It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ..

Sport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sp….

If I faltered, there would be no arms to hold me and the world would be a cold and forbidding place..

The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win..

It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile..

The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it's filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn't happen. A champion….

I couldn't touch my toes with straight legs, but I could break 4 minutes for the mile..

Sport, like all of life, is about taking your chances..

If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always be keen to do it. I loved the cou….

I enjoy singing, and the instruments which truly move me are the horn, the trumpet and the cello..

It seems quite impossible to walk in America..

Our house was bombed, and the roof fell in. We were sitting under the stairs of the basement, and we were quite safe, but it brought home the realiza….

Whether we athletes liked it or not, the 4-minute mile had become rather like an Everest: a challenge to the human spirit, it was a barrier that seem….

When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor ….

Doctors and scientists said breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after….

I trained for less than three-quarters of an hour, maybe five days a week - I didn't have time to do more. But it was all about quality, not quantity….

Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was ….

I wanted to be a neurologist. That seemed to be the most difficult, most intriguing, and the most important aspect of medicine, which had links with ….

It's a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes. If you run one part too fast, you pay a price. If….

I was always a great bundle of energy. As a child, instead of walking, I would run. And so running, which is a pain to a lot of people, was always a ….

Mothers, unless they were very poor, didn't work. Both of my parents had to leave education. My mother had to work in a cotton mill until 18 or 19, w….