The most challenging aspect of the decathlon is not the events themselves, but how you train to become the best 100-meter runner you are on the same day that you're the best 1,500-meter runner.

When you walk out of your apartment, you think about performing; you do not think about how your opponent looks. So I think the advice from me to everybody is just to go out there and have fun.

I be thinking sometimes, maybe I'm just too hard on people. Maybe I want too much. But no, I don't. All my granny did was cook for me, tell me that she love me, gave me hugs every now and then.

You can actually suffer a little bit more going slowly than when you're going really fast. A faster marathon might even be easier than a slow one, in terms of what it takes out of you mentally.

Coming from the background that I come from, being a gold medalist, you see Ronda Rousey and Daniel Cormier doing so well. Yoel Romero. All these Olympians. It's kinda hard to bet against them.

I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.

Protect your good image from the eyes of negative viewers, who may look at your good appearance with an ugly fiendish eye, and ruin your positive qualities with their chemical infested tongues.

I think I tried to separate indoors and out. And so when he beat me indoors, I did not see that as letting anybody down, I saw it as a good head to head competition, and so it was. It was fine.

His unit is in charge of 5,000 homes, and they've only been able to search about 2 percent of them. People are standing on roofs or sticking their hands out of air vents so they can get rescued.

My parents always encouraged me and I had a good home life. We were always taught to respect things and other people. It's so different today, because children are just not taught the right way.

Waving the flag at the 1976 Olympics wasn't my idea. It was too much apple pie and ice cream. Not that I don't love my country, but I felt it was my victory up there, I put all the time into it.

There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.

Technically, the last number of years, partially from the injury, it's been difficult to push forward but I felt even before the injury that I still could do more and was sort of at a stalemate.

My passion for giving is no different than yours. I give because it's in my heart to give. I give because I was taught to give at a very early age. This is how I developed my passion for giving.

It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.

It's never fun to do it by yourself. It's good to have other people that are on the same path as you. It's nice to have that in common and be able to converse with them. It's cool to share that.

Racing teaches us to challenge ourselves. It teaches us to push beyond where we thought we could go. It helps us to find out what we are made of. This is what we do. This is what it's all about.

At the Cardiff World Cup I really would like to make the final. The favorites are still Peter, Daniele or Vavra, but I will try to do my best in order to be closest as possible to these athletes.

After quitting gymnastics in 2000, I was looking for that next thing where I could defy gravity. I was looking for something that had the flipping and the twisting and allowed me to be acrobatic.

I used to be seriously incognito - without wanting to be. The effect of the magazines, television, billboards - they've changed my whole life in terms of having to deal with being a, quote, star.

I have a real passion for children. I always wanted to teach and only became an athlete because my parents told my brother Parenthesis (sic) and me that we should use any God-given talent we had.

The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.

There’s not a better feeling than when you have found that moment of balance and harmony when both running and life come together. Then you know why you run and that you couldn’t live without it.

Within the realm of wrestling, it's been the same every year - just continually trying to improve and evolve as a wrestler, putting myself in a position to not maintain but maximize my potential.

Scoring is a function of great execution, and winning is the result, but thinking about winning can pull your focus off of proper execution in a competition. Thinking about process is the answer.

It is almost impossible to divorce sport from politics, but sport is such a positive factor in today's society - there is nothing else which will bring so many people together in that atmosphere.

I deliberately returned slowly to training after Raphael was born and everything, apart from being bitten by a dog while out training in Monaco at the beginning of the year, has gone pretty well.

The world record is like you we went to the theater to see this movie, and it was really good, and it had an unexpected ending, and you left the theater saying, 'Wow, that was such a great movie.'

From a young age, I was a pretty good listener, a strong lady. Maybe it helped me that I never felt intimidated by anybody. Even at school, I was always strong. I believed in myself, in what I do.

No one runs fast without an extreme amount of training. Like today, you see kids walking around dribbling a basketball. I had a bag with track shoes in it, and I used to go to the track every day.

When you're younger, your inspiration is there. As you get older, it tends to waver. Once you find it - I found it again - that's where you can draw from. That's where you draw your strength from.

Your job is not done when you have determined your goal. You must also plan for and determine how it is to be accomplished. Goals and plans are meaningless if they cannot be executed successfully!

If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard. The thrill of competing carries with it the thrill of a gold medal. One wants to win to prove himself the best.

I'm sure there was people in Australia that told Peter Norman that hey, man, you shouldn't have done what you did, you shouldn't have gotten involved in those individuals, it wasn't your business.

If your husband asks what you think, tell him. If you have a preference, voice it. If you have a question, ask it. If you want to cry, bawl. If you need help, raise your hand and jump up and down.

The morning, which is like a farewell that approaches slowly from far away, while smiling... We are the sunshine in the night sky. It's as if the Night is sleepwalking. Slowly, we'll be forgotten.

All the athletes are individuals. This isn't a team sport. We all have our own styles, our own clothing preferences and our own way of doing things. That's the way I do things and I'm proud of it.

One shouldn't be afraid to lose; this is sport. One day you win; another day you lose. Of course, everyone wants to be the best. This is normal. This is what sport is about. This is why I love it.

I deliberately returned slowly to training after Raphael was born and everything, apart from being bitten by a dog whilst out training in Monaco at the beginning of the year, has gone pretty well.

First, don't cry. That's the worst thing a gymnast can do in training, because it can ruin your concentration and lead to injury. Second, always place the highest demands of yourself in the sport.

We'll probably only consider a handful of individuals. We'll bring up people who can accumulate either innings or at-bats, so we can hopefully gauge where they stand as a prospective Major Leaguer.

I want to give as many Canadians the opportunity to be successful and if we can use their athletic gifts to get them a free degree or a free diploma across the border then I guess I'm doing my job.

I could not have done anymore, I had pushed myself to a limit that I had never touched before and that's definitely going to change you - than going out and doing what you do in practice every day.

I've boxed many people in their own backyard plenty of times - in China, I boxed a Chinese girl in the final of the world championships, and I've boxed Russians before in their home nation as well.

When everything is moving and shifting, the only way to counteract chaos is stillness. When things feel extraordinary, strive for ordinary. When the surface is wavy, dive deeper for quieter waters.

Afraid no, I wasn't afraid but it was an unusual thing, it was an unusual feeling. It was an unusual atmosphere for me having grown up in this country and, and, and never seeing anything like that.

Universities are like a utopia in a way, because you're mentally stimulated, you're challenged, and you have a lot of young, creative minds wanting to do new things, different things. Better things.

I just love playing so much, competing so much. You're able to put your losses behind you. One of the greatest attributes a decathlete can have is the ability to forget... to look ahead, not behind.

That's what our training is for, we practice not panicking, we practice breathing, we practice looking directly at the thing that scares us until we stop flinching, we practice overriding our Can't.

Twenty years from now, I can look at this medal and say, 'I was the best quarter-miler in the world on that day.' If you don't think that's important, you don't know what's inside an athlete's soul.

Share This Page