Episode 203: In this episode of the Sports Performance Leadership Podcast, hosted by Pete McKnight, we are joined by Dr. Richard Young — an internationally respected performance leader whose career spans more than three decades across sports, science, and innovation.

Richard has been involved in 11 Olympic Games as an athlete, coach, researcher, technologist, and leader, working across over 50 sports and seven countries. His mission: to help athletes, teams, and organizations move from high potential to sustained higher performance.

Holding a PhD in physiology and biomedical engineering, Richard has applied his research to understand the human and systemic factors that underpin sustained success. He founded several influential international programmes, including the Technology and Innovation programmes for Great Britain and New Zealand, and the Performance Knowledge & Learning programme for New Zealand’s Olympic, Winter Olympic, and Paralympic teams.

Over six Olympic cycles, Richard has studied the crucial differences between medallists and non-medallists — exploring how leaders, coaches, and systems foster resilience, coherence, and repeat excellence. Today, he consults globally as a Performance Advisor, helping Olympic and professional sports teams, as well as leaders in business, health, and education, to declutter, align, and integrate performance systems for sustainable success.

In this compelling conversation, Richard unpacks the essence of leadership systems, showing how clarity, alignment, and simplicity drive long-term success — not just in sport, but across any high-performing environment.

Topics Discussed:

Richard’s Career Journey — From athlete to innovation specialist across 11 Olympic cycles
Sustained Performance — What separates one-time winners from repeat performers
The System Approach — Understanding people, places, and things and how they interact
The 3×3 Dashboard from "Simplify" — Flow, self-awareness, evidence, values, and routines
Evolving Team Models — Moving from multidisciplinary to integrated system approaches
Optimal Team Size for Repeat Success — Why three is often the magic number
Values Alignment — How personal and organizational values must connect
The Iceberg Model — Making visible the deeper systems and values beneath the surface
Distributed Leadership — Tackling the bottleneck of leadership quality
Creating “Simple, Aligned, and Well” Environments — A blueprint for repeat success
Speed of Learning — Why adaptability separates sustained winners
Mentorship for Leaders — Building the next generation of performance thinkers
Personal Insights — Books, mentors, family, and life in New Zealand

Where you can find Richard:

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Sponsors

VALD Performance, makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training

Hytro: The world’s leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport.

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Where to Find Us

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Our Team

#24: The Four Categories of Purpose Messages (Mini-Lesson)