Go to the Olympics Meet Olivia Coffey
Meet Olivia Coffey, a senior associate at One Equity Partners, representing Team USA in the women's eight next week. Her personal best time on an ergometer, or indoor rowing machine, over 2 kilometers is 6 minutes and 36 seconds. Google it. It's fast.
Speaking to Bloomberg News from Erba in Northern Italy, where US rowers trained before traveling to Paris earlier this month, 35-year-old Coffey explained how she forged a career in the alternative asset management industry while pursuing her dreams on the water.
After graduating from Harvard in 2011, Coffey was recruited by One Equity Partners in a back-office role. Her parents trained with the firm's founder Dick Cashin he and her father Cal rowed for the US at the 1976 Montreal Olympics (the elder Coffey won silver in the pair's event.)
Early in her career, Coffey missed out on selection for the London 2012 Olympics and was a spare for the Rio 2016 Games. She worked on the firm's research and valuations team, and rowed while obtaining her MBA from the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2018.
That year, after winning the world championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Coffey resumed work at One Equity Partners and targeted a place on the Olympic team an effort that was rewarded with a berth in the women's eight, which placed fourth at the Covid-postponed Tokyo Olympics.
"It was a really awful feeling to walk away without getting to my ultimate goal," she said. "I was ready to be done with rowing, but found my life wasn't balanced, it felt like something was missing," Coffey said.
She resumed workouts in the office basement gym, attended CrossFit classes and began training with a group who communicated on an appropriately-named WhatsApp chat: 'Rowed to Paris'
Coffey, who lives between Princeton, New Jersey, the Upper West Side and Watkins Glen in upstate New York, and spent the most recent winter in Sarasota, Florida, logs 14 to 15 exercise sessions per week.
Awake at 5:30 a.m. each morning, she spends about two hours on the water rowing 20 kilometers to 30 kilometers, and during afternoons, she spends about 90 minutes on another cardio or cross-training activity, be it running or cycling sometimes in Central Park or on the rowing machine or lifting weights.
"I usually hit 250 kilometers a week, or 40 kilometers to 50 kilometers a day," said Coffey, who rarely drinks alcohol when training. "I eat a ton of carbs things like cookies and sweet drinks, which are not great for me long-term," she says.
"When I'm not training, I'm recovering or working," adds Coffey, who aims to be asleep by 10 p.m.
ICYMI
Swiss shoemaker On Holding has more than tripled the number of athletes wearing its sneakers at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Young athletes navigating a burgeoning world of big-money sponsorship deals are teaming up with Bank of America Corp.'s financial advisers.
The only way to make the Games more sustainable is to spread them out and shrink them.
From wearable heat sensors to inflatable ice pools, Olympic athletes are adjusting their training and performance routines for extreme heat.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, is eager for the UK capital to once again play host to the summer Olympics. And bring an NBA game to the UK capital.
What's On at Paris 2024?
Saturday: 14 Gold Medals
The big event of the day is the swimming (still some €690 tickets left) with the 400m free finals. There's also the rugby 7s and judo, with France hoping for some early medal action. Plus there's skateboarding, which is always fun.
Sunday: 13 Gold Medals
More swimming. There's also fencing, shooting and skateboarding.
Monday: 18 Gold Medals
Artistic gymnastics kicks off, along with equestrian and mountain bike events. Perhaps the best event will be the women's 100m breaststroke, featuring Team USA's Lilly King.
Tuesday: 14 Gold Medals
Surfing gets down to business 10,000 miles away from Paris in Tahiti. The men's triathlon also comes down to the wire. But all eyes will be on Simone Biles potentially performing at the artistic gymnastics team final.
Wednesday: 17 Gold Medals
A lot of rowing and a lot of swimming, with Caeleb Dressel and Katie Ledecky in the pool. The US also plays South Sudan in the basketball.
Thursday: 18 Gold Medals
The golf is back. Rory McIlroy will be hoping for glory. And there's plenty of rowing, where Team GB will be hoping for a return to form.
