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In my very first interview, at nine years old, I said I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. That was the first time I said it out loud in front of somebody other than my parents.
During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year.
To win two Olympic golds in a row like Daley Thompson is very special. One day, I'm going to have to meet Daley, shake his hand, and thank him for giving me something to chase after.
It's typical of Italian culture that we only start to feel emotional about something when we have the possibility to see it in front of us. By February, Italy will have Olympic fever.
Cal Poly is my kind of school. So many universities I visit boast about boring alumni like pioneering surgeons and Olympic athletes. But Cal Poly has none other than Weird Al Yankovic!
Yes, I am the Olympic champion, but this is not the end of it. I want all the gold that there is out there, everything that exists in figure skating. In all events, in all competitions.
Beijing didn't go the way I planned and I would have liked to have performed a little bit better personally. After Beijing that is what stuck in my mind. I want a better Olympic finish.
My attitude was, they'd earned the right to do what they thought they had to do with their one square metre of Olympic dais, and I was glad they were doing it, and glad I was with them.
I have played a few times in Barcelona, including the fantastic Olympic Stadium. It's undoubtedly one of my favourite cities in terms of the people, arts, food, architecture and design.
In fact, at Olympic National Park in my district, they 3 years ago had 130 summer employees they brought in for temporary work. This summer they have 25 because they cannot afford more.
I'm hoping that maybe everyone on the Olympic team thinks that I'm worthy to carry the flag. That's my next goal, to carry the flag during the opening ceremonies, if everyone chooses me.
We're in a pressure-filled sport for sure, but anything in an Olympic season is heightened, the highs are higher and the lows are lower, and everything just takes on grander proportions.
BMX is still a young sport in Olympic terms. So the sport science behind it is also relatively new. As a program, it's only going to get better as the sport gets bigger and more extreme.
To compare Olympic sport with cricket would not be fair. Years back, cricket was a sport only for the classes, and we will also have to make other sports masses from classes like cricket.
Given this platform of being an Olympic athlete, I think it's really important that we stand up for what we believe in, and we speak out against things that we think are wrong and injust.
Records are there to be broken. Lots of people would love to swap their world record for an Olympic medal, but for me, my medals are there forever and ever, and that's what does it for me.
Sport allows us to engage in dialogue and to build bridges, and it may even have the capacity to reshape international relations. The Olympic Games embody perfectly this universal mission.
Throughout my entire life, I've always been a captain. I was the captain of my high school team. I was the captain at Oklahoma State University. I was the captain of the 2008 Olympic team.
I'm not really sure if I will go back to school. I'm getting old! So I'm not really sure if I have time to go back to school to be a dentist. But hopefully I'll be an Olympic gold medalist.
When you're expected to win and you have the press saying that you are going to win the Olympic gold medal, and you're the only sure thing in the Olympics, it can undermine your confidence.
It's an Olympic Games, at the end of the day, and to represent your country at the Olympics is about as good as it gets. Put a gold medal on top of that, and it doesn't ever get any better.
What I can tell them is the way you become an Olympic champion is to start working now. I tell them why it's always worth it to put the time and effort into something you want to be good at.
I always thought the Vancouver Olympics would be my last destination, but I'm extending it to Sochi... I want to start anew, not as an Olympic medalist but just as yet another figure skater.
The Olympic stadium may have been built only in the early 1970s but it was clear for a long time it had no future. For many reasons it is not good enough for modern football and today's fans.
When I started out on 'The Biggest Loser,' for me it was kind of embarrassing to be on national TV and go from this wrestling icon, this Olympic gold medalist, to being on 'The Biggest Loser.'
I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world's best athletes.
They're still considered Olympic eligibles, so there's never an issue whether they're going to turn pro or not. When they get to that level, money is never an issue. They make so much money now.
I just want kids to have a chance to go and try an Olympic sport. Every kid has a bike - that's how I started, and one kid coming along and giving it a go could make that journey to the Olympics.
I've been to Tokyo-slash-Japan - we actually went to Yokohama in 2015 and 2013 for international competitions. I think that it would be really nice to go back and do a little Olympic thing there.
I ran the effort to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to New York City. We lost - on a global scale. To my surprise, life went on, and I learnt that nobody cares about your failures as much as you do.
Female success stories from sporting events like the Olympic Games have played a role in shifting the Indian perception to see the female athlete as a hero and a role model for young Indian girls.
Personally, just being able to compete in an Olympics, being part of an Opening Ceremony wearing a green jacket with the rest of the Australian Olympic team, would be a more than a dream come true.
I'd like to work with horses, but it doesn't pay very well. Maybe I'd like to go somewhere in the Middle East because they keep buying really nice horses for their Olympic teams - like, the Qataris.
In a way, by being fully committed to the Olympic movement globally, I'm better able to promote women's hockey and talk about women's hockey and put a face to women's hockey, to all the IOC members.
People say, 'Wow, you've achieved it all this year: two world championship wins and an Olympic gold medal.' And I think, 'Yeah, but how come I feel so unsatisfied and under pressure all over again?'
I trained with a few Olympic runners and jumpers. Just to try to get a little bit faster, a little bit better. Anything I could do to try to get a little bit better and stay ahead of the competition.
It is pretty amazing. My parents, who came from Nicaragua to the U.S. - who would have thought that they would have American kids on the Olympic team? I think that's the epitome of the Olympic dream.
I came back from the Olympic Games, and straightaway, I'm this role model. So that means I can't mess around with my mates like I used to because, if I do, people are going to use it to knock me down.
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.
So as an amateur Olympic competitor I loved criticism, because it made me better. But now as a professional I don't really know how to channel it or where to take it, so I don't take it quite as well.
I don't believe in the so-called Olympic spirit. I speak from personal experience. When China hosted the Games, it failed to include the people. The event was constructed without regard for their joy.
Squash has the credentials to become an olympic event and our goal is to see the sport in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. We are working towards this and will keep trying even if our bid is not successful.
The Olympic Games provided players like Neymar, Marquinhos, Gabriel Jesus and Renato Augusto with some really valuable experience and ended up improving the performance of the Brazilian national team.
Growing up I definitely looked up to Dominique Moceanu. She was my favorite gymnast and she was on that '96 Olympic team. She was always so fun to watch. I kind of wanted to model my career after hers.
Whereas China has set about systematically striving for Olympic success since it re-entered global competition after years of isolation, India has remained complacent about its lack of sporting prowess.
Every international meeting or championship I do, I can cope a lot better because I can say I did the 100 m. hurdles, opened up the athletics at an Olympic Games in front of a home crowd, 80,000 people.
The Olympic Games are always in the head of every sports athlete. We work for that. The Olympics are the most important race. They're each four years, and everybody wants to show their best performance.
And in nineteen seventy two I almost wasn't, on the team, but I knew about it just before Olympic Games for three months before this why this is was not very good for me. I'd been ready to go, you know.
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.
Mentally, I have to get my body and mind in the right place before I start the routine, but once into the zone, it's like I turn on a switch. I envision myself doing the same thing for the Olympic Games.