taken on a life of its own. Definitely.

Grace Brown 12:25

But there are young women on bikes, which is nice. But yeah, I guess I was just like, okay, I'm gonna give cycling a go. And I literally went all in. I bought a nice bike, got all the gear. I found a group in Melbourne on Beach Road, and I got hooked instantly. I just loved the speed. I loved like the feeling of freedom, the wind, and you just sort of can race with people all the time. Like even just in a bunch on a casual ride, you're always just like competing in a way. And that really hooked me into that endless desire of improvement. Like I could see, I could improve in my skills, I could improve in my power on the bike, tactics. It's I think that really surprised me about cycling. It's much more tactical than running and requires much more skill in bike handling. So there was just like endless possibilities of how I could improve in this sport.

Brigette McGuire 13:30

Yeah, and sounds as though you really enjoyed learning and leaning into all of the different aspects of the tactical, technical, you know, psychological. Yeah, psychological. But importantly, physically, your body could could cope.

Grace Brown 13:45

Yeah, and I I felt instantly, I think like one of my very early rides, this woman said to me, It was like, Have you really only just started cycling? It looks like you've been on a bike your whole life. And I, of course, had ridden bikes my whole life, but never seriously, I'd never been a cyclist. It was more just commuting to get around. Like at uni, I would ride to get around Melbourne. But yeah, riding a bike seriously, I only started at 23.

Brigette McGuire 14:16

Okay. So tell me about then that experience of okay, you're 23, you've studied at uni by this stage, you've done an arts degree at Melbourne Uni, and suddenly you think, okay, well, this maybe dad was, you know, maybe there was something to what dad had been telling me for a little while now. How did you then move from immersing yourself into the sport? We're we've started in Beach Road, it's it's set off a fire within you. How did that progress through again the the program or the pathway, if you like, from state to national? And suddenly you're, I'm sure, a a new athlete on the scene within the cycling community. Yeah. How did that progress for you?

Grace Brown 15:00

It was quite fast. I started racing sort of the Victorian series, and then got onto like a national road series team. And from there, within about a year, I was winning races and I got selected for an Australian women's development team. They took us over to Europe to race for the first time. And yeah, I started that was a really tough year because the level between Australia and Europe, you go from racing maybe a bunch of 50 women in Australia to suddenly being in a peloton of 120, 150. So it's uh quite a jump, especially in terms of skills. The European riders are really used to being, you know, shoulder to shoulder, bumping each other, racing for corners, like it's quite full-on. And coming from Australia, we're all a little bit more like gentle riding around each other. And yeah, so that was really going in the deep end for me. And I struggled through those few months racing in Europe. But when I came back, I realized how much I'd grown from that experience. And then from there, I came third at the national championships. I signed my first professional contract, and it just sort of snowballed. And uh suddenly I was in the world tour, which is the highest level of network.

Brigette McGuire 16:35

Yeah, you know, that just that pathway. So, yeah, you know, I think Dad was right, you know. But it must have been it's and we see this so often with Australians who are competing in international sports that suddenly, whether it's Europe or whether you know it's America, wherever wherever, and that first experience can be daunting, and you know, you mentioned struggle. Yeah, how did you then lean into that and keep moving forward? Because sometimes for athletes, it may be a choice of, okay, maybe this isn't for me. Yeah. You know, there it could be doubt, all sorts of things coming in, all of that leaving home for a long period of time, the cost, all of you know, all of those, you know, key elements come into play.

Grace Brown 17:19

Yeah, those thoughts definitely came through my head. I remember distinctively a phone call home to my parents saying, I don't think this is for me. I don't think that I'm cut out to be a professional cyclist, it's all too hard. And yeah, I believed that for a little bit. But then it was that that realization coming back to Australia, and once I raced again in the in the Australian scene, and I experienced the improvement that I'd absorbed whilst being in this really tough environment. I think that was a a really key learning for me that even though it had been a struggle and I'd been uncomfortable and fearful a lot of the time, um, just being exposing myself to that had allowed me to grow. So I think that was a really important learning for my career that I revisited a lot, that discomfort is a breeding ground for personal growth. So I knew then that if I continued exposing myself to discomfort, I would continue to grow.

