Jim Craig

Jim Craig is the legendary goaltender from the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team whose performance in the Miracle on Ice has been called the greatest sports moment of the 20th century. He speaks on leadership, teamwork, and business readiness, drawing from the experience of beating the heavily favored Soviet team and winning the Olympic gold medal. Jim’s story, immortalized in the Disney film Miracle, provides audiences with powerful lessons on what ordinary people can achieve when they prepare, believe, and work together.

From the Ice to the Boardroom
Today, Jim is president of Gold Medal Strategies, a Boston-based motivational speaking and sales training company. He is the author of Gold Medal Strategies: Business Lessons from America’s Miracle Team, which outlines the specific skills and techniques needed to maximize business readiness, hone competitive cooperation, and attack challengers. His transition from Olympic hero to successful entrepreneur demonstrates the same discipline and competitive drive that defined his athletic career.

A Miracle That Still Resonates
More than four decades later, the Miracle on Ice remains one of the most inspiring stories in sports history, and Jim’s firsthand account of that journey continues to move audiences to action. His keynotes deliver championship-tested strategies for teamwork, leadership under pressure, and building the kind of preparation and competitive mindset that enables teams to achieve the impossible in sports, innovation, and business.

What does Jim Craig speak about?
Jim Craig speaks on teamwork, leadership under pressure, and what it takes to perform at your best when the stakes are at their highest. His keynotes draw directly on the experience of backstopping one of the most famous upsets in sports history and translate those lessons into principles for building cohesive, high-performing teams.

What is Jim Craig’s background?
Craig was the goaltender of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team whose gold medal victory over the Soviet Union — the Miracle on Ice — is one of the most celebrated moments in American sports history.

Who books Jim Craig to speak?
Meeting planners book Jim Craig for leadership, sales, and sports-adjacent corporate events where a first-person account of team cohesion, clutch performance, and the power of collective belief resonates deeply.

Building a Winning Team and Corporate Culture

– Recruiting and selecting the right players

– Inspiring, guiding, and motivating team members to put “team” in front of individual interests

– Managing and coaching team members to work efficiently and in synchronicity

– Identifying “diamonds in the rough”

Self Reliance and Personal Responsibility

– How do I strive for and achieve personal excellence?

– How do I stay committed to my personal goals?

– How do I condition myself to be professionally tough – better than my competitor?

Creating Great Groups

– Instilling in people a sense of destiny and desire to accomplish greatness

– Maintaining a competitive edge and a view that the team is an underappreciated underdog that will win, shock, and inspire

Identifying the Right People for the Right Position

– As Coach Herb Brooks said when building the U.S. 1980 Olympic hockey team: “I’m not looking for the best players – I’m looking for the right ones.”

– Selecting the type of players so that the whole (team) is greater sum of the parts (employees, players)

– Being on guard against prima donnas and disruptive influences

– Finding your captain and team leader

Innovation and Strategic Change

– Always be on the lookout and the hunt for better ways to do things

– What tools and resources are available to help your team win?

– How Coach Brooks, a supreme innovator and strategist, taught and mentored us to play a revolutionary type of hockey that would enable us to beat the mighty Soviet machine: a hybrid of the bruising and physical Canadian form of play and the speed, fluidity, and finesse of the Eastern European and Soviet game

– When needed, abandoning the old, unsuccessful, yet comfortable, for the new and uncomfortable, yet what will eventually enable success

Making a Difference — Build Your Legacy

– Make it matter that you lived!

– Are you optimizing your God-given talents?

– Set the right example for your children, for all young people

– Improve the lives of others

The Keys to Peak Performance:

– Hard Work

– Sacrifice

– Humility: A Willingness to Ask for Advice and Seek Out the Counsel of Others

– Persistence