Quotes from Greg Rutherford

People assume that you need to run fast to get to optimum fitness, but the truth is endurance lifting makes you stronger and leaner.

If you look at the skeleton, the start is very important.

Even though arguably I could have done much better at school, I'd decided at a young age that I was going to be a professional sportsman at some sport. And at that stage, there was a bit of luck: I was fortunate to meet the right people at the right time to get me to where I am now.

I haven't actually checked my family tree, but Rutherford is a very old Scottish name, so I've probably got Scottish genes a few generations back.

I was always the slightly fat kid, which used to bother me quite a bit.

I want to jump far all the time and go out there and win medals.

As a jumper, I try to defy gravity as long as I can. But no matter how far I jump, I'll always hit the earth eventually.

There are not many people around the world who can say, 'I get paid to jump into a sandpit.'

I want to become double Olympic champion, triple Olympic champion, five-time world medallist.

My parents were great at making sure I got out of bed when I needed to play football on a Sunday morning and that I was ready after school to go to training on a Tuesday and Thursday. But it was never forced upon me or rammed down my throat. If it had been, I could have ended up hating sport.

My team are incredible, and I have the most amazing parents and beautiful girlfriend in the world.

My grandfather died before I was born, so I never had the chance to speak with him about his father. But I learned about him from books.

It's quite funny because I always talk to baby through Susie's belly, and every time I start speaking, I just get kicked in the face.

Being in a scenario where you're thinking, 'I can't do what I want to do due to the financial burden that comes with some of it,' makes you think, 'Well, I could go and do an after-dinner speech every night.' I'd probably earn more than I could in track-and-field. But that's a dangerous scenario to get yourself into.

Hopefully, I can get multiple distances out there and re-establish myself as one of the best jumpers in the world.

I've got two chocolate labradors, Murphy and Dexter. They're like my children.

I'm a very keen baker; I pride myself on my cakes. I go along the classic sponge line, but I like to jazz it up: I've made some psychedelic birthday cakes.

I've never had a car sponsor or all the things that most others seemed to have had.

I've not received any major sponsorship deals or anything else.

For a long time, I thought I'd be a physio if I wasn't a sportsman. At one point, I wanted to be an inventor, and I'd come up with little schemes.

I knew I was going to be a sportsman.

My dad is a builder, and my mum's a nurse. They're just very normal people.

It will be good fun finding out what sport baby's good at; perhaps it will be something obscure. My parents were fantastic at taking me to training sessions and letting me try lots of different sports, so I want to do the same.

I am the Olympic, World, Commonwealth, and European champion now, and I hope that's enough for people to accept that I am a half-decent British athlete.