CHAMPION SERIES
Introducing Glynn Owens, aka The Prince (his stage name); former university professor turned actor and pole dancer. And at 73, the oldest man ever to compete in the world pole sports championships. (Until 2024 when he might compete at age 74…)
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Transcript
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
So today we welcome Glynn Owens Owens to the Pole Dance Directory podcast. Very exciting to have you on, Glynn Owens. You’re #2 after Christie. I’m sorry I had to interview Christy first, but you are another world champion like her. And I’d love to hear more about that for our listeners and let’s can we start with your back story.
I know from talking to you, you’ve done a lot of different sports over the years and competed in a lot of different areas. So just give us a little bit of a background of where you’ve come from and; you’re a professional as well; so how you?
Glynn Owens
It’s probably apparent from my accent. I was born in the UK. Effectively born in Coronation Street.
Moved to New Zealand in the mid 1990s. For most of my life, most of my adult life I should say, I’ve been fairly involved in sports of one kind or another.
Came into sport sort of accidentally, but then I would say 95% of the things I do in life are accidental.
Simply because, I was training circus at the time and someone I was training with said “hey, come and have a look at pole dance” and for a few years I used to go once a week and the two of us would go and play on a pole. And then the studio I was doing that at, a group of them decided that they would have an evening out and go and watch New Zealand’s top Pole competition the Pole Legends event and I went along and I just looked at it and I thought I have never seen anything like this. This is amazing and then there was the crazy thought. Could I ever actually get to level a where I could do that sort of thing?
And then I thought, well, not if I don’t have a go and basically, from that point on I started doing pole very, very seriously and started to perform, started to compete, and that was well just about 10 years since I first went to a pole session, so that would been about seven years ago.
And then I never really looked back.

I would say 95% of the things I do in life are accidental
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Wow. OK, so 10 years from starting at pole to world champion. Is that a really short summary?
Glynn Owens
Yeah, pretty much.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
But let’s back up before that, Glynn Owens, because you you glossed over it very quickly, said I was doing circus. So I know you were doing circus. Like, how did that happen? And and I know you’ve done martial arts before that?
A Potted History (backstory)
Glynn Owens
OK, I’ll give very the quick potted history.
I had many years of judo player and that was the first time I ever went to a world championship. It’s actually just over 50 years ago, so.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
50 as in FIVE ZERO (years ago) for everyone listening!
Glynn Owens
My first World championship was the 1972 World Student Championships, where was representing the UK. And I did that for a fair length of time, and then I gave that up and did various other sports.
I was a distance runner for a while.
I had a wonderful, wonderful period when I specifically set out to do sports to which I was totally unsuited. And the reason for that was that I’ve done so much serious competition that I realized that if you’re not careful, you start competing seriously. And you forget to have fun.
So, if I did sports where I was never going to be in a serious competitor, I could just have fun doing them. So I did bizarre things.
I can remember being on the start line of 110 meter hurdles race with somebody easily 40 centimeters taller than me, looking worried and saying “I don’t know how I’m gonna get over these hurdles” and me thinking you think you’ve got problems.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Because you’re not terrifically tall, are you then?
Glynn Owens
165cm [tall] Yeah, so there’s not a lot of me and and basically I did decathlon for a while and decathlete’s are all 1 meter 95 and built a solid muscle. And then there was little me and that was quite fun. And that was actually quite terrific because there I was no threat to anybody, so everybody was so welcoming.
People were really friendly. In the final event of the decathlon, in the 1500 (meters running) I would actually start beating some people and every time I passed someone on the track, they would cheer for us “Ay go Glynn Owens”.
It made-up for things like the fact that I would be the one who dropped out of the high jump with three failures before anyone else would come in, basically invented my own range of events.
Most people did the shot putt, I did the shot drop. They did the long jump, I did the short jump. It worked quite well, really.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
But you had fun.

Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Because you’re not terrifically tall, are you then?
