Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.

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

If you work hard in real life, people tend to get in your way - either from inertia or prejudice - and they stop you achieving things. It's the worst thing about real life compared with sports, where you generally get what you deserve: if you're the fastest guy, you win; there are no other games being played.

People tend to like an athlete's performance, but if you don't get a feeling for the individual, you're not very emotive about them.

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

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.

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