Explore Quotes on Athlete

Athletics is a luxury.

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 countryside.

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 is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.

I raced supremely well. I felt I was as well fitted to do it as I had ever been, and as perhaps I might ever be. I went climbing three weeks before, because I was feeling fed up with running.

I want to be like the athletes who seem stuck in time. When you see them at 50, you say they probably can still run like a champ.

In reality, we can prove that the incidents of drug, alcohol abuse and violence have dropped dramatically among professional athletes - but the problem is it would be impossible to convince than fans, because of what they read on the AP wire.

And then you have the responsibility and the duty of being good examples to youngsters, not smoke, training hard, go to bed early, don't drink alcohol, don't take drugs, it's very important to have a policy for educating against doping.

It's been a wild ride. I hope people can appreciate how special it is to see the people that ran well today; how special and sometimes fleeting greatness can be even from yourself. I gave it everything I had and for a short period of time I did very very well and I'm very proud of that and I'm leaving it at that. I did the best I could.

Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.

Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work. I had to put in the time to get back. And it was a grind. It meant training and sweating every day. But I was completely committed to working out to prove to myself that I still could do it.

I celebrate a victory when I start walking off the field. By the time I get to the locker room, I'm done.

In the end, the game comes down to one thing: man against man. May the best man win.

You have to have the mentality of executing your game when you don't feel like there's a lot of hope. I think the best feeling is when somebody pushes you to the limit and you dig down a little bit extra. By the same token, you also need a little luck. Sometimes they come together.

I'll let the racket do the talking.

Often I visualize a quicker, like almost a ghost runner, ahead of me with a quicker stride. It's really crazy. In races, this always happens to me. I see the vision of a runner ahead of me, maybe just 15, 20 meters ahead of me, and the cadence of that runner, which is actually me in the future, is a little quicker, so if I'm going (his rhythm/breathing), then my ghost runner, the vision of me, ahead of me, like opening up and just going for it, is quicker .

The greatest efforts in sports came when the mind is as still as a glass lake.

Tonight was not about winning, it was about focusing on myself and what I was aiming to do. It's the reason why I was able to swim so well

I've just been enjoying the training a bit more. I've put too much pressure on myself in the past. Just relax and let it come. I just went out there to have a bit of fun tonight.

It's unbelievable I'm swimming so fast. I went in with no expectations. I just went out hoping to get a personal best. I went out there with a smile, just to have fun and see what would happen.

I know I've made huge gains in my confidence, and knowing more about my racing and myself as a person. That has made me a better athlete

Everyone who has been to an Olympics says expect the unexpected. That kind of psychology games does go on, so I'm kind of expecting things to happen but I don't know who from. I think it's kind of silly but I'm prepared for it. I'd probably just laugh it off because it means that they are afraid of racing me, so it's like a huge compliment