I'm calm and focused and I can't wait for the biggest sport event in the World to begin.
Across the board you can run up against 10 athletes where we're the same physically. They've done the same kind of training; they are in the same kind of shape. But the one that wins is the person who really believes they can win.
When I was a kid and we played baseball we used to use that "eye black" stuff sometimes - that kind of grease you put under your eyes to reduce glare or something. We only used it, of course, to look cool; it's not like we were any better prepubescent athletes for reducing glare.
One theme that fascinates me is cognitive enhancement. It seems only a matter of time until we live in a world where steroids for the brain are readily available to all. And once we come to grips with that reality, I suspect the debate over the ethics will be much more heated than the debate over steroids in baseball or any other sport, where the use is limited to a select group of freakish athletes.
I think we have to keep putting women's sports in the limelight. I thought the Women's World Cup did a wonderful job of showing the quality of women's soccer. But we also need coverage and marketing and press and getting these female athletes to become household names.
It's that deep-seeded societal gender norm that women, for some reason, aren't elite athletes, when we are. We really are. I think we fight against that a bit.
Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models.
There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to twenty years, perhaps even further back than that, there's also been an explosion of a very wealthy black class in the United States, but those people are often treated as special cases: they're athletes, entertainers. Jay-Z. Basketball players. The country metabolizes the fact these rich black people exist, but it seems only to reinforce the idea that every other black person is limping along in poverty.
The ancient Greeks kept women athletes out of their games. They wouldn't even let them on the sidelines. I'm not sure but that they were right.
I was always a thin kid; I was an athlete.
Seven out of 10 black faces you see on television are athletes. The black athlete carries the image of the black community. He carries the cross, in a way, until blacks make inroads in other dimensions.
I have plenty of money, unlike other Hollywood celebrities or athletes that have not invested well.
If the athlete is fair with the press, he deserves fairness back.
I used to be an athlete and even ran the 400 metre stretch for Tamil Nadu. I have always been active.
I think in general, people look at all Olympic athletes, look at all superstar athletes, and they say, "Okay, this guy doesn't have any insecurities." They're almost like these icons who - I don't know how to say it, but like they can't make mistakes. But the reality is, and I'll tell you this firsthand, a lot of great athletes have a lot of insecurities, and they have a really hard time dealing with a lot of so-called losing or however you want to classify it.
I've been an athlete most of my life and on a disciplined schedule. Working out for me is just part of my every day.
I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.
Look at self-satisfied pop singers or greasy, semi-literate athletes. People worship them. Why?” "Because they’re talented.
Most of the time, I'm fighting guys who are 22 years old, former college wrestlers, athletes, kids who are in much better shape than me. Often people who are much bigger and wider than me. It can be dispiriting at first.
Athletes and actors do really crazy things and we do them under weird circumstances because we love what we do and because we take things in an extreme manner.
I'm able to give a voice to the athletes around the world - use my degree for something other than the power play.
I'm in the perfect position. It's a sports position and a political position where I can help better the lives of athletes around the world.
I feel sorry sometimes for these sportsmen and women who put in just as much effort as the footballers. For example, athletes train at least as hard as footballers but have to be happy if they can earn enough to finance a decent education.
A lot of athletes use sports psychologists.
If you're tweeting - and this is what I tell the young athletes who come to me about these situations, because I've been through them and I've seen both sides of it - if you're tweeting just because everyone else is tweeting and you're not uncomfortable, if it doesn't feel like a sacrifice - like when I wore that T-shirt it was a sacrifice.
