Daley Thompson Quotes
Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills.
I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world's best athletes.
Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.
Los Angeles was great fun because it was the polar opposite of Moscow in 1980. It was sunny and bright, lots of colours around, whereas Moscow was dark and oppressive.
Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.
In sport, if you want to be the best you have to compete against the best - I would much rather have come tenth and be judged against everyone than come first and be judged against just a few.
People tend to like an athlete's performance, but if you don't get a feeling for the individual, you're not very emotive about them.
When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours.
Most people doing the decathlon these days are quite boring, so people don't relate to them.
Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds.
You can be an Olympic champion in 9.5 secs, but to be the greatest, there's more to it. It takes a bit of forethought and a lot of mental application.
During a photo-call with fellow Olympic gold medallist Duncan Goodhew- Pity Steve Ovett didn't show up. Then we could have had the good, the bald and the ugly.
I've still got a small fitness and conditioning business where I travel round the world doing stuff for individuals and corporations, mainly fitness training.
I didn't even know what it was when I started. But I was lucky. I found it at 16. Most people don't discover decathlon until they're 21 or 22.
I did not want to be the best black man of the year; I wanted to be the best man of the year.
The decathlon takes so long to learn that people who are good athletes don't want to go back to the beginning again.
I tend to eat vegetables only when I'm with the kids and the rest of the time, I'm a bit slack. But, I am weight-conscious, so I concentrate on avoiding junk food.
Even if you've been involved in a World Cup, the Olympics is huge. Only the Games has the power to change communities.
When you're walking into the stadium, you just say to yourself, 'the 100m is the same anywhere, the shot put is the same weight anywhere.'
When we stage the Olympics it will inspire kids all over the country. A kid in Scotland or Ireland will be encouraged to take up sport.
Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions.
In my heart of hearts my motivation would always have been to be the best, and I think that athletics is probably what I was built for.
There are lots of women tennis players, for instance, but because not many of them seem to have much personality, they're interchangeable. You don't have a feeling about them.
There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.
Ever since I was a kid, whatever situation I was presented with, I always made the most of it.
