I think there's so much emphasis on body image and results and outcome, but really what you should be after is to be healthy and to feel good about yourself.
Abby WambachRead
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.
Interpretation
For athletes, the Olympics symbolizes the pinnacle of achievement, family bonding, and national pride.
Abby Wambach emphasizes the profound significance the Olympics hold for athletes, describing it as a shared family experience that inspires dreams of glory. Winning a gold medal and witnessing one's national flag raised during the ceremony represents the ultimate reward for years of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, embodying the aspirations of not just the individual athlete, but their family and country as well.
In practice
In a motivational speech to young athletes about pursuing their dreams.
I think there's so much emphasis on body image and results and outcome, but really what you should be after is to be healthy and to feel good about yourself.
When you're a pro athlete, life is very narcissistic - everything relates back to you and how you play. When you are getting out of pro sports, you suddenly have to get a little more mindful of what's going on around you and how you affect the rest of the world.
I would trade all the individual awards I've won for a World Cup.
My teammates have put me in all different kinds of positions to score goals, and I can't say it enough, and I really through and through believe it in my heart that I'm only as good as my teammates allow me to be.
As soon as I started to realize that I could make a living playing professional soccer, I went to that place where I could torture myself because I knew it would make me better for the championship game.
I don't care how many championships you've won or how many records you've broken - if you've had a hand in pushing forward not only a game but women in sport's movement, then I think that's pretty darn good.
They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.
In the last 15 to 20 years the best central midfielder that I have seen — the most complete — is Scholes. I have spoken with Xabi Alonso about this many times. Scholes is a spectacular player who has everything. He can play the final pass, he can score, he is strong, he never gets knocked off the ball and he doesn’t give possession away. If he had been Spanish then maybe he would have been valued more.
You know the marathon in my country is just exceptional. It's like soccer in England. If England win the world cup and Ethiopia win the marathon - it's the same.
Cub fans, by consensus, are the best in baseball. Year after year, in good times and (mostly) bad, they turn out in vociferous numbers, sustaining themselves with a heavenly ichor that combines loyalty, criticism, cheerfulness, durability, rage, beer and hope, in exquisite proportions.
A lot of black guys always ask me, 'Did Larry Bird really play that good?' I said, 'Larry Bird is so good it's frightening.'
I always tried to learn about the hitters. Anytime someone got a hit off me, I made a mental note of the pitch. He'd never see that one again.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.