I had trouble finding my next goal after winning a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics, but the interest of the public and my fans in me got even bigger. I wanted to get away from the pressure, even for a single day.

I knew when I started gymnastics, I wanted to have a lot of fun and eventually go to the Olympics. On the moments where I felt really down, I just remembered, 'You're almost there. Just keep going. Keep working hard.'

The Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo show just how much effort China is willing to spend to enter the global stage. But while China desires to understand the world, it fails to accept its universal values.

For any athlete growing up, the Olympics is the one thing you watch with your family, and it's the one thing you dream about. Seeing your country's flag go up as you get a gold medal is the best thing you can achieve.

As Israel prepares to enter, my position is well known. It is one that I have taken at previous Olympics. It is wrong that the IOC refuses to have a minute's silence for Israeli athletes that were slaughtered in Munich.

My first Olympics was Munich in 1972. I am better now than I was then, in knowledge and experience. The age of top riders generally tends to be older than in other sports because it takes a lot of time to be consistent.

In college, I would do my teammate's hair and their makeup sometimes. I did a friend's makeup at the 2008 Olympics, and she said, 'Have you ever considered taking classes?' For some reason, it had never crossed my mind.

People think coming in under the radar is like being a fighter pilot and actually coming in under the radar. It's a completely ridiculous idea to come in under the radar. It's the Olympics; everyone is on the radar here.

In some ways the ACL tear was a blessing. I had hesitated to return to elite gymnastics after the 2008 Olympics. I told myself I had already accomplished so much, and the road was just going to get harder if I continued.

Yes, I could win the Olympics. I hope to, and that's what I'm training for. But it's really going to come down to me racing on that day... Just being really calm and mature about what the reality is - that's my strategy.

It's not enough to say that the Olympics is an athletic contest outside of politics, because it's not. The Chinese clearly are using the Olympics to recreate how they are viewed in the world and how they view themselves.

I've been lucky to ride 10 different horses at the Olympics. I'd like to think that of all of them, Big Ben - who was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame - would still be competitive in the contemporary sport.

Facebook and Twitter have changed how people follow ski racing. In past Olympics, you couldn't stay in touch with the fan base that followed you during the Olympics. They thought they had to wait four years to reconnect.

The Olympics meant everything to me. Going through them is like nothing else you will ever experience. For those few weeks, you are in another world. At that point, I couldn't see how there could ever be anything better.

To me, doing the Olympics in 1992 in Barcelona for NBC, just seeing the Dream Team take the floor, was a thrill for me. I don't think there was another team in any sport with that high level of athletes playing together.

When I'm on planes, I'd talk to people and I'd tell them I compete in the X Games. Some would know what it was, but maybe half didn't. But everyone knows about the Olympics. They're really like the X Games for the world!

Dance music has evolved very much. From DJs playing at the Olympics, to playing at the Super Bowl, working with Cirque Du Soleil and even getting recognized at the Grammys with awards, dance music is growing in a big way.

My mother never watched me train in Romania. She wasn't allowed, it just wasn't done back then. My training was paid for by the government. My parents were not at the Olympics with me, either. I never expected them to be.

Brands are essentially forbidden from saying or associating themselves with the Olympics - something that has been commonly owned by Western Civilization since the Greeks - unless they hand over piles of cash to the Games.

I am now the Wimbledon champion, and I think that gives me even more confidence coming to the Olympics. And maybe in some ways, it maybe takes some pressure off the Olympics, because I already did win at Wimbledon this year.

Basically, I was a little bit nervous before competing beam at the Olympics, and I had this nervous thing to just talk to myself, like 'You can do it, you can do it.' And right before I hopped up there, I said, 'I got this.'

I think the Olympics are a time for the world to come together and put aside differences, but we're also coming to represent ourselves, our communities, and our countries, so I think it's important to stand up and be a voice.

One of the really important things about the Olympics is, to enjoy yourself, you have to accept that it's different and feed off the enthusiasm of everyone and the inspiration and hopefully that will elevate your performance.

Since the Beijing Olympics in 2008, our office has been discussing how we can make architecture more human and at one with nature. We need to ask ourselves, what legacy do we want to leave behind on humankind's urban culture?

During the 2012 Olympics, I decided to put on some cheesy pop because I knew Ellen White liked it. The first song was 'Reach for the Stars' by S Club 7, and before I knew it, everyone was singing it - suddenly it was our song.

