Flywheel Sports Appoints Sarah Robb O'Hagan as New CEO

Sarah's background includes her role serving as global president of the multi billion dollar sports brand Gatorade, where she successfully led the business through a major repositioning and business turnaround.  Most recently, Sarah was global president of the luxury fitness company Equinox, where she led a significant innovation and technology transformation . A high-energy combination of disruptive business leader, fitness fanatic, passionate author, and cheerleading mom, Sarah has also held leadership positions at both Nike and Virgin Atlantic Airways. As CEO of Flywheel Sports, she plans to transform the business into an omnichannel lifestyle brand through the enrichment of program content, enhanced services, and the strengthening of its technology platform.

Lew Frankfort, Executive Chairman of Flywheel Sports and Chairman Emeritus of Coach, Inc., said, "I am thrilled to have Sarah join us to provide the vision and leadership to enable the brand to realize its great potential. Her experiences leading innovation and transformation as an executive in the airline, sports and fitness industries as well as her clear personal passion for our mission to help people achieve their physical potential makes her the perfect match for this opportunity. I am delighted to partner with Sarah in the next chapter of our journey."

Sarah Robb O'Hagan said, "I'm so fired up to be joining the Flywheel team. I feel like this great business is the opportunity towards which my entire career has been building. Having spent the last few years writing a book about what it takes to exploit your own potential, it was amazing for this role to present itself at the exact moment that I knew where I needed to be. Flywheel has an awesome team delivering an indoor cycling experience that has all manner of potential to stretch into additional offerings. We have an incredible growing community of passionate riders and barre participants that come into our studios every day wanting to push themselves to the next level. I can't wait to help them get there with even more innovative offerings that meet their fitness needs."  

Flywheel Sports Co-Founder Ruth Zukerman, who is actively involved with the company as Creative Director, said "I am so excited to welcome Sarah to Flywheel. Her energy and passion for our team and our riders are just the right recipe to help us take our business to the next level."

In her new role, Sarah will be based out of the company's headquarters in the flatiron district of New York.

About Flywheel Sports Inc.:

Flywheel Sports, Inc. is a rapidly growing boutique fitness brand with about 40 studios in the United States.  It is private equity backed with over 1,200 employees.  Since 2010, when Flywheel launched its flagship studio in the Flatiron district of New York, it has been at the forefront of boutique fitness movement.  Every Flywheel ride delivers a high-intensity cardio workout in a fun, welcoming, and energetic atmosphere.  Its proprietary technology enables riders to get the most out of their workouts by gauging their output, helping to set personal goals and tracking progress over time.  The studios offer a state of the art stadium-style cycling format.  In-studio leader boards are unique to Flywheel and add a competitive element to its classes.  World-class instructors choreograph the classes with curated playlists guaranteed to motivate and inspire each rider.  Along the way, Flywheel also created FlyBarre, the perfect complement to indoor cycling.  FlyBarre, with 22 locations alongside Flywheel studios, provides total body sculpting that blends the best of lightweight training and core strengthening exercises.

ADDENDUM

Sarah who has been described as "Superwoman undercover" and the "Pied Piper of Potential," sees her next career move at Flywheel as a deliberate attempt to unleash her own full potential, a topic she writes about in her forthcoming book Extreme You, which Harper Business will publish this April 2017.

Sarah's career journey has led her through some of the world's most iconic brands – including Virgin, Nike, and her roles as the president of Gatorade, and then Equinox. Her early successes included the breakthrough marketing campaign she led for Virgin Atlantic Airways in collaboration with the Austin Powers movie, in which she rebranded the airline "Virgin Shaglantic" and turned a 747 into an international flying showcase. Later, Sarah transitioned to the sports industry, where she was a member of the Nike team that launched the game-changing innovation Nike Plus in collaboration with Apple. What makes Sarah most proud, however, are her self-proclaimed "epic fails," including back-to-back firings in her mid-20s and a close call with deportation from the US - a period she fondly refers to as her "canyon of career despair." The deep learnings of humility, self-awareness, and resilience she drew from that time became the basis of her Extreme approach to life, which she writes about in her forthcoming book.

Sarah is a passionate advocate for an active lifestyle and believes the lessons learned from sports and fitness can be applied to improve performance in the workplace. She has served on Hillary Clinton's US State Department Council to Empower Women and Girls Through Sports and as a trustee of Billie Jean King's Women's Sports Foundation. She also sits on the board of STRAVA – the social network for athletes. As a proud Kiwi American, Sarah is an active member of the World Class New Zealand Network, and she remains committed to helping her birth country's development, international competitiveness, and economic growth.

Throughout her career, Sarah has been recognized for her many achievements including being named one of Forbes' "Most Powerful Women in Sports" and one of Fast Company's "Most Creative People in Business.", to the top 40 Under 40 lists by the Sports Business Journal (2009, 2011, and 2012), Sports Goods Business (2010), and Crain's Chicago Business (2010) and Ad Age magazine's "Women to Watch" (2010). In 2014 Sarah was awarded the Sir Peter Blake Trust Award for outstanding leadership and in 2016 she was recognized in her native country with a "World Class New Zealand" award for leadership.

Sarah, her husband Liam, sons Sam and Joe, and daughter Gabby live in New York. They have a chocolate labrador named Edmund "Eddie" Hillary. (@ExtremeSRO)

SOURCE Flywheel Sports Inc.