Glynn Owens
165cm [tall] Yeah, so there’s not a lot of me and and basically I did decathlon for a while and decathlon’s are all 1 meter 95 and built a solid muscle. And then there was little me and that was quite fun. And that was actually quite terrific because there I was no threat to anybody, so everybody was so welcoming.
People were really friendly. In the final event of the decathlon, in the 1500 (meters running) I would actually start beating some people and every time I passed someone on the track, they would cheer for us “Ay go Glynn Owens”.
It made-up for things like the fact that I would be the one who dropped out of the high jump with three failures before anyone else would come in, basically invented my own range of events.
Most people did the shotput, I did the shot drop jump. They did the long jump, I did the short jump. It worked quite well, really.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
But you had fun.
Glynn Owens
Absolutely. And then for while I was a climber. From climbing, I came into circus aerials and the rest is history. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing next.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Because the story is not done yet. I know, I know.
Glynn Owens
I Hope not. I Hope not tho it’s getting more and more painful story every year
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Oh, yes. Yeah. So talking about the pain, how and what do you train on a typical week for your pole work now.
Training Routine
Glynn Owens
OK, most of my training is on pole and I’m fortunate enough to be teaching at a pretty much brand new studio – been open less than two years, which is a wonderfully luxurious place and includes perks for its instructors. We have access to the studio at all times, so I will typically do between an hour and a half and two hours in the studio, in theory, six days a week and the other day rest day, but sometimes the rest day doesn’t quite eventuate. But that’s made-up for by the fact there are sometimes things crop up where I can’t train.
So for example, in another part of my life, I’m an actor. This weekend I’ll be on set pretty much all weekend, so that will keep me away from the studio. So that will be a lot of rest days to make up for -any of the rest days I missed recently.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Wow. So an hour and a half. Pretty much every day that you can.
Glynn Owens
Yeah. I mean, yeah, an hour and a half to two hours, but usually longer if I’ve got a substantial stretch routine as part of the day’s plan. If I’m doing high intensity stuff and then, yeah, I tire easily.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
That doesn’t sound like you tire at all to me. And when you when you say you’re in the Studio that long, what would be the sort of things that you would do? Are you doing a lot of conditioning or are you just running combos? Are you working on new tricks or does it just vary depending on the time of the year?
Glynn Owens
Absolute mixture, I mean the consistent bits are physio rehab exercises for whatever injuries I’m trying to put back together.
Learning the studios new warm up routine, which we’re all supposed to do when we are teaching and I still haven’t got it in my head. Some conditioning stuff, some flexibility stuff. Some cardio stuff because I like to prepare for things, like the world championship stuff and the Australian (championships).
We’ve got 4 minutes basically of high intensity activity and for that I go back to my running days and I will try to build up to a comfortable duration of shuttle runs where I’m pushing in high intensity, followed by short recovery by high intensity, short recovery. So they’ll be pretty consistent.
And then on top of that, there are the things where, if you don’t do them, they don’t work anymore. If you don’t consistently do them.
I do a lot of elbow work, so I will hook the elbow on the pole and do lots of things from there. If the skin on the inside of my elbow doesn’t look like an elephant, I’m going to have trouble and it takes only a few weeks of not doing the elbow stuff for the skin to go Ohh, pretty baby’s bottom level again and so I will almost always put some elbow work in. A lot of stuff I’m working on is not so much new tricks, but things that I’m working to try to include but which look too ghastly to present to any human being at the moment.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yes, I have a code color code on my training for that! It’s called pink – I didn’t die, but I don’t think anyone knows what I did.
Glynn Owens
Yeah, yeah, very much, that sort of thing. I generally work on the principles. If it takes me X amount of time to learn to do a move, it will take me some like 100 * X to get to the point where I can feel that it looks good enough to show to other people.
And there’s always that gradual transition when you’re learning things from getting it right once every 10 attempts to getting it right in half the attempts, then getting it wrong, one every 10 attempts and then hopefully getting it wrong one every 100 attempts and eventually with luck getting it to the point where it just feels as natural as walking. But there’s still a lot of moves where that isn’t the case.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
I’m not sure any of my pole moves feel as natural as walking, but one day, maybe when I’ve been doing it, as long as you. I’m a bit behind you on timeline.
