Available to book
Derek Redmond
Derek Redmond helps teams perform under pressure and recover from setbacks. A resilience and Olympic motivational speaker, he's a World relay champion, a two-time British 400m record holder, and has delivered over 1,000 keynotes in 52 countries.
Derek Redmond is a World and European relay champion whose 1992 Olympic semi-final became one of the most replayed moments in sport. He uses that experience to help organisations handle pressure, setbacks, and change.
Derek held the British 400m record twice and won 4x400m relay gold at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, where Great Britain beat the favourites, the USA. At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics he tore his hamstring 250 metres from the finish and completed the race with his father at his side. The moment has been referenced by Barack Obama, featured in Visa and Nike campaigns, and voted one of the most inspirational in Olympic history by NBC.
He's since delivered more than 1,000 keynotes across 52 countries, to audiences as large as 78,000, and is the author of Sport Is a Business and Business Is a Sport. In 2025 he was named among the UK's top 15 motivational speakers and in Global Gurus' top 10 for corporate events.
Derek's sessions cover mental resilience, teamwork, change, and inclusion, drawing on his own experience of racism as well as elite sport. Audiences leave with practical models for recovering from setbacks, working as a team under pressure, and building inclusive, high-performing cultures.
For conferences and leadership events that need a story people remember and lessons they can apply the next day, Derek is a proven choice.
Topics, sessions and talks
Elite sport shows what diverse teams can achieve when everyone's contribution counts. Derek Redmond draws on his athletics career and his own experience of racism, including his work co-fronting the #isthisyou campaign, to explain four types of diversity and how unconscious bias shapes decisions. He speaks with honesty about what it's like to be on the receiving end, and leaders come away with a clearer view of their own role in building teams where people perform at their best.
Derek Redmond tore his hamstring in the 1992 Olympic semi-final and still finished the race. He uses that moment to unpack the mindset that keeps people going when a plan falls apart, including his seven-stage change curve for working through failure and disappointment. It's a candid, first-hand account of performing under pressure, and teams leave with a practical model for recovering from setbacks, staying focused in a crisis, and deciding what finishing looks like when things go wrong.
In 1991, Great Britain's 4x400m relay team beat the favourites, the USA, to win gold at the World Championships in Tokyo. Derek Redmond ran the second leg and uses the race as a case study in teamwork: how four individuals agreed a plan, trusted each other, and took a calculated risk on running order. He tailors his B.R.A.V.E and P.R.I.D.E frameworks to each client, and teams leave with a shared language for working together under pressure.
Olympic athletes live with constant change, and the best treat it as a chance to improve. Derek Redmond applies what he learned at the top of his sport to organisational change, showing how small, deliberate improvements add up and how mental resilience helps people stay committed through uncertainty. The session includes practical exercises on marginal gains, and teams come away with tools for leading change, adapting quickly, and keeping standards high while everything around them shifts.
Based on his book of the same name, Derek Redmond treats business and elite sport as the same pursuit: both reward preparation, teamwork, and performance on the day. He uses the 1991 Tokyo relay as a case study and brings in personality profiling tools so teams can see how different working styles combine. Teams leave with a clearer picture of their own strengths and how to get more from the people around them.
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frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
Derek Redmond tells the story of his 1992 Barcelona semi-final first-hand and uses it as the thread through his keynotes, linking it to practical tools such as his seven-stage change curve and his B.R.A.V.E and P.R.I.D.E teamwork frameworks.
Derek Redmond speaks on mental resilience under pressure, building inclusive high-performing teams, teamwork, and change management. He's a World and European relay champion and two-time British 400m record holder whose 1992 Olympic semi-final, finished with his father at his side after tearing his hamstring, was voted one of the most inspirational moments in Olympic history by NBC.
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