It doesn't matter who you are. It can happen to anybody. We have Kenyan, Dominican Republic and even Scandinavian Olympic gold medalists. All you need is will power.
The hard part for me was being an Olympic gold medalist and having that persona; you don't see too many Olympic gold medalists go into acting. It's actually even more difficult. You're not taken very seriously, and you're looked at in a different light, so it was kind of hard for me to go straight from Olympics into acting.
We still have our people working in the cane fields in the Dominican Republic. People are still repatriated all the time from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Some tell of being taken off buses because they looked Haitian, and their families have been in the Dominican Republic for generations. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic still can't go to school and are forced to work in the sugarcane fields.
My parents are Dominican. I would always go to the Dominican Republic, and I fell in love with Bachata, which comes from the Dominican Republic.
The only thing that me and Muhammad Ali have in common is that we are both Olympic gold medalists and both very outspoken.
I was ready in 2008 for the Olympic Games but unfortunately I missed the Kenyan trials with a thigh injury. I watched those Olympics but it was tough to watch. But it was good in the end because a Kenyan, Wilfred Bungei, was the champion.
I am Dominican American. My father was born and raised in the U.S. and his heritage is German and Eastern European, and my mother hails from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.
How can you top an Olympic gold other than, you know, getting a second Olympic gold?
My goal is one Olympic gold medal. Not many people in this world can say, 'I'm an Olympic gold medalist.'
I kind of always took it for granted the fact that my parents were Olympic medalists.
I'm happy to see that more girls are going into weightlifting and aiming to become Olympic medalists as well.
The DOCF all started when I made a trip to a local hospital in the Dominican Republic. I was visiting children who had received life-saving heart care operations. I couldn't help but think that in another life, one of these kids could be my own son. If it wasn't for baseball, I may have remained in the Dominican Republic and who knows where life would have taken me. It was then that I knew that I had to use the gift that I received, to play baseball, to do whatever I could to give back.
Win or lose, I'm going to leave everything on the mat. That's what gold medalists do.
We feel like we're the Olympic gold medallists and we have the opportunity to bring that gold home. That will be our goal and short of that we would probably be disappointed.
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, the sons and daughters, the future of Turkiye, even under such circumstances and conditions, your duty is to save the Turkish independence and the Republic, you will find the power you need in the noble blood in your veins.