Things have changed so much, with Facebook and Twitter. Everyone is so much more accessible these days: no British athlete has ever experienced what we are experiencing now. It's such a unique situation with the home Olympics.

The time leading up to the 1996 Olympics was the most demanding and stressful of my career. The sport I had loved so much was slowly becoming a nightmare as I trained with Bela and Marta Karolyi the summer before the Olympics.

Looking back, I'm so proud to have gone to five Olympics - I believe only three other Americans have achieved that. My true gold medal, though, is my daughter, Karsen, who is 18 months old. And I have a wonderful husband, Mike.

But you know we couldn't compare what we do with what the British athletes did at the Olympics. We are very proud to be British and if we have done our bit to promote Britain in a historic year for the country that's brilliant.

Delhi is special for me because I made my world record here. We were playing against France at Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium when I hit the fastest drag-flick in the world during the London Olympics qualifications in 2012.

I've put myself forward to be involved. Whether I get picked, we'll have to wait and see. Obviously everybody is excited about it, about the Olympics coming to London and the football being played in different parts of Britain.

My wife and I came to Canada for the 1994 Commonwealth Games and we really liked the B.C. lifestyle and environment. The following year we applied to become permanent residents. We moved here in 1996 after the Atlanta Olympics.

When I was growing up, yearning with my pals to be a track star, one of our heroes was Bruce Jenner. He won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in the decathlon, and he adorned our Wheaties boxes. We all wanted to be Bruce Jenner.

I wasn't expecting two seconds of me on the medal stand to go viral after the Olympics. I came back to my room after the medal ceremony, and my dad said this picture of me doing a face I don't even remember making is blowing up.

I was a crazy little seven-year-old. I used to get up an hour early to watch the big kids train. I thought, 'I must absorb their awesomeness.' That was my goal from when I was seven. I told my coach, 'I'm going to the Olympics.'

I think snowboarders have a unique experience when it comes to the Olympics because we have a pretty frequent competition circuit in addition to the games. So it's not a sport where your big moment is just once every four years.

The Olympics have been an amazing part of Los Angeles' history. In many ways in 1932, they put us on the map when people didn't even know where Los Angeles was. In 1984, they were the first profitable Olympics of the modern era.

I remember seeing the Olympics when I was 13. I always wanted to know how it felt to stand on top of the podium hearing your country's anthem while watching your flag being raised in something you poured your heart and soul into.

There's sort of a theory that's going around in the China-watching community about a perfect storm coming up with the 2008 Olympics, a U.S. election and a Taiwanese election, some sort of mutually reinforcing explosion and crisis.

When you're a little girl, and you're watching the Olympics, and you see this very diverse group of gymnasts out there, and - I think this team, the Final 5, will inspire so many little girls to go out there and do what they love.

I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio - to stay home. You'll be putting your life at risk here. This is without even speaking about the state of public hospitals and all the Brazilian political mess.

I've realized the extraordinary power of sports to heal, unite and inspire. I believe the Olympics will serve as the ultimate platform to provide positive changes and I hope to inspire all of Japan through my strong showing there.

We're going through the Olympics. We're watching women working as teams. We're watching men working as teams. We're watching all working as teams. We're proud of men and women getting medals. That's how the Navy should be working.

Eleven years old is not an early age to set your sight on the Olympics for a gymnast, because we normally peak in high school. I first qualified for the Olympics team during my sophomore year in high school, when I was 15 years old.

I was playing a gig in Greece in September 2003 and this guy walks up to me and says, 'Hey Tiesto I just heard you play; you're amazing. I want you to play at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.' I looked at him, like, 'Sure pal!'

Every guy that I've talked to would love to have that opportunity to go, and I don't think there's one guy who's ever said that they don't want to go to the Olympics. That's a dream and something that very few people get to realize.

I'm glad to be partnered with Orgullosa because I feel that now that I'm able to win a gold medal at the Olympics, win a silver medal, I feel little girls will be able to look up to me, and Hispanics will kind of rise a little more.

I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of neat experiences, Olympics and everything, getting to the Stanley Cup Finals was really cool, but to actually make the NHL was just something I don't think I or my family will ever forget.

I feel a lot of support from the people of Penrith and the Blue Mountains and will always remember the amazing welcome home I received after the London Olympics. But more importantly, it's during hard times that Westies come together.

Life has changed both on and off the court after the Rio Olympics medal. I have a lot of confidence on the court now and feel anything is possible. I also feel that I have improved my game. Off the court, I do get recognised more now.

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