Name: What Sport Can Teach Us About Leadership — with London Marathon Events CEO Hugh Brasher
Uploaded: 2025-12-09T18:00:31.000Z
Duration: 39 min 30 s
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We all have to make big decisions in our lives, decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys.

未来形

If you reflect on them, some are good and some I'm sure you'll definitely regret.

In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices and they all had to make decisions to get to where they are today.

In this podcast I hear about those choices as well as the moments, moments of doubt, risk and conviction that impacted our guests journeys and the people they lead.

This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

In this episode, I speak to Hugh Brasher.

Look to really where you want to go, look to the person you want to be.

Start reading the right books, start connecting with the right people.

You will end up in that place if you keep looking at it.

Hugh is the CEO of London Marathon Events, which manages running, swimming and cycling events across London and the United Kingdom.

His career in sport follows in the footsteps of his family's incredible sporting legacy.

Sport has been an intrinsic part of my life.

It runs through my blood, but not quite at the standard of my parents.

But I just think sport is brilliant at teaching people life lessons.

Early in his career, Hugh took over his family's running equipment store and transformed it into a nationwide chain with over 40 outlets.

He eventually sold that business to the UK's largest sporting retailer, but not without facing some of the toughest choices of his professional life.

The more that you lean into hard decisions and the more that you do them, then the easier eventually they become.

But something like that is never going to be easy.

These are Hugh Brasher's executive decisions.

My mother was French tennis Open champion, both singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and my father was Olympic gold medalist in steeplechase in Melbourne in 1956.

And I think sport has been an intrinsic part of my life.

Having said that, though, I always say that if I was a horse as a yearling, I'd probably have been sold for a huge amount of money because the stud value of my parents was probably quite high.

But quite soon I'd have been banger and in the selling hurdle and I'd be glue now.

So yes, it runs through my blood, but not quite at the standard of my parents.

I come from a family of sportsmen as well.

My father played first class cricket, my uncle played first class cricket and football.

And I am, I love I love sport, I love it.

But I'm pretty average at it, to say the least.

Is that dispiriting for you or was it a challenge as you were growing up?

Your mother's a multiple French Open champion.

Your father's was, was with Hillary on Everest, was with Bannister at the breaking of the four minute mile as well.

Firstly, your parents are just your parents.

I had no idea, you know, people would be coming up to my dad and asking for his autograph or coming up and having this deep conversation.

I think you're just in an environment where they are normal people and you don't realize their achievements at the time.

And, you know, I think so many of my father's achievements actually, I only found out once his obituary was being written.

It wasn't something that he was particularly vocal about.

His gold medal was on the top of a bookcase in its little case and no one ever saw it.

So that wasn't something that was shoved in front of us.

My elder sister was turned professional age 17.

I motorbike raced later on to a fairly decent standard.

I think that the more that we can encourage people to get active, it's now been proven to improve people's physical health.

That's the obvious bit, but the mental health, and I really passionately believe that children should, this is a United nations human right, is that children have the right to be active.

And sadly, in this country, activity has become a privilege.

And that is a privilege through kids that can go where their parents pay for them to go to school in those schools.

Sport activity is taking place every day.

In so many state schools, kids are lucky if they're getting one day a week with which activity has taken part.

And that is a right that every child should have.

And definitely London marathon events as a company has.

Tell me about your early business decisions.

Of course, your dad, amongst all these amazing things he was doing.

And of course your mum was a brilliant sportswoman as well.

And then you took that on, what, a fairly early age?

Or was it his baby for a while, then he handed it over to you.

Yeah, it Was my first job when I was 15 on a Saturday and school holidays, selling trainers at this shop that sold all sorts of sports equipment.

I remember I got a Liverpool football top top when I was about nine.

So it really did, it didn't make you a Liverpool fan, it didn't make me live.

I have no idea why I got that top but anyway I did and so I was working there, 15, going to school, selling people tennis rackets, selling them better quality tennis rackets, better quality football boots and yeah, it really turned from a two week holiday job into a chain of the largest specialist retailer retailers in, in the UK.

I sold it to Mike Ashton Sports in 2014 and it was founded on groundbreaking customer service.

One of the values of the company was groundbreaking customer service.

And I think in this country we're not very good at customer service.

So it's not difficult to be groundbreaking when you look at the benchmarks that we have.

But really that the staff were there to understand the customer, listen to the customer, be experts, be able to simplify what, what they needed.

Mo Farrell used to work at the sweatshop in Teddington.

He used to work in the warehouse and he used to work on Saturdays.

We had some great athletes in, in the history, but it wasn't because they were great athletes, they worked there.

It's because actually they wanted to help people.

The number one reason in interviewing people about why they wanted to work for the company is because they wanted to help people.

And the moment they said that, that was the moment that I knew that they were right to work in the company.

But I mean you talk about these great athletes coming through.

We've talked about my background as well, a little bit off camera and it wasn't uncommon on a Saturday morning for, I don't know, Gordon Greenwich to be in there chatting to Bobby Moore, chatting to my dad and my uncle about sport.

That has to brush off on you as a young man with these amazing people coming through.

Yeah, but it's also, it's what you think is normal.

I mean John Walker, the first man to do 100 sub 4 minute miles, used to come into the sweatshop in Tennington and make us a cup of coffee and just come in for the chat.

And some of the greatest athletes, athletes in the world, endurance athletes.

I remember I was doing a track session at Kingston and there were three Kenyans running around and they asked us to time them.

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What Sport Can Teach Us About Leadership — with London Marathon Events CEO Hugh Brasher

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