Brigette McGuire 18:35

So it's the old being comfortable in the uncomfortable.

Grace Brown 18:40

Which is not, I mean, it's not for everyone. No. Um, you have to be, I think, pretty, yeah, pretty sturdy to like cope with that. But you give yourself respite. It's not like you're always in it's not like life is completely full of discomfort. You have moments that you give yourself that are reward as well.

Brigette McGuire 19:03

So, what would that look like for you? Because I think that's a really important message that you know, your your life, whilst you've extremely dedicated to pursuing something in particular, how do you find some sort of balance?

Grace Brown 19:17

Yeah, I I think you have to be really clear with yourself what brings you joy. And for me, I I knew that like my relationships with my family, with my husband were the most important things that I needed to go back for for comfort and joy. And throughout my career, like I spent a lot of time overseas away from that. And teams that I was on didn't want me to come back to Australia quite often because it was disruptive. But I fought really hard to have my time out from the sport to come back to Australia and be with the people that you know made me feel whole because I knew that that was really key to my longevity in the sport. So yeah, I think you you need to be aware of what allows you to feel happy and make these careers sustainable and and gives you the energy to sit in discomfort. Because yeah, if you're not giving yourself pockets of joy and having that balance, then then the your whole life is uncomfortable and you're not going to grow.

Brigette McGuire 20:34

Yeah, and the the cup's definitely gonna be emptying out.

Grace Brown 20:39

You can't take strength from anywhere then.

Brigette McGuire 20:42

Exactly. So you mentioned there that you know your teams overseas would would not want you to be coming back to Australia because you know you've got work to do and races and and obviously training and you become very tired as a as a team. And there's politics within that with selection and you know, as as you then are moving to, you know, whether it's world championships or the biggest races in the world for you. How do you navigate all of those challenging moments in those environments?

Grace Brown 21:11

Yeah, well, specifically with the like discussion around whether I can come back home or not, it was really a matter of uh knowing that they valued me enough that they wouldn't let me go or and me being prepared to lose my job over this thing that I thought was really important. Um, in the end they came around because they saw that actually allowing me to do the what I wanted made me a better athlete and I would always come back stronger and revived from my trips home to Australia. So it was that trust that was built over time that they saw okay, if we give Grace what she's asking for, she will. Return the favour.

Brigette McGuire 22:02

I can see why you're doing well in business, Grace. You're a very good negotiator. But so critical, those those negotiation skills. You know, in those very pressurized moments where people are wanting you to do things that perhaps, you know, is not what you want to do in that time.

Grace Brown 22:20

Yeah, exactly. You need to know what your threshold is and what you're willing to lose.

Brigette McGuire 22:25

Yes, yes. So let's turn our attention to a very exciting day in July in 2024. So it was a dominant victory in Paris. You're the only woman to break 40 minutes for the 32-kilometre course time trial. And despite the conditions were treacherous and rainy, uh, you won the race by over a minute and a half, and it was to win Australia's first gold medal at the at the Paris Olympics. What was that like?

Grace Brown 22:59

It's uh it's crazy. Like it's been almost two years, and the memory is fading a little bit, but it's still very special. Bring it back. Yeah, and also just you know, when you continue on with life, it's like, wow, did I actually do that? Um but yeah, so much had gone into that day. I had raced in Tokyo, and I came fourth in the time trial there by only seven seconds. So it was one of those moments that was a little bit bittersweet because uh initially I felt like, oh, I've just missed out, and like what could I have done to get on the podium? But when I reflected, I hadn't expected to get on the podium for those Olympics. I wasn't aware of the breadth of my potential and coming away from Tokyo, I then knew that I was capable of much more. And I'd also been injured in that race, so I thought, you know, if I came to an Olympics in full health with a, you know, training that a planned that I could actually target a gold medal. So the day after Tokyo was the beginning of a three-year plan uh towards the Paris Olympics and going after a gold medal. And yeah, nothing was gonna stop me on the day, not even some rain, which is also an interesting psychological journey because yeah, it's really dangerous on a bike when it's raining, and in the middle of Paris, the roads are super slippery because usually it's just for cars and there's all this oil that's stripped on the road. As soon as there's rain, it becomes an ice rink. But I had really focused on turning off like my blinkers and just focusing completely on my effort and what I had to do, and understanding that the rain was there for everyone, and I just had to get out there and race my fastest race and remain relaxed because I'd done all the work and I just needed to execute. Okay.

