MMA is pretty tough on your mind because it's a sport that's not just about winning. You really want to win bad, but it's tough when you lose. You get beaten. And it really messes with your ego, because nobody wants to get beaten by other people physically. It's not just a game. You get beaten physically.

To me, Dan Evans is an example of somebody that puts the clock back a little bit and tells everybody: 'Listen, tennis is not a freak sport where you need to have rich parents, who sit in your players' box for every single week of the whole year, and you need to talk to your coaches' box between every shot.'

I've always wanted to be in journalism. I even started a course at Loughborough doing media studies. I like all sports, and I am keen on writing. But I thought that while I was still young, I ought to make a real go of it at badminton. So I have put all my focus on playing sport instead of writing about it.

If you play the video game, you become more interested and you want to know more about it. You want to read as much about it as you can, see it live and watch as many games as you can. If you're the type who wants to be as involved as you can in the sport, you're probably going to want to play 'Madden NFL.'

There are so many different elements to surfing. Small waves, big waves, long boards, short boards. This makes it a sport you can share with people. It's not just a solitary thing - it's become a family thing, too. It's about exercising and passing something on from father to son, and from mother to daughter.

I like playing sport, and I like doing physical stuff. I like hiking and I like climbing and I like playing sport. I do a lot. But I don't like the term 'exercising.' I feel like with sport, you're playing games. But with exercise, you're literally just trying to stop yourself from dying too young. It's weird.

People regularly practice playing a sport like golf or basketball - but few people think about 'practicing being successful.' I had practiced meeting the Queen of England - what I would wear, how I would stand, the handshake - so when I did meet her, I was comfortable - for I had practiced the moment for years.

Horseracing already has the highest mortality rate of any sport in the world per capita to the people who do it. If you crash in Nascar you still have a roll bar, and a cage, and a lot of protection. It's built to crash, but if you fall off a racehorse we all know what can happen, so it's tremendously dangerous.

I wasn't interested in sport or anything obvious, so I didn't stand out. I was interested in music, but I couldn't read music, so I wasn't allowed to do the GCSE. I was interested in painting, but no one's interested in a 16-year-old boy who's interested in painting. I wanted to get out of school very, very quickly.

I really just try to enjoy the game and hope that I can inspire young kids. I started playing tennis because of Monica Seles, and I try to promote the sport in the best possible way. Sometimes it's hard because you get upset on court, but I think in life one learns through experiences in order to evolve as a person.

'Just Can't Let You Go' is a song about passion. It's when you have such a strong passion and love for someone or something that your heart just can't let it go. Whether it's a special boy, girl, or that feeling you get when performing on stage or playing a sport. For me, my passion is music. I just can't let it go!

You can play basketball and have a magic night and score 40 points with your team-mates and win the game. There are favourites for the World Cup, but you can't guarantee Germany, Spain, or Brazil will win, but here, everyone can guarantee that Mercedes or Ferrari will win the race, and this is very sad for the sport.

Since the break-up of the 1990s, Russia has not had winter sports facilities. All the winter sport venues were effectively located in countries that are no longer part of the federation. There is a strong argument for saying Sochi's legacy will be this country will have winter sports facilities it did not have before.

If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.

I started playing in '98, but I got hooked by playing celebrity golf tournaments. Tiger had a lot to do with it - his passion, the way that he plays. He's unique and different, and he inspired a lot of my passion. It's a sport you can't master. If you're an athlete, you can do almost anything, but golf is not like that.

I think that it's perhaps harder to learn from victory than it is from defeat. I think that we don't want defeat. We don't want defeat in sport. We don't want defeat in life. How are we going to be beaten? All right. We have to deal with those things. What's going to cause us to lose the game, whatever the game might be?

Having success in World Cups is some of the biggest career highlights that I've had, but more generally speaking, the biggest highlight is just the development of the sport and being involved in this period of women's cricket, but also in women's sport in general in Australia, where it's been a bit of a watershed moment.

Who do you know, who could come out on a flying carpet? P. Diddy standing at the bottom, come out like a concert, dancing, oozing confidence, and then get in and take somebody out? Come on, do you know anybody in the history of the sport that did what Prince Naseem did? I ain't trying to brag, but I was bloody good at it.

Cricket is a self-sustaining industry; but corporates need to realise that other sports don't have that luxury. This is the time when they need to invest, and keep the faith. Every sport has the potential to create world champions. Imagine India as a country full of world champions. Why imagine? Let's just make it happen.

Freediving is by far and away the toughest sport mentally. You are underwater for up to seven minutes, and a lot of thoughts go through your brain, and you need to be completely calm and relaxed. In any other sport, you use increased adrenalin, but in freediving, you have to drop the heart rate down to 20 beats per minute.

I read a statistic that in horse racing, the favourite only wins 12 per cent of their races. I'm not comparing myself to a horse or saying I'm the favourite - although my sister would say I can nag an awful lot - but nothing is guaranteed in sport. Anyone can step up and take what you perceive to be your place in the final.

