Apolo Ohno

Eight-Time Olympic Medalist, Hall of Fame Short-Track Skater & NYT Bestselling Author

Apolo Ohno

Eight-Time Olympic Medalist, Hall of Fame Short-Track Skater & NYT Bestselling Author

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Biography

Apolo Anton Ohno won his first U.S. championship at 14, after six months of training. Over the next decade he became the most decorated U.S. Winter Olympian in history, earning eight Olympic medals in short track speed skating across the 2002 Salt Lake City, 2006 Turin, and 2010 Vancouver Games, along with more than 100 World Cup medals and the 2008 overall World Championship. He was inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2019, and his skates from the 2002 Games are held in the Smithsonian’s collection.

What came after the podium is the part he speaks about most. Retirement from sport is a career ending in your twenties, and Apolo turned that ending into a system for starting over. He wrote about the obsession and discipline behind elite performance in Zero Regrets, a New York Times bestseller, and about reinvention itself in Hard Pivot, written for anyone whose first chapter has closed. He won season 4 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, finished the Ironman World Championship in Kona in under ten hours, and completed executive education at the Wharton School.

His broadcasting career spans every Winter Olympics of the modern era: fifteen years with NBC Sports, including analyst duties in Sochi and PyeongChang, and most recently on-the-ground coverage of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games for Yahoo Sports, where his short-form Olympic storytelling reached tens of millions of viewers.

He remains deeply embedded in the Olympic movement as a member of the LA28 Athletes’ Commission, a member of the Salt Lake City-Utah 2034 State of Sport Committee, a board member of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum and the Utah Sports Commission, and a global ambassador for the Special Olympics. With Milan behind us and Los Angeles 2028 and Salt Lake City 2034 ahead, no American athlete is more connected to the decade of the Games than Apolo.

Off camera, he is an investor and advisor to companies in health, wellness, and human performance, and has spent twenty years working with high performing teams at organizations from Fortune 100 companies to high-growth startups. His keynotes, The Gold Medal Mindset and Hard Pivot, translate the mental performance systems of elite sport into tools leaders can use: performing under pressure, building cultures where excellence compounds, and reinventing before the world forces you to. He has delivered them for audiences from 5,000-person sales kickoffs to 30-person executive offsites across financial services, technology, and healthcare.

Speech Topics

The Gold Medal Mindset

Train the mind. Perform under pressure. Win the moment.‍ This is the mindset that made Apolo the most decorated U.S. Winter Olympian in history. Through raw, powerful storytelling, Apolo takes audiences inside the mental framework that fueled his Olympic dominance, and applies it to our high-stakes world.

Unlock flow under pressure to achieve peak performance
Build unshakable mental clarity in critical moments
Recover smarter. Visualize sharper. Perform with purpose
Inspired through real stories to unleash sustainable momentum, on and off the podium

Hard Pivot

Evolve with clarity. Lead with purpose. Move with conviction. From the pages of his bestselling books to the keynote stage, Apolo teaches high performers how to lead transformation, with clarity and conviction from within. ‍

Lead pivots with clarity, courage, and confidence
Let go to grow
Turn uncertainty into your competitive edge
Build dynamic resilience: grow stronger through change

The Five Golden Principles

Five principles to anchor, energize, and align your performance, on and off the podium.

Gratitude: Calm the nervous system, anchor presence
Giving: Contribution and acceptance as gateways to flow
Grit: Resilience under pressure, discipline over time
Gearing up: Prepare with intention. Execute with precision
Go: Harness momentum. Act with clarity.

Zero Regrets

A mindset to lead boldly, decide courageously, and live without holding back. From his New York Times bestselling book Zero Regrets, Apolo shares raw stories and mental strategies that ignite motivation, fuel bold action, and help people trust themselves, when it counts.

Turn fear into fuel, and take bold action
Visualization to sharpen focus and unleash inner fire
Build unstoppable drive through consistency and grit
Embrace process over prize, with systems that elevate performance

Human 2.0

The mindset upgrade for a world that's not slowing down. As technology accelerates and the ground keeps shifting, Human 2.0 helps teams stay agile, connect meaningfully, and respond decisively, no matter what's changing around them.

Flow over frenzy: train deep attention when everything competes for it
Reclaim energy, bandwidth and health from digital overwhelm
Stay inspired. Use emotion for motion
Build conviction, drive culture, deepen connection, repeat

Additional Keynotes

Peak Performance - immersive sessions to sharpen decision-making, adaptability, and vision under volatility
Team Culture Architecture Workshops - operating systems that drive cohesion, connection and impact
Train like a champion: life-design programs that drive sustained excellence
Breakout Intensives on Flow, Resilience and Mental Agility - tactical deep dives customized to create lasting shifts.

Testimonials

“[Apolo] has a gift for making excellence feel attainable. He gets people thinking differently about accountability, preparation, mindset, and what it takes to perform at their best. I've seen him captivate audiences from the keynote stage, in executive fireside chats, and in more intimate discussions with customers and leadership teams. He creates genuine connections, sparks meaningful reflection, and inspires people to expect more of themselves and those around them.”

- SVP of Commercial at CDW

“Apolo faced head-on, fueled by his mindset, the light in his heart, and the perseverance in his spirit. I can't think of a better person to inspire us and remind us that succeeding is a marathon, not a sprint. And the journey to get there requires a particular mindset that Apolo Ohno is the living embodiment of.”

- President & CEO at Emerald

“It's so invigorating to hear from someone who's had such unique experiences and is influencing not only sport, but also the world to talk more about mental and emotional wellbeing. How you're talking about it, I think makes huge differences to everyone's lives.”

- Global Benefit Manager at Microsoft