I hope the millions of people I've touched have the optimism and desire to share their goals and hard work and persevere with a positive attitude.

You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared... Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant. There will be days when you don't feel on top of your game, or meetings in which you aren't at your best, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises.

As athletes, we're used to reacting quickly. Here, it's 'come, stop, come, stop.' There's a lot of downtime. That's the toughest part of the day.

You have to be able to say, OK, that happened back then. Now let's take it from here and see what happens. It would be very easy to hate people for the rest of your life, and some people have done that. You've got to deal with what's happening now and try to make things better.

Failure makes me work even harder.

I realized that if I was going to achieve anything in life I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it... I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it's an illusion to me.

I wasn't really a work conscious type of person.