Brigette McGuire 25:26

Just just needed to execute.

Grace Brown 25:29

Exactly. Simple.

Brigette McGuire 25:30

So I wanna I would have just if you could share with us a little bit about from Tokyo then then to Paris. So you've really locked in and said, okay, there's there's there's something here that I I I can go, I can do this, and you you've got that belief now. How did you go about that? Because there's there's obviously it may not happen.

Grace Brown 25:51

Yeah.

Brigette McGuire 25:52

You know, so you know, we've got uh students at the the business school here that that may be, you know, really wanting to pursue something, but to do that, to achieve their goal, they're going to have to sacrifice a lot. Yeah. And there is the risk that it may not occur. What are you what are your thoughts when you when you reflect? You you did achieve it, but there was a risk that that you may not.

Grace Brown 26:15

Yeah, I think you have to understand that the efforts that you put in towards a big goal like that are never wasted, even if you don't attain that goal. There's so many other little progressions along the way. It's not like I had this goal of winning gold in Paris, and that I was really not living anything else in life along the way to that. And if I didn't get a medal, if I finished somewhere else on the podium or like whatever the result was, it didn't mean that those three years were completely wasted because yeah, you learn things along the way, you have other successes. I think also I was on the journey with other people. I built a team and they were all committed to the goal as well, which creates a lot of pressure and responsibility. And responsibility. But I understood that everyone that was on the journey with me wouldn't blame me if I didn't achieve gold. Like they appreciated me for so much more than whatever the result of this race was going to be. So that was a real comfort. And yeah, I think with any big goal, it's never just about the result. Yeah, it's about the process and the especially with a performance-related thing. For me, in the end, it was about doing my best. On the day I really focused in on, okay, I've got this many kilometers to give my absolute best effort, and we're not thinking about what happens after the line. Right. We're thinking about getting to that line, having put everything out on the road and doing an effort that I'm proud of. So then whatever comes from that, it doesn't matter because I'm already proud of my effort.

Brigette McGuire 28:27

And through that race, you kept building, didn't you? At each at each point. She kept pushing ahead. Did you could you sense that you were getting that you were strong throughout each each phase? Could could you tell that you were moving ahead? What did that feel like?

Grace Brown 28:42

Yeah, I think the first couple of kilometers I felt like I was a little bit behind, and then I was like over pushing. But I got to the first intermediate time check, and I heard that I was five seconds ahead of my closest rival. So, how do you hear that? We have uh radio communication. So there's the coach in the car driving behind me. He also gives me directions on the road because I have very little visibility. Really? In my position, it's very aerodynamic. And if I'm holding it correctly, then I can only see about a meter ahead of me. So it's um there's a lot of trust with the coach in the car behind me on the radio. Of course, I'd done a lot of preparation and I knew the course like the back of my hand. So I was prepared for each corner and I knew where I had to be on the road at every given moment. But yeah, coming to that first time check, I was five seconds up on Chloe Digit, the American. And every other time I've raced Chloe, she's always been the fastest to the first intermediate time check. She goes out full gas and then holds on for dear life. I'm I've always been a much more measured rider in my pacing on in a time trial. So I knew that being ahead of her at the first time check was a really good sign. And that was my first little glimmer that I was on a really good day and that I could probably win this race.

Brigette McGuire 30:14

Yeah. It's amazing to hear from you and start to understand the attention to detail that goes into, you know, as fans, we're sitting there watching the the telecast and cheering you on and come on, great, you know, let's do it. You know, we're everyone's thrilled, but and just so overjoyed with, you know, the success that you achieved. But how many times you said that you knew the course, like the back of your hand, how many times do you think you would have rehearsed that race with your team, knowing exactly what you had to do at each stage?

