As an athlete, I'd average four hours a day. It doesn't sound like a lot when some people say they're training for 10 hours, but theirs includes lunch, massage and breaks. My four hours was packed with work.

I had already been into my professional career for six years and had not won an individual gold medal at the Olympics. There was a tremendous amount of pressure going into 1996 to get it done.

As an athlete, I'd average four hours a day. It doesn't sound like a lot when some people say they're training for 10 hours, but theirs includes lunch, massage and breaks. My four hours was packed with work.

When you're gone I can go running though the house screaming and no one will ever hear me.

You can't control what the other athlete is going to do; you can't control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task.

The mind is absolutely instrumental in achieving results, even for athletes. Sports psychology is a very small part, but it's extremely important when you're winning and losing races by hundredths and even thousandths of a second.

You owe it to yourself to find your own unorthodox way of succeeding, or sometimes, just surviving.