We're obviously keeping tabs on it all via our medal tracker, but this being Bloomberg, we're also taking GDP and population into account, to see which countries are punching above and below their weight.
Olympics vs Companies
Hey, it's Giles. I've been wondering about the impact of the Olympics on companies. You know, like all companies. So I searched for every mention of Paris 2024 in company earnings call transcripts over the past month or so.
There are a whole bunch of mentions, some of them are pretty obvious. Steven Zaat, CFO at Air France, noted "a big impact coming from the Olympics…we miss the international traffic."
But what about more left field impacts of the Olympics?
Greg Levin, the CEO of BJ's Restaurants, said the "opening and closing ceremonies are more challenging days overall for us." Why? "I think people are really interested in seeing what the fashion is of the different countries walking into opening ceremonies and what the fashion is on the closing."
I didn't know people ditched pizza & grill night because they wanted to see Mongolia's Olympic outfit, but once you see it, it makes sense. It's amazing.
Fashion brands are not so happy. "Our experience for Olympic games, that is not the best moment for us," said Axel Dumas, CEO of Hermes. I guess that's because the classic buyer of luxury goods isn't a track & field fan.
That's not me stereotyping. Take it from the experts. "In the few weeks before the start of the Olympics, you see usually a decrease of the usual tourists coming to buy luxury," according to Roberto Eggs, global markets officer at expensive puffy jacket maker Moncler. "We have not yet welcomed in Paris the tourists that are going to come for the Olympic Games, that are usually a lower spender, but are buying more entry prices."
There's also been an impact on clean beds. Elis SA sells lots of linen services to hotels. "The Olympics has had a negative effect on activity in Paris," said Xavier Martire, chairman of Elis, "with several professional events originally scheduled in June deferred to September or October."
But my favorite reference of the Olympics comes from a paint company. PPG Industries Inc. is a big supplier of paints and coatings, based out of Pittsburgh. CEO Tim Knavish said: "I'm expecting lots of paint sales as the Olympics get going here."
Speaking to Bloomberg News from Erba in Northern Italy, where US rowers trained before traveling to Paris earlier this month, 35-year-old Coffey explained how she forged a career in the alternative asset management industry while pursuing her dreams on the water.
After graduating from Harvard in 2011, Coffey was recruited by One Equity Partners in a back-office role. Her parents trained with the firm's founder Dick Cashin he and her father Cal rowed for the US at the 1976 Montreal Olympics (the elder Coffey won silver in the pair's event.)
Early in her career, Coffey missed out on selection for the London 2012 Olympics and was a spare for the Rio 2016 Games. She worked on the firm's research and valuations team, and rowed while obtaining her MBA from the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2018.
That year, after winning the world championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Coffey resumed work at One Equity Partners and targeted a place on the Olympic team an effort that was rewarded with a berth in the women's eight, which placed fourth at the Covid-postponed Tokyo Olympics.
Olivia Coffey does about 15 workouts a week. Source: Ed Hewitt/Row2K.
"It was a really awful feeling to walk away without getting to my ultimate goal," she said. "I was ready to be done with rowing, but found my life wasn't balanced, it felt like something was missing," Coffey said.
She resumed workouts in the office basement gym, attended CrossFit classes and began training with a group who communicated on an appropriately-named WhatsApp chat: 'Rowed to Paris'
Coffey, who lives between Princeton, New Jersey, the Upper West Side and Watkins Glen in upstate New York, and spent the most recent winter in Sarasota, Florida, logs 14 to 15 exercise sessions per week.
Awake at 5:30 a.m. each morning, she spends about two hours on the water rowing 20 kilometers to 30 kilometers, and during afternoons, she spends about 90 minutes on another cardio or cross-training activity, be it running or cycling sometimes in Central Park or on the rowing machine or lifting weights.
"I usually hit 250 kilometers a week, or 40 kilometers to 50 kilometers a day," said Coffey, who rarely drinks alcohol when training. "I eat a ton of carbs things like cookies and sweet drinks, which are not great for me long-term," she says.
