Quotes About Athletics

It's going to be a massive honour to represent your country, if selected, for the World Cup.

I want to be in the World Cup.

It's a gift to be offered the opportunity to play the World Cup.

The World Cup is always difficult, you need to come physically prepared.

To be one of only three Englishmen to have scored in a World Cup finaI is amazing.

Hockey is no longer a big four. It's football, basketball, baseball and soccer. Now, I'm not talking MLS. I'm talking COPA, World Cup, men's, women's, MLS, youth... and there's a lot of reasons for it.

If anybody wants to beat me, let them run a world record.

It's a great feat for me to have broken my world record.

An Olympic medal is much better than a world record, and so is a world championship or Commonwealth Games medal.

I think if you come first with a new world record, that is the best.

I always think it's because of you know hard work, hard training. And if Susie's training hard, you know, why can't I train hard to get a world record. I'm doing the same thing.

But I'm after medals more than anything. Championships don't get taken away from you but records do, so I think I'd rather have medals at every championships rather than times. A world record would be a bonus, but I'm still only 25 in 17 days.

It's something special to break the world record at the Olympics.

I guess I set a world record for errors. I had a pretty good arm, see, but I didn't have much control.

I felt I was never going to beat Igor Ter-Ovanesyan or Ralph Boston because they were the joint world record holders.

I can't be disappointed with my first gold in a senior championship, and to score 5000 points, which only one other woman, the world record holder, has got over, I am satisfied.

I'm very happy to have set a world record in Tallinn. Estonians sure do love athletics and combined events!

I called Daley Thompson after the Games of '84, when he won. He'd had this phenomenal decathlon for nine events - and then he went out there and jogged the 1,500 meters and missed the world record by, like, three points.

I'm probably a lot more closer in the 1500m to the world record than I am in the 5000m.

When we race in London a world record will be the last thing on our minds.

I don't know how you keep the world record holder off your team.

I missed the final of the World Championships in 2009, but I told the coach I would break the world record in 2010. Which I did. Then in 2011 I won the World Championships and now in 2012 it is the Olympics. That is how I have been working.

Already in 2007 I thought I would be able to break the World record in the near future. That time Sammy Tangui was the pacemaker in Lausanne. I liked the way he was running. He is tall, he has a strong body and his stride is similar to mine. I told him in one of the coming years I would need him when I try to break the World record.

The London games mark the 24th anniversary of my winning two golds and setting the world record in the heptathlon. Someone is going to want it; records are made to be broken - it's only a matter of time. I hope mine will outlive me.