Grace Brown 30:49

Yeah, it was a real building process. Like I because it was in Central Paris, I went to the course a year before and rode it, but it was very hard to get a sense of it because it was in traffic and some of the roads that we would go down were meant to be the opposite direction to the traffic, so it was pretty hard at that point to get a sense of it. But I did a whole lot of research with Google Maps and screenshotting things and drawing lines of where where I would ride and getting the like street view so that I could visualize it. I pieced it all together. And then the days leading in, we were able to go on the closed course. I already had a plan of how I was going to do everything. So then I practiced my plan, made a few revisions, got the car behind to film me, and I just went over that again and again to the point where I just knew like every bump on the road, I knew where the drain covers were that where the white lines, because drain covers and white lines in the rain are more slippery. So when I knew it was raining, I could adjust some of the lines that I would take through corners, so I wasn't, you know, going over drain covers and that's where you might risk crashing. Um so yeah, it was really quite detailed, and I'd as I said earlier, like I'd prepared so much that once I got to the line, it was just a matter of execution. It it was because I had visualized it again and again, and then it was just a matter of pressing play.

Brigette McGuire 32:34

And you did that very, very well. So then Australia erupts and everyone is so excited. So how did life change after that moment for you?

Grace Brown 32:43

Yeah, it's interesting. I think there's a lot of athletes that think winning a gold medal will change your life entirely. And to an extent it does, like it gives you this achievement that people are always going to be interested about and impressed by, but it never changes like fundamentally who you are. And for some athletes, you get a lot of media attention, and there's some gold medalists that no one really remembers at all. Um, so it's definitely not it's not as all-consuming as a lot of people think, and I know gold medalists that have really struggled with that, expecting life to change a lot and to be a superstar afterwards. And they're just a regular Joe still, right? Which I think is hard. Yeah, because like we see the swimmers, for instance, they get a lot of attention. But if you're in a less followed sport, or if you don't have a story that the media really likes, then you sort of get brushed over. Yeah. I think I was in the middle a bit, like I got, especially being the first medal of the games, like I got a lot of a lot of attention for that. But then after the games, I didn't get as much. I think also because I didn't return to Australia, I continued racing in Europe. So I didn't sort of leverage the moment as much as some other athletes did. But yeah, I think for me personally, it's been a real sort of contentment, a sense of achieving this ultimate goal and being really proud of myself, which will never be taken away.

Brigette McGuire 34:38

Yeah, absolutely not. And and we're all very proud of you too. Grace, I love a trophy, I have to say. But there's no greater, I would assume, and certainly from as a sports fan's perspective, there's no greater reward in sport than than the ultimate prize, I believe, in in winning an Olympic gold medal. And you've been generous enough to bring in yours today. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about it and um what that felt like when uh that was awarded to you?

Grace Brown 35:09

Yeah, it was um an amazing experience standing on the top of the podium and yeah, hearing my family in the crowd and they put the medal around my neck, and I truly felt shivers down my spine. And it was so heavy. Oh yeah, have a feel. How much does it weigh? Do you know? I think 580 grams, which doesn't seem like a heap, but in a small thing like that, it's pretty dense. And one of the really special things about it, if you turn it over to the other side. The other side. The other side, yep. Uh, this this here is a piece of the Eiffel Tower.

Brigette McGuire 35:49

Oh, how amazing.

Grace Brown 35:50

Yeah, we have a little bit of Paris with us.

Brigette McGuire 35:53

Take that everywhere. Thank you so much for bringing this in. And um, you know, it's it's obviously an incredible keepsake of, you know, that all of that work that, you know, you put into over so many years. And you mentioned the media attention. And if we think back to Paris, just the Australian women just dominated so much. You know, the women won 13 out of a total of 18 gold medals. So it's almost three-quarters of our country's gold medals were won by women. So when you see other sports, such as the male-dominated footy codes around Australia that dominate media, they dominate, you know, sponsorships, memberships for all of these clubs. How do you know relate to that?

