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.
[clarification needed] 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.
Peter Eriksson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the only son of Eskil (a construction worker) and Ellen (a switchboard operator).
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.
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.
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 acted as the high performance director for Speed Skating Canada between 1992 and 1995, which led to seven medals at the 1994 Olympic Games.
At the 2008 Paralympic Games the GB & NI team finished 18th in the Nations standing, with two Gold medals (David Weir).
Part of the success for the GB & NI team under Eriksson’s leadership has been complete integration with the Olympic program, the slogan for achieving this being 'the same, the same, the same', ensuring all funded athletes on the Paralympic program have the same opportunity, facilities, support services, training/coaching environment and expectations as their Olympic counterparts.
In October 2012, Eriksson was appointed to replace Charles van Commenee as UK Athletics Olympic head coach.
[2] It was intended that he would lead the programme until the World Championships in London 2017, but he resigned in June 2013, citing personal reasons.
[3] Eriksson accepted the CTO/head coach position at Athletics Canada in August 2013 located in his hometown of Ottawa, Ontario.
In 2017 Eriksson started working as high-performance adviser for Own the Podium (funding agency for elite sport in Canada).