Daley Thompson famous quotes

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

#Sports #Teamwork #Good Team

I'm competitive - that's what defines me - and I love it.
-- Daley Thompson

People don't want to serve apprenticeships any more. Kids expect to be paid and treated really well and all that guff before they've achieved anything. It doesn't work like that. You have to spend five or six years being relatively rubbish and put up with it. For that you don't deserve to be getting lottery money.
-- Daley Thompson

#Kids #Years #People

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Champion #Forethought #Application

I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective.
-- Daley Thompson

#Regret #Eight #Years

Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions.
-- Daley Thompson

#Athlete #Careers #People

I think one of the things about being a good coach is to recognise when you have given all that you can. In fact there should be some sort of unspoken law that says that a coach cannot have anyone for three or four years - if you have not passed on most of the stuff you know in that time, then you are not doing a good job.
-- Daley Thompson

#Jobs #Thinking #Years

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Fun #Dark #Opposites

There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.
-- Daley Thompson

#Thinking #Years #Would Be

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Athlete #Games #Firsts

Retiring was hard. I'd spent 15 years doing something I loved, but when you get older everything seems to go. When I started spending too long with the physio and the doctor, I knew it was time to call it a day. But I had no preparation for being retired and I didn't know what to do.
-- Daley Thompson

#Doctors #Years #Long

We crave instant success these days. If you are a really good sprinter and long jumper, you don't want to spend two or three years on a whole new set of events. You're used to doing well and it's difficult to give that up.
-- Daley Thompson

#Years #Two #Long

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

#Ambition #Champion #Becoming

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

#Men #Years #Black

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#People #Lucky #Found

For kids it's natural to be competitive.
-- Daley Thompson

#Kids #Natural

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Motivational #Sports #Country

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Inspirational #Funny #Gold

Ever since I was a kid, whatever situation I was presented with, I always made the most of it.
-- Daley Thompson

#Kids #Made #Situation

I am an education ambassador, mainly working with schools.
-- Daley Thompson

#School #Ambassadors

When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours.
-- Daley Thompson

#Men #World #Records

Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.
-- Daley Thompson

#Girlfriend #Losing

The only limitations are mental. The guy who thinks positively will win.
-- Daley Thompson

#Winning #Thinking #Guy

I am only about winning and getting better.
-- Daley Thompson

#Winning #Get Better

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#School #Kids #Two

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

#Skills #Weakness #Favour

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

#Leadership #Want #Slow Down

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.'
-- Daley Thompson

#Weight #Shots #Stadiums

Even if you've been involved in a World Cup, the Olympics is huge. Only the Games has the power to change communities.
-- Daley Thompson

#Games #Community #World

In my heart of hearts my motivation would always have been to be the best, and I think that athletics is probably what I was built for.
-- Daley Thompson

#Motivation #Heart #Thinking

But if kids take up things like hockey and football they will go back to it.
-- Daley Thompson

#Football #Kids #Hockey

I tend to eat vegetables only when I'm with the kids and the rest of the time, I'm a bit slack. But, I am weight-conscious, so I concentrate on avoiding junk food.
-- Daley Thompson

#Kids #Vegetables #Weight

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Player #Tennis #Personality

The stopwatch doesn't lie. The tape measure doesn't lie.
-- Daley Thompson

#Lying #Tape

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Kids #Years #People

I don't even have my own computer.
-- Daley Thompson

#Computer

I'm obsessive. I want to know the answer to how good I am. Most people aren't.
-- Daley Thompson

#People #Answers #Want

It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know.
-- Daley Thompson

#People #Easy #Difficult

Most people doing the decathlon these days are quite boring, so people don't relate to them.
-- Daley Thompson

#People #Boring #These Days

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Athlete #People #Feelings

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

#Sports #People #Mind

If you work hard in real life, people tend to get in your way - either from inertia or prejudice - and they stop you achieving things. It's the worst thing about real life compared with sports, where you generally get what you deserve: if you're the fastest guy, you win; there are no other games being played.
-- Daley Thompson

#Sports #Real #Hard Work

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#Sports #Want #Firsts

The decathlon takes so long to learn that people who are good athletes don't want to go back to the beginning again.
-- Daley Thompson

#Athlete #Long #People

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.
-- Daley Thompson

#People #Quality #Facts

I've still got a small fitness and conditioning business where I travel round the world doing stuff for individuals and corporations, mainly fitness training.
-- Daley Thompson

#Training #World #Corporations