From Unknown to World Champion: The Rise of Rico Bogen

Foreign.

I'm Charlie Redding.

And I'm Claire Fudge.

Welcome to the Business of Endurance.

I think we have many good runners. Never get easier, but I want to be there in a good shape.

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Business of Endurance podcast where we delve into the stories, insights and advice of the world's top endurance athletes. Today we have a truly inspiring guest, someone who has taken the triathlon world by storm with his remarkable achievements at such a young age. Rico Bogan, the youngest Ironman 70.3 world champion, joins us to share his journey to the top, his training secrets and his approach to balancing life, fitness and the business aspects of being a professional athlete. At just 222 years old, Rico has already made history and is poised for even greater success. We'll discuss his partnership with Q Cycles, we'll explore his strategies for maintaining peak health and nutrition, and we'll learn how he handles the pressure that comes with being a world champion. We'll also dive into his thoughts on the strength of German triathletes, his race selection process and his long term goals in the sport. This episode promises to be packed with valuable insights and actionable advice. Whether you're an aspiring triathlete, a seasoned pro, or someone looking to improve your overall fitness and performance, stay tuned as we uncover the story behind Rico Bogan's incredible success and what drives him to push the limits of human endurance. So without further ado, let's welcome Rico Bogan to the Business of Endurance podcast. So, Rico, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you. Wow, you have crashed into the world of triathlon quickly. And that's where I really want to start. I have to be honest, a year ago I hadn't heard of Rico Bogan. So you then become the world champion. The youngest ever world champion. 70.3. And what an incredible day that must have been. So I'd love to start with that story. What was it like in the build up to, you know, where have you come from? How did you build up to that race? Tell us the story of that race.

Hi. Together. I'm really happy to be here. In the podcast, the champions was 22 years, so yeah, I'm the youngest. 70.3. I am a champion though. I started as a young kid in a sports family, so my parents are working but they didn't do sport as a hobby and so they took us on every running competition or triathlon competition in the area around Leipzig. It's great because as a child you have this competition and can focus on this competition. And that's not so easy to do it in other competitions. That's really great to get points for the Olympic ranking. We took the decision to go more in the middle stance and winning the world champions title thing that nobody expected it for me, I didn't expect it to.

And it was a really stacked field as well. It was a really. It was, it was a. You beat a lot of the. The very top names. Tell us a bit more about that win. Tell us what happened. How did you feel before the race? How did you feel during the race? And at what point did you think, I've got this in the bag? How did that feel?

It was a little bit. Yeah, a 50, 50 chance if I'm responding good on the altitude or not because it was the first time. But yeah, and also in the altitude camp. I didn't feel that good at the end last week, although I read that for three weeks and the last week I was really tired and thought, oh, that's not good. I'm not at my highest level. I came down 11 days before the race and it got better day by day. And yeah, then I was there, I think on Wednesday I was in Finland and the last brick session before the race I felt very good. So there I was really excited before the race and then I was out of the water in third or fourth place. But on the bike I was all time with the front. We had in the beginning a gap with just three men. This is Nislag and Matiss Machia. And I was there and we had a gap already in F4 there. Here's where I want to be, where I want to be at the front. And after 50 or 60 kilometers I thought, yeah, my legs are not that fresh anymore and a little bit tired. But at the end it was a little bit easier and so I got from the bike and third position and then, yeah, my legs were new again. I started to run and it said I had good cadence and rhythm and there was already my parents was there. The sideline cheered. Yeah, it looks so good. Good. And yeah, after 3 kilometer I could close the 30 seconds gap and I went in front of the race and now in first place and yeah, this was really amazing. And yeah, the finish line is just goosebumps and yeah, tears of joy and yeah, this was amazing because, yeah, it was a long way. My sport career started very early and yeah, everything came down there and yeah, just was unbelievable.

Yeah, it was absolutely fantastic. I followed you under. Who cycles actually all day? Yeah, it was fantastic to see you finishing and hear the excitement. Yeah. So absolutely fantastic win. You've got this background coming from swimming at a young age and then into 70.3 distance. Is there anything in particular that you've changed strategy wise in 70.3 racing that you feel is monumental? Already made a difference.

