ATHCO

She loved sprinting. She couldn’t afford shoes, so she turned up barefoot. A teacher looked at her and asked why she was even there.

She never went back.

But she still wanted to move, so she walked into a gym at 17. That was over ten years ago.
The thing she couldn’t do was approach strangers on a commercial gym floor. Her words: she’d rather live on the street. So instead of facing it, she left the country. Two years in Bangkok. Two in Singapore. Nine clients a day, six days a week, seven days of paid leave a year.

Then her visa was denied and she had 60 days to get out.

She came home and walked straight into the commercial gym she’d crossed the world to avoid.

GIORGIA gets properly honest about a decade in the fitness industry in this one. Including why most of the advice you see online isn’t coming from chicken and rice.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Five years of work went into Tokyo. A ruthless centralised program in which a daily leaderboard determined whether you kept your seat. Two stress fractures in his ribs he never told anyone about, because speaking up meant losing your spot.

Three weeks out from the Games, they overcooked it.

He describes taking two strokes off the start line in Tokyo and watching the entire field disappear from his peripheral vision.

He walked away from endurance sport after that. Didn’t want to touch a rowing machine. Then HYROX came along and he couldn’t stay out of it.

Seven and a half minutes off his time between race one and race two. Sub-60 in Chicago. Now Kyle Schoonbee is chasing Elite 15.

In this one, he breaks down what actually separates elite HYROX athletes from everyone else and a lot of it isn’t what you’d expect.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

She thought about the Olympics every single day from the age of eight.

A hip injury cost her 2012. Glandular fever cost her 2016. By 2020 she’d walked away, finished a law degree, and figured it was over.

Then her son was born. Two weeks later, holding him, she told her husband she still wanted Paris. Her last international race had been seven years earlier. Almost everyone thought she was crazy.

Five months postpartum she raced African Champs and finished eight minutes down. Exactly one year later, she won it by three minutes.

She trained less than her competitors with a newborn, broken sleep and a business, more hours weren’t available. So every session had a purpose, and after every race she wrote down what went wrong and fixed it.

She went to Paris at 34. Vicky van der Merwe (Botha), OLY is now pregnant with her second.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcast

We started ATHCO to answer one question: how do you turn a passion for sport into a full-time profession in South Africa?

27 episodes later, we’ve got an answer. It’s not the one we wanted.

The best creators in this country still have full-time jobs. At 40K followers. Doing content that would fund a very comfortable life in Europe.

Brands here don’t have creator marketing budgets, not because they don’t want to, but because the infrastructure doesn’t exist yet. And the market maths is brutal.

We’re also being honest about us. One of us is burning through savings. The other is flying back and forth from Germany. We tried one business model that didn’t work. We’re figuring out the next one.

No six-step formula. No secret hack. Just where we’re actually at.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Start your weekend the way it should be started.

Join us for an easy 5k run followed by a free sauna session and a free juice to replenish. No pressure, no pace targets. Just a good run with good people and a proper recovery session afterwards.

The plan:

7:30: Meet up, say hi, grab your spot
7:45: Easy 5k run together
Post-run: Free sauna session at SaunaHaüs
Finish: Free juice from Nourish’d

What to bring:

Running kit, a towel and swimwear for the sauna, and a water bottle. That’s it.

📍Prom Park - 160 Beach Road Cape Town Western Cape 8005 South Africa

See you on Saturday!

He’s 22 and one of the fastest stand up paddle sprinters on the planet. Junior World Champion at 18. On his first ever international event. Bronze in the Pro Men’s division at 21. World Cup gold in Italy.

He gets almost nothing for it.

No salary. No government backing. Meanwhile paddlers at his exact level in other countries get free cars, houses and full team support.

And here’s the part nobody talks about: being one of the best in the world isn’t enough anymore. Cameron Tripney⚡️ has spent his whole life focused on performance and now he has to pull out a camera and film his training too, because results don’t get you sponsors. Content does.

He was terrified of water as a kid. He’d freak out about soap in his eyes. Now he’s world-class on it.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Amish was lonely. COVID had just ended his cricket career, and he’d gotten into running, but he was doing it all alone. Something was missing.

So he invited a few old cricket mates: meet at a coffee shop, do a 5K, grab a coffee. He made an Instagram page that same day.

Only two of them showed up. But five strangers had already found the page. Ten people ran that first morning.

Five years later, Amish’s Running to Coffee is in four cities across South Africa. He built one of the country’s OG run clubs completely by accident.

His secret to a community that lasts? Stop chasing numbers. “People come to your crew for one reason, you.”

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify & Apple Podcast

Twelve months ago, Jake couldn’t swim 25 metres. He’d never owned a bike. He had no athletic background at all.

Then, after a few beers at a New Year’s Eve party, he signed up for an Ironman 70.3 on the spot. The entry was 500 euros. He didn’t even own a bike yet.

He started filming the whole journey from session one. Partly just to keep himself accountable. Eight months later he qualified for the 70.3 World Championships. Four months into posting, off a single race, he landed an ambassadorship with Ironman itself. His first brand deal came at 6,500 followers.

Jake Bird breaks down the entire playbook. How he grew his following, why talking-to-camera content beats viral videos, and why you should never start posting just for the money.

Part comeback story, part social media masterclass.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Years ago, Michael was battling drug addiction that nearly took his life.

The turning point? Supporting his borther at the Two Ocean Marathon changed everything. Something clicked.

His first run was 2km on the promenade in normal takkies. It snowballed into an obsession and by complete accident, into one of Cape Town’s biggest running communities.

Since then he ran the Boston Marathon twice. The UTCT 100-miler, where he was so broken he walked the last 70km to the finish line over 17 hours because he refused to give up.

Michael Obery doesn’t just run. He’s the guy at every Cape Town race screaming your name from the sidelines. This is his story and it’s a special one.

Full episode on YouTube, Spotify. & Apple Podcast.