Meet triathlon’s richest (former) pro

For those of us who have been in the sport for a while, we’ll always remember him as the quiet-spoken champion. He won Ironman Switzerland five times. The famed Zofingen Powerman duathlon eight times. He was the world duathlon champion three times. He was professional in every respect of the word. Always taking time to do an interview, it was hard not to come away from any interaction thinking that Switzerland’s Olivier Bernhard was a really nice guy.

Now, thanks to some hard work, he’s also a really rich guy. Bernhard is one of the three founding partners of On Running, a company that has become a powerhouse in the the sports world since it was started in 2010. Bernhard started the company with Caspar Coppetti and David Allemann and, in 2019, tennis great Roger Federer came on board as an investor, too.

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“I shouldn’t say I got lucky, because it was hard work to get here, but it’s like in sports – if you believe in something then just go for it, put everything on the line,” Bernhard said in an interview during an On press event before the Ironman World Championship in Nice. “That’s what we did when we founded the shoe company, or what’s now a sports company, in 2010. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and ask myself is it really a dream?”

Bernhard came up with the concept of CloudTec as he was dealing with a running injury. He literally cut up a hose and attached pieces to the bottom of a shoe. The idea was that the shoe would provide cushioning as you landed, but then that cushioning would compress as you pushed yourself forward and needed a firm platform. He tried to pitch the concept to other running shoe companies, including Nike, but no one was interested. So he teamed up with Coppetti and Allemann, and they started to build running shoes.

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“In the beginning you have to make the product work,” Bernhard remembered. “None of us, the three founders and two employees, had a clue how to build a shoe. It was a good thing, because we’re still listening to other people with expertise outside. Not in just making shoes, but accounting, marketing, sourcing – we’re listening to people with more experience than ourselves.”

Things didn’t get any easier once they had some shoes to show off.

“Initially it was making the shoe work, making people believe in the technology, and then the next step getting into retail,” he said. “I think that runners and triathletes bought into the story behind the shoe, but retailers weren’t sure. Initially we tried to explain the technology to them, but that didn’t work. Then we realized that most of them were runners themselves, so we took them on a run. We put them in the shoes and took them for a run. That made the difference. They could feel the difference, then they started make orders.”

Bernhard attributes a lot of the success to “the athlete’s spirit within the company.”

“It’s the same as being an athlete – every day you have to overcome challenges if you’re going to believe you’re going to make it,” he said.

On has most definitely “made it.” According to Bernhard, there are now 3,000 people working for the company around the world and the company is still growing 50 to 60 per cent every year. In addition to triathlon, On has become a big player in the world of tennis, with stars like Iga Swiatek and Ben Shelton now wearing On clothing and shoes. The company is now making spikes, too, and the always-competitive Bernhard has some lofty goals for the company: he’d like to see athletes wearing On track spikes win more medals than Nike at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

It’s a lofty goal, but, as Bernhard is all-too-aware, if you don’t set big goals, you’ll never reach the highest levels – of sport, or business.

For Olivier Bernhard, the success of On has been just like his success in sports – it’s a matter of going for it and putting everything on the line.