Glynn Owens
Should just watch and see how awkwardly I walk.

Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
So you’re doing a lot of pole. Do you teach on top of that. Or do you encompass your teaching into that time?
Glynn Owens
As well, it depends. I have two regular (teaching) slots each week at a studio in town, and I’ll often stay in the studio after that to do other bits of work. I’ll usually get there a bit before as well and do my own personal warm up and set conditioning type things. And on occasion, like at the moment, I going to be acting as a human prop for a beautiful, wonderful pole doubles performer who’s actually doing a solo act and needs another human being on the ground. So we are rehearsing, usually for a little bit of time every week on that, just to make sure I don’t let her down. Other than that, the other studio I teach at is mostly cover work or short course or workshop type thing.
So for example I recently did a workshop specifically on shoulder mounts, and then Superman. Showing people how to get into them, what’s some different ways to get out of them. Lots of different things to do while you’re in them. An hour and a half workshop wasn’t enough to do more than scratch the surface, but people came away now knowing how to do their shoulder mounts with only one hand and things like that. So yeah, all good.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yes, I saw your one handed shoulder mount. I just went I would be happy to be able to do a shoulder mount.
Glynn Owens
I used to claim as evidence in my great teaching skills that I once had somebody ask how to do that, and I showed them and they got it on their second attempt, which I think shows how great a teacher I am. But when I say it was Miss Philly who did that, somehow I don’t get any credits anymore.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Oh…. But you’ve got the credit of teaching Miss Philly something. I bet there’s not many people who can say that.
Glynn Owens
Uh, I’m not sure about that actually, because the more I learn, the more I realize that there’s still so many things I don’t know and so many things that people who maybe they’ve only been doing pole a year or two may well be able to sort of teach me something new that I’ve not encountered before, or find a way around something that I’ve given up on because I just never got the hang of it.
A couple of years ago, I had a wonderful instructor at one of the studios here just teach me a very, very nice exit from Jamilla. And it delighted me. Simple, straightforward. It looked more dramatic than it was, and Jamilla had always been something… well, yeah, you learn that when you first start, and what can you do with it? Not very much. Forget it.
And now that incorporates some into quite a few of my routines just because it’s such a nice little sort of get in one way. Get out another way.
I should say I have a horror of getting out of moves just by going back through the way I got in. I was like my combinations to be progressive – A leads to B., and leads to C. Not always of course.
Some basically, you do something like your fonji, and you’re going to end up starting where you finished alright.
But in my case ending at 2 meters further down the pole than starting means starting further up the pole than where I finished. But basically in roughly the same position.
But mostly I like things to make a progression from one thing to another, rather than just coming back out the way I arrived.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yes, I I’m the same. I you wanna sort of tell a story as you’re going along don’t you?
Glynn Owens
Absolutely, yeah.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Which segues us into competing at the World Championships and telling a story there. Now for you, getting to the World Championships was not as simple as it is for a lot of people, because New Zealand doesn’t have a federation in the Pole Sports world.
So you had to come to Australia to compete as an open athlete, is that right?
Competing in Australia as an “Open Athlete”
Glynn Owens
Ohh Fiona, I have to say, I am so so glad I came over to Australia, if for no other reason; and I was remarking on this in a meeting with Deb recently; that I have never in all my sporting career been made to feel so welcome as I was when I turned up at the Penrith championships.
Everyone was so absolutely wonderful. I fell in love with everyone there. If people are watching this and they haven’t done those championships, go along and do them. It is such a wonderful atmosphere.
And for someone who was going along, making his first attempts at pole sports, I’m wondering, do I really want to do this? Or Do I not? That reception and that degree of care that people had to make sure that everything was going as well as possible for me, and it’s just sort of got me convinced, definitely, pole sports is not something I’m walking away from while I can still do it.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Excellent. So that gives me a perfect we’ll say, are you coming in July (2024) to Penrith again and are you looking at Sweden (2024) for Worlds?