Grace Brown 36:39

Yeah, it is tough. And I think it's such a like deeply, deeply ground thing because there's so much history in men's sport. There are some sports where women have been participating at a high level for a long time, but mostly the women's side of the sport is quite new in comparison to the men's, or it's been really underground because up until quite recently it was frowned upon for women to do a lot of different sports. So, like if I think of cycling, for instance, there's just so much history and like the stories about men for about over a century, really, racing. And women's cycling is really only evolved in the last 30 years. So we're competing, we're trying to do a lot in a short space of time. And yeah, like the women's sport is amazing to watch, and and like all yeah, all different sports. I think it's a really great product now, but it's gonna take a long time to get the fans on the same level as they are for the men's. So yeah, I hope that we can continue pushing and and more people can realise how exciting it is to follow women's sport as well.

Brigette McGuire 38:12

Absolutely. And and it's so important to have role models such as yourself, and then before you ename's, of course, so that young girls and and boys can can be fans of female athletes, but for the young girls to see that so they they can see it, so they can be it.

Grace Brown 38:29

Exactly. And I often get asked this question about especially in cycling, like who inspired me? No one in in cycling ever inspired me because I never saw women racing bikes when I was a kid. The only women's sport that I saw on TV was the Olympics. Okay. And I think that's why for a lot of women, if they have a sporting dream, it's often in the Olympics. Whereas boys will want to be a professional footballer or an F1 driver or you know, all these sports that we've seen for a long time on TV. As a young girl, like I didn't know that women could do those sports. So becoming an Olympian was like the only dream that I could have, really. And yeah, Kathy Freeman was I think probably every girl that was a kid in the year 2000 would say Kathy Freeman or Susie O'Neill or you know, one of those women is their sporting idol. Because yeah, that's that's shit. They were built up in the media. Um, and it really shows like how much the media have a responsibility for growing women's sport and offering the platform for young girls to dream.

Brigette McGuire 39:50

And providing providing an audience, you know, for for them to, as you say, to dream. And I never forget I was lucky enough to be in Sydney in the stadium when Kathy won on that race. And I was actually, whilst we're talking babies, we've got a baby. I was six months pregnant at the time, and and my son, who was born three months later, I thought I might have been going into labor then and there because the adrenaline was was so um extraordinary, but that was such an inspirational moment. So it's just wonderful to see more women doing that for the whole, the whole country and you know, looking forward to 2032. I'm sure that there'll be cyclists that you're you know you're inspiring Grace. But I wanted now, I know that you've got you've very intelligent woman as well as accomplished athlete. You've got an arts degree, but you've also got a master of marketing as well. Now you've taken what you've learnt in cycling and now you're putting your energy into business. Yep. Can you tell us about that journey, that next stage for you post post-Paris? And you know, five minutes later you've launched a product.

Grace Brown 40:55

So quite five minutes later.

Brigette McGuire 40:58

It seems like it.

Grace Brown 40:59

Um I actually started working on the business in 2024. So my last year as a professional cyclist in the run-up to the Olympics. Really? So in the run-up to the Olympics, you're starting to do it. Yeah. Yeah, right. So I was doing product testing and like all this stuff on the side while I was training for the Olympics, which probably sounds a little bit crazy to some people, but I was studying the masters in marketing for a lot of my cycling career. And then when I finished that, I needed something else to intellectually sink my teeth into. So, and at the same time, I had discussions with people that they were saying, oh, you know, athletes and founders have really similar skills and attributes. A lot of athletes make really great founders. And that got me thinking about what are some problems that I can solve. And I've always been a bit of a sunscreen obsessive person, I guess, like spending a lot of time doing sport out in the sun, especially in Australia. You realize how exposed you are. And I could never find a good sport sunscreen, one that had water resistance because you get so sweaty, you need that durability, and 50 plus, of course, that felt nice on the skin, that wasn't greasy, that you could put on your forehead, it wouldn't drip down and sweat into your eyes. That stings, I don't like this. Exactly. For a lot of the time, I just thought that, you know, that was a something I had to put up with, like the discomfort of this gross sunscreen. But I realized that a lot of other athletes just don't wear it at all because of these things. So yeah, that started my mind ticking over. And at some point I was like, right, I'm gonna try and solve this problem and develop a sunscreen that is the solution. And that's where Sun Motion was born. I probably started out a little bit naively because developing a sunscreen is a tricky task, it's heavily regulated in Australia, but yeah, I was able to make some connections with people. I found a really great cosmetic chemist to help me formulate the product. And yeah, basically the first sample he sent me, I was like, this is pretty much nailed it. Uh, we made a few tweaks and then yeah, got the ball rolling. So it was about a almost a two year timeline from idea to having a product on the market, which was a lot longer than I expected. Really? What did you initially expect to do? I thought I could do it in a year. So my ideal scenario was like Would retire and I would have a product to sell. Um yeah, I launched December 2025, which is basically a year after I'd retired. Yes.