Yeah. Preparation for 70.3 is different to shorter stance. You have to cover load more. I would say this was something different. And also penetration is much more important than the middle stance, sprinter stance because there's just one hour and you have a bottle on the bike and yeah, there you have maybe 30 grams of carbs in the bottle but if you don't get it in then it's also not so important. But yeah, for middle sense, yeah, you have to train the nutrition. Then with the stomach you have to. Yeah, nothing gets out again. And so yeah, this was something new. And yeah, with my coach, yeah, we tried to talk about this and trying to train this and training. So that's. I think that's the most different to the shortest tense. And yeah, so I got it very fast with the nutrition though already in the first race it was okay. And running I have sometimes problems to get carbs in me and my coach doing this speed stuff and all the longer stuff. So we mix it very good.

You've mentioned your coach a couple of times already and I think actually you share your coach with Claire. I think Claire also coached by Joe. Given that you're very early in your career, how did you go about picking your coach? What did you look for in a coach? What was it about Joe that you felt was a good fit?

Yeah, for me it's important to have a good relationship to record and with not just what is on the training plan. So I'm asking very many questions or I want to know why we are doing this. So that's very important for me that I can give my feedback and that I can ask something. I got a contact to him and I asked him, yeah, is it okay if I ask questions? And so that's what I think is very important in our relationship, that he is adjustable.

You know, you mentioned about a partnership with a coach is really important to help support you with that success and I guess trust as well. You mentioned partnerships in the world of triathlon. It's becoming more and more difficult to be able to gain partnerships and sponsorships for athletes and we've certainly seen that sort of past. Covid obviously you've nodal working alongside CU cycles. What made you choose a KOO bike or work with Q cycles and how do you find that bike and that design?

Yeah, it's. It looks a little bit different from the other bike brands. Yeah, I want to work with them because looks different. And the philosophy behind this is different. As you have the higher frame or the fork is wider and higher so that the airstream could go through the frame and through the legs so that it's not broken at the beginning it makes sense. And the context is also about. With Joe and his girlfriend is a friend of my mom. There's a program if I want to join you got measured your body and then the frame is built to your body. In a bigger bike company, I would just be one of many athletes in there. In this company. Maybe I'm the other role model, but I can talk to the CEO, I can talk to anybody and I can make also a difference.

And it's definitely a bike that splits opinion, isn't it? But ultimately it's giving you the results that you want. What amazing advocate you must be for them. They must be delighted with their next generation program. I'm really intrigued about this whole sponsorship thing. When you won the world championship, did you suddenly have this flood of new sponsors trying to throw product and money at you? I'm very conscious that nowadays it's. It seems to be almost more about the followers than it is the results that you get as an athlete. So how has the sponsorship dynamic change? How was it before you won the world championship and how it has evolved since?

Before the world championships there was not too many sponsors. They believed since the beginning and me on the first day that yeah, he's a really good guy. He will become a world champion though they believe from day one. But otherwise there was a sponsor here in Leipzig, my hometown, so it was more like a friend who wants to give me some money and yeah that I can do the sport and my parents paid the most travels and so it was very important that I have the parents behind me. After the world champs it got for sure easier. And with the world title you feel that social media is getting more important that you have to present them on social media. I have both the followers and the performance. Nutrition is also so important in the middle sense and there are so many brands. So yeah, it took quite a long time to find the right partner there.

It sounds like a full time job on top of a full time job being an athlete managing sponsorship and social media. As somebody who's still young, how do you manage training full time as a professional athlete athlete and having to manage all the social media side of Things and sponsorship side of things. What do you do in terms of helping yourself recover properly and potentially have some social part to your life as well?

I have a good team around me. So as a manager I have Alex Bog. So he's also the CEO of Recycle but he managed the team BVT for many years. So he knows how to manage a team or how to manage an athlete. And social media wise I have videographer with me and photographer. So because Hoffman is a friend or at the beginning it was a friend, he's still friends but now he's doing more the YouTube channel, he's cutting the videos. I really try to balance the social life and the training life that I'm not just focused all the time on training and so that I have the social life.

Obviously staying healthy and injury free is really important. Have you got any strategies or key things that you do that help you stay healthy or help you avoid injury?

Yeah, with injury. I've also in Leipzig here a partner in physiotherapy that I could go two times a week to physiotherapy. So really cool that also in Leipzig it's possible here and then. Yeah, I prefer for recovery sauna. Yeah. Then you relax your muscles and eating is very important.

You mentioned the good eating there at the end and I was going to come on to some of your other recovery strategies. And actually when you were talking about racing moving from shorter distance into 70.3 and how nutrition is really important part of that race day, is there anything specifically that you do from a nutrition perspective to help with either day to day fueling or perhaps your recovery?

