Daley Thompson Quotes

"If you're not in it you can't win it."

"The stopwatch doesn't lie. The tape measure doesn't lie."

"We crave instant success these days. If you are a really good sprinter and long jumper, you don't want to spend two or three years on a whole new set of events. You're used to doing well and it's difficult to give that up."

"In sport, if you want to be the best you have to compete against the best - I would much rather have come tenth and be judged against everyone than come first and be judged against just a few."

"Sport fosters many things that are good; teamwork and leadership."

"We live in the best place on earth but at times the worst."

"Most people doing the decathlon these days are quite boring, so people don't relate to them."

"I wouldn't swap the era I competed in for anything, not a day of it. I started out as an amateur, and people like myself, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Tessa Sanderson and the rest did it for the glory of winning medals for our country."

"There were only ever two black kids at my school. I never considered myself to be 'a black kid'. I was who I was. Which isn't to say things haven't happened to me that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't black."

"Los Angeles was great fun because it was the polar opposite of Moscow in 1980. It was sunny and bright, lots of colours around, whereas Moscow was dark and oppressive."

"It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know."

"I am only about winning and getting better."

"In my heart of hearts my motivation would always have been to be the best, and I think that athletics is probably what I was built for."

"But if kids take up things like hockey and football they will go back to it."

"Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills."

"Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds."

"Kids are starting at such a low base rate in terms of fitness that it's taking them years to catch up to where people like me started from. Every little bit is making it more difficult for kids to succeed on a world stage."

"For kids it's natural to be competitive."

"Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one."

"When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours."

"I'm competitive - that's what defines me - and I love it."

"When you're walking into the stadium, you just say to yourself, 'the 100m is the same anywhere, the shot put is the same weight anywhere.'"

"What used to drive me was the fact that I wanted to be better than everybody at something. One of my best qualities is that I used whatever other people found to be an adverse thing to be a positive thing for myself."

"I did not want to be the best black man of the year; I wanted to be the best man of the year."

"I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world's best athletes."

"Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions."

"Ever since I was a kid, whatever situation I was presented with, I always made the most of it."

"I tend to eat vegetables only when I'm with the kids and the rest of the time, I'm a bit slack. But, I am weight-conscious, so I concentrate on avoiding junk food."

"I don't even have my own computer."

"I'm obsessive. I want to know the answer to how good I am. Most people aren't."