About
I started this work in 2017, first as The Privateer Group, then Privateer Sports, and now We Are Privateers. The name has changed three times. The reason behind it hasn’t. Each version has been an attempt to get closer to what this work actually is — and to shed whatever language and structure was getting in the way of saying it plainly. We Are Privateers is where I’ve landed, for now. The “we” matters. This work has never been mine alone, and the athletes, families, coaches, and partners I’ve been lucky enough to walk alongside are as much a part of it as I am.
Somewhere along the way, the international sporting world forgot that athletes are people and not assets. Careers get managed. Contracts get negotiated. Brands get built. But the person at the centre of all of it — the one whose body and years and quiet hopes are on the line — gets treated like a line item. I’ve spent the better part of a decade pushing back against that, one athlete at a time. It’s slow work. It doesn’t scale the way the industry wants things to scale. But I’ve come to believe that the slowness is the point — that you can’t actually care about someone in a hurry, and you can’t build the kind of trust that lets a young athlete tell you the truth about what they want by treating them like a transaction.
What that looks like in practice: I work alongside athletes to help them chase what they’re chasing on the field, and to be ready for the life that comes after it. I support athlete development in underrepresented markets, where the talent has always been there but the pathways haven’t. I advocate for athletes who don’t have someone in their corner. And through QUEEN Sports and Culture Club — a non-profit I founded in 2024 — I’m working to get girls back into sport, in a form that hasn’t been hollowed out by pay-to-play and won’t-let-you-just-play. Sport should be a place to build confidence, try things, find out who you are. For too many girls, it stopped being that. QUEEN is my attempt to give it back. The through-line in all of this is the same: build a real relationship with the person, care about their well-being, and help them stay themselves inside a system that would prefer they didn’t.
If you’re an athlete, or someone in an athlete’s life, and any of this sounds like what you’ve been looking for — get in touch. I’m always open to have a conversation, especially about sport. I don’t have a script for these calls and I don’t do pitches. I’d rather hear about who you are, what you’re trying to do, and whether the way I work is something that fits where you’re trying to go. If it is, we’ll figure out what comes next together. If it isn’t, I’ll do my best to point you toward someone who might be a better fit. Either way, the conversation costs nothing, and I’ve yet to regret one.
— Adam
My Story
I figured most of it out myself. That’s kind of the point.
I grew up in sport the way many athletes do — learning by doing, finding my own way. Track and field from Grade 3 through university. Sprints, mid-distance, jumps. But I was never just training. I was studying — coaching methods, training philosophies, anything I could get my hands on. I didn’t have a roadmap, so I built one.
That instinct followed me through everything that came next. I ran a construction company. I worked alongside my wife in immigration law. I spent years studying and working across Europe, Africa, and Asia, picking up languages and habits and ways of seeing things that I still draw on every day. None of it looked like a straight line. All of it taught me something about how people build lives in places that weren’t necessarily built for them.
But some of the most formative experiences came through sport itself — just not in the way you might expect. Working with organizations connected to movements like the Homeless World Cup, and running my own sport for social development organization across Southern Africa, I saw firsthand what sport could actually do. Not just compete or perform. Change lives, build dignity, strengthen communities. That’s the version of sport I came back to North America carrying with me.
When I moved into athlete management in 2017, I saw the system clearly. And I didn’t like what I saw. Athletes pushed to their limits, then quietly set aside when results dipped. Treated as assets, not people. I’d seen enough to know I wanted no part of it.
So I built something else. An approach rooted in the belief that an athlete’s worth isn’t measured in medals — it’s in who they are as people, and who they’re becoming. The work I’ve done since has been an attempt, day by day and athlete by athlete, to live up to that belief.
Nearly a decade on, I’m still doing the work. Still figuring it out. Still learning from the athletes I’m lucky enough to walk alongside.
I do this work because I know what it feels like to navigate systems that weren’t built for you. To need someone genuinely in your corner.
I didn’t always have that.
The athletes I work with do.
The Athlete-Centric Model
In December of 2024, the International Testing Agency invited me to sit on a panel about the relationship between athletes and the people who support them. The audience was global, the translation ran in five languages, and the conversation covered a lot of ground over the course of the hour.
But the moment in the panel that I keep coming back to was a single question.
Somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, I was asked what I thought the most important principle was for building a healthy relationship between an athlete support person and a young athlete. And what I said — without rehearsing it, because it’s just what I believe — was that it comes down to trust. That without trust, you don’t get the open and honest conversations that the work actually depends on. And without those conversations, none of the rest of it functions. Not the career management. Not the support through pressure and setbacks and the long, quiet stretches where an athlete is trying to figure out who they are. All of it rests on whether the athlete trusts you enough to tell you the truth.