Glynn Owens
I’m looking at Sweden. I may have a slight surprise for you in July. And this comes from the fact that, as you know, my great hero in the world of pole is Deborah Roche and she is now the treasurer of APSF.
And I sort of made her promise last week that hopefully won’t actually need to be carried out, but could be amusing, shall we say. But I’ll save that was a surprise for you for when I get to Penrith. But I will, accidents and everything else permitting, I will certainly be in Penrith and hopefully with a few new things to sort of present to the audience, which would be nice.
Creating a Routine – Start with the Mood
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Fantastic. Now I’m looking forward to being there myself. Hopefully; as you say, all going well.
Obviously, you know, common to all competitions is creating the routine. How do you go about creating your routine? For me, I struggle with it. I find choosing the music incredibly difficult. I’m still looking for music for this year.
Glynn Owens
So let’s start with the music. Actually I love creating routines I have to say. The music is more difficult for pole sports because of course you are confined to music themes rather than choral or vocal, so with no songs you’re much more limited.
So for me the first thing I’m thinking of when I’m looking at music is what sort of a mood do I want to bring it.
So last year at Penrith I thought I’m going to go there and look really stupid. So let’s get some music that will automatically, if people are gonna laugh at me, let’s have laugh music. And I use one of Dvorak’s humoresque’s and it had the theme that I wanted for that. Here’s Glynn Owens going out and doing something strange and goofy. And if you think it’s funny, well, it’s OK. Sounds like it’s meant to be funny anyway. And this year I’m flirting with something flamboyant. That could be fun.
But I have to say that there’s also a very mundane element to my music choices, which is once I’ve got the rough idea, it’s been a matter of trying to think of examples. Going on to YouTube and looking at how long each one takes and looking at ones that are either between 3 minutes 50 seconds, and 4 minutes, or ones that are so close that I can either compress them or extend them just to get within the barriers.
I think I’ve sort of got something for this year, but I’ve not yet really put much thought into what the routine is going to look like. I will be following the advice of an amazing woman I met through Pole Sports, a woman called Fiona (ed. who me?), who suggested it was really useful to start at the top of the pole because that way you’re already up there and you save some energy. I thought that was such great advice.
So I will almost certainly be starting once again at the top on the pole and I hope I can have a nice little progression from there and then from that point on we shall see.
I will usually make a list of moves that I definitely want it in, and there will be a list of moves that if I can get them to be adequate. Let us say they’re not going to cost me more than they score me, I will put it in. And of course, there are the compulsory moves which are a constant joy to me.
The flexibility moves are limited to just those moves over the minimum level of difficulty that I can at least make a recognisable attempt. There is no way in any kind of universe that I’m ever going to score for a flexibility move in pole sports, so I’ll just accept that and that’s fine. And it’s actually quite fun it means I can in theory do moves have quite higher degree of difficulty because not going to score for the next way. And yeah, let’s have a go, you know, let’s put an inverted jade in there or something. It’s all great fun. And then there’s the deadlifts which are not a major problem for me in terms of actually doing them.
We’re only required, as you know, one dead lift anyway, and may well stick to the iguana deadlift that I did last year.
I am still bemused as to why that didn’t score for me at the worlds because I keep looking at it and thinking I can’t see anything wrong with it and so I’m going to be getting it looked at, and get the Super experts to give an opinion and as soon as I know what’s wrong with it, hopefully I can learn to correct whatever they thought didn’t look right, and if something I can’t correct. So for example I have a problem with my toe points which basically – my bio mechanics is weird – my toes always look as though they’re not very well pointed – and on the opposite side of the coin I can do a full plie without lifting my heels off the ground, but that’s not something you get scores for, I’m afraid.
And, so if its that that’s getting in my way. Then I’ll probably go for something that’s more easy to deal with.
The strength moves again, shouldn’t be too much of a difficulty. There’s a good range of strength moves within my capacity
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yes, you’re quite strong, I think.
