ATHCO

Chanel Kruger didn't grow up a runner. At school she only played netball, and by her own admission she hated putting in the work. Her sister was the track star. That changed during COVID. Her sister kept training at home, so Chanel joined her, mostly just to spend time together. They worked through a Burnt Studios at-home program, one session led to another, and she never really stopped. She&#...

One in four children in South Africa is affected by childhood stunting. And if a child doesn't get the nutrition they need in their first two years of life, the effects can't be reversed later. Jeremy Cook is a motion designer with a nine-to-five. He's not an elite athlete, he's not running across a continent, and he doesn't have a big following. What he does have is a race cal...

Cassandra signed her partner up for an Ironman 70.3 as a birthday present without asking him. She signed herself up too, then went back to work on a cruise ship and came home with three and a half months to train for a race she didn't fully understand. Her goal at Mossel Bay was simply to finish. She qualified for the 70.3 World Championships in Nice. First triathlon she'd ever done. In th...

Vicky-Leigh Kruger wasn't sporty, was bullied for her weight, and hit a wall in grade 11, glandular fever, 21 days out of school, a colon infection, her gran passing, and five days away from repeating the year. Her words: she had no purpose and she was drowning. She found CrossFit at 16 through one guy's Instagram videos. At 18 she failed her Level 1 exam three times because she'd neve...

Oscar Armstrong was a professional kitesurfer from 16 to 22. Sponsored, homeschooled, travelling the world on tour. Then he burnt out, moved to the Caribbean, picked up a camera and built an entirely different career. Since then: Indonesia, Sardinia, a van in Oregon, marine conservation documentaries, and a 50km surf ski from Hout Bay to Muizenberg in 7 hours 42 minutes. Now he's a fitness ent...

Giorgia Wessels couldn't afford running shoes, so she showed up to sprint trials barefoot. A teacher asked why she was even there and she never went back. She walked into a gym at 17 instead, and that was over ten years ago. She was too shy to approach people on a commercial gym floor, so rather than face it she left the country. Two years in Bangkok, two in Singapore, working nine clients a d...

Kyle Schoonbee rowed at the Tokyo Olympics. Five years of work, a ruthless centralised program, two stress fractures he never told anyone about. Then three weeks out from the Games the squad overcooked it. He took two strokes off the start line and watched the entire field disappear. He walked away from endurance sport after that. Then HYROX came along and he couldn't stay out of it. Seven and a h...

Vicky Van Der Merwe thought about the Olympics every day from the age of eight. She got there at 34. A hip injury cost her 2012. Glandular fever cost her 2016. By 2020 she'd stepped away, finished a law degree and moved on. Then her son was born in 2022 and two weeks later she told her husband she still wanted Paris. Her last international race had been seven years earlier. Almost everyone tho...

We started ATHCO to answer one question: can you turn a passion for sport into a full-time profession in South Africa? Twenty-seven episodes later, we have an answer and it's not the one we wanted. This is just the two of us being honest about what we've found. Why the best SA creators still have full-time jobs even at 40,000 followers. Why brands here don't have creator marketing budg...

Cameron Tripney is 22 and one of the fastest stand up paddle sprinters in the world. 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 government backing, no salary, none of the support paddlers at his level receive in South America or Europe. And the hardest part isn't the t...

Amish Kooverjee was lonely during COVID. His cricket career had ended and he was running alone, feeling like something was missing. So he invited a few cricket mates to do a 5K and grab a coffee. Only two showed up but five strangers found the Instagram page he'd made that day, and ten people ran. Five years later, Running to Coffee is in four cities across South Africa. He accidentally built...

Twelve months ago, Jake Bird had never owned a bike and couldn't swim 25 metres without stopping. After a few beers at a New Year's Eve party, he signed up for an Ironman 70.3 on the spot. Eight months later, with no athletic background, he qualified for the 70.3 World Championships. He documented the entire journey on Instagram from day one and four months into posting, off a single race,...

Michael Obery is one of the most recognisable faces in Cape Town running. What most people don't know is that years ago he was battling drug addiction that nearly killed him. The turning point came watching his younger brother head out for a run at 5am while Mike was still coming home from a night out. His first run was 2km on the promenade. It snowballed into an obsession and by accident, into on...

