Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The first few weeks football players look at you like you are speaking a foreign language. My job is to get them to trust me, trust the system. I ask them to run in a way that makes no sense to them.
Can't nobody else get in there and help you. Your coach, he can't get in the ring and fight with you. You don't have your dad, your mom. When you get in the ring, you don't have anybody but yourself.
I don't think you can become an outstanding runner unless you get a certain amount of enjoyment out of the suffering. You have to enjoy absorbing it, controlling it, and - ultimately - overcoming it.
The marathon is all about energy management. I had planned to run it like a track race with strategic surges to blow up my competitors by putting them into oxygen debt, so that is the way I prepared.
My school was six miles away from where I lived on the farm. I had to walk and run, there and back every day, through gorges and over rivers. If I was late, there was a very big stick waiting for me.
I have high expectations for myself - as an athlete, as a man, as an individual - and wrestling has helped me build a lot of character knowing that I have to remain humble but also fight complacency.
Being the first Olympic medallist of my country means that I have some obligations and it was a very tough job for me to resume a proper training schedule due to the (new) status I have in my country.
If you want to be your best, spend a lot of time exploring what is more than enough. Push yourself until the bar is lying immobile across your chest. Push yourself right off the edge of your capacity.
As kids, we have all handled shot guns. From there on, there is no transition. It stays in the toy box. The idea is to get the transition and bridge the gap between the toy box and the shooting range.
I'm more of a hands-on person. I like working with young people from the standpoint of providing support for the grassroots programs. State, national and Olympic champions begin at a grassroots level.
With sabre fencing, it's important to have a strong core. I do an exercise called 'the dead bug.' You sit on the round side of a Bosu ball, lean back, extend one arm and the opposite leg, then switch.
I leaned too early. I was running, I looked across, I realised I was going to win - the thought I was on for a world record entered my mind - I reached for the line when I should have stayed straight.
It takes patience to become the best runner you can be. Top athletes realize that running is a long-term sport. It is set up for people who value delayed gratification and who like hard-earned success.
The joint lubrication was not what it was when I was competing, and I decided that not having arthritis or rheumatism for the rest of my life was a lot more important to me than returning to the track.
I find significance in all kinds of small details when I run; I'm hyper aware of my surroundings, the sensations in my body, and the thoughts running through my mind. Everything is clearer, heightened.
Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.
Cycling is not impactful. Its just like when you are injured, have a knee surgery or something, there are so many things that you can still do, you just have to find that other passion that's out there.
You really just love those opportunities and being a competitior in those situations [when running against the best]. I think that's when the art of hurdling and love of competition are at their purest.
Half-baked effort is almost as good as no effort put in at all. Always seek to do your best. Good things always have a way of finding those who put forth their best even when their situation seems bleak.
It wasn't until I was 14 and watched the 1976 Olympic games on television that I really started to dream about the big time. I remember seeing Evelyn Ashford in the 100 meters, and she was going to UCLA.
There are times when you're tired and times when you don't believe in yourself. That's when you have to stick it out and draw on the confidence that you have deep down beneath all the doubts and worries.
We runners are all a little nutty, but we're good people who just want to enjoy our healthy, primitive challenge. Others may not understand running, but we do, and we cherish it. That's our only message.
There weren't a lot of people who believed in my abilities. But the more I grew and developed as a man, the more I believed in myself, and the harder I worked, the better I got and the more I progressed.
Sometimes, when I walk out onto the track I think, 'What am I doing here? Why do I put myself through this?' But that's when you really get into your focus ... you focus on the race you are going to run.
For my first pretty big international competition and the Olympics, I think I did pretty well. Medals aren't everything. It's all about you going out there and having a good time. I feel proud of myself.
We all have our ways of handling fear and managing trying; jumping in or climbing down, a direct approach or a delay, joyful or miserable, a spirit of adventure, or God help me, get this thing over with.
I love to read autobiographies. [What is your favorite autobiography?] the autobiography of Coach John Wooden. Everybody has a struggle so it's about seeing how they overcome it and be the best they can.
I am always fighting inside the Council to get the message across that at each competition venue, we should send somebody to inspect and to make sure the athletes will be looked after in a correct manner.
If we carry on filling up the calendar, we keep on pushing the athlete, we shorten the athletes longevity. The risk is to shorten a career that could have lasted 10 years because the athlete is burnt out.
Just before I got down here I had a chance to see Agassi play another game and he smoked another player, which was nice to see. Someone who a lot of people thought couldn't come back and now he's winning.
The medal just was an object, just a medal, and that's it. What really meant something was the blood, the sweat, the tears that went into getting that medal. I'll always have the memories of that with me.
Poetry, music, forests, oceans, solitude-they were what developed enormous spiritual strength. I came to realize that spirit, as much or more than physical conditioning, had to be stored up before a race.
For me it's the challenge -- the challenge to try to beat myself or do better than I did in the past. I try to keep in mind not what I have accomplished but what I have to try to accomplish in the future.
I wouldn't go to pro wrestling. It's not really my thing. I'm a fan, but I think every sport could take some notes from the WWE - how they've progressed and stayed relevant for such a long period of time.
I want to see where I measure up against everyone in the world and everyone who has ever competed in the sport, and there's that innate sense of wanting to challenge myself. I'm competitive in all aspects.
I don't run anybody else's race. When the gun goes off, I must evaluate with my own body and see. Then, as the race develops, I run accordingly. So you can say that I do not have a set tactic for any race.
I felt my throat start to close up, and I didn't think I was getting enough oxygen. I was scared, and I thought about quitting. But you don't want to quit when you've trained so hard and long for one race.
Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.
Olympic Style lifting compliments sprint training perfectly. It does this by making sure everything in the body is 'fully connected.' This is based on the principle that all movements have a kinetic chain.
It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.
I am an athlete first and foremost, and it is vital for my competitiveness, my well being, and for my preparations for events during the European summer that I measure my performance against other athletes.
Sometimes I was sad, sometimes happy. Just on and off. Always I felt welcome. It's just, you know, sometimes as a human being, you cannot always be happy. You do good things, you do bad things, people talk.
Running fills a need so we make fewer demands on others. Running reveals the roots of negative thinking, so the weeds can be pulled. Running reconnects the soul to the source, inspiring hope and creativity.
I'd like my children to learn that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, and that when you make a decision to do something like pursuing the Olympics, like I have, it needs to be a family affair.
The sportsman knows that a sport is a recreation, a game, an amusement and a pastime, but his eyes are fixed on a higher goal, on the most important thing in his life, which is his education or his vocation.
The time to be upset is during the race, when you can actually do something about it. Nothing could be done now. A thousand times I'd told them: the key to racing is to come off the water regretting nothing.
I decided that I was going to go to the Olympics to see if I had made the right decision to retire because I knew that if I'd made the mistake of retiring I would know during and after those Games in Athens.
The first punch I learned was the jab. Second, the cross punch; third, the hook - after that, all the combinations and how to move my head and feet. It took me just two months to be ready to get in the ring!
For every finish-line tape a runner breaks -- complete with the cheers of the crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras -- there are the hours of hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about.
I love running. It's as simple as that ... it has given me endless rewards: physical, emotional, and professional. The benefits of running are lifelong. I ran as a child, and I intend to run into my old age.