Quotes from Daley Thompson

Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.

I did not want to be the best black man of the year; I wanted to be the best man of the year.

When we stage the Olympics it will inspire kids all over the country. A kid in Scotland or Ireland will be encouraged to take up sport.

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.

For kids it's natural to be competitive.

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.

If you don't want to grow old, then slow down the slowing down process.

When you're walking into the stadium, you just say to yourself, 'the 100m is the same anywhere, the shot put is the same weight anywhere.'

The stopwatch doesn't lie. The tape measure doesn't lie.

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.

Sport fosters many things that are good; teamwork and leadership.

Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds.

Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills.

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.

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.

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.

Kids are starting at such a low base rate in terms of fitness that it's taking them years to catch up to where people like me started from. Every little bit is making it more difficult for kids to succeed on a world stage.

I didn't even know what it was when I started. But I was lucky. I found it at 16. Most people don't discover decathlon until they're 21 or 22.

If you're not in it you can't win it.

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.

I wouldn't swap the era I competed in for anything, not a day of it. I started out as an amateur, and people like myself, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Tessa Sanderson and the rest did it for the glory of winning medals for our country.

I am only about winning and getting better.

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.

There were only ever two black kids at my school. I never considered myself to be 'a black kid'. I was who I was. Which isn't to say things haven't happened to me that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't black.