Every Medal of Valor recipient has confronted life-threatening danger. Each had their fight-or-flight moment. But each one stood their ground for our safety. We hold them up as examples to other first responders – and to all Americans.
People say, ‘Wow, you’ve achieved it all this year: two world championship wins and an Olympic gold medal.’ And I think, ‘Yeah, but how come I feel so unsatisfied and under pressure all over again?’
I haven’t let the gold medal out of my sight; it sleeps next to me in bed.
An Olympic medal is much better than a world record, and so is a world championship or Commonwealth Games medal.
It is a big achievement to win a medal at the World Cup. Winning a medal is like doing well at Wimbledon, in tennis. It is one of the biggest shooting competitions in the world.
The first time I won a medal at a female wrestling tournament, all of the other girls there had coaches and family members cheering them on. I went in alone, said nothing, wrestled three girls and beat three girls – convincingly.
Once ‘Walk Two Moons’ received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.
Playing in Wembley Stadium in front of 83-some-thousand fans to win a gold medal was unreal.
One minute you’re a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do well and win a medal somewhere, and then it’s all foisted on you. You never know when it’s going to happen. You don’t think about the media side of things when you’re a young athlete trying to do well.
Getting to the Olympic Games was my gold medal.
That’s what the Olympics is about – getting your name on the wall, and that gold medal.
It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for ‘Scent of a Woman.’ It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it. I don’t see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.
I made myself a little angry before beam. That’s the best way to do beam. It’s important to fuel yourself with some devastating things, but I also realized that if I daydream about doing well and having this silver medal, it’s more motivating than focusing on the negatives. So I learned to focus on the positive.
One of the things I was never thrilled about with ‘Medal of Honor’ was that it was non-stop music.
You want to come home from a tournament with a winner’s medal. That’s not the fans or the media putting us under pressure, that’s the pressure we put ourselves under.
It has been said that sharing my silver medal with that incident on the victory dais detracted from my performance. On the contrary. I have to confess, I was rather proud to be part of it.
I like to think that I probably have written more World War II music than anyone on the planet after all the ‘Medal of Honors’ and ‘Call of Duties.’
My goal is to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games, and I’ll fight and continue going until I do that.
When you win the Olympics, you hope that the medal that you get, that weight makes it feel like you really earned something.
It’s like an addiction: you win one medal and you want to win more.
I really want to win a medal and would want to win gold. It’s my fire and fuel, life and dream, everything.
Getting the Games for London has been the fulfilment of a dream. It is one which I truly believe can change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people for the better. But in the end, nothing can quite compare with winning your first Olympic gold medal.
Of course, I can’t wait until I get the medal and I can walk around the house and say, ‘Daddy, I got you.’
I wasn’t really expecting me to win the gold in this race. To get another medal for myself and for the U.S. was a pretty good thing to happen, I’d say.
Here were these college kids beating the Soviets and going on to the Olympic Gold Medal. To me, that’s the greatest upset of all time in any sport that I can think of.
To finish off this whole Olympics by finally getting the gold medal, it’s the best feeling in the world.
After I got my gold medal, I thought, ‘This isn’t just me. It belongs to my team, my friends, my family, the fans, everybody who’s impacted my life – this is our gold medal.’ So when someone asks to try it on, I’m like, ‘Sure, why not?’ I might be a little too relaxed about it, but why would I keep it to myself?
I had my Olympic gold medal cut up into eleven pieces. Gave all eleven of my kids a piece. It’ll come together again when they put me down.
I would be so proud to finish my career with a European medal.
My children can really understand the Olympic Games, To have a medal is very, very special.
The two things that are probably tied for first are winning a championship with the Mavericks and also being able to win a gold medal – two gold medals with Team USA.
The title ‘black swimmer’ makes it seem like I am not supposed to be able to win a gold medal, I am not supposed to be able to break the Olympic record, and that is not true, as I work as hard as anybody else, and I love the sport, and I want to win, just like everybody else.
I am very happy that Indian women are making their mark in sports be is Sakshi Malik or even PV Sindhu who also won a medal for the country. We talk about women empowerment and there cannot be any bigger example than this.
A medal in Tokyo Olympics is my target, it’s the ultimate for an athlete. I am still young and my best is yet to come.
The SheBelieves was my big moment, my big breakthrough. We had to get on that platform, hold that trophy, and have that medal around our necks.
To win a gold medal at Olympic Games has long been my dream ever since I started my career as a table tennis player.
To anyone who has started out on a long campaign believing that the gold medal was destined for him, the feeling when, all of a sudden, the medal has gone somewhere else is quite indescribable.
Every time a medal is won on the national or international platform, our country really enjoys winners but we don’t appreciate the effort that goes into creating winners.
The regressive Left ranks minority groups in a pecking order to compete in a kind of ‘Oppression Olympics.’ Gold medal goes to the most offended.
I wanted to win an Olympic medal for my country but because of circumstances, I had to become a professional wrestler. I will have fulfilled my dream if I can support even one kid who wins a medal for the country.
To have this gold medal around my neck is just bonkers and still hasn’t really sunk in.
I never believed that India could win a medal in badminton because the competition is so tough.
It’s an Olympic Games, at the end of the day, and to represent your country at the Olympics is about as good as it gets. Put a gold medal on top of that, and it doesn’t ever get any better.
Having an Olympic medal validates that you can be a successful freeskier… It’s like a credential that sticks with you the rest of your life.
Playing in the Copa America would be an important thing for me, just like the Olympics, because Brazil has never won the gold medal there.
For our teams that do great work, we have a tradition of giving Rolex watches. If you see all the key guys with their Rolexes, that’s sort of our Medal of Honor if you do something big.
If I wouldn’t have medaled at the Olympics, it still would have been a successful trip. The medal is the icing on the cake.
A world championship medal on the road is something that I’m missing from my CV.
Athens is a great place for me. It is my second home. It’s where I won my first world championship medal, it’s where I set my world record.
I basically have my life today as a result of what I did as a child. What did I miss out on? Yeah, I missed not hanging out at shopping malls, I guess, but that is not a big deal because you don’t get a medal for that.
I get to do the fun part which is racing. I get to enjoy the race… I don’t need a piece of medal to remind me of that.
The Manchester games in 2002 was the breakthrough for me because I won my first individual Gold medal and that gave me the confidence to maybe think I could be a world beater.
You’re still a person with or without that gold medal. It just represents the hard work.
I believe Indian hockey itself is going through a major phase of transformation. We set our sight on winning the gold medal at the Asian Games. We have achieved that.
Anyone would love to have the medal and a major trophy on their CV. When you reach Wembley, you think of the amount of hours you have put in training throughout your life, all the games you have played up to that point, and if you win a trophy, it is there forever as a reward.
To be part of something special, to be an Olympian and have the chance to win a medal – it’s an amazing feeling.
Everything that I did to win a gold medal, I’m practically transferring it over to mixed martial arts.
Children will come out and listen to a writer whose books they like. They don’t need a government agency or a medal that says ‘laureate’ to continue that.
Whatever earnings I got from winning this silver medal, part will be used for my college education.
