Swimming lessons
May 07, 2024
UVic Psychology grad and Olympian Ryan Cochrane reflects on his years as a high-performance athlete—and how it helped him navigate a real estate career.
Ryan Cochrane knows what it’s like to feel the heft of an Olympic medal placed around his neck—more than once. He held Canadian records in three swimming events. So, it is surprising to hear him say he was once just a middle-of-the-pack athlete. He credits competition with his brother for lighting a spark.
“I was a very mediocre athlete growing up. Being a twin, I really learned that competitive nature at a young age. It was not something I was born with. It was something that I learned due to my experience as a twin,” he says. “Those lessons taught me how to be persistent in my goals and how to not want just immediate gratification—to know that some goals are years in the making.”
Having reached the heights of success as an Olympic medalist, Cochrane, who earned a degree in psychology from UVic in 2014, chose to throw his passion into real estate. He applied many of the goal-setting practices learned in sport to his new career as an agent.
“A lot of people don’t know what their weekly goals or monthly goals are, let alone their yearly or life goals, so I think having a partner or someone to keep you accountable is super important. And keeping excitement around what those goals are.”
Cochrane keeps weekly, monthly and yearly goals to see if he’s met his aspirations. “Knowing how to measure yourself at any given time, you’re not going to hit every goal, you’re not going to be successful every time, but I think it’s important to have direction to what you do and purpose at the same time.”
There’s nothing magical about athletes that leads to success, he says, except perhaps their work ethic. Over time, you work up to training 25 or 30 hours a week—and step by step that mediocre athlete can become a world champion.
It has been an interesting transition from sport and its 4 a.m. wake-up calls, he says. Now that he can widen his world to more than swimming, he enjoys connecting with family and friends and was also a volunteer on the UVic Alumni Association board for many years as a way to give back. “I knew when I went to UVic my commitment was to sport. At the same time, there’s a life that happens after it. When I was going to university, sport was first, school was second. That was a very conscious decision.”
He chose real estate in part because it is always changing and interesting—and while it’s often stressful, he enjoys helping people during such an important time in their lives. He says the learnings from high-performance sport and his psychology degree have helped him to stay optimistic and positive—a good trait in his business.
“I believe everything is fixable. There’s an answer to everything and you just have to really put your head down and work and be proactive. All those skills really transfer. They all take a bit of different importance when you get to a new career.”
And what about his hair? Has it recovered after all the years of chlorine from the pool? “It has,” he says with a laugh.
—Jenny Manzer, BA ‘97
This article appears in the UVic Torch alumni magazine.
For more Torch stories, go to the UVic Torch alumni magazine page.