You must realize one thing. In every little village in the world there are great potential champions who only need motivation, development and good exercise evaluation.

The idea that you can't lose contact with the leaders has cut more throats than it has saved.

I discovered years ago that the best results in this respect could be gained by running 100 miles weekly at my near best aerobic efforts and that, supplementary to this, running as many easy miles as I could

They have a word in Finnish called sisu, which basically means guts. It’s the strongest word in the Finnish language. You tell a Finn he doesn’t have sisu, that’s like spitting in his face.

I get more gratification out of getting some obese person who had a heart attack running around and enjoying life within a year. I get more gratification from that than putting a person in the Olympic Games. The Olympic athlete probably doesn't appreciate what you've done, but the other guy does. I think it's really rewarding.

There are champions everywhere. Every street's got them. All we need to do is train them properly.

I have a saying 'train, don't strain.' The Americans have the saying 'no pain, no gain' and that's why they have no distance running champions. They get down to the track with a stopwatch and flog their guts out thinking that it'll make them a champion, but they'll never make a champion that way.