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Reinventing success: What Olympic champion Oliver Zeidler is learning about leadership
Olympic champion Oliver Zeidler shares how resilience, reinvention, and a beginner’s mindset shaped his journey from sports to MBA and leadership growth....
From missing Rio 2016 to winning Olympic gold, Oliver Zeidler’s journey is one of constant reinvention. Now, midway through the IMD MBA, he’s discovering that curiosity, humility, and resilience are as vital in leadership as in sport.
In both sport and leadership, the moments that define us are rarely the easiest ones.
Olympic champion Oliver Zeidler knows this better than most. After missing out on Rio in 2016 as a swimmer, he switched to rowing, became world champion within three years, and then faced one of his hardest tests at the Tokyo Olympics. Now, as an MBA participant in Lausanne, he’s exploring how to channel that same discipline and curiosity into a new arena.
What connects each chapter of his journey is not victory, but the willingness to start over, to learn, to adapt, and to keep growing. In his words: “Sometimes the best thing you can do is to become a beginner again.”
Within just three years of taking up rowing, he became world champion, a result built as much on intention as on talent.
Lessons from a legacy
Zeidler grew up surrounded by champions. His grandfather, Hans-Johann Färber, won Olympic gold in rowing, his aunt, Judith Zeidler, also became an Olympic champion, his father, Heino, now his coach, was a national-level rower, and his sister Marie competed internationally.
“My family was always a source of strong support for me because they all understood what it means to perform on a high level,” he said. But it was his grandfather who first taught him the importance of studying and working alongside sport. “He always said that education should never stop, even when you’re training hard,” Zeidler recalled. “That’s something I’ve really kept with me.”
Learning to begin again
Despite his family history, Zeidler’s own path was never set in stone. After narrowly missing selection for the Rio 2016 Olympics as a swimmer, he made a bold choice. At 20, he traded the pool for the lake. “It was the best decision of my life,” he reflected. “It was an unusual step at that age, but it allowed me to start from zero, to learn again.”
Within just three years of taking up rowing, he became world champion, a result built as much on intention as on talent. Alongside training, he spent nearly a decade at Deloitte and earned degrees in taxation. “It gives you a good balance if you have something to challenge you mentally,” he explained. “In consulting, I worked my head; in rowing, my body. They motivated each other.”
When setbacks become turning points
But even champions can stumble. For Zeidler, that moment came at the Tokyo Olympics. As the reigning world champion, he entered as the favorite, carrying the hopes of a nation that hadn’t seen a medal in his discipline for two decades. Then, in a stunning turn of events, he finished fourth in the semi-final and missed the final.
The loss cut deep. “It was devastating,” he recalled. “When you go in there as the reigning world champion, the favorite for gold, a whole nation expects you to do well… and then you fail? That was tough.”
Afterwards, he took time to reflect. “I took one or two months off to just understand what I really wanted to do,” he says. It was during a visit to a friend in Switzerland that clarity came. Standing by the shores of Rotsee in Lucerne – his “favorite lake, the Lake of Gods” – and watching the regatta preparations, he decided to return. “That is where I decided to go for another Olympic cycle because I really wanted to race and win on that lake again.”
This time, he approached the sport differently. He turned to sports psychology – something he had once dismissed. “Before that, I always said that I didn’t need psychology at all, that I could handle it on my own,” he said. “But that was a huge mistake. If I had started earlier with sports psychology, I would have understood a lot more about myself and how I can prepare properly for a race.”
Working with a psychologist helped him face what he had been trying to avoid. When he finally returned to compete at the Paris Olympics, he carried those lessons with him. “Before the semi-final, I knew this was the race where I lost it last time,” he says. “There was still some pressure, and even if we went through the whole grieving cycle, there were still some demons with me from Tokyo. But as soon as the call came, it was just a case of executing the race plan.”
He crossed the line with an Olympic record, almost five seconds faster than the previous mark. “I remember going to the cool-down area and really taking two minutes to just cry my eyes out,” he laughs.
“Resilience is often used as a buzzword,” he reflected, “but I can say from experience that handling upsets and coming back stronger made me a better person and a better athlete.”
“I always came from this competitive background where if you don’t put your best into the work, you won’t be in the boat. But in business, people manage their energy and time differently.”
From high performance to human leadership
When Zeidler joined the IMD MBA, he was once again stepping into unfamiliar waters, swapping oars and finish lines for case studies and leadership labs. “At some point, I realized I wanted to do something completely different,” he said. “That’s when the MBA came up as an idea because you have a lot of time to reflect there… to widen your knowledge base and then have the opportunity to change careers completely.”
For him, this wasn’t just another qualification. It was another act of reinvention, a conscious choice to be a beginner again. “That’s what I did from swimming to rowing,” he said. “That’s what I did from school to consulting, and now MBA. The next step, let’s see what it is.”
Despite his Olympic title, Zeidler arrived in Lausanne not as a champion but as a learner among peers. “At the beginning, it was challenging because there are a lot of cultures coming together,” he recalled. “I always came from this competitive background where if you don’t put your best into the work, you won’t be in the boat. But in business, people manage their energy and time differently. That was challenging for me to accept.”
That shift, from individual pursuit to collective success, has been defining. “I definitely needed to find compassion and to try and understand what drives people,” he said. “It’s so valuable in leadership: not just focusing on your own agenda but understanding how others work best and how to achieve the best result for the team.”
Redefining success
Zeidler’s definition of success has since evolved. “I would like to take more responsibility,” he said. “Becoming an effective leader is my ultimate goal. It’s not about a certain position; it’s about enabling others to achieve their goals.”
That perspective stems from his core values. “I’m convinced that if you work hard, it pays off at some point,” he said. “Rowing is a sport where you need to put a lot of work into becoming successful, and that’s why you respect the others around you as well.”
He hopes to bring that ethos into business. “Athletes are great people to have in companies because they bring a different kind of experience: hard work, respect, and the ability to perform under pressure,” he said. “To carry that into a company culture would be very cool.”
His advice for those navigating uncertainty is simple yet powerful: build security where you can, do what you love, and keep exploring. “Managing this security with a bit of uncertainty is really important,” he said. “The most important thing is having fun in what you’re doing, otherwise it’s not sustainable.”
For Zeidler, success is no longer about medals, but about the mindset to begin again: in sport, in business, and in life.
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