A Quote by Robert de Castella

When I was about 14 or 15, and running in a pretty muddy cross country race, one of my shoes stuck in the mud and came off. Boy, was I wild. To think that I had trained hard for this race and didn't do up my shoelace tightly enough! I really got aggressive with myself, and I found myself starting to pass a lot of runners. As it turned out, I improved something like twenty places in that one race. But I never did get my shoe back.
I am happy that I ran the half-marathon, but to me, just running and saying that I finished a race isn't enough for me. I want to run the race as best as I can. Working out for pants size isn't enough. I need a goal or a race to get back on the treadmill every day.
No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others.
I had a dual goal in my running that was to win and to achieve excellence, so I was never happy with a slow tactical time. If the race were slow I would get in front and pull it up again. I couldn't stand a slow race. A lot of people seem to get screwed up on tactics. There is only one tactic in a race and that is to always be in a position where you can win it.
The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising a lot of people have given up compeating altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse. What the human race needs is a lot more streakers.
I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.
My thoughts before a big race are usually pretty simple. I tell myself: Get out of the blocks, run your race, stay relaxed. If you run your race, you'll win... channel your energy. Focus.
When I crash during a race and injure myself, what's the point in whinging? Because I put myself in that position. No one's making me race motorbikes - I want to go and race motorbikes. The most annoying thing for me is lying in hospital and not being able to get to work. I get beside myself.
When I was 15, I had lucky underwear. When that failed, I had a lucky hairdo, then a lucky race number, even lucky race days. After 15 years, I've found the secret to success is hard work.
I couldn't get my first film on the air. The first film I did was called 'The Race For Space,' about the U.S.-Soviet space race. The networks had a policy that I found out about the hard way. I even had a sponsor for my program, but the networks wouldn't put it on because it was independently produced.
For my first race, when I was 19, I'd bought a 600cc bike. And that was far too big for me, really. I shouldn't have really had something like that. But anyway, I went and raced, and I crashed. In my very first race! But I never gave in. I kept going back and back and back.
It's probably the toughest distance race in the world to win. World class runners from 1500m to the marathon contest it and instead of just three runners from each country, like in the Olympics or World Championships, in the senior men's race there are nine.
Drag Race' was, like, my outlet and finally being able to see myself in television and that was through Manila Luzon, who was a 'Drag Race' contestant. Manila was the first Asian queer person that I ever saw on mainstream media and 'Drag Race' really did that for me.
I felt like I already knew how to race by the time I was four. I was always at the race track with my dad. I watched him race thousands of laps in a sprint car standing on top of a trailer watching him, getting down and cleaning the mud off his car. That's just what I grew up doing.
When I run a race, I, maybe inadvertently or unknowingly, concern myself with whether the fan was entertained or got what he expected or whether they got what I think they deserved out of me and out of the race.
It's the culture, not the blood. If you can go anywhere in the world and adopt these babies and put them into households that were already assimilated in America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby with as much patriotism and love of country as any other baby. It's not about race. It's never been about race. In fact the struggles across this planet, we describe them as race, they're not race. They're culture based. It's a clash of culture, not the race. Sometimes that race is used as an identifier.
I represent the mixed race community, which I think gets left out a lot. I always describe myself as being mixed race.
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