I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.
On television, I have watched countless athletes from different countries, sports and Olympics stand proudly at the top of the podium and shed tears. They symbolized the Olympics for me because Olympic medals represent all of the hard work and sacrifices made by the athletes as well as the people who helped them reach the top of their sports.
Of course, rivals do affect athletes mentally, but if you are competing with top-notch athletes, you will push each other, you will encourage each other.
I've always been interested in working with top athletes, athletes who are pushing the edge and are really progressive in the outdoor space and adventure world.
Anything you can do to help someone, I just think it's so important because there's a lot of kids that look up athletes of all size and shapes in a lot of different fields, not necessarily in the basketball field. They get involved emotionally with those people because there's something about certain athletes that people rally around.
The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children - children with mental retardation - can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.
Think of all the girls who could become top athletes but quit sports because they're afraid of having too many defined muscles and being made fun of or called unattractive.
There are so many intelligent former black players, guys like Luther Blissett and Cyrille Regis, who never got a chance to become a top manager or a top coach because of the perception that surrounds people who look like them. They are black - which, for many, means they are good athletes but incapable of being anything above and beyond that.
What if you didn't have education for sports? People with a natural inclination for sports, athletes without any kind of education, without any kind of training, they would just be couch athletes instead of the world class Olympians that we have.
I feel like people always thought my sister and I were models. I think it was just because if you went through Diva Search, that's just what you were. We were never models; we were athletes. We were athletes who fell in love with wrestling.
I do not think athletes should get a free pass. I don't think we should train our children and future athletes to believe that they are above the law and morality.
The number of really good athletes is decreasing. People don't want to work as hard anymore and they complain. In the future, there probably won't be as many good athletes because they won't work as hard. The world is getting lazy.
Unfortunately the world is what it is now. People don't get along for whatever reason. As professional athletes, in a way we're almost ambassadors for peace, because sports brings everyone together.
I would like to see more pictures of what athletes are doing, like in People. Show athletes hanging out with each other, eating lunch, out on a date.
There is only a relationship between music and sports because all athletes want to be rappers and all rappers want to be athletes.
I don't think college athletes are given enough time to really take advantage of the free education that they're given, and it's frustrating because a lot of people get upset with student-athletes and say, 'They're not focused on school and they're not taking advantage of the opportunity they're given.'
If athletes went to the races more and to the backside in the morning, I think more people would get involved because, as an athlete, we can relate to what the horses go through. Training routine, injuries, massages, etc.