Les Mills, Olympian who built a global fitness empire, dies at 91

Les Mills, who represented New Zealand as a thrower at four Olympic Games before founding a fitness company whose workouts are now performed in gyms around the world, died on Monday at the age of 91, as reported by 1News.

A champion thrower

Born in 1934, Mills became one of New Zealand's leading track-and-field athletes, competing in the discus and shot put. He appeared at four consecutive Olympic Games — Rome in 1960, Tokyo in 1964, Mexico City in 1968 and Munich in 1972 — and carried his country's flag at the Games, a mark of his standing in New Zealand sport. He was even more successful at the Commonwealth Games, winning the discus gold medal at Kingston in 1966 and collecting several other medals over a long career, the New Zealand Herald reported.

From one Auckland gym to the world

In 1968, Mills and his wife, Colleen, opened a gym in Auckland — the seed of what would become a global enterprise. The transformation owed much to his son, Phillip, who took the family business and built its pre-choreographed group-exercise classes into an international franchise. Programs such as BodyPump and BodyCombat — set routines, taught to music, that gyms license and instructors deliver around the world — turned the Les Mills name into a fixture of the modern fitness industry, used in clubs across more than 100 countries.

A public life, too

Mills was not only an athlete and businessman. He also served as mayor of Auckland, holding the city's top civic office for much of the 1990s — an unusually varied public life that spanned elite sport, local government and global commerce. In later years he remained involved in athletics, mentoring New Zealand throwers, among them the discus champion Beatrice Faumuina.

A lasting influence

Few people have shaped how the world exercises as directly as Les Mills. The group-fitness format his company refined — energetic, choreographed, endlessly scalable — became a template adopted far beyond his own brand, drawing millions of people into gyms and community halls. He leaves a legacy measured not in medals alone, but in the countless workouts that still bear his name. He is survived by his family.