Glynn Owens
Not as strong as people tend to assume, actually, but I’m terribly, terribly lazy, and if there’s a way of doing something that looks as though it requires strength but doesn’t really require as much as it looks, then I’ll probably have found a way of doing it.
The old judo maximum of maximum efficiency with minimum effort got drummed into me at an early age and I’m now definitely so inclined.
Spins. I would still probably, I’ve got a few spins that I like to do on a spinny pole
Favorite Moves?
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yeah. What are some of your favorites?
Glynn Owens
I actually like to do an elbow spin, but rather like my iguana deadlift, I’m puzzled as to why I didn’t score with that so Again, I’ll be waiting till I get some feedback and consider that. But if that doesn’t work I can just put in a pencil spin or something?
Like that, that will least go around and at the end of the day they’ll be recognizable, conceivably good enough to score with and then I can put my elbow work into other parts for the rest of the routine, once I’ve got the compulsories sorted.
Having said that then it’s a matter of just juggling the things around and seeing what will fit with what. What will make a nice transition. I’m gonna need to put some floor work into the transition from static pole where I will be starting, to spinning pole where I will be finishing.
So something a little bit more imaginative than just getting off scratching my head and walking there. I’m not a great fan of floor work on the principle that I came into pole to do pole; not floor but that’s OK.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yeah, it’s also a chance to catch your breath. Isn’t it, though? I mean, we’re allowed up to 40 seconds, so you can kind of just [puff].
Glynn Owens
Oh, that’s right. Good to have the discipline too, and I’ve got some possibilities which I think might make it actually even look quite reasonable, and I’ve got a cool new costume for this year.
So yeah. And then it’s a matter of putting things together. And in terms of preparing, what I do is usually deal with the individual combinations. So for example, if I am doing, as I tend to do, a cast into a starfish and then a jump off, then that will be dealt with as one unit. And I will 1st and get the jump off from the starfish. Then I’ll just get back to getting into the starfish from the casts and I’ll just get the casts so they move nicely and so on.
So it’s a bit like starting with words, building up sentences and then as you get sentences, you put sentences together to make the paragraph, and hopefully by the end of it you got something like a story. And if the story didn’t work, you change some of the words or some of the sentences.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yeah. When do you hope to be like doing full run throughs of your routine prior to the competition? Couple of weeks just a couple of weeks beforehand. Do you typically?
Glynn Owens
I normally hope to be about… I like to not do a full run through any later than the week before a championship. On the simple principle that seriously, because my routine has a certain element of danger to them, there’s the risk of injury and so on. I think with a week I can get enough past an injury to still get out there and do something, but getting an injury less than a week away from competition is dicey.
In my early career I dislocated a rib 3 days before the top event of the year and couldnt even climb the pole the next day. And so I think in future I definitely like to keep a longer gap.
So I’d normally hope to have about two or three weeks of doing two or three times a session at a full run through. And then have a tapering down where I do some of the more difficult moves for the first part of the last week, then moved some of the easier moves. Then just generally keep the body moving and ideally, get the body where it’s pawing at the ground and wanting to be let off its leash so it can do stuff again by the time I’m ready to compete.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
That is really helpful.
I’m going to be listening to that again and thinking about it with my preparation.
In a more general sense, what are some of your favorite pole moves and what are some of your nemesis pole moves?
Glynn Owens
It’s the one that just consists of being fast asleep at the bottom of the pole. That would probably be my favorite.
Yeah, I need to invent some of these, the beer drinking move and things like this, but the ones that are already out there, shoulder mounts and Superman are basically standards for me, they’re things that I know I can do some interesting stuff with; I can get into them in interesting ways. I can do interesting things when I’m in them. I can get out of them interesting ways.
So they are probably in a sense, favourites in the sense that, it would be a strange routine that didn’t include them for me.
Elbow moves an awful lot. I got picked up, thankfully in time before the world’s last year when I had strung 3 elbow spins together and the lovely Sarah-May Monaghan pointed out that only two of them would count because my body position didn’t change between the 1st two.
