Olympic Speaker Connor Fields
A Champion Among Olympic Speakers
Now what? A Story of Olympic Success, Failure, and Moving Forward.
Setting a goal, reaching your big moment but then falling short, finally achieving your Olympic Gold Medal moment, a catastrophic failure of career-ending proportions. These situations seem to span the spectrum of possible outcomes, yet each time, you are left with the same question…
In my keynote, "Now What?" I take you on my journey to the Olympic games —where triumph and failure collided—and share how resilience, adaptability, and mental strength shaped my path. I didn’t just win a gold medal. This isn’t your typical Olympic Athlete sports story. I nearly lost my life at the Olympics, too. From choking in my first final to bringing home gold to fighting for my life, I learned that having a true champion's mentality isn’t just about reaching the summit—it’s about how you rise again despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and keep going, no matter the outcome.
Success is personal. Everyone’s “Gold Medal” looks different, but we all face moments when we must ask ourselves: Where do I go from here?
In this keynote, I’ll share four powerful strategies that helped me go from being a kid with a dream to picking myself up after a failure, winning gold, and reinventing myself after a catastrophic loss. You’ll learn how to navigate the highs and lows, increase adaptability, and keep moving forward after your biggest moments, whether they’re victories or losses. Audiences leave more motivated than ever to go after their own goals. The goal of motivational speakers is to inspire, but Connor’s goal is to leave the audience with actionable strategies as well.
No matter where you are on your path, the only question that really matters is: Now what?
How you move forward is always up to you.
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You have a goal. Now what? In my keynote, I share the critical steps that propelled me to Olympic Gold—steps that are as much about resilience and adaptability as they are about ambition. Success isn’t just about setting big, bold goals—it’s about making every decision and every action count toward your vision, even when the path isn’t clear. Along my journey to becoming an Olympic Gold medalist and then reinventing myself after my career ended in the blink of an eye, I learned that success is built one small choice at a time.
I’ll also dive into the strategy of periodization—the Olympic athlete’s method of peaking at the right moment. When you have to be absolutely perfect on one specific day every 4 years, you learn how to truly commit to a goal. I show how you can apply that same approach to your own life so you can be ready to rise when it matters most.
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You came up short. Now what? Failure comes in different forms; sometimes, you don’t reach your goal, and you need to continue working. Sometimes, failure causes you to have to change completely what you will work toward. I share actionable strategies on how to do both.
We all want to perform at our best in those big moments, but what happens after the moment? Throughout my career, I discovered that true peak performance isn’t just about getting it right when everything is on the line—it’s about how you bounce back, adapt, and move toward your next big moment after a win or a loss.
Reflecting on my first Olympic experience, I pinpointed the mistakes that held me back. That introspection became the foundation for creating strategies to help me perform at my best when it mattered most. In my keynote, I’ll share those hard-earned lessons with you—offering actionable strategies to help you show up ready for your own “Gold Medal Moment” and close the loop by sharing the next steps to take to move forward like a champion, whether you win or lose.
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You have reached your goal. Now what? How do you do it again and remain at the top? As the first American to be a Gold Medal Olympic Champion in my sport, I had the weight of the world on my shoulders to remain at the top. Reflecting on my success at both the world and Olympic levels, I have learned the importance of both celebrating your wins, but also moving forward each time with just as much intensity, drive, and hunger as if you never won. I share my true experience that motivates the audience to move forward and equipped with new tools to help sustain success.
Olympic Speaker: Strategies From an Olympic Gold Medalist
Everyone has their own unique version of a gold medal, and success means something different to every team, but we can all use the same strategies to reach our gold medal moments and seize them.
To help you meet your goals, Connor shares the same strategies used to win Olympic Gold medals. These are strategies you and your team can immediately implement to give yourself the best chance of navigating the ups and downs life can throw at you as you work towards reaching your own Gold Medal Moment.
What you choose to set as your goal is up to you, but after hearing Connor as your keynote speaker, you will be more equipped than ever to achieve it. Read about Connor’s different Keynote offerings here:
Now what?: Handling challenges life throws at you and moving forward like a Gold Medalist each time.
In his keynote, “Now What?” Connor Fields touches on challenges that can cause self-doubt in life and work, equipping you with the tools to overcome them. This incredible keynote presentation delves into the crucial power of resilience, overcoming failures, unwavering determination, and perspective, empowering you to face challenges head-on. With compelling stories and hard-earned insights, Connor empowers attendees to be ready to answer the question “Now What?” every time.
KEY LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Clear Goal Setting Strategies: Once you know what you want to achieve, how do you get there? Connor outlines step-by-step processes to increase the likelihood of reaching your goals.
Lean Into Resilience: After a failure, what do you do to get better? Connor shares what he learned from failing at the highest level: how to correct mistakes and get them right the next time around.
Sustain Success: Now that you have won, how do you stay at the top? Be ready to sustain success with insights from someone who stayed in the top 5 World Rankings for over a decade.