Brigette McGuire 44:13

So now you're a founder and you're an entrepreneur and you know you've got a fully fledged business. Yeah. So you've you've really had to take all of your experience as an athlete, but all of your education as well, and now putting this into a business and a highly competitive business category and environment. So, you know, from logistics, from distribution to brand to positioning to price point, tell us how you've navigated all of that. Because I actually personally I think you've done really well from concept to in-market in two years. Yeah.

Grace Brown 44:46

So Yeah, that's probably my naivety. Uh the I I think naivety as a founder has a role to play because often if you speak to people that are in the industry, they would never s build a product because they know too much. Um so, but once you're in there, once you're on the path, especially I think as an athlete, you just dig your heels in and you keep going because that's what I've learned to do my whole life. Um, but yeah, I mean, there's so much to that question. I think, yeah, coming up with the pricing strategy, I guess. That was towards the end because you need to know how much it is costing you to produce, and it always ends up being a little bit more expensive than you initially hope.

Brigette McGuire 45:45

Sounds like a renovation, doesn't it?

Grace Brown 45:46

Always so there's two aspects to pricing. One is competitively in the market, so you need to analyse the market and understand where you want to sit compared to other brands. And with sunscreen, there's really, you know, the cosmetic skincare brands that are quite highly priced, small packaging. And then you have the chemist supermarket brands, let's say, that are a little bit more like bulk pricing and less elegant products. And I really wanted to be somewhere in between the two of them because I'm I'm delivering a product that I want to be accessible and not so precious that you can use it on your whole body, but a degree of like I wanted people to know that it's a bit more premium, it's an elegant product to wear on the skin. So it is competing a little bit with these beauty cosmetic brands. So that's one aspect, but then also from an actual making the business work perspective, you need to have the the cost of producing it. You need to have a wholesale price, which is cheaper than the retail price, because if you go to wholesalers, they will demand at least 50% margin, often sometimes up to 70-80%, the big retailers. So that needs to be built into your price to be cut away from the retail price. And the retail price is what I sell it for on my website and what I ask retailers to sell it for. So all that sort of comes in to land on the final price. There's a lot of considerations, a lot of moving hearts, aren't they? Yeah, it was um a lot of that's obscure. I think like generally consumers don't understand the wholesale aspect of it, and that if they're purchasing something from chemist warehouse, the brand gets hardly any of that that you pay.

Brigette McGuire 47:58

Yeah, no, it's a it's a whole logistical supply chain that yeah, that that people take a cut as you as you can.

Grace Brown 48:07

And if you have distributors, they take a cut as well. So yeah.

Brigette McGuire 48:12

So you have to be a persistent business person, just as you are as a as a high performance athlete, Grace. Can you share with us, you know, from the lessons that you've learned from sport, how have you taken that into business? And what excites you now about competing? You're competing in business. This isn't just for fun, you know, this is your livelihood. This is you've you've put this out in the market.

Grace Brown 48:36

Yeah, I think the biggest things that I've taken from my sporting career is uh, you know, a bit what we were talking about earlier, that you have to be uncomfortable to grow. And yeah, one thing that I really learned, especially with a bit of psychology in sport, I had some nasty crashes. And to come back from those, I realized that I was always going to be a little bit fearful racing. And I taught myself that when I experienced fear, it was my body, rather than telling myself to back away, it was a signal to move forward. And this is something that I'm taking into my business as well, that when it feels uncomfortable, when it feels a bit scary, then I have to take action to mitigate my fears rather than freeze and back out. So I think this is really useful in like all of life, really. Like, yeah, you have to be proactive. You can't just expect things to be okay and tick over. You have to see the warning signs and be like, okay, well, I need to double down on this thing to ensure success rather than just expect that it will come along.

