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

People don't want to serve apprenticeships any more. Kids expect to be paid and treated really well and all that guff before they've achieved anything. It doesn't work like that. You have to spend five or six years being relatively rubbish and put up with it. For that you don't deserve to be getting lottery money.

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

There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.

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

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

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