I remember before the Olympics, I was asked, 'What do you think you're going to do in the Olympics?' and I said, 'I'm hoping I'm going to win a medal, and, if possible, it's going to be a gold one.'
The culture precedes positive results. It doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they're champions: they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.
I wanted to bring the book out right now because I think anyone who cares about Tibet knew there would be disturbances in the run up to the Olympics [2008]. Many Tibetans feel it's their last chance to broadcast their suffering and frustration and pain to the world before the Olympics take place and China is accepted as a modern nation and the world forgets about Tibet.
I never planned to be at the height of my career when I was 30 years old and going to my fourth Olympics. I watched the 1998 Olympics when I was 14 years old. That's what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I might have a shot at three Olympics max. This is way beyond the parameters of what I set out to do.
I'm going to wait until I'm 20 before I start calling out world champions.
I informed the team three years before the Olympics that I was retiring from indoor. It's not as if I left six months before the Olympics and left them with a gaping hole to fill. I retired in July of '89. The Olympics were July of '92.
Playing college soccer was going to be the top of my athletic feats. I wasn't going to the Olympics. I was a decent player, but it's because of hard work, not because I was Freddy Adu. I wouldn't have a medal from the Olympics if I wasn't in a chair. I wouldn't have gone to the Olympics and experienced the whole atmosphere.
In my first interview in the UFC, I asked them to throw me among the lions. I wanted to fight the best, and that's what the UFC did. Ex-champions, future champions - that's what I wanted.
Champions behave like champions before they are champions
Gold slipped from my hand at the Rome Olympics and then from P.T. Usha at the Los Angeles Olympics. But it is my dream to see a boy or girl from India winning gold in the Olympics before my death.
There are young children out there in our state, that could be Olympic champions at 2032 to think that Melbourne has hosted an Olympics, Sydney has hosted an Olympics, and now Queensland has that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we've got to give it everything we've got.
Even before I competed in the Olympics, I always wanted to write a book.
Both with Bayern and with the national team, I have a lot of teammates who have achieved a lot more than me - most of them are world champions, European champions or Champions League winners.
The Olympics are coming... and it's a big problem in American politics, because the problem with holding the Olympics this fall is that we're all going to be focused on the Olympics, and it makes that window of opportunity for Gore to win the election that much smaller.
I am the Olympic Ambassador. I always promote Olympics. I just want to say, Olympics is Olympics. [You] cannot mix with politics. Olympics for me is love, peace, [being] united.
A lot of people have been saying I am obsessed with the "making history" thing. But it's what pushes me, it's what drives me, it's a huge boost knowing that I am going to be the first. There's a long list of Olympic champions that have become world champions, but none of them are from England.