Clever little Glynn then just started to swap the order around, which was a bit scary at first, so that we had the change of position and then going back to the original one and little bits of advice like that make a huge difference to me. So elbows get in there and then there’s the more dramatic things, the starfishes, the fonjis, things like this.
The flips, although my knees at the moment are not very happy with flips, so they’re maybe limited depending on how the rehab goes.
Nemesis Moves?
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Nemesis moves… what do you think are yours? Would you just say flexibility moves generally, or has there been a particular move that you had to work at that just gave you heaps of trouble?
Glynn Owens
Oh, I mean, there are. There are moves that I cannot do, despite frequent practice and going over and over and over again and restudying the videos and so on. But I still can’t get to be at an acceptable level. Fonji is probably the most obvious example.
If someone said what’s what’s a fonji, I could show them what it is, but they think, yeah, looks a bit tatty. Whereas when people are beautiful do it, you know they have these beautiful sort of lines and so on and they don’t drop a meter down the pole when they do them and they flow smoothly from to the other.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
But you can do a fonji. So I I don’t think I’d call that a nemesis move. It may not be as beautiful as you want. But you know you can do one which a lot of people can’t. It is a very advanced move.
Glynn Owens
Well, I don’t know. I actually think that there is a bit like elbow shoulder mounts. They’re easier than people think.
I think I spent a lot of difficulty first trying to learn them because I vaguely got this idea they were sort of like doing a a somersault in mid air and I was trying to get my legs high and almost touching the pole with my body extended along it with my toes and my body extended before coming back down again and not like that.
A big breakthrough for me when I was learning was actually realising, you know I need a lot of height on the pole and starting the practice high up makes a big difference.
Suddenly. You know, I could flip from my shoulder mounts over into a shotgun. And yeah, this wasn’t actually, the big problem.
The other main problem for me with fonji was wonderful because it illustrated what I’ve since I said is Glynn Owens’s fifth law pole, which is that in pole dance, if you put any two moves together, one of them is almost certain to be on your bad side. And this is how I was with the fonji. The flip from the shoulder mount took me into the wrong side for the shotgun and the flip from the right side from the shotgun took me on to the wrong side for the shoulder mount and that took a lot of relearning. And but that’s just my digging in and do it and do it and do it.
I learned a lot by an English pole dance, now in New Zealand, Ali Pooley , who is a beautiful, beautiful pole dancer and she remarked when she was first learning fonji that she just spent a lot of time in tears in the studio. And I thought, well, OK, if AIi was working hard enough to drive herself to tears, then I have no excuse for being lazy.
It’s a bit like Deb being such an inspiration whenever I think I can’t do something I think, well, Deb started out with just over 75% of the official quota of limbs and manages to look beautiful, so I have no excuse.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
She does look beautiful, doesn’t she when she poles? Amazing.
Glynn Owens
Oh, she’s gorgeous.
I swear to you. I watched two of her videos long before I knew anything about her, and it was only when I watched the third one. I thought, what’s she doing with her left hand looks a bit weird and left arm looks a bit weird. And then I realized it was because there wasn’t a left arm to look weird and the first two videos she just looked so good that it hadnt even registered with me.
So yeah, the hard work on those and then, whether they ever end up in a routine, who knows? But they’re fun things to do anyway. So yeah.
And this I think is back to what I was saying earlier. The key thing for all of this is make sure you’re still having fun.
Why did we start doing pole?
The key thing for all of this is make sure you’re still having fun. Why did we start doing pole?
The same reason people kick a ball around on a Saturday afternoon, throw a rugby ball back and forth between them. It’s because it’s fun and what we need to do is keep that feeling of being fun.
The great thing about both Pole Dance and Pole Sports is that you actually get bonuses for this because we’ve all seen amazing pole dancers who are totally cold, dead and unemotional. And they just interesting to watch, but you don’t engage with them.
And if you’re not engaging with your audience, then in pole sports, you’re not going to score as much because it comes under the general, you know, choreography and so on. And yes, audiences aren’t going to last as much, and you’re not going to have as much fun.
