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When I fight for a cause and I know it, I fight for it. I'm not scared to say something. I think some tennis player, maybe they're a bit scared, whatever is the reason. Definitely, some athletes, they fight for big cause. They speak it loud. I think it's great. It's great for sport. It's great for life.
I stand with all the athletes who believe in doing things right. The ones who win and the ones who lose while knowing they have been cheated out of their positions. There are thousands if not tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of those kinds of athletes out there. We have to remember them.
I think we have tremendous media covering the sport of boxing, even if boxing is a little bit lost in popularity with MMA sports. And I think that with the show 'Lights Out' it's going to get more attention to the sport, and it's going to put more attention to the problems that athletes in general have.
I never thought that shoes would be the reason that you recruit players, but it's a factor. I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of the athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents and coaches have more of a say than peripheral people, but that's easier said than done.
Well, I mean, Russia was responsible for shooting down MH17. Russia was responsible for invading Ukraine. Russia is responsible for taking away the chemical weapons in Syria that they didn't take away. Russia was responsible for having honest athletes in the Olympics when they did the whole doping program.
In the fun house of today's metastisizing sports-entertainment megaplex, when every day brings another story revealing how these 'heroes' we create are fashioned from base clay, a pause might be in order to reflect on athletes who actually embodied the qualities we think we admire in the too-easily deified.
Today, people idolize athletes and celebrities - and yes, highly successful and visionary business people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but not the innovators who perhaps have not seen such high-flying levels of success. Can anyone name the inventors of GPS, which has such a huge impact on our lives today?
It's important for closet gay athletes everywhere, not just at the professional level, but more importantly athletes at the younger level in high school and college, to understand they do have support around them and that they can come out and feel comfortable. And honestly, that is going to help save lives.
Much in the way Olympic athletes optimize their game by paying an enormous - borderline maniacal - amount of attention to things like diet, exercise, sleep, and of course the essential R&R, we all would do well to pay more attention to those key aspects of our lives that comprise our overall health equation.
One reason outfielders don't have stronger arms might be they don't practice as much as we did. Most teams today don't take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now - basketball, football, soccer - for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms.
I was maybe halfway through my career, and I was shooting a Nike commercial, and the director came to the trailer and said, 'Hey man, you're really gifted at this. I get a lot of athletes that come in, but you were prepared, and you made everything seem very natural. I really think you should look into this.'
Marciano was an idol in a simpler era, when professional athletes were heroes and sportswriters were complicit in building legends rather than exposing them. To the public, all that really mattered was that Rocky had 49 wins in 49 fights and retired in 1956 as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.
So many black kids aspire to be entertainers or professional athletes because those are the only role models they see that look like them. There are only 300 jobs in the NBA but an endless amount of opportunities as an entrepreneur. With enough hustle, entrepreneurship opens doors to a world of opportunities.
We might have, with Hockey Canada, an Aero Bar, a chocolate bar. 'Okay we're going to play for this chocolate bar.' Here you have guys who made millions of dollars, they're professional athletes, and they will fight tooth and nail to win. It's not necessarily for the chocolate bar. It's the competitive spirit.
I was not athletically inclined. I was very quiet, introverted, non-confrontational. My three older brothers were athletes - basketball, football - but I was kind of a momma's boy. Then one day, my brother Roger encouraged me to go to the boxing gym with him. I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural.
I'm not a union guy in the sense that I know a lot about how they operate. But I know fighters. They are individual athletes. This is not a team sport. I think it's going to be hard to say, 'Hey, do you mind not fighting on Saturday and walking around the arena with a picket sign instead?' I just don't see it.
It's not just professional athletes and soldiers who are at risk from traumatic brain injury. More than 1.7 million people a year sustain a traumatic brain injury, and about 50,000 of them die each year, according the Centers for Disease Control. There are both emotional and financial costs from these injuries.
I think any actor can relate to the feeling of 'Just tag me in, coach, give me a chance.' Athletes go through the same thing. To be quite honest, most people in any job or career probably go though that, when you want a chance to prove what you can do, or somebody is taking away a chance at something you can do.
I was runner that really started focusing on swimming at a very young age, and that's kind of how I got into acting. I was at a school for gifted athletes and gifted artists, and I got injured one year and started hanging out with all the actors and dancers and all those crazy people and started getting the bug.
I think the four major leagues ought to set up a joint commission - say, of retired judges - to rule on athletes who are accused of doing bad things away from the game. Then each league would retain its independence in determining what penalties their players should get for infractions committed within the sport.
If the National Football League, an organization notoriously known for not standing behind their athletes of color, can come out to make a statement to condemn racism and their systemic oppression and admit they were wrong for not listening in the past, then the 'Bachelor' franchise can most certainly follow suit.
If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports.
When I look at the great athletes, I think of the Kobes and the LeBrons and the Tom Bradys of the world, obviously they take rests and recover, but they also continue to work, too. Working out and keeping up with that, with your conditioning, is another part of health and keeping your longevity throughout the years.
Most athletes are media shy. They keep to themselves and to their training. I'm not saying it is absolutely necessary for them to come out and face the cameras with confidence, but if they do, it will only help them. They will find themselves closer to their fans and will also get their word across more effectively.