I think the biggest thing to being an elite-level bobsledder is grit. You have to really want it. It's a very blue-collar sport. We do a lot of the work ourselves; we sand the runners, we wash the sled, we help maintain the sled. Obviously, we have a sled mechanic that travels with us, but a lot of the work we do ourselves.

I am delighted that Jason Gardener will be taking over from me as President of U.K. Athletics. With his competitive background in the sport as an Olympic champion coupled with his engaging personality and his experience as a board member of U.K. Athletics, he possesses all the qualities required to be a successful president.

You think aerobics is not a cool sport? I think you are wrong. It requires amazing discipline - flexibility, fitness, knowledge. And you have to do it with a big smile on your face. Also, I once performed in front of 10,000 screaming women. I tell you something, I'd rather do that than kick a ball around in front of a few men.

We play a sport. It's a game. At the end of the day, that's all it is, is a game. It doesn't make you any better or any worse than anybody else. So by winning a game, you're no better. By losing a game, you're no worse. I think by keeping that mentality, it really keeps things in perspective for me to treat everybody the same.

We live in a world where finding fault in others seems to be the favorite blood sport. It has long been the basis of political campaign strategy. It is the theme of much television programming across the world. It sells newspapers. Whenever we meet anyone, our first, almost unconscious reaction may be to look for imperfections.

I loved school. Not sure how much I focused on the education; just had fun and played lacrosse for seven years. It was lucky I had sport, which I was good at, so it didn't matter that I wasn't great on the academic side, or not brilliant at drama. Although I am still bitter about not being in the school choir. Furious, actually.

First impressions matter more in basketball than in any other sport, and they can be savored only in person. Players can't hide behind pads or helmets, so we can stare at them, evaluate every move they make: running, jumping, walking, even ogling the cheerleaders. We can see every ripple and tattoo. If they're lazy, we can tell.

A lot of times we're being portrayed as thugs, but anyone who really knows us understand that we work hard, we diet hard, the commitment is full on. But alot of people don't see that. Some of the nicest and most respectful people I've ever met are in this sport. I truly believe that, and there's a lot of fighters that live by that.

If a child plays sport early in childhood, and doesn't give it up, he will play sport for the rest of his life. And if children have a connection with, and are involved in the preparation of, the food they eat, then it will be normal for them to cook these kind of meals, and they will go on cooking them for the rest of their lives.

I grew up playing softball, and at the age of nine, I decided I was going to be an Olympian. I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I thought it might be in a warm summer sport like softball, but I played a variety of sports growing up - basketball, soccer and track. I really didn't care. I just wanted to be an Olympian.

The great thing about baseball is the causality is easy to determine and it always falls on the shoulders of one person. So there is absolute responsibility. That's why baseball is psychologically the cruelest sport and why it really requires psychological resources to play baseball - because you have to learn to live with failure.

I've been coaching the sport for a number of years. And I went through many athletes. Some athletes stay with your program for a long, long period of time. Some athletes, they have a different approach as far as coaching style or your philosophies. I totally respect their own opinions - they have the right to choose their own coach.

Anybody who knows me knows that I don't just love this sport, I am in love with it. I am really in love with this sport. I am obsessed with boxing. I eat, breathe and sleep it. You know, I do it all; this is my life. This is not a hobby for me. This is a lifestyle for me, and I address it accordingly. I take it very, very seriously.

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

Boxing is the more dangerous activity from the rugby player's and the general public's point of view, but to me rugby is far more dangerous so I would prefer my sons to box. I love my children too much and do not want to watch them getting hurt. This is in no way intended as a criticism of rugby, which I consider to be a fantastic sport.

Baseball cannot be learned as a trade. It begins with the sport of the schoolboy, and though it may end in the professional, I am sure there is not a single one of these who learned the game with the expectation of making it a business. There have been years in the life of each during which he must have ate and drank and dreamed baseball.

A lot of the car companies are understandably looking at the terrific job that Toyota has done by partnering with NASCAR and the success and all the things that come along with that. They've been an incredible success story for a car manufacturer looking to come into a sport that's very difficult to come in, compete and win every weekend.

Dealing with boys at work and being the only girl can be challenging. I have my insecurities, but I've learned I have to be a good sport. I have to be able to take certain jokes and not take them personally. There are jokes made almost every second of the day. I had to develop a tough hide. You know, the music industry is dominated by guys.

I often find that pundits are quite negative... not just in tennis, but in sport in general. I just don't like that. Obviously, the job of a pundit is to create interest and a bit of controversy. I get that. Listeners like that. But I do think there's a duty there to promote the sport and talk about how good these people are at what they do.

Yeah, I miss it. You don't just break off a friendship you've had with a sport, and with all those you've met all over the country. We've got some friends, some very close friends, and you just sit back and think how fortunate you were having a career like that. And, actually, there's nothing in the game of baseball that hasn't happened to me.

I assisted Bobby Houghton at Halmstads, and we were both just under 30. We'd say, 'Wouldn't it be great to do this for maybe 10 years, save a little money, then perhaps start a little business together.' Some sort of travel agency. We had no football thoughts beyond that, other than maybe combining it with a bit of sport, getting a few tours going.

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