And trust, in my experience, only gets built one way. You treat the person in front of you like a person. Not an asset, not a project, not a name on a roster. A person — with a life, a family, a body that hurts in specific places, a future they’re scared of, a present they’re trying to make sense of. You give a damn about who they are and not just what they do. You stay in their corner when the results are good and when the results aren’t. You answer the phone.
That’s the athlete-centric model. That’s the whole of it, really. Everything else I do is just the working-out of that one commitment in the specific shape of a specific athlete’s life.
I thought, when I said it on the panel, that it was the most obvious thing in the world. The kind of thing you almost feel embarrassed saying out loud because surely everyone in this room already knows it.
What I learned from the response — both during the Q&A, where the questions kept circling back to the relationship piece, and from the post-webinar feedback the ITA shared with me afterward — is that it wasn’t obvious. Or rather: it was obvious, in the way the most important things often are, and that’s exactly why it landed. People in the industry knew it, or had known it once, and somewhere along the way the knowing had been buried under the protocols and the contracts and the optimization. Hearing someone say it plainly — care about the person, build trust, the rest follows — was a kind of permission to remember.
I’m still working out why it stuck as hard as it did. My honest guess is that the room was full of professionals whose job is to manage athletes through some of the highest-stakes situations in their lives, and most of them came up through a system that taught them every part of the job except the foundation it sits on. You can have every protocol in the world. You can have every contract clause and every contingency plan. But if the athlete doesn’t trust you, none of it works. And building that trust isn’t a technique. It’s a posture. It’s how you show up, every day, over years.
That’s the work I do. I show up. I build trust. I treat the athletes I work with like people, because they are people, and because the system they’re operating in won’t always remember that on their behalf. From there, everything else becomes possible — the career, the development, the life beyond sport, the platform an athlete might one day use to give something back to the place they came from. None of it works without the foundation. All of it follows when the foundation is real.
It should be simple. Most of the time, the truest things are.
The Athlete-Centric Model
In December of 2024, the International Testing Agency invited me to sit on a panel about the relationship between athletes and the people who support them. The audience was global, the translation ran in five languages, and the conversation covered a lot of ground over the course of the hour.
But the moment in the panel that I keep coming back to was a single question.
Somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, I was asked what I thought the most important principle was for building a healthy relationship between an athlete support person and a young athlete. And what I said — without rehearsing it, because it’s just what I believe — was that it comes down to trust. That without trust, you don’t get the open and honest conversations that the work actually depends on. And without those conversations, none of the rest of it functions. Not the career management. Not the support through pressure and setbacks and the long, quiet stretches where an athlete is trying to figure out who they are. All of it rests on whether the athlete trusts you enough to tell you the truth.
And trust, in my experience, only gets built one way. You treat the person in front of you like a person. Not an asset, not a project, not a name on a roster. A person — with a life, a family, a body that hurts in specific places, a future they’re scared of, a present they’re trying to make sense of. You give a damn about who they are and not just what they do. You stay in their corner when the results are good and when the results aren’t. You answer the phone.
That’s the athlete-centric model. That’s the whole of it, really. Everything else I do is just the working-out of that one commitment in the specific shape of a specific athlete’s life.
I thought, when I said it on the panel, that it was the most obvious thing in the world. The kind of thing you almost feel embarrassed saying out loud because surely everyone in this room already knows it.
What I learned from the response — both during the Q&A, where the questions kept circling back to the relationship piece, and from the post-webinar feedback the ITA shared with me afterward — is that it wasn’t obvious. Or rather: it was obvious, in the way the most important things often are, and that’s exactly why it landed. People in the industry knew it, or had known it once, and somewhere along the way the knowing had been buried under the protocols and the contracts and the optimization. Hearing someone say it plainly — care about the person, build trust, the rest follows — was a kind of permission to remember.
I’m still working out why it stuck as hard as it did. My honest guess is that the room was full of professionals whose job is to manage athletes through some of the highest-stakes situations in their lives, and most of them came up through a system that taught them every part of the job except the foundation it sits on. You can have every protocol in the world. You can have every contract clause and every contingency plan. But if the athlete doesn’t trust you, none of it works. And building that trust isn’t a technique. It’s a posture. It’s how you show up, every day, over years.
That’s the work I do. I show up. I build trust. I treat the athletes I work with like people, because they are people, and because the system they’re operating in won’t always remember that on their behalf. From there, everything else becomes possible — the career, the development, the life beyond sport, the platform an athlete might one day use to give something back to the place they came from. None of it works without the foundation. All of it follows when the foundation is real.
It should be simple. Most of the time, the truest things are.
