It's the Olympics where competitors couldn't care less about breaking records in running and swimming.
When 59 countries represented by 1176 experts and more than 1200 competitors converge on Brazil in August they'll be more concerned with how fast they can build a forklift than in how many seconds they can cross the 100 metre finish line.
Just as competitive as its athletic cousin, this Olympics is still filled to the brim with lucrative contracts, sponsorship deals and a frenzied international market.
Welcome to the tradie Olympics, where welders become superstars, chefs are scouted by prestigious patisseries and florists fiddle with frangipanis from across the globe.
All of them, including 14 students from TAFE NSW, will converge on Sao Paulo for the World Skills championship, almost exactly a year before its athletic compatriot heads to Rio.
"The Japanese and the Europeans will struggle," said 19-year-old florist Jessica Peters, who will have to combine 30 buckets of Brazilian flora into unique arrangements over the course of a few hours.
"Brazilian flowers are very similar to Australian flowers. The Europeans are all about the fuller cottage, while Japanese flowers are very airy."
Pastry chef Adele Di Bella is not so confident. "The Taiwanese are the dark horses," she said. "They are really good at sugar."
Di Bella isn't too shabby herself. She is sitting across the room from her one-metre high, sugar-made, carnival-inspired impressionist statue which she will have to re-create under the pressure of bright lights in Brazil.
Kallon McVicar, 20, will also be on the flight across the Atlantic to Brazil. Every time he pulls down his blazing blue welding mask it fires up his competitive streak.
McVicar is a formidable boilermaker, but he's wary of the Chinese, South Koreans and the Americans.
"They are professional trainers," he said. "They are permanently employed training for welding competitions."
In the parallel world of the tradie Olympics, multi-national companies such as Lincoln, which earned over $3 billion in revenue last year, sponsor the best welders as professional welding athletes. These poster-boy power tool exhibitionists weld all day, every day, but never on a job site.
Scouts from major companies fly into every world skills tournament, hoping to pick up the next welding, machinist or manufacturing superstar.
While McVicar can see the appeal; he would rather ply his trade in more practical terms.
"When you get them on a job site they shit their pants," said McVicar. "But there is no denying they are good welders."
The same pressure applies to the squad's manufacturing team, consisting of crack machinist Matt Sawers and fitter Kelvin Marquand.
They will have three days to build a forklift from scratch.
While these students might be off to compete on the international stage, their teachers have fears much closer to home, concerned that the next generation of welders might not be so lucky.
Successive cuts to TAFE funding by the NSW government has cost 1300 teachers their jobs over the past year according to the TAFE teachers association, while 40 per cent of students have had to pay an extra $500 to $1500 on fees and enrolment delays have plagued the start of term.
"I congratulate these students," said NSW TAFE Teachers Association president Phil Chadwick "But there are much wider issues here. The only way we stay competitive is through teachers going above and beyond the call of duty."
"The cuts have impacted on every single area of TAFE. Time is the biggest factor, teachers just aren't able to spend enough of it with students."
TAFE managing director Pam Christie has repeatedly defended the reforms as "increasing efficiency", as has NSW Skills Minister, John Barilaro, who said there are areas in which TAFE can compete with private colleges to provide the best educational outcomes but that core trades would continue to receive funding.
Mr Chadwick said he was very concerned that the government's push to have private colleges pick up the extra work under continuing reforms could put more jobs on the line now that the state election is over.
"Trades are not a profitable area for them to be in," he said. "Without TAFE to provide those services the quality of tradie that we produce in the future is at risk."
