Our first ever live gig was in front of Buckingham Palace, an Olympic event attended by some of the royal family, and we had to follow James Brown.
Nothing I have done professionally will top the feeling I got when singing with John Farnham at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.
I’m happy to see that more girls are going into weightlifting and aiming to become Olympic medalists as well.
People are saying I hold and spoil, but you don’t get to win Olympic gold without a bit of power and ability.
I am very happy my Olympic dream has come true.
One thing I’ve learned from winning an Olympic medal is that it’s really exhausting.
I don’t have all this money people think Olympic athletes have.
You learn a lot from your first Olympic Games experience. Everyone thinks they’re prepared, but you never are.
From meeting Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, teaming up, rehearsing, playing selected gigs outside of Britain, coming back into Olympic Studios to record the first album, and then going to America, which we crack open like a nut with the debut record – all that happened, literally, within months.
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.
I’ve seen some folks with Olympic backgrounds go into combat sports and it just not being for them. You know, doing Judo or something else you might excel, but as soon as a punches are flying, they’re out.
Olympic medals are the one medal that I don’t have; I’ve won just about every other competition that I’ve been at.
It’s like someone important is missing from a party because you can’t imagine an Olympic gymnastics competition without Romania.
I’ve been with Team Canada for a lot of World Cups and World Championships, and to be part of an Olympic team would be a huge thrill for me.
I thought that when I won the Olympic trials I was going to be the happiest person in the whole world. And I was happy. But it wasn’t like I thought it was going to be. I had already imagined it in my head so many times. It was real before it happened.
I absolutely think I have the ability to be a world-class athlete and make a team. But even if I never make another world championship team or Olympic team, I think there are so many things I can say about the sport that can really excite me and bring me a lot of motivation in the day to day.
After one Olympics, if we invest in sports and say we will get a gold medal in the next Olympic, it doesn’t work like that in sports. How it works is that you provide the infrastructure, provide education about nutrition and health.
The spirit of the Olympic movement is great for young people because it teaches them about the training and discipline required to compete. Even if they don’t make the teams, they can rededicate their lives to the art of sport, discipline, and physical fitness.
There is a lot of scope for improvement but as we enter the home stretch for the Olympic preparations, we know the biggest challenge for us is to remain consistent with our performances.
To do a PB in an Olympic final – I’m pretty happy – you can’t ask for more, that’s the fastest time I have ever swum.
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?’
It’s very special that the Olympics is in London. As a first Olympic experience, it’s going to be pretty incredible.
I went to five Olympic Games and my favorite is Sydney.
An Olympic medal in athletics is still a dream for India. Milkha Singh is the torchbearer for young athletes to achieve that goal.
Tennis is not really a traditional Olympic sport.
There is a pressure in this country that comes from being a boxer with an Olympic medal and then turning pro.
All of the major events are fun. Obviously the Olympic Games is top.
Being named to the Olympic team has special meaning to it because I feel like I’ve come full circle.
I never thought about competing in the Olympic Games when I was growing up.
A goal of making it to the Olympic Games has motivated me to work very hard in my sport.
Because I am Olympic champion, everyone assumes I am this perfect athlete who should never lose. Every time I step in the ring, I am expected to win.
Every once in a while I run the Olympic downhill in Japan in my head. I think of how the energy is going to flow and then I make it all work for myself.
When you win an Olympic gold, it is such a powerful feeling that stays with you for the rest of your life.
I’ve reached out to other mayors throughout the United States to form an Olympic Task Force of Mayors, and to community leaders, Congress, and businesspeople. As thousands of people around the country join the movement, it gets more and more exciting.
An Olympic pursuit really takes a full three to four years of Olympic preparation.
From the time I started boxing, my dream was to win an Olympic gold medal. At 10, I can’t say I knew how big the Olympics are. I just knew that every kid in the gym wanted to win an Olympic gold medal. Every kid in every gym probably wants to win an Olympic gold medal.
You always imagine everything will go so smoothly in the Olympic season.
I dreamed of being a professional skater once. I wanted to be a Korean Olympic skater, but I wasn’t good enough, so I quit.
Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.
Part of me worries about upsetting people, because we all have perceptions about Olympic champions.
I missed the Olympic team in 1996 – missed making the team. I tried to make a comeback in my sport, and soon after the Olympic trials, Johann Olav Koss, who is a Norwegian speed-skater, called me up and asked me to be a part of Olympic Aid. Now Olympic Aid is Right to Play. It’s a wonderful, narrow focus.
As an Olympic athlete, especially a female Olympic athletic, social media’s such an amazing place, people are so positive, all these young girls. Anything negative is such a small space, people aren’t coming at you for their gender.
Over the years, I’ve made many sacrifices to win two Olympic gold medals and put together winning streaks that will never be broken.
If someone told me a couple years ago, ‘You’re going to be deep into show jumping with horses,’ I would be like, I didn’t even know that’s an Olympic sport.
In my eyes, I will never be up there with the Sir Steve Redgraves and the Sir Chris Hoys of this world. It’s not something that drives me; I just enjoy going to the Olympic Games. Just to be mentioned in the same breath as those people is an honour for me. I don’t ever think about those kind of things.
I would encourage people to participate in sports. You don’t have to dream of being an Olympic or a professional athlete.
To organize an Olympic Games is probably the most complex thing on the planet because it has so many moving parts.
I would be happy with an Olympic bronze. What I don’t have is an Olympic medal.
I have been skiing since I was in school, but I’m not great. I am never going to break an Olympic record, I just want to go down the hills, on red or blue runs, but not… black.
In Jamaica High School in New York, my coach was Larry Ellis, and he said I could probably make the Olympic team. He gave me something to shoot for.
Hosting the Olympic Games of course guarantees the world’s attention, but there is more to it than simply bathing in the global spotlight. Most importantly, host cities can use the opportunity to create a positive and lasting legacy, resulting in both tangible and intangible returns to local communities.
I’ll have to say winning the Olympic gold in Atlanta is a crowning achievement, along with the gold in the relay in the same games.
I want to be recognised as exemplifying the Olympic spirit – one of the last true Olympians.
I’m sure that if Ronda could take time off, go to the gym and train for three months for a fight with Holly Holm with absolutely no distractions, I don’t even want to imagine the Ronda Rousey we’re going to see come out. Again, we are talking top of the food chain, Olympic, amazing athlete.
If the Olympic Spirit is about overcoming every hurdle and accepting no limits, then I think Samsung is a great ambassador for these values.
I am almost 30 so I am approaching this one as if it will be my last Olympic Games. I want to put out 110 percent to make sure that I am up at the top.
Growing up in Alaska, they don’t really teach you to swim there. I learned to swim just a few summers ago with Olympic gold medalist Amanda Beard. She did great, and right after that I went to get scuba certified. I had fun with it. I didn’t really get scared, but some people thought that was a risk.
One of the most common misconceptions about Olympic sports is that they only happen at the Olympics.
Actually, I always dreamed about getting a gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle in Olympic swimming. I always thought that would be the epic award in sports to get.
During my time, squash was not even part of Asian or Commonwealth Games. Considering the dominance of Jansher Khan and I in the ’80s and ’90s, it goes without saying that Pakistan would have bagged a plethora of medals through us at these games. And yes, the ultimate prize would have been an Olympic gold.
