It's something I deal with to this day, a fear of falling back into that darkness. I see athletes go through a similar thing. ... With athletes, it's never fully understood the level to which we push ourselves. Especially in an endurance sport.
Being a comedian is a lot like being an athlete. If you're Carl Lewis and you're the fastest, then no matter what you're the fastest.
I like to push characters to extremes so they have to make really tough decisions and there is no life more extreme than that of an athlete.
Athletes become our heroes, because they're superhuman. They do things nobody else can do. They're better than 6 billion other people.
Looking good is important. We're our own premium brand as professional athletes, so you want to be thoughtful about presentation and represent yourself and your city and sport as best you can.
What we're seeing is an era where governments and huge organizations such as the IOC don't have accountability. They don't have accountability to the athletes they are supposed to be protecting and they don't have accountability to the truth. What we've seen out of Russia is a continual denial, no matter what has been presented. They are still blaming Grigory Rodchenkov as an individual who did this all on his own.
Breath is critical to everything, to our relaxation, to our flexibility, to our mobility, to our strength and to our power. Knowing how to use our breath and tapping into this breath strength is critical for success as strength athletes.
I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.
The Olympics have been with the world since 776 B.C., and have only been interrupted by war, especially in the modern era.
I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.
When you are public figure, you're an athlete or actor, that is your job to speak out on certain things. I think you speak out on what you desire to speak out on or your passionate about.
I have great admiration for athletes. They are just like actors in a lot of ways. They have tremendous pressures and conflicts. They have to compete, and they can't stay home just because they have a head cold.
The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.
Athletes try to get other athletes out and they should have no false starts.
An athlete must have a certain cockiness to succeed and win, but an athlete must also care about the game he or she plays.
That is what great athletes can do: they give us a model of striving for human perfection.
I think you always strive to get better as an athlete. That's the difference between good and great, in my opinion.
I know that BMW is now a sponsor of the USOC - of the United States Olympic Committee - so they offer the use of their aerodynamic speed-tunnel for testing and such for the athletes, which is a great advantage. But to be honest with you, I'd rather have a free car!
Brazilians tend to have that weakness, they get emotional. You can easily get them upset and get them out of their comfort zone. They're clever too and very gifted athletes but they have that emotional thing, which we Europeans also have a little bit of.
I think in running, to be honest, that even though athletes are very dedicated and are willing to train and do whatever they need to do to prepare, more often than not they're not in a very professional environment where you've got a high performance director and a coach that are really monitoring your daily activities.
The reports of racial episodes are disturbing. But the players' protest is exhilarating because it is the most high-profile example to date in a continuing revolution in which the athletes who drive the multibillion-dollar college sports machine have begun to use their visibility to demand change.
Twenty years from now, I can look at this medal and say, 'I was the best quarter-miler in the world on that day.' If you don't think that's important, you don't know what's inside an athlete's soul.
I want to find that defining moment that you're satisfied and you've done what you want to do in your life.
I want to be like the athletes who seem stuck in time. When you see them at 50, you say they probably can still run like a champ.
I'm not just retiring from the runway, I'm retiring from all modeling. God, I love saying that! When I was 18, my mom said I have to have a plan. I decided I'd leave on top. I want to be like the athletes who seem stuck in time. When you see them at 50, you say they probably can still run like a champ.
