Racing superbikes was like doing an MBA at 300km/h: Rado CEO Adrian Bosshard tells his unique story

Time+Tide

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article first appeared in Issue 9 of the Time+Tide NOW Magazine. You can find Issue 9 in both physical and digital formats in the T+T Shop, and you’ll be treated with more industry insights, exciting interviews, and of course, the full Watch Buying Guide.

I grew up in Biel in Switzerland, and when I was about 12 years old, my father took me to see my first motocross race. It made such a huge impression on me. I remember standing there and watching in complete awe as this guy rode his motorbike and spun it through the air. At that moment, I turned to my father and said to him: “One day, I’m going to do that, too.”

“It’s too dangerous,” my dad said. “Motocross is a crazy sport.” But I thought to myself: “Nobody is going to stop me. One day, I’m going to do it.” Lo and behold, I did start riding motocross. I started training and then competing in races – first the juniors, then the nationals and then on the international and world championship motocross circuit.

To begin with, my father was really supportive. Motocross was a hobby that we shared together. Dad had two passions – he loved watches, and he loved motorsports, and I inherited both in a big way. But then I decided that I wasn’t going to go to university because I wanted to race motorbikes as a full-time career. When my father saw that I was becoming really serious about motorbikes, he got scared. “If that’s what you really want to do, then you have to go it alone,” he said. “If you were going to study, I’d support you in doing that. But I’m not going to pay for you to chase your sporting dreams.”

Fair enough. But I didn’t have any money, and so the only realistic opportunity for me to participate in some form of motorbike sport was motocross. It was much more affordable that road racing. So that’s exactly what I did. Luckily, I quickly progressed and it didn’t take long before I was getting good results. In my twenties, I was twice named the Swiss motocross champion, I came third in the European championship, and eventually I became one of the top ten riders in the world. By the time I was 27 years old, financially I was doing quite well in motocross. But then I did something crazy. I borrowed a road-racing bike from a friend and went down to the track to try it out. That one experience was all it took. Suddenly, I was hooked on superbikes.

What did I love about the experience? It was that feeling of riding a bike with over 200 horsepower that could go over 300km/h around the track. I’d never felt that sensation before of entering a corner at high speed, of knowing that you’re riding at the absolute limit of your capability, feeling the grip shift from the front wheel to the back wheel and the acceleration as you begin to slide out… If you like the sensation of speed, you won’t find a bigger adrenaline rush.

From that moment, I knew that this was what I had to do with my life. Once again, nothing was going to stop me. The problem was that I was going to have to start again from zero. That was a big call, because by this stage I’d built up a successful career in motocross. I had a good contract with Honda Switzerland, I had all the mechanics, great materials, a decent revenue stream. Basically, I was all set up. I knew that I could support myself comfortably with motocross. Yet I opted to turn my back on all that. “You can earn money your whole life,” I said to myself. “But your dream is to race superbikes. You’ve got one chance to follow through on that dream and you have to do it right now.” That was when I decided to end my motocross career and go into superbikes. But I knew that if I was going to do it, then I had to go all-in.

My first issue was that I wasn’t part of a team, I was racing independently. That meant I had to build up all this infrastructure single-handedly. To compete in the sport, you need to have a bike, you need to have spare parts, you need to have a truck to transport everything, you need to have mechanics, you need to have engineers, you need to have hospitality. You have to set up this huge organisation and you need to invest all the money for that yourself, because it’s not falling from the sky. So I was forced to make these massive investments. I had a small house that I’d almost paid off, but I took another loan against it, plus I used all the savings that I’d earned from motocross. It was a high-risk operation, but I was able to recruit a good, efficient team of people who shared the same passion as me. They also dreamed of experiencing the MotoGP circuit on a global scale and wanted to travel the world and race on the best racetracks. Our common goal was to find the limits of how far we could go.

Fortunately, the gamble paid off. In the first year, I became Swiss champion. In the second year, I came fifth in the European championship. That enabled me to move up into the World Championship and I set about becoming one of the best independent drivers on the circuit. Between 1992 to 1996, I competed in the MotoGP – this was in the era when Mick Doohan was the top rider – and I managed to establish myself in the top ten.

But all the time I was racing, life on the MotoGP circuit was also an eye-opener in other ways off the track. I had to learn a lot about people, financial, and technical management with all these areas channelled into one target: trying to be as fast as possible on the racetrack. For me, it was like doing an MBA at 300km/h! Running a superbike team was like running a small company. I had to create the budget, I had to make the business plan, I had to invest, I had to implement procedures. And I was having to do everything under tremendous time pressure. At the same time, I was also a professional sportsman, so I had to train physically and mentally to race bikes, while dealing with the logistics of this whole organisation. It was a headache. Several times, I did get a bit sad that I was competing against other riders who didn’t have that all that additional workload and so could focus purely on racing alone. I was still doing well and competing as one of the top ten riders in the world. But without all those extra demands, I think I could’ve probably broken into the top five or six. Ultimately though, I recognised that riders like Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi were always capable of more. They were the best riders on the best bikes. Even if I was riding something similar, realistically, I don’t think I had the capacity to be a world champion.

I’d always said that I would put everything into motorsports until I couldn’t see a way to progress any further. That moment came when I was 34. I felt that I’d pushed my technical situation to the limit. By that stage, I also had a wife and two kids to support. I realised that it was time to look to the future. Honestly, I had no regrets. I enjoyed a motocross career from the age of 14 to 27, and then from 27 to 34 I raced on the MotoGP circuit. By doing those things, I fulfilled my childhood dreams. I pushed myself to find my sporting limits and I learned a lot about myself. Now, I had to build a second life.

My initial aim was to enter the motorbike business. But when I informed one of my sponsors, the Swiss watch company Certina, that I was retiring, the former president of the brand said to me: “Adrian, you’re a guy with determination and drive. I would like to take you into the watch industry.” He offered me a sales job with Certina for the Swiss market. “OK,” I thought to myself. “Let’s do this job for a while to see how a big company works. Then I can apply that experience and know-how to the motorbike business I want to do.”

I started at Certina as a salesperson in 1996, and began my journey with the Swatch Group. In 2003, I was made CEO of Certina and in the following years I was given some additional projects. On top of my role at Certina, Nick Hayek [the CEO of Swatch Group] made me the coordinator for all the Swatch Group brands in Eastern Europe, and also gave me responsibility for another brand we’d just acquired called Union Glashütte.

Then, in June 2020, Mr Hayek offered me the chance to take over as Rado CEO. I accepted immediately. Rado was a brand I’d always heavily admired. In fact, when I got married in 1991, I received a Rado Integral from my wife as a wedding gift. In a way, I feel like I’ve had a second life in business after motorsports. But I’m also a big believer that people who do sports at a high level can often bring great qualities to their next careers. It’s not a coincidence that Rico Steiner, my head of marketing at Rado, was a really good tennis player, or that Rene Furler, my head of retail, was a former professional ice-hockey player. I’ve found that former athletes often have the sort of drive, determination, and hunger that can transfer very well into the business world. I just find they’re the people who you know are willing to go all-in.