"When I'm not training, I'm recovering or working," adds Coffey, who aims to be asleep by 10 p.m.
ICYMI
Swiss shoemaker On Holding has more than tripled the number of athletes wearing its sneakers at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Young athletes navigating a burgeoning world of big-money sponsorship deals are teaming up with Bank of America Corp.'s financial advisers.
The only way to make the Games more sustainable is to spread them out and shrink them.
From wearable heat sensors to inflatable ice pools, Olympic athletes are adjusting their training and performance routines for extreme heat.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, is eager for the UK capital to once again play host to the summer Olympics. And bring an NBA game to the UK capital.
What's On at Paris 2024?
Saturday: 14 Gold Medals
The big event of the day is the swimming (still some €690 tickets left) with the 400m free finals. There's also the rugby 7s and judo, with France hoping for some early medal action. Plus there's skateboarding, which is always fun.
Sunday: 13 Gold Medals
More swimming. There's also fencing, shooting and skateboarding.
Monday: 18 Gold Medals
Artistic gymnastics kicks off, along with equestrian and mountain bike events. Perhaps the best event will be the women's 100m breaststroke, featuring Team USA's Lilly King.
Tuesday: 14 Gold Medals
Surfing gets down to business 10,000 miles away from Paris in Tahiti. The men's triathlon also comes down to the wire. But all eyes will be on Simone Biles potentially performing at the artistic gymnastics team final.
Wednesday: 17 Gold Medals
A lot of rowing and a lot of swimming, with Caeleb Dressel and Katie Ledecky in the pool. The US also plays South Sudan in the basketball.
Thursday: 18 Gold Medals
The golf is back. Rory McIlroy will be hoping for glory. And there's plenty of rowing, where Team GB will be hoping for a return to form.
We're obviously keeping tabs on it all via our medal tracker, but this being Bloomberg, we're also taking GDP and population into account, to see which countries are punching above and below their weight.
Olympics vs Companies
Hey, it's Giles. I've been wondering about the impact of the Olympics on companies. You know, like all companies. So I searched for every mention of Paris 2024 in company earnings call transcripts over the past month or so.
There are a whole bunch of mentions, some of them are pretty obvious. Steven Zaat, CFO at Air France, noted "a big impact coming from the Olympics…we miss the international traffic."
But what about more left field impacts of the Olympics?
Greg Levin, the CEO of BJ's Restaurants, said the "opening and closing ceremonies are more challenging days overall for us." Why? "I think people are really interested in seeing what the fashion is of the different countries walking into opening ceremonies and what the fashion is on the closing."
I didn't know people ditched pizza & grill night because they wanted to see Mongolia's Olympic outfit, but once you see it, it makes sense. It's amazing.
Fashion brands are not so happy. "Our experience for Olympic games, that is not the best moment for us," said Axel Dumas, CEO of Hermes. I guess that's because the classic buyer of luxury goods isn't a track & field fan.
Leather travel products in a Paris Olympics-branded window display at a Louis Vuitton luxury store in central Paris. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg
That's not me stereotyping. Take it from the experts. "In the few weeks before the start of the Olympics, you see usually a decrease of the usual tourists coming to buy luxury," according to Roberto Eggs, global markets officer at expensive puffy jacket maker Moncler. "We have not yet welcomed in Paris the tourists that are going to come for the Olympic Games, that are usually a lower spender, but are buying more entry prices."
There's also been an impact on clean beds. Elis SA sells lots of linen services to hotels. "The Olympics has had a negative effect on activity in Paris," said Xavier Martire, chairman of Elis, "with several professional events originally scheduled in June deferred to September or October."
But my favorite reference of the Olympics comes from a paint company. PPG Industries Inc. is a big supplier of paints and coatings, based out of Pittsburgh. CEO Tim Knavish said: "I'm expecting lots of paint sales as the Olympics get going here."
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