Jaco van Gass OBE

Why organisations work with Jaco van Gass

• A first-hand account of what happens between catastrophic loss and elite-level performance, from a speaker who has lived both ends of that arc rather than studied them.
• Demonstrated ability to translate military and Paralympic experience into language senior teams use, with named clients including Investec and the British Forces Foundation.
• Credibility built on verifiable results, including Paralympic gold at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 and a world record of 3:15.488 in the C3 3000m pursuit, not motivational anecdote.
• A serving counterweight to the corporate resilience industry: the message is grounded in 11 operations, two Paralympic cycles and a polar expedition, not in a wellness model.

Biography highlights

• Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), 2025 New Year Honours, for services to cycling, an upgrade from the MBE awarded in 2022.
• Multiple-time Paralympic gold medallist across Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, with podium finishes across pursuit, team sprint and time trial events.
• World record holder in the C3 3000m individual pursuit, 3:15.488, set during Paris 2024 qualifying.
• Author of Unequivocal: My Story (2022), published in hardback and ebook; ghostwritten with Eleanor Updegraff.
• Member of the 2011 Walking with the Wounded North Pole expedition with Prince Harry, and the 2012 Walking with the Wounded Everest summit team.
• Former British Army Parachute Regiment soldier, wounded in action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2009.

Biography

The 2009 RPG strike in Helmand should have been the end of the story. It removed Jaco van Gass’s left arm at the elbow, collapsed a lung, broke his tibia and put him through 11 operations. The interest, for a senior audience, is what came next, and how.

Recovery did not look like a return to baseline. It looked like a rebuilt operating system. Jaco joined Walking with the Wounded for the 2011 North Pole expedition with Prince Harry, and the 2012 Everest summit team, before moving into elite para-cycling. By Tokyo 2020, he was a Paralympic gold medallist in the C3 3000m pursuit and the mixed team sprint. By Paris 2024, he had retained the pursuit title with a world record of 3:15.488, having raced a week after being hit by a car in training.

The book Unequivocal, published in 2022, gives the spine of the argument: that recovery is a deliberate practice, not a personality trait, and that the gap between “I cannot do this” and “I can do this differently” is closed by specific decisions made under fatigue. He was appointed OBE in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to cycling, an upgrade from the MBE awarded in 2022.

For corporate audiences, the value is precise. Jaco is not delivering motivation. He is describing what composure under sustained pressure costs, what it produces, and how it is rebuilt when the original conditions of success no longer apply.

Key speaking topics

• Resilience after catastrophic setback
• Self-leadership under sustained pressure
• High-performance recovery and rehabilitation
• Goal-setting when the original plan is gone
• Team performance under extreme conditions
• Disability, inclusion and adaptive performance

Ideal for

• Leadership and senior teams facing prolonged operational pressure or post-crisis recovery
• HR, talent and wellbeing leads commissioning serious content on resilience rather than wellness theatre
• Sales conferences and annual kick-offs, where the agenda needs a credible counterpoint to commercial content
• Veteran, public-sector and emergency-service audiences with a direct cultural bridge to his story

Audience outcomes

• A working definition of resilience grounded in lived recovery, not framework language
• A clearer view of the difference between motivation and decision-making under fatigue
• A concrete account of how high-performance teams, military and athletic, function when conditions deteriorate
• Renewed reference points for goal-setting when circumstances force a full reset