Wayne Gretzky once said,
“I don’t skate to where the puck is. I skate to where it is going.”
My friend Slava Fetisov had to defend against him. Imagine that for a moment. The greatest attacker in the game … and you have to stop him.
Slava told me it was never about reacting. It was about reading the game. You had to sense where the puck was going next and get there first. If you were late, even by a second, it was over.
I think about that often.
The world feels unsettled at the moment. A lot is changing, very quickly. In my work, timing has always mattered.
In 2007, I realised that Arctic sea ice was melting fast, so I went to the North Pole and swam across a patch of open water.
A few years later, it became clear that we needed proper protection for our oceans, so I swam the length of the English Channel to call for 30% of the world’s oceans to be protected.
And when river pollution became impossible to ignore, I swam the length of the Hudson River.
None of these swims were random. They came at moments when the world was just beginning to pay attention.
Looking back, I realise how important that was.
These days, I sometimes see campaigns that remind me of what Slava described. Good people working incredibly hard, but focused on where the problem used to be, not where it is going.
When resources are limited, that is a risk we cannot afford.
Slava understood that on the ice. I have had to learn it in the water.
Timing matters.
📸 Lewis Pugh Foundation
(Playing ice hockey with Slava in Antarctica. It’s safe to say he got to the puck before I did.)
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