Keep Failure in Perspective: No one wants to fail, but if you are here, you have a chance to fix it. Nearly losing your life and having the world’s attention to see if you would survive changes the way you look at failure. Be able to keep failure in perspective and stay optimistic about the future.
Gold Medal Moments: Reach Your Big Moments, and Be Ready When You Do. Olympic Secrets to Peak Performance
In “Gold Medal Moments,” Connor Fields shares what he learned throughout his 3 Olympic cycles and how those lessons can be applied daily. From choking at his first games, winning sports greatest prize at his second, and nearly losing his life at his third and losing the chance to go to four Olympics, he experienced the entire range of outcomes. Each time, learning different lessons about preparation, how to succeed despite setbacks, and failing with grace. Through captivating stories and actionable takeaways, attendees will acquire powerful tools and frameworks designed to drive success. Whether you’re eager to enhance your performance in the business world or seeking a spark of motivation, this keynote is essential for anyone ready to think and perform like an Olympic Champion in their professional pursuits. Get to your Gold Medal moment, and seize it!
KEY LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Intentional Preparation: Learn how to maximize your preparation to be ready for the big moment when it arrives. Lean into a high-performance mindset that embraces discipline, focus, and resilience.
Implement Proven Olympic Strategies: Discover the secret frameworks and techniques used by Olympic athletes that can be applied to enhance performance. When you have 1 day every 4 years that counts, you better get it right. Learn how to “peak” the same way Olympians speakers do.
Handle the Moment: Discover is the secret Olympic athletes and gold medalists use to stay calm in big moments and maximize your chances of success.
Above all, more than anything, success is made up of these 3 ingredients that Connor goes into:
Setting Goals
In this keynote as an Olympic motivational speaker, Connor explains the steps that propelled him to become a World Cup winner and one-time Olympic gold medalist. What started as a crazy goal written on the wall at his parent's house at 15 turned into a mission. However, the bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacles you will face.
Connor underlines the crucial need for setting precise, ambitious goals and the power of making every decision count toward overcoming what may seem like insurmountable obstacles. Through raw and honest stories, Connor opens up about his own struggles, the times he wanted to give up, and shares how he was able to move forward each time with lessons that can be immediately applied to whatever goal the listener sets.
Every choice, no matter how small, can impact our path to success. As a keynote speaker, Connor shares his approach to goal-setting and decision-making.
Learn From Your Mistakes
What happens when you do everything right and prepare as much as possible, but it doesn't work out? How do you believe you can get it right next time? This is a challenge in both sports and in life. Olympic speakers have seen extreme adversity and can help you learn how to work through it at your event. How do you have the courage to try again? The first thing to do is look in the mirror and figure out why you did not succeed. That is hard to do, and it can hurt, but it is necessary if you want to be the best you can be.
This introspection was crucial and helped Connor establish best practices to prime for peak performance the next chance he got. Connor shares these lessons to prepare you for your Gold Medal Moment when it arrives.
Manage The Pressure
The whole country is counting on you…hundreds of millions of people are watching…your entire career comes down to this moment…will you become an Olympic gold medalist and one of the Olympic champions? The intensity of jumping a massively long jump, competing in a World Cup, or an Olympic final is unmatched, yet the essence of pressure remains constant across all scenarios - it doesn't matter if you're on the Olympic starting line or preparing for a presentation at your next conference. If it is important to you, you will feel the pressure.
Connor has developed world-record holder proven strategies to manage the pressure of needing to succeed in that make-or-break moment, strategies born from moments when the stakes couldn't be higher. Connor explains how they can be adapted to navigate the pressures in your own life, in both work and personal life. He can help you turn seemingly daunting challenges into opportunities for growth and achievement.
Why Book Connor?
Everyone knows the classic Olympic speaker's sports story: dream big, work hard, fail a couple of times, win the world championships, then achieve your goal of being an Olympic medalist and go home happy. Connor’s story doesn’t end with a shiny gold medal being placed around his neck as Olympic Champion. Through raw and honest storytelling, Connor shares how his near-death experience reshaped his perspective on what it means to “lose.” Whether the focus of your event is personal growth, navigating high-pressure environments, resilience, leadership development, or innovation, booking Connor as your keynote speaker promises a captivated audience who leaves inspired to live life fully, motivated to work toward big goals, and confident in their ability to adapt to an ever-changing and unexpected world. Contact me directly or your speaker's bureau today!
Have an Olympic Speaker Unleash Your Team
If you want a gold medal event at your next conference, next event, next meeting, or next retreat, bring in one of the most inspirational keynote speakers in the world. Connor has inspired business leaders and corporate events around the world with incredibly inspiring true stories. Connor has been featured in publications like Sports Illustrated, is a part of the Hall of Fame, holds world records, and is one of the top motivational speakers. Whatever your field athlete speakers can inspire like no other. Olympic athlete speakers are the perfect speaker to help motivate your team to overcome extreme adversity. No matter your playing field, make your next conference a gold medal, and reach out to Connor directly for a custom speakers proposal, or have your speakers bureau bring him in for standout speaking engagements.
