Raya UsherTriathlon Coach | Coach Educator | Endurance Sports Professional

Former international athlete, World and European Championship medallist, coach educator and endurance-sports professional, Raya brings an unusually broad perspective to coaching — but her philosophy is remarkably simple:

Understand the person first. Then build the athlete.

Before triathlon, Raya competed internationally for Canada in alpine skiing, spending six seasons on the competitive ski circuit. After stepping away from elite sport, she built an international career in business and finance before discovering triathlon in 2015, joining Precision as an athlete in 2016 and beginning her professional coaching career in 2018.

Since then, she has coached hundreds of athletes, from people nervously preparing for their first triathlon to experienced age-groupers chasing podiums and World Championship qualification.

For Raya, great coaching isn’t about fitting an athlete into a system. It’s about understanding what makes that individual tick and building the right approach around them.

Ambitious people with real lives.

You don’t need to be fast already.
You don’t need to be chasing Kona.
And you definitely don’t need your entire personality to revolve around triathlon.
But you do need to be curious about what you’re capable of.

Raya particularly enjoys working with athletes who want to improve but need their coach to recognise the reality of everything else going on around them; busy professionals, parents, athletes returning to sport, people stepping up to a new distance, or experienced competitors wondering whether there is another level in them.

Her experience working with neurodivergent athletes has also helped shape her highly individual approach to coaching. Athletes don’t all process information, motivation, structure or pressure in the same way, so there is little point coaching them as though they do.

Raya is equally comfortable helping someone find the confidence to reach their first start line as she is working backwards from a World Championship qualification goal.

The common denominator isn’t ability. It’s ambition.

If you’re prepared to communicate, engage with the process and do the work, Raya will bring the plan, the honesty, the experience, and probably more enthusiasm for your finish line than you thought was humanly possible.

Raya’s understanding of performance began long before she became a coach.

A former Canadian international alpine ski racer specialising in slalom, she spent six seasons competing on the international ski circuit before eventually stepping away from the sport.

Years later, triathlon became her route back into competitive sport.

Since beginning triathlon in 2015, Raya has represented Great Britain internationally and competed from Sprint through to full IRONMAN distance.

Her racing achievements include:

• 3rd place at IRONMAN Argentina
• Earned an IRONMAN World Championship qualification at IRONMAN Barcelona
• 3 × IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship appearances
• European Aquabike Championship silver medallist
• World Long Distance Aquabike Championship bronze medallist
• Multiple World and European Championship appearances representing Great Britain
• Multiple IRONMAN and international podium finishes

That experience matters as a coach.

Raya knows what race nerves feel like. She understands pressure, disappointment, injury, confidence, huge goals and the slightly irrational things otherwise sensible people occasionally do when there’s a finish line involved.

She’s experienced the athlete-coach relationship from both sides.

Raya brings another perspective to coaching that isn’t found on many coaching CVs.

Before becoming a professional coach, she spent approximately a decade working internationally across business, banking and emerging-market finance, including running her own consultancy.

She later brought that commercial experience together with her passion for endurance sport, joining Predictive Fitness, the sports technology company behind TriDot, where she has spent the past four years in senior international, commercial and coaching-services leadership roles.

Her professional career has allowed her to work closely with coaches and endurance-sport organisations around the world and at the intersection of coaching, sports science, data, technology and athlete performance.

It has also reinforced something she strongly believes:

Technology and data can make coaching incredibly powerful.

But they should enhance the relationship between athlete and coach, never replace it.

Raya is also an experienced endurance-sports presenter, podcaster and industry contributor.

She co-hosted 90 episodes of The Cyclist Pod alongside comedian Stephen Grant, combining cycling, interviews, industry discussion and the occasionally less-serious side of endurance sport.

She was also part of the presenting team for Super League Triathlon’s The Power Up Show, a live global triathlon programme featuring news, interviews and features from across the sport.

Raya also co-hosted the Tour de Zwift Pro-Am broadcast alongside BBC presenter OJ Borg, introducing the professional and amateur teams competing in the live race.

She is a recurring expert guest on the TriDot Podcast, contributing to discussions covering coaching, Aquabike, female biomechanics, technology and neurodivergence in endurance sport, and has appeared across endurance-sport podcasts, publications and industry events.

Her industry appearances have also included speaking as a panellist at the Triathlon Industry Conference, alongside leaders from across the global endurance-sports industry.