When you are at the Olympic Games, it comes down to a ten thousandth of a hair between making the next round or winning a race or getting second or third.
I’m a two-time Olympian, but ever since I was a little girl, the Olympic dream has influenced me.
Winning a title in Olympic year is never easy.
The Olympic Games must not be an end in itself, they must be a means of creating a vast programme of physical education and sports competitions for all young people.
I went to London and was excited to make the team, but to be honest, I was a bit dissatisfied with my performance there, and I’d really like to make up for that in Rio and get the best out of myself on the Olympic stage.
You can not be in top five in Olympic after just one year’s preparation.
Remember before nineteen seventy two Olympic Games I was total skinny, I was small, very strong, they may be don’t like to see a gymnastics like that. I don’t know but, gymnastics, might. Nineteen seventy two supposed to be change somewhere.
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.
In para-cycling I am a veteran with Olympic medals now.
I was at the Olympic Games winning medals and I still doubted my image. I doubted what I looked like. That’s sad.
In the Olympic Oath, I ask for only one thing: sporting loyalty.
I want the full Olympic experience.
Being 19 years old and making the Olympic team on my last lift. I went 6-for-6 and had a perfect Olympic trial. Making the team and being one of the youngest to ever go to the Olympics was pretty special.
I pretty much knew that I was going to come in fourth, but then I said, ‘I’m fourth at the Olympic Games. What are you talking about? Why is that disappointing?’
So, in a way I was hedging and saying that if the Olympic stuff doesn’t work out at least I can be a lawyer.
I am Olympic champion for life, and I have learned to enjoy what that means.
Olympic athletes have to find a job right after they’re done competing.
I think we should follow the Olympic charter and the guidelines as the whole world is following it.
Olympic athletes are a different breed. We’re not dealing with million-dollar contracts. We don’t do the sport for those deals. We do the sport because we love the challenge, the battle. We love to be an American.
We can’t all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one.
I’ve been to Tokyo-slash-Japan – we actually went to Yokohama in 2015 and 2013 for international competitions. I think that it would be really nice to go back and do a little Olympic thing there.
We knew James Harden was good. You don’t get named to All-Star games and win Olympic gold medals when you play like Darko Milicic.
If you skate with an Olympic level skater, they make you so much better because you’re skating behind them, and you’re trying to imitate their stride and their stance. It’s like having the world’s greatest training wheels.
How can you top an Olympic gold other than, you know, getting a second Olympic gold?
It was while I was in the mental hospital that I got my letter from the British Olympic Association saying, ‘Congratulations. You’ve been picked to go to the Olympic Games.’ I kept stressing I wasn’t a patient.
An Olympic medal won’t define my whole life, although it might look like it to onlookers. When I look back, I should have been able to get an Olympic medal.
One must put things in perspective – I’ve been given a circumstance with very little time to catch form and try and get an Olympic quota for the country.
In WWE, I focused more on Olympic lifting. I had to make sure that I was physically able to lift another human being at all times.
I’m not really sure if I will go back to school. I’m getting old! So I’m not really sure if I have time to go back to school to be a dentist. But hopefully I’ll be an Olympic gold medalist.
The Olympic Games were created for the exhaltation of the individual athlete.
In 1974 or 1975, if someone had told me I was going to be an Olympic champion, I would not have believed it. Even in 1976, I’d not have believed it.
My main point in this regard was to compete for my country and my people and to receive the support of the entire Cuban society, to carry my flag in whatever competition I was in, the Olympic Games, Pan-American Games.
Olympic Gold changed me and my life dramatically. I became a celebrity overnight and people see me as a famous skater, not a real person.
I wanted to be the best street fighter in Houston, Texas. And I thought if I got a trophy or two, I’d go back home, and everyone would be afraid of me. I had one fight in ’67, the first one. In ’68 of October, I was an Olympic gold-medalist, a dream come true, with a total of 25 boxing matches.
It’s torturous what my siblings put me through. I can take any Olympic final, I can fight in a world championship and fall behind and win in sudden death, but when it comes to my siblings, it’s out of my control. There’s not much I can do.
It was a dream of mine to be an Olympic champion but not a lifelong goal.
Past Olympians have a continuing role within the Olympic family.
Dad met Mom in 1983 during the lead-up to the 1984 games. She was an Olympic downhill skier. In those days, the winter and summer games were held in different cities but in the same year, so there was more intermingling of winter and summer athletes at social functions.
I’ve never felt that I was less of an athlete or not accomplished athletically because I didn’t win an Olympic medal. It’s definitely something I would have liked to have added to my resume, but at the same time I think I can look back at my athletic career and feel that I was one of the best.
I rolled the second car that I ever owned, a Toyota 4 Runner. This was winter in Colorado, two weeks before the 2002 Olympic trials. I was driving in the outside lane, and my rear tire caught some black ice, and we totally turned sideways to the point where we were heading right toward the median.
Every time I hear that Champions League song, it reminds me of hearing it for the first time in the old Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam.
The Olympics is still my greatest achievement… I have many belts, but there is only one Olympic gold.
It wasn’t until I was 14 and watched the 1976 Olympic games on television that I really started to dream about the big time. I remember seeing Evelyn Ashford in the 100 meters, and she was going to UCLA.
The Olympic medal gave me a lot of confidence, and I went and won my first Super Series in Hong Kong. So in that regards, what Rio did was give me extra motivation and the confidence that now anything can happen.
When I picked athletics, I knew I wanted to be an Olympic champion.
Olympic champions should be 100 per cent athletes who have made the sacrifices.
As a teenager I had no idea that I had the potential to win an Olympic gold medal and my athletic career developed only by lucky circumstances.
I had been on the junior Olympic team in high school for trampoline; I could do twenty-six back flips in a row.
I think an Olympic medal is the only thing missing from what I can physically achieve as a cyclist. I can’t win the Tour de France, but I’ve pretty much won everything else that I can within my physical realm, so that’s the only thing missing.
The Olympic stadium may have been built only in the early 1970s but it was clear for a long time it had no future. For many reasons it is not good enough for modern football and today’s fans.
My senior year of high school, when I was getting recruited for college, my dad goes to me, ‘You can become an Olympic champion.’ And that’s the first time that I’d heard someone else say that to me. I was like, ‘Uh, are you talking to me?’
At the end of the day, standing on the Olympic podium on the top is what we’re all really searching for here.
The fans and supporters are also part of the Olympic family.
No matter what, like, I couldn’t – I could break a world record, get an Olympic gold medal, and my mom would be, like, you could have done better. But you looked pretty. That’s what she says all the time.
I set myself some specific goals, but the key one is just getting myself into as good a shape as possible for one day this year: the Olympic marathon.
I never really felt I had the same respect as my male team-mates. My opinion wasn’t worth as much. I used to sit quietly in meetings and not say anything, as I knew my opinions would be disregarded. And that’s after I had become Olympic champion and multiple world champion.
I have trained so so hard to be where I am at – I train with Olympic athletes and if I’m struggling to get to the top then there is something wrong.
I know that BMW is now a sponsor of the USOC – of the United States Olympic Committee – so they offer the use of their aerodynamic speed-tunnel for testing and such for the athletes, which is a great advantage. But to be honest with you, I’d rather have a free car!
I set my sights on making an Olympic team, not realizing how tough it was going to be.
For too long the world has failed to recognise that the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement are about fine athletics and fine art.
