Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?
For some, sport is just a short chapter of their lives so I am excited to help athletes develop many life skills that they can take with them on their next chapter.
It's not enough to just test athletes. The athletes themselves need to fight for their right to compete against clean athletes.
They say that generally, rulers - dictators - tend to be short, like me. It gives them an inferiority complex; when they were kids, they wanted to be big and to crush the small, but they were small themselves. Lenin was short, Stalin was short, Putin...
Everybody used to say that baseball players can't dress and athletes can't dress. You know, a lot of athletes now are trying to prove everybody wrong, though there are some athletes that try too hard and try to do over-the-top things. But me, I try to be simple and just make whatever I'm wearing look good.
I've been coaching the sport for a number of years. And I went through many athletes. Some athletes stay with your program for a long, long period of time. Some athletes, they have a different approach as far as coaching style or your philosophies. I totally respect their own opinions - they have the right to choose their own coach.
I know a lot of athletes, they want to play until their 45 or 50 or whatever, some athletes claim, but count me out on that.
I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.
I talk to student-athletes. I try to get them to remember that they're not just athletes, but student-athletes. You need to get an education, keep your hands clean and try to represent the university.
I try to get them to remember that they're not just athletes, but student-athletes.
I have always been small and one of the smallest heptathletes out there. And earlier in my career, I was faced with coaches and athletes who felt I was too small to be a multi-eventer. It gives you a push to show you can do it.
There are some athletes who I feel like are just looking for likes, and then there are people who are just real.
It's just that I have this funny objection to torturing small animals no matter how scrumptious their body parts might be. ... Our food industries are equal opportunity abusers: cows, chickens, pigs, and a special mention to those little calves who for their short, miserable lives are locked into crates too small to allow movement just so we can eat veal.
It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.
When I was working on the Olympic cookbook it was amazing to discover how different athletes need different types of diets. Everybody thinks that an athlete has to eat lots of carbohydrates, however some athletes don't need that. Some sports such as sprinting are explosive so you need a diet that will give you the energy for that moment.
Some sports, you see some athletes just walking around the gym not really doing anything, eating food. They're first to the lunchroom, never lifting weights.