I have not a diet or I'm omnivore. I'm eating everything. For me it's. I'm not eating that much meat or in normal life or normal training week. I don't need the meat and not that heavy stuff, especially for running. It's more. Yeah. Having bread or oats immediately after the session. I recovery shake. But that's working very good.

I agree. And I think it's not just about getting back and eating whatever's wrong. I tend to rip people's heads off. I get really hangry if I don't. So that recovery shake saves me.

But it's very good. The recovery shake again, in my younger ages I didn't do that and then I came home very hungry and yeah sometimes cry to my parents why there's nothing to eat and.

Why is dinner not ready? That kind of makes me think are there any mistakes that you see Young triathletes making that you've learned now or having a recovery shake straight after. Sounds like a good piece of advice. Are there any mistakes people making with regards to nutrition?

Yeah, I think the old school was that you don't have carbs in the training sessions as you just have water or sometimes no water. So also in swimming, some at least has no water bottle or something to drink on the side of the pool.

Sound like you got some very good strategies there in terms of recovery and being really sensible around listening to your body as well. Going back to, you know, this amazing place that you're in, being the youngest ever 70.3 world champion, that's obviously brought you amazing success. But has that to a certain degree put a pressure on you now to perform? What does that feel like to be in this situation right now?

Yeah, for sure, a little bit more pressure than before. But because now I'm not the underdog anymore, so everybody knows my name or I don't want to put too much pressure on me because trial on so many good athletes there we could see all last years that nobody could win every way. So we have so many different winners. And also in the Team 100 series now, nobody won twice. I think that's why it's not boring and it's a really good, cool sport.

I think maybe there's an underlying added pressure because Germany have got such great history. You mentioned it already yourself. It's got this history of producing exceptional triathletes. And we were talking before the podcast. I've just come back from Germany and I was going out and doing sort of 70, 80 mile rides and 75% of the ride was on, on tarmac, but purpose built bike trails. And I was like, this is incredible. I mean, and I couldn't help but think, I wonder if this kind of infrastructure helps breed people into cycling and running. So why is it that you think, why do you think that Germany produces such strong triathletes? And I know when I race I'm always up against some strong German athletes. So why is that?

I would say it's, we have a good structure, we have the many swimming pools and it's one opportunity. And if you love the sport or if you love the training, and then it's just a matter of time that you get to the top and we have a good infrastructure and then the competitions and then we had good role models to focus on them.

I think the swimming pool is a really interesting point actually, because in the UK we've got something like 300 swimming pools closed in the last four years and we have a real struggle to find good swimming pools. And yet it strikes me that so many times we speak to triathletes, professional triathletes that come from a swimming background. And I think you're right, it's important that we learn to swim at a young age. But I think the discipline of training that swimming embeds in you then and also the building of the engine also seems to. It just strikes me as the UK is missing out horribly by closing swimming pools when Germany is clearly proving the opposite seems to be the case. Who was your role model when you were younger in the sport?

And for me it was mostly Jan Frodeno because he's. He's tall, so taller than me. So he was more body. That is possible with very tall athlete. And yeah, he, he won the Olympics, he won 17.3 and he won the long, long distance world championships. So he won everything. He was a role model for me and he did all very good business besides the sport. So he built his own brand. Quite untouchable and warm water for me.

It's interesting to hear you talk about building your brand as an athlete as well. I think that's really interesting. You touched on there about in Germany racing from a really early age and you mentioned it a couple of times now in the world of professional triathlon like how do you go about choosing races like strategically racing, when do you choose like T100 over the Ironman series as an example? So yeah, how do you start to even choose which races you're going to participate in?

I'm one of 20 athletes who has a contract with T100 so I have to race six races in the series. So these six races are set in my competition plans. There are eight races I missed Singapore, so maybe I do know all of them or maybe I will miss another one. But for this one it's clear I have to do this. But it's also great to be there because you always race against the. The best Ridelli in the world. So I'm really appreciating that I'm there and always looking forward to race there. The running competitions if it's here in Leipzig or around Leipzig. I'm doing the running competitions as a training race and I'm talking with Joe the coach what we implemented in the training plan and then he structures around us. Yeah, if he has a running competition or a triathlon then I'm doing this just as a training or a good faster training.

You mentioned that the T100 series in that finish at Escape from Alcatraz in San Francisco was just incredible, wasn't it? And obviously it was a three way mad dash for the line. Obviously you finished really strong that time but it wasn't quite enough. What lessons did you learn from that race?