What I Do
The work I do isn’t a service you buy. It’s a partnership, and like any real partnership, it requires something from both sides.
It requires time, because trust isn’t built in six months. It requires honesty about what’s working, what isn’t, and what you actually need from me. It requires mutual investment — I show up for you, and I need you to show up for the work. And it requires a willingness to be seen as a whole person, not just an athlete and not just a result.
If that doesn’t sound like what you’re looking for, I’m probably not the right fit, and I’ll be the first to say so. But if it does, here’s what working together actually looks like.
I work with a small number of people because that’s the only way this works the way I want it to work. You’re not a roster spot. You’re a person, an athlete, a club, a federation, a program trying to do something real. I treat you that way — through the highs, the quiet stretches, the decisions, and the in-between moments when the system goes silent and you need someone who won’t disappear.
The work itself moves between four areas, shaped by what each athlete needs and what each club, federation, or program is trying to build.
If you’ve read this far and any of it sounds like what you’ve been looking for — get in touch. I’m always open to have a conversation, especially about sport.
ATHLETE SUPPORT & CAREER PLANNING
This is the foundation. I map out a plan with you — balancing performance and mental health, opportunity and protection, ambition and wellbeing. The focus is on the full picture: competition planning, long-term strategy, transitions between levels or countries, and the life that comes after sport. It’s not a program you purchase. It’s an ongoing partnership that evolves as you do, and it doesn’t pause when the season ends or the contract gets signed. The work continues for as long as you want it to.
ATHLETE PROTECTION
Sometimes the system fails you. Sometimes the system was never built to protect you in the first place. Either way, when federation or club relationships get complicated, when you’re overlooked or mistreated, when you’ve run out of options and the people who were supposed to be in your corner have gone quiet — I step in. I help you navigate the politics, the bureaucracy, and the moments when the right thing to do isn’t the easy thing. It’s messy. It’s hard. It matters.
PATHWAY DEVELOPMENT
Whether you’re an athlete pushing toward Olympic qualification, breaking into professional football, or charting a different goal entirely, I help you build a sustainable route. That means identifying opportunities, creating structure, and walking the path with you — through the setbacks, the pivots, and the unglamourous grind no one sees.
I also work with the people on the other side of that path — the clubs, federations, and programs trying to build the places and platforms athletes need in order to have a shot in the first place. Smaller clubs and federations building infrastructure where there wasn’t any before. Development programs in markets where the talent has always been there and the resources haven’t. Communities the system has historically overlooked, working to create routes that don’t yet exist. I choose this work deliberately. I work with underdogs — whether that means an individual athlete trying to find their way through a system that wasn’t built for them, or an organization trying to build a system where there isn’t one. The work changes shape depending on where you are and what you’re trying to do. The commitment doesn’t.
LIFE AFTER SPORT
I don’t wait until your career ends to start thinking about what’s next. From day one, I’m working with you on building an identity, a purpose, and opportunities that exist beyond the game — so that when the day comes, it’s not a cliff. It’s a doorway. Because you’re more than your sport, and your value doesn’t end when the final whistle blows.
The Athletes I’ve Walked Alongside
Sára Mihalik — Sprint Kayak World Champion. European medalist.
Sara and I started working together when she had no major achievements yet. That’s important. Because this work isn’t about attaching to already-successful athletes. It’s about believing in someone’s potential and investing in the relationship long before the medals come.
In her own words —
“I started working with Adam Favel at a time when I had no significant sporting achievements to my name. That alone says a lot about who he is as a manager and as a person: he doesn’t seek success by attaching himself to already successful athletes — instead, he helps humble, hard-working ones reach success through his genuine dedication and belief in their potential.
Despite living on the other side of the world (I was based in Hungary at the time, while he was in Canada), and despite the difficulty of finding sponsors in the sport of canoe sprint, Adam still managed to help me alleviate my financial challenges. Through his management, I was able to access equipment and nutritional supplements at discounted or no cost, and he also helped establish partnerships with organizations willing to provide financial support. But perhaps most importantly, he didn’t just “give me the fish” — he taught me how to “use the net.” He showed me how to manage and represent myself as an athlete, a skill that I continue to use even after retiring from professional sport. In that sense, he guided me through one of the hardest transitions any athlete faces: life after sport.
Even more valuable than his professional support was Adam’s unwavering human presence. From the very beginning of our cooperation to the end of my sporting career — and even beyond — he was always there. During the difficult seasons when even some of my coaches gave up on me, Adam stood by my side, helping me climb back to the top. He supported me quite literally around the clock, often during his own late-night or early-morning hours due to the time difference.
