Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.

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

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

Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.

I didn't even know what it was when I started. But I was lucky. I found it at 16. Most people don't discover decathlon until they're 21 or 22.

In my heart of hearts my motivation would always have been to be the best, and I think that athletics is probably what I was built for.

When you're walking into the stadium, you just say to yourself, 'the 100m is the same anywhere, the shot put is the same weight anywhere.'