Yeah for me it was a great result or it's a third place. I was really happy with it. Yeah to one for such a long time with the lead and with Martin Van Riel who was before the race everybody said yeah it's an easy win for him because he won every race or every middle distance race he ever did. I was quite happy to battle with him and could stay with him for such a long time. And yeah for this race I would have to train the sprint because if I would have a better sprint then I could win it. Yeah, we drain a little bit more in the sprint.

That leads me on to what is next for you. You know you've achieved some amazing success already and being at such a young age. You mentioned London T100 coming up. Charlie's a big goal setter here so he will be very keen to know what are your short term goals right now and what are your long term goals. Would you think about transitioning to longer distance like Ironman distance at some point in the future? Is that on the cards for this year?

And the goal is with the T100 series and the next race is in London. So at the end of this week on Sunday that's the race and my goal is always to be at least in top five and yeah to be on the podium. It's. Yeah it's. This is something I can't say before because yeah it's important how you feel on this day and so many circumstances but to be there in the top five and also and the overall ranking because you get points for every race and then there's overall ranking to be there in the end of the year in the top five. That's the goal for this year. And then in December there's still the 70.3 world champs in Tapo and New Zealand. I hope that I can perform there but it's not easy there because many short distance guys come for after the on the tour to the middle standards. So I think we have many good runners and never get easier but I want to be there in good shape. I can be in the T100 series next year too so that I'm one of the athletes. So I would love to race there next year and with long distance I know that I will do it on dumb day. But I don't want to say if.

He could just pick one long term goal. So whether it's a win in particular, whether it's a winning Kona, whether it's a winning Roth, whether it's the win of the T100 series, if you could pick one more career win, what would that long term goal be?

Difficult question. I don't think I would pick the long distance world champion. So I don't know if it's on Kona or is it somewhere else?

Rico's just been talking about his short term and long term goals and goal setting is incredibly important. You know, the top 1% of achievers the world over, whether it's sport or business, write goals. If you want to be in the 1%, you have to write goals, but also have a system to achieve those goals. I have a, a workshop called the Limitless Life Workshop where I'll show you how to create amazing goals and how to create a system to achieve achieve those goals. So if you go to www.thetrusted.team, you can register for one of our events called the Limitless Life Workshop. I will show you how to set goals and how to achieve them. We always ask the previous guest of the podcast to ask the next guest a question without knowing who that is. And the previous guest was a former professional rugby player turned ultra runner called Lewis Robling. I think Claire has got his question.

Lewis asks, do you have any mantras and what do they mean to you? So if there's any mantras that you.

Say to yourself while running. Yeah, so running, I say sometimes keep to the cadence. Or it's also a German as a locker on Leicht. So it's keep easy and stay easy. Yes. Is just flat. So I'm always saying this, if it's going uphill, then I'm saying, yeah, keep easy. It's. It's just split.

Excellent. I like that. I like that. That's brilliant, Rico, it's been absolutely brilliant chatting to you. What an incredible start to your career with such. But equally what I love about chatting to you is, and why we started this conversation was that when somebody bursts onto the scene and having great success like you did, it's very easy to think, oh, they've just suddenly they're a natural. And yet what was brilliant about hearing your story was the fact that you have transitioned from so much from a youngster. And of course we only see the peak of the mountain, don't we? But all of that work below has clearly taken a Huge amount of effort and it's massively paid off. It's a huge congratulations so far. I'm sure in years to come we'll be getting you back on the podcast having won all of those different things that we talked about as we got the rising star of the world of triathlon here. But a huge congratulations and we'll be watching with eager eyes cheering you on in London and in New Zealand. Obviously not in person, but yeah, no, I hope you have an amazing year and many years to come.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation, for being part of the podcast. He loved it.

So what did you make of that interview with Rico?

It was fantastic to speak to like the youngest ever since 70.3 world champion. That was, that was amazing. And what an amazingly sensible heads on a 23 year old male. What he was coming out.

Why did you have to have male there? Well, I don't.

Female.

Yeah, no, I know exactly why you had to have.

But just Justin, you know, some of the wisdom that he was coming out with is, you know, you kind of learn by mistake, but it's almost like he's already ahead in terms of his thinking.

He is definitely wise beyond his years. I thought he was very grounded and I thought, you know, just like referencing or you know, when it's, when it's all becoming a bit too much, a bit of time hanging out with my friends, my school friends or my grandparents, it's just, you know, really, really sensible stuff. What I liked was when we talked about being coached by Joe, his, his confidence to be able to say, well, I want to do this, therefore can we make that work? And knowing that he needed to sort of, kind of stand up for what he believed in and what he wanted to do, I thought was, was really interesting. What else did you take from that interview?

