Sport fosters many things that are good; teamwork and leadership.
The only limitations are mental. The guy who thinks positively will win.
I'm competitive - that's what defines me - and I love it.
Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills.
When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours.
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.
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.
If you don't want to grow old, then slow down the slowing down process.
Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.
I don't even have my own computer.
During a photo-call with fellow Olympic gold medallist Duncan Goodhew- Pity Steve Ovett didn't show up. Then we could have had the good, the bald and the ugly.
There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.
I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world's best athletes.
Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.
Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds.
You can be an Olympic champion in 9.5 secs, but to be the greatest, there's more to it. It takes a bit of forethought and a lot of mental application.
Los Angeles was great fun because it was the polar opposite of Moscow in 1980. It was sunny and bright, lots of colours around, whereas Moscow was dark and oppressive.
Ever since I was a kid, whatever situation I was presented with, I always made the most of it.
It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know.
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.
In sport, if you want to be the best you have to compete against the best - I would much rather have come tenth and be judged against everyone than come first and be judged against just a few.
I am an education ambassador, mainly working with schools.
There are lots of women tennis players, for instance, but because not many of them seem to have much personality, they're interchangeable. You don't have a feeling about them.
I've still got a small fitness and conditioning business where I travel round the world doing stuff for individuals and corporations, mainly fitness training.
People don't want to serve apprenticeships any more. Kids expect to be paid and treated really well and all that guff before they've achieved anything. It doesn't work like that. You have to spend five or six years being relatively rubbish and put up with it. For that you don't deserve to be getting lottery money.