Keaton Mac Farlane was the kid picked last in PE. He started going to the gym at 15 to escape everyone and his high school nickname became "Creatine." Ten years later he's done marathons, ultras, and Ironmans while staying jacked year-round, and he's trained over 200 people. In this episode he breaks down how to combine running and lifting without losing muscle, and why most hybrid athletes get it...

Carla Johnson got into running because of a boy. Her first marathon was a 4:20 she hated. A few years later she qualified for Kona the Ironman World Championships while working full-time in a mining job, sleeping seven nights a month in her own bed and training 28 hours a week. Then she walked away from triathlon at the top, discovered running was her real calling, and two years later became a top...

Stephani van Zyl did rhythmic gymnastics for 16 years. Her mom coached her. Her dad was supposed to be a South African Olympian. When gymnastics ended at 19, she spent five years trying to find the next thing triple jump, running, resistance training but injuries and scoliosis kept pulling her back. Then she found HYROX. First race ever: 3rd overall in Women's Pro doubles. First solo: 10th ove...

David Fick went from gym bro to 2:35 marathoner. Running saved his life after addiction his cousin dragged him to a run club in Durban and everything changed. Seven years later, he's the team captain of ASICS Front Runners South Africa, coaches over 20 athletes, and is chasing sub-2:30 at Berlin with a newborn due weeks before the race. But this conversation is really about what he thinks SA runne...

Michael Tones has been building brands since he was 10 labeling bottles in his family's factory in Durban. His dad was a serial entrepreneur who risked everything and lost everything more than once. Michael watched and took notes. Years later, a mate said "toss me a naughty water" on a Friday evening. By Monday he'd trademarked it. No plan, no product. He sold his house, went R70...

Michael Larter's girlfriend Amiee took her own life in 2017. After years of depression and healing, he founded the Amiee Howard Foundation to get teenagers access to therapy the group who can't afford it and don't have medical aid. Then he ran across countries to fund it. First South Africa to Namibia, 772km in 14 days. Then the entire length of Japan 3,300km, solo, self-funded, pushin...

Shaka started rugby at 14 five years behind everyone else. He came from a school with 90 boys, studied mathematics at Stellenbosch, and did 1,000 passes a day during COVID because he couldn't pass with his left hand. Now he coaches rugby performance and works at one of the top schools in the country, bridging the gap between what team coaches expect and what individual players can actually do....

Laura Kirkpatrick spent four years in med school, started a vegan business that landed in 30 UK stores, did three years in management consulting, and then quit everything to ride bikes and make films. She left with 10,000 followers, no brand deals, and one consulting bonus as her safety net. She came to Cape Town on a whim after a stranger on a training camp suggested it instead of Mexico. This co...

Kuba Nowosiński quit his sales job in June 2024 with three months of savings and one bet: what happens if I put 100% into content creation? Two years later, he has 116K followers on Instagram, works as head of business development at one of Poland's biggest social media agencies, and gets flown out by brands across Europe. He sits on both sides of every deal. He's the creator and the perso...

Gerrit Knein was leading a 120-million-euro company with 100+ employees. 13-hour days. Multi-six-figure salary. Managing director by 28. Then his son was born and he remembered a promise he made at 18 to be the kind of dad who's actually there. So he left. What came after wasn't what he expected. The freedom he'd dreamed about came with an identity crisis nobody warned him about. Now h...

Nika Bedeker has no content strategy. No pillars. No calendar. She edits on her phone, posts when she feels like it, and still doesn't think she's an influencer. But somehow, a lot of the good things in her life came from social media. Her fiancé. Her job. Her flat in Cape Town which she got by sending her Instagram to the landlord. Even her Milan Marathon ambassadorship, which she was convinced w...

Seb Prentice was 24 when his mom passed away. She was in London, he was in Cape Town. Three weeks from hospitalization to gone. At the time, he was earning R70-110K a month in tech sales, living rent-free in Sea Point. He quit, took his savings and his mom's life policy, and opened a gym. He moved out of his flat and into the gym itself to keep costs down. He started every single month in the...