We touched on it quite a bit throughout the, in Germany it seems that they, as we do with a lot of people we interview, they start quite young. But that, you know, racing really young seems to be potentially, you know, a key to him being able to also thrive in this, you know, professional competitive environment as well. You know, if you've been racing since you're really, really young and it's very.

Easy to sort of. Because he sort of skirted over it. But the fact that he started his career as a short, short course athlete and realized that he wasn't winning anything, so he very young, you know, like he said, you know, a lot of the people that will come out of the Olympics will, will be the athletes that Kind of get to the end of their short course career and then essentially retire from that and move to middle course. Whereas he had gone and done that at a very young age, which I think is fascinating because, you know, he could see that that was his strength and he, he had the, the courage to switch much younger than most due to middle, middle distance. And, and you can see him therefore migrating to long course quicker than perhaps, perhaps he alluded to.

I think, actually, and, you know, I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this. But just thinking about it, you know, the way that he's building his professional career, he was talking about, you know, you've got this kind of background of him coming from this young age in, in, you know, sport and competing. And then he's really is. Is almost like he's building a business. You know, he's taking all this advice from people who have made it. So his coach that this, you know, has been a professional athlete and now he's coaching at this level. He's got Alex Bock from KU Cycle that is helping to manage him and having all these people that are supporting around him and taking all of that advice. You know, he's really building very good foundations. You know, he was talking about partnerships, you know, at the age of 23, being able to negotiate really good partnerships and not just saying yes to everything that was probably, you know, thrown at him after, you know, winning that title and actually saying, actually, does it work for me? Let me try it out, Do I need it? And actually, do I benefit from it? And I just. There's. There's something that kind of comes to me in terms of it's like building a really good, you know, business. And you'll be definitely the businessman to talk about that.

Well, I just think that, you know, Jan Frodeno was an inspiration, not just from a. From an athlete point of view, but also from a kind of building a business brand point of view. And you could see that he's learning lessons from Jan and he's kind of. Yeah, he's. He's building some. Building a force to be reckoned with. I think he's. He's definitely one of those athletes to just keep an eye on. He's going to go significant places and obviously has already, but continue to see amazing things from him. And obviously by the time that this episode goes live, we'll know how he got on in the T100 in London. Well, another brilliant episode of the business of endurance. Just. Yeah, so much wisdom in there, in, in many young years. So yeah, for all the listeners out there, keep on training.

So as promised, Rico talked about his very sensible nutrition strategy, particularly around his recovery, but also his needs for training. And if you would like to also have some insight into protein for recovery, then if you click the link in the show notes below, we'll send you a protein download. So giving you picture ideas and newly updated picture ideas of both plant based proteins and also animal based proteins so you can make sure that you know how much you need before and after training. So click the link below and you can download those copies for yourself.

If you want us to keep getting amazing guests onto the business of Endurance podcast, we don't ask for you to pay for us, we don't ask for patronage. All we ask for is that you subscribe to the podcast, ideally on Apple, give us a five star rating because it shows us you care and if you've got time, leave us a comment. One word is fine, something like inspiring or amazing or something like that, but we really do appreciate it and it will help us to continue to deliver amazing guests on what we hope you find to be an amazing podcast. Thanks very much. Jeff and Chloe from Big Moves Charity we featured in Episode 1 of Season 7 made such a great impact on the both of us, we decided to make them our charity sponsor for season seven. They really touched me in the sense that I lost my brother in law to suicide in Wales and these guys are working their socks off to help prevent situations like that. So Claire, why did Jeff and Chloe really make an impact on you?

Coming from a background in clinical nutrition and working in mental health, to me also it hit a spot in terms of the charity and how they are building therapy to help support people with mental health difficulties. And They've saved over 50 lives now and already met their first target of a million and their new target 15 million that they're trying to get to, it's absolutely incredible.

And 15 million million is a huge target they've set themselves. But they're speeding up help that people in desperately in need get and this help is needed more than ever. And I know how problematic mental health issues are in today's world. So if you think you can help Big Moose Charity and they're particularly looking for corporate partners to help them raise that 15 million. If you think you can help them or link them into a company that can help them, the best place to go to is Big Moose Charity Co. Or you can find them on Instagram as Big Moose Charity. Or you can even email Jeff at Jeff at Bigmoose co.