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.

If you don't want to grow old, then slow down the slowing down process.

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

For kids it's natural to be competitive.

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 am only about winning and getting better.

The decathlon takes so long to learn that people who are good athletes don't want to go back to the beginning again.