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.
A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.
No actor wants to play to an empty house.
Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.
Everyone's dream can come true if you just stick to it and work hard.
In a world that's changing so quickly, you're guaranteed to fail if you don't take any risks.
I still bother with runners I call hamburgers. They're never going to run any record times. But they can fulfill their own potential.
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