Peter Eriksson

Peter Eriksson (born 19 November 1952) is an athletics coach and formerly the head coach of the Olympic and Paralympic programs for both British Athletics and Athletics Canada.

As a young man he was interested firstly in athletics, and competed in the sport of speed skating for 17 years (1963–1980).

He has personally coached many athletes to international medals, including Jeff Adams, Kelly Smith, Scot Hollonbeck, Jamie Bone, Rainer Kuschall, Heine Koboerle, Rick Reelie, Clayton Gerein (1964–2010), Colette Bourgonje, Gavin Foulsham, Peter Carruthers (1947-2017), Christoph Etzlstorfer, Daniella Jutzeler (1967–1994), Håkan Ericsson, Bo Lindqvist, Jan-Owe Matsson, Aron Andersson, Tatyana McFadden, Chantal Petitclerc, Brent Lakatos, Hannah Cockroft, Shelly Woods.

From 1972 to 1983 he worked as a fireman (#128) on Östermalms Fire Station in Stockholm.

He participated in the Sprint World Championships in 1977 and 1979 with the best performance of 10th place in the 500-metre in 1977 World Championships.

During his speed skating career, he represented Södermals IK and Pollux speed skating clubs.

In 1980 Eriksson participated as an apprentice coach at the 1980 Olympic Games for the Swedish Track and Field Association.

During these games Eriksson met Gusti Laurell, former Swedish national coach, who became his mentor and has influenced him throughout his coaching career.

In addition to Laurell, Herman Buuts, the former national head coach of Sweden and the Netherlands, helped him with summer training during his last two active years as a speed skater.

Buuts has also had a tremendous impact on Eriksson’s coaching philosophy and interest in track and field throughout his career.

Eriksson first became involved in coaching after the end of his speed skating career.

He began his coaching career in Stockholm with a junior speed skating team and around 1982 moved over to coach Paralympic track and field athletes.

The transition occurred while studying at Boson Sports School east of Stockholm where he met wheelchair track athlete Ronnie Schuttman, who asked Eriksson to coach him.

Eriksson completed his master's degree in physical education at GIH (University of Stockholm) 1983.

Paralympic Games since 1984, in addition to medals won at World Championships and other

major international events.

Eriksson is the most successful Paralympic Track and Field coach in Paralympic history.

He taught in schools around Stockholm for a few years before starting research in the physiology on spinal cord injuries at the University of Stockholm for Professors Per-Olof Åstrand and Bjorn Ekblom until 1986.

During this period Eriksson acted as the head coach for the Swedish Paralympic Team and coached several international wheelchair athletes such as Jan-Owe Matsson, Bo Lindqvist and Håkan Ericsson.

Eriksson moved to Edmonton, Canada in September 1987 after spending a year in New York City.

Between 1988 and 1996 Eriksson acted as a head coach for the wheelchair racing athletes in track and field with CWSA (Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association), from 1996 onwards he coached primarily as a personal coach for several top Canadian and US wheelchair racing athletes.

Since arriving in North America, Eriksson has coached athletes from ten different countries; namely Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada and United States.

Eriksson was the first Paralympic track and field coach in Canada certified at Level 5 (NCCP) for track and field.

He continued his research at the Steadward Centre (formerly known as the Rick Hansen Centre) at the University of Alberta under professors Robert Steadward and Yagesh Bhambhani until 1992, when he moved to Ottawa, Ontario.

During his research period Eriksson published more than 18 scientific research articles on his work.

Eriksson acted as the high performance director for Speed Skating Canada between 1992 and 1995, which led to seven medals at the 1994 Olympic Games.

In 1995 Eriksson moved into working in the high technology field until 2005.

Eriksson is also a co-founder of the World Series for wheelchair racing, a series of international high calibre wheelchair racing events across the world 2003 to 2009.

In 2005 he became the first Paralympic coach to be awarded Canadian Coach of the Year and was also inducted in the Terry Fox Hall of Fame.

The same year he accepted the position of head coach for track and field for US Paralympic Committee, where he worked for a year.

He served as head coach of Britain's Paralympic team from 2009, where he led the team to a third position in the nations ranking, and then replaced Charles van Commenee as the Olympic head coach of UK Athletics in 2012.

After this period Eriksson worked as high-performance adviser for Own the Podium (funding agency for elite sport in Canada) until January 2009, when he began work as head coach for track and field for the Paralympic program at UK Athletics.

He resigned from this position in 2013, and took the CTO/head coach position for Athletics Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic program.

Working with Athletics Canada, Eriksson did not just make history with record medal counts at major events he also established himself as the most medal-winning head coach of Canadian Athletics in modern history.

Peter Eriksson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the only son of Eskil (a construction worker) and Ellen (a switchboard operator).

Spending the first years of his life in Södermalm, southside of Stockholm he eventually moved and grew up in Bagarmossen, a suburb of the city of Stockholm, and from an early age he was instilled with a strong work ethic from his parents.

Eriksson has over 30 years of coaching experience in speed skating and track and field; and has led Canada to record medal performances in the 2016 Olympic Games, 2015 World Championships and 2014

Commonwealth Games.

Under his leadership as performance director and head coach, the nations that he has worked with has generated over 240 medals at major International Competitions.

Athletes in his programs have won 122 medals at the