It really means a lot that I won the gold medal - but I woke up the next morning expecting to feel different. I felt the same.

As a young athlete, it was first about having fun; then it was about winning.

Through everything I've gone through- and I've been everywhere, at the top of the world, in jail, hung over drunk - I never gave up my dream of winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

You can only look forward to a South Dakota winter if, as with childbirth, remodeling a house, or writing a novel, you're able to forget how bad it was the last time.

When I was little, I wasn't allowed to put sugar on my breakfast cereal because it made me so hyper.

To me, the decathlon is its own little society and I am part of that culture.

As a young child, I was never a crier. I never cried to get my way, or even when I was in pain.