Brigette McGuire 50:09

Yeah, yeah, amazing. Tell me um Sun Motion. So, where did you get the name?

Grace Brown 50:15

The name was uh it was actually quite fun. I thought a bit of a process coming up with the name and the branding and everything. But I wanted I wanted something that, yeah, obviously drew in sun sport and activity. So I workshopped a whole lot of different names. I had this big spreadsheet, and it was somewhat a process of elimination because you have to check trademark um availability with websites and all of that. So crossed off a whole lot from the list that I couldn't take and then just like workshopped what I had left. And Sun Motion just felt I don't know, just ticked all the boxes in the end and could be a little bit fun. You can sort of make some make some little rhymes and stuff out of it.

Brigette McGuire 51:10

Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I love it.

Grace Brown 51:12

So yeah, that's how I landed on the name. And then yeah, I built the brand around that as well. I wanted something that was a bit colourful and energetic. The primary colours are a bit of a like lime green, which is almost yellow, and a darker um bluey green, which also can be a bit like the Aussie colours, like a yellow and green, but not quite. So that was a little, it's a bit of a throw to that. But otherwise looking at also looking at the demographic that I was targeting, which is probably more millennials. Okay. So yeah, a bit of aesthetic that that they like, but gender neutral as well. So you you're you're sort of taking all these things in to try and build the brand.

Brigette McGuire 52:07

Grace, you've brought in uh a tube of of Sun Motion. Yes. SPF 50 plus sunscreen. Where can we purchase it?

Grace Brown 52:15

Yep, so this is a tube, 100 mils, and you can find it on sunmotion.com.au. So that's the easiest spot. Otherwise, it is stocked in a few bike shops. If you happen to be a bike rider, you can go there.

Brigette McGuire 52:28

And we wish you absolutely every success with the brand that you've given birth to, as well as Stanley, who you've given birth to. And now becoming a mum. I know certainly for me that changed my perspective in business. I'd left corporate once I had my two sons and then went, decided to have my own consultancy. Now you've made a a change as as well. It's a it's a pivotal time in your life. If you think about you know, the next 20 years and his we hope, sporting journey. You know, what sports would you like him to play? And would you like him to follow in your footsteps? Would you like him to aspire to the highest level of sport?

Grace Brown 53:11

Is it too early to say it's hard because the I mean, there's so many just being born. Yeah. Yeah, there's so many great things about being an elite sports person. But I think, you know, you have to have a certain head on your shoulders to come out strong. And yeah, I think if he wants to do it, he he can do it. And I'll be fully supportive. Professional cycling is a dangerous sport, so I feel like as a mother, that will be really hard to let him do it. But um yeah, maybe a safer sport would be great. But yeah, whatever he I would love him to love riding a bike because I think it's just a joyous thing, and I want him to also be able to take risks. I like I don't want to wrap him up in cotton wool, and I think sometimes as a parent, you just have to let your kid learn themselves without trying to protect them from life. So that will be a challenge that I have to face eventually. Like it's way easier said than done, I'm sure. So yeah, uh it's interesting thinking it from that perspective.

Brigette McGuire 54:25

Yeah, yeah. And I have no doubt that like every challenge that you face, that you'll be proactive and you'll you'll you'll think it through. And uh we wish you absolutely every success in your journey moving forward, Grace. So, you know, on behalf of our listeners of Love the Fan Win the Game, we would sincerely like to thank you so much for joining Love the Fan Win the Game and sharing your insights, your experience. But not only that, but for bringing along your beautiful newborn son, Stanley, to to be part of, you know, the podcast today. So on behalf of us all, I'd just like to say thank you for joining us, Grace.

Grace Brown 55:01

Thanks for having me, Brigette. And I hope that yeah, all the listeners uh enjoyed our conversation and learned something.

Brigette McGuire 55:07

I'm sure they certainly have. Grace Brown, OAM, is the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the cycling time trial and founder of Sun Motion Sports Sunscreen, president of the Cycling Alliance, and SBS expert cycling commentator.