My overriding memory from Poland (not Sweden) was the astonishment at how much support I was getting from an audience of people, most of whom had no idea who I was. I’m used to it from friends in the crowd. But I was getting enormous cheers during my routine from an audience of people who, a week before had no idea I even existed. And that was such a boost, an absolute boost. I got to the end without even feeling I’d done any work at.

Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yeah, it was. It was an amazing feeling at worlds, wasn’t it? I’ve been really amazed at how inclusive and friendly and welcome and helpful backstage as well when there’s like, costume problems. They did people just come and help, but it’s just it’s I’ve not found it anywhere else in my life either. You know, a lot of people see pole sports as very dry.
As you’ve said, you need to have some enjoyment and some engagement with the audience, and then it can become really lovely. But the audience and the people themselves were just overwhelmingly amazing.
Glynn Owens
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, I I’m still in touch with some of the people I met there. And there are other people I met there that I’m not in touch with because we have no language in common.
I particularly remember the final day of the championships. I was looking at one of the stalls for one of the vendors and there was a tap on my shoulder. And I turned around and there was two young Kurdistan girls there who were just wanting to give me a little badge. And I spoke no Kurdish or Russian or whatever. They spoke no English or French or German or anything I could haltingly get by in, but we managed to make ourselves understood. And yep, they’re going to be seared in my memory forever and it’s just such a friendly, welcoming place to be. Everyone’s so supportive, absolutely terrific.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Yeah, I’d agree with that completely encourage anybody thinking about doing pole sports to have a go at your local federation.
[TIP: You can find your local federation by searching the IPSF website]
Glynn Owens
That may, with luck, be one of the surprises I’ve got planned for Penrith is that I’m hoping I might have doubled the size of the New Zealand entry this year. Because I do have a colleague who is interested. But she’s a registrar at one of the local hospitals, a lot will depend on work shifts and so on. But if she can get there, she’s definitely showing lots of interest. So yeah a New Zealand team of two!
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
So you’re an influencer for change?
Well, it’s been it’s been awesome chatting to you. I’m gonna ask you any last tips for training as an older athlete because we haven’t actually touched on exactly how old you are and we probably should just to make it crystal clear that nobody else out there has any excuses when it comes to doing pole.
Glynn Owens
Well, I might accept it (an excuse) from Greta Pontarelli, because she’s pretty much the same age as I am. I must admit it was rather nice to come back from Kielce (Poland) and know that if nothing else, I was the oldest person ever to compete at a world pole sports event because I was 73 then.
And yeah, one of the reasons that I don’t want to miss these things, I mean you say, “why do I do it”? And the simple answer is well, I’ve got the chance to do it. And if I don’t do it, I may not get that chance again at my age.
Anything could go wrong, so any year could be my last year that I’m in a position to do it and I don’t want to miss it by not taking that opportunity. So yeah, it’s going to be interesting this year because of course I compete in the over 60 category. If I make it to the worlds this year then I will be 74 at the time, which will be pushing things interestingly.
But yeah, we shall give it a go in terms of training.

I’m just pleased to see so many older people coming in. I taught a workshop last year and someone there had started pole at the same age I did at the age of 63, so that was cool.
And hopefully she’ll still be going when she’s 73.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
I hope I am.
Glynn Owens
A fair number of people you know in the over 60s now. So yeah the geriatrics are slowly building up and getting ready to be a significant influence. So yeah. And the phenomenal thing is you look at some of the performances by some of the people who shouldn’t be doing things that they seem to be doing effortlessly at their age and yeah, wow, it’s more me sitting there and thinking I have no excuse for not being better than I am. When I look at what some of these guys are doing.
So yeah, we all have much to and be inspired by from the people around us.
Fiona Caffin – Pole Dance Directory
Excellent. Well, thank you again. It’s been an absolute delight talking to you and I am looking forward to seeing you in Penrith in July (2024).
Glynn Owens
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing you, definitely looking forward to being there and thank you for giving me the privilege of being part of your interview series. Thank you. Much appreciated.
Thank you. Bye.
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