What snowboarding has always had and the Olympics has not touched is that spirit, that original spirit of creativity and athletes standing up and having a voice and being innovative. But I guess what the Olympics has done is provided a platform for that spirit, and that's what I see as being a really positive thing.
I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn't even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game.
I'm training at Phase 1 Sports in Las Vegas, and it's a very high-end training facility for a lot of top-level athletes. I have been able to add a lot of power and the endurance to keep that power going. I've always been powerful, but the muscle conditioning I've been able to add has been a tremendous amount of help.
A lot of skaters hole themselves up in hotels and focus - and that's great, and that may work for them. But for me, having the Olympic experience was as great as winning the medal. I have so many memories of living in the village and meeting other athletes, seeing other sports, and feeling the energy. It's so magical.
The magazines were born out of a need that my parents saw: that there were no magazines that really spoke to black people. 'Ebony' wrote about architects and artists, the share cropper who sent his nine kids to college, real African Americans at a time when everyone else only covered them as entertainers and athletes.
Long before social media made things like bib replication easier, banditing at major races was viewed as a brave act. Rebellious runners like John Tarrant gatecrashed races as a political statement, in protest of rules about amateurism that limited how much money athletes could earn in appearance fees and endorsements.
I'm a big believer in the student-athlete part. I value the education and what it provides for you. Football is a vocation. Only 1.67 percent of these athletes go on to the NFL. An education provides you an opportunity for a career. A lot of people just don't get that. To say they aren't getting anything is misinformed.
I think in running, to be honest, that even though athletes are very dedicated and are willing to train and do whatever they need to do to prepare, more often than not they're not in a very professional environment where you've got a high performance director and a coach that are really monitoring your daily activities.
I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.
Seeing the intensity and power she brings to the game, it's hard to imagine her being anything but single-minded in pursuing tennis. But Serena Williams has other passions, too. In fact, there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day, week or month for one of the world's most gifted athletes to chase her many interests.
All athletes speak about the mental element of athletics, and it usually boils down to the same thing: if you can remove your ego from the game, you can function with much more clarity and you are more likely to succeed. Wouldn't it be interesting if we all began speaking about the mental element of our lives in this way?
Our team, in general, is in a position where people look up to us, and kids look up to us. I embrace that, and I think I have a huge LGBT following. I think it's pretty cool, the opportunity that I have, especially in sports. There's really not that many out athletes. It's important to be out and to live my life that way.
It was very important to me to join an organization that has an established track record of helping young fighters grow into world class athletes and champions. Gladiator Challenge has been a home to such fighters as Quinton Jackson, Rashad Evans, Urijah Faber, Tyson Griffin, Chael Sonnen, Michael McDonald, and many others.
My earliest memory of the Olympics was watching the 1996 Games in Atlanta. I remember everyone being so excited to watch. Seeing the American athletes on the podium, I saw myself. I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be one of those athletes on the podium representing their country and bringing home medals.
When I was a teenager, I was an umpire for a competitive league for 8- to 9-year-olds. I was really bad at it because I didn't know all the rules, and all these kids were better athletes than me. I made a bad call, and this dad snapped on me. Then he dumped his trash from his cooler, and I had to kick him out of the stands.
I think, in accepting the amount of money that athletes make, I think that fans accept that now. It's the nature of the beast; that's the way it is, so they understand it. All, I think, fans have changed - because the price of tickets has gone up so much - that they feel a certain sense of entitlement when they go to a game.
More time than not, athletes, specifically fighters, have a 15 or 20-year career, and unfortunately, we end up right where we started when it's over. All we have is maybe a round of applause when we walk in a room - Hey, there's the champ! That's great; I want that, but I've got to have something tangible to show for it, too.
I feel like I have this different opportunity that not a lot of athletes may have. It's the fact that I'm Korean-American, and the Olympics are going to be in Korea, but I'm also riding for the States. I feel like I got really lucky that it got all pieced together - my first Olympics, being in Korea where most of my family is.
Champions are not the ones who always win races - champions are the ones who get out there and try. And try harder the next time. And even harder the next time. 'Champion' is a state of mind. They are devoted. They compete to best themselves as much if not more than they compete to best others. Champions are not just athletes.
Athletes and musicians make astronomical amounts of money. People get paid $100 million to throw a baseball! Shouldn't we all take less and pass some of that money onto others? Think about firefighters, teachers and policemen. We should celebrate people that are intellectually smart and trying to make this world a better place.
I think a lot of people look at athletes in general and think they have everything figured out. They made it to the big leagues... We're battling and going through the same stuff everyone else is going through, but just in a different way. Maybe it can be comforting knowing that we have to battle through some of the same stuff.
We have the opportunity to make people feel something, feel some emotion, and then also we get to be just pure athletes, and from a pure technical standpoint do things are really technically demanding, and very challenging. So it's that balance between the two that we love. And we love to play with the limits and push ourselves.
My mom actually, she does this for a living. She has her own company called Carter and Tracy Incorporated, and she helps young athletes get started, whether it's dealing with housing or dealing with their money, and I know she always has best interests in me, not only because I'm her son, but because of what she does for her job.
It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.
That's a part that's always a challenge for athletes: trying to keep the passion alive while knowing it's still your job. There's no question that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, I'll be pretty burned out. And when that time comes, then I'll take a step back and take a look at it and see if I want to keep going.
I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing.