For most Olympians, getting to the Games has been a lifelong dream. You spend your teens watching TV, fantasizing about standing over the pitiful silver and bronze medalists and landing your own Wheaties box. The story for rugby players heading to Rio, though, is a little different. The 2016 Games will feature rugby for the first time in nearly a hundred years, and for American player Zack Test, it’s a pretty big career pivot.
“When I started playing rugby, it was all about trying to get a contract to go play in Europe or the southern hemisphere,” he says, ”and then when the Olympics was announced it completely changed my path. It became about bringing a gold medal back to the U.S.”
Test played rugby throughout his teen and college years, but started his athletic career as wide receiver for the University of Oregon in 2007. Since then he’s joined the American men’s national sevens team, where he’s built a reputation as one of the top players and holds the record for most tries scored in the World Rugby Sevens Series.
Football may be America’s nearest equivalent to rugby, but the fitness concerns are a little different. “Football requires a lot more muscle mass and short, explosive endurance movements,” says Test, “so they pack on a lot more muscle mass because it’s short bursts and then it’s over, and you have time to recover before the next play. Whereas in rugby you have to be fit enough to play at least 14 minutes nonstop.”
Like most people who have played a sport throughout their lives, 26-year-old Test has had to learn to adjust his diet as he’s aged. Now he’s got a consistently healthy diet: no fried stuff, heavy on fruits and veggies, lots of almonds, smoothies with avocado, breakfast of raw oats and yogurt, all that jazz. “It’s taken me a while to get there. When I was younger I could eat anything, skip stretching before training and be fine. But as you get older if you don’t watch what you eat, your body starts to break down and you lose your speed and put on unnecessary weight. ”
While we're not really fans of talking at length about cheat days, this one is worth mentioning. (“I try to do it on the weekends. There’s more down time and Sunday is football so it’s easy to watch a game and order a pizza.”) In fact, Test’s cheat days is the stuff of legend, the most ridiculously indulgent, maybe gross maybe brilliant, “your-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate” cheat days. The most eyebrow-raising is his taste for pizza with whipped cream. “I tried it a while ago, one teammates put it in front of me and told me to try it. I’m not really a whacky food guy, but it combines the salty and sweet thing so on cheat days it’s what I go for.”
He also learned, through an accidental main course-side dish mess, that mac and cheese makes a damn fine topping on brisket sandwiches. But that pizza and whipped cream thing is still a lot to wrap your head around. “You don’t want vegetables on there because it’s kind of a weird contrast. But any kind of pizza goes with it.”
It’s no Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but hey. Results are results.
Zack Test's Cheat DayBreakfastWaffles with syrup and jam
LunchCheese pizza with whipped cream
DinnerBeef brisket sandwich with mac and cheese
Luke Darby is a contributor to GQ, covering news, entertainment, and the environment. A Louisiana native, he now resides in Cleveland, and his writing has also appeared in Outside, the Dallas Observer, and Marie Claire.Related Stories for GQReal Life DietRugbyRugby