When I eventually decided to transfer from representing Hungary to competing for Finland, Adam once again played a key role. The process was complex and emotionally demanding, but he made it much easier — both by handling the administrative side of the transfer and by providing the emotional support I needed at that time. Thanks to his help, I was able to rise from one of the lowest points in my career and return to the World Championship podium.
In summary, Adam is not only an exceptional manager — organized, proactive, and resourceful — but also an extraordinary human being whose empathy and commitment make all the difference.”
— Sára Anna Mihalik
World Champion, Canoe Sprint and Marathon
Now Sara coaches at WAT Kanuzentrum in Vienna, mentoring the next generation of paddlers. The relationship didn’t end when her competitive career did. That’s the point.
The Athletes I’ve Walked Alongside
Anthony Watson — Skeleton 2018 Olympian. Actor. Dancer. Musician. Speaker.
Anthony made history as the first male skeleton athlete to represent Jamaica at the Winter Olympics. But the part of his story that matters most to me didn’t happen on the ice.
After his 2018 Games, Anthony found himself in an environment that no longer served his growth. He made the difficult decision to transition and represent Puerto Rico — a process that meant navigating international eligibility rules, licensing, and sport politics largely without institutional backing. It wasn’t simple. But he kept moving, and I kept moving with him.
He was building toward one final Olympic run at Cortina 2026, funding it himself through a speaking tour built around his story of perseverance, identity, and chasing a dream the system never handed him. Then a long-term injury ended that chapter.
That’s the part of sport nobody prepares you for. The abrupt stop. The shift from what’s next in my career to what’s next in my life. That’s usually when support disappears.
Mine didn’t.
Because this was never just about getting Anthony to another Olympics. It was about the whole person — the athlete and the man. Off the ice, Anthony is an actor, dancer, musician, and speaker. Our work together continues as he moves into this next chapter, with the same commitment I brought when the Games were still on the horizon.
Athletes like Anthony don’t wait for the system to hand them a path. They build one. They deserve support that stays when the outcome changes.
RAMBLINGS OF A PRIVATEER
This is my love letter to sport.
I’ve spent most of my life around athletes. I’ve competed, I’ve coached, I’ve supported, I’ve advocated, I’ve watched people give years of themselves to something they couldn’t fully explain to anyone outside of it. And along the way, I’ve come to believe that sport is one of the most undertold stories of our time — not the headline version, but the real one. The hours. The doubt. The strange friendships. The privateer moments. The people who walked their own road because no one was going to walk it for them.
Ramblings of a Privateer is where I’m going to tell those stories. Mine when they’re mine to tell. Other people’s when they’re given to me. Some of them will be about athletes you’ve heard of. Most of them won’t be. The ones I’m most interested in are usually the second kind.
It’s a zine first, in the old sense of the word — printed, downloadable, made with care, released in volumes rather than posts. There will be writing here on the site between volumes, the kind of pieces that don’t need to wait for a print run. There’s a podcast attached to it, where some of these stories get told out loud and where I get to talk with the kind of people I think more people should be listening to. And over time there will be more — video, interviews, contributions from athletes themselves, whatever the thing wants to become.
I’ve been thinking about this project for a long time. I used to do a podcast that eventually became We Are Privateers, the firm. Ramblings is the other half of that work — the storytelling half. The one that doesn’t ask anything of the athlete except their honesty.
If you’ve ever felt like the way sport gets talked about in the mainstream isn’t the version of sport you actually know — this is for you.
The first volume drops with the relaunch of this site. The podcast follows soon after. You can find both here.
Get in Touch
If you’ve read this far, you’ve got a sense of how I work and what I believe. The next step is just a conversation.
You can reach me through the contact form. Every message comes to me personally, and I respond to all of them — though sometimes it takes a few days, especially during travel or competition windows.
Whether you’re an athlete trying to figure out your next step, a parent trying to make sense of what your child is navigating, a coach or club or federation looking for someone in an athlete’s corner, or someone who isn’t sure what kind of help you need but knows you need some — write. We can figure out the rest from there.
I won’t always be the right person. Sometimes I’ll be the wrong fit; sometimes the timing won’t be right; sometimes the help you need lives somewhere else. If that’s the case, I’ll tell you, and I’ll do what I can to point you toward someone who might be a better fit. The conversation costs nothing either way.
If you’re reaching out about mistreatment, abuse, or unsafe conditions — that matters here, and you’re not writing the wrong person. I’m not a legal service, but I take these situations seriously, and I can offer support, strategy, and help connecting you with the right people or organizations. You can write directly to adam@weareprivateers.com and mark the subject line however feels right. I’ll respond personally.
If you or an athlete you know is in immediate danger or experiencing a crisis, please reach out to emergency services or a trusted mental health professional in your area first. Then, if it would help, write to me too.
I read every message myself. Take your time.