Meet the MD of Peloton – whose exercise bikes were snapped up in lockdown

Andy Martin speaks to Kevin Cornils about the stationary bicycle that’s taking off, with its 22-inch screen, life-affirming trainers and community of competitors

Cornils attended Harvard Business School in 2000 (Peloton)

When all the gyms shut, the online home gym took off. And Peloton, in particular, has flourished during lockdown. But Kevin Cornils recalls he bought the first Peloton bike outside the US way back in 2013. “I logged on and I’ve been riding ever since,” he says. He may have actually been pedalling away in his living room when John Foley, the Peloton co-founder and CEO, called him in 2018 and asked him if he wouldn’t mind becoming MD International for Peloton. If ever there was a no-brainer, this was it. Cornils has given a completely new spin to the old adage, “Get on your bike!”

Cornils, like the Peloton bike, is an American import. He was born in the Napa Valley in California, where his mother was a school teacher and his father was an engineer for the Navy. Cornils met John Foley when they were both students at Harvard Business School in 2000-2001. Later Foley encouraged Cornils to seek out “entrepreneurial experience” rather than investment banking and Match.com brought him to England, which is where he was (by then CEO at Glasses Direct) when Foley called.

John Foley and his wife Jill had been regulars at spinning classes at their gym in New York. But spinning was becoming increasingly popular and the Foleys were juggling jobs and kids –they were finding it hard to book convenient slots in the schedule. So the simple idea occurred to them: why can’t we do this at home? Of course the stationary exercise bike has been around for a long while: even my mother had one (not sure she used it much though). Foley’s vision was to recreate the spinning class online: so the bike incorporates a 22” screen on top of the handle bars that streams classes and hooks you up to trainers and your fellow workout warriors around the globe. Peloton turns your living room into a gym.