I've always known that I was born to sing, ever since I was a child.

For me, riding a two-wheeler bike was very risky. Counting the pedal strokes before turning a corner and learning to hear the sounds coming from buildings, grass and the climbing frame made all the difference to basic survival and ensured that I didn't end up head-first in the sandpit.

I like to windsurf and ski, and most of all I love to ride horses. The wilder and faster the better! If I'm presented with a fast horse or a fast boat, I still get that shiver of excitement and I cannot resist. Luckily I never seem to have any accidents, and thank God for that.

My life experience has taught me nothing happens by chance. Even the idea of the ball in a roulette game: it's not chance it ends up in a certain place. It's forces that are at play.

I don't like being called 'macho.' Macho basically means stupid and a real Italian man is not macho, he's smart. That's smart in both senses: elegant and clever.

When a little more than a teenager, I was a piano-bar pianist in the land where I was born and raised, Tuscany.

If you could have the arms of Hercules, legs as swift as the wind. If you could leap shoulder high above the rim, have the kick of a dolphin, the reflexes of a cat. If you could have all these, you would have the body, you would have the tools. But you would not have greatness until you understand that the strongest muscle is the heart. To me, that's the soul of the Olympic Games.