Peter Mueller, born in Madison, Wisconsin, was the first Olympic 1000 m champion when this distance was introduced to the Olympic program in 1976. Four years later he was 5th on his favourite distance.

Later he has had great success as a speed skating coach. He started the positiv development of Austrian speed skating during the 1980s. He was the coach of Bonnie Blair for the 1992 Olympic Games and Dan Jansen in Lillehammer 1994. Then he left his home country for France and later the Netherlands, where he successfully created a world class sprint team. He became national team coach of Norway before the 2003/2004-season and successfully brought the Norwegian speed skaters back into the world top within two years.

He was married to the American speed skater Leah Poulos, two times World Sprint Champion and three times Olympic silver medalist. He later married the Dutch speed skater Marianne Timmer.

By Bjarte Hetland, last updated December 19, 2005