Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
Sebastian CoeRead
Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of passion over mere talent when pursuing goals.
Sebastian Coe highlights that while talent is often recognized and celebrated, it is the passion and excitement for a particular endeavor that truly drives success and fulfillment. He suggests that finding individuals who are deeply enthusiastic about their pursuits is more important than solely focusing on their innate abilities.
In practice
In a team meeting, to encourage colleagues to focus on their passions rather than just their skills.
Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
Throughout my athletic career, the overall goal was always to be a better athlete than I was at the moment β whether next week, next month or next year. The improvement was the goal. The medal was simply the ultimate reward for achieving that goal.
Blink and you miss a sprint. The 10,000 meters is lap after lap of waiting. Theatrically, the mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding.
I had a very ordinary background in Sheffield; I went to a secondary modern, but I saw something on TV in 1968 that inspired me to join an athletics club, and 12 years later, with great coaching and the support of people who loved me a lot, I ended up at an Olympic Games.
I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life.
The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race.
I truly believe that we have infinite levels of power that we don't even know are available to us.
There's no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A.
No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it's government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.
If I'm going to play, I'm going to have to give it 100%, which means I'm going to have to play in all of the tournaments that I don't like.
Disappointment can drive us, or it can defeat us.
If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.