Zitat des Tages von Dan O'Brien:
There is nothing better than having a personal-best day, being in shape and pushing myself beyond my own limits.
Breaking the world record in '92 was a very special personal moment, but I'd say my favorite moment as a decathlete was winning the Olympic gold medal.
Take pride in exactly what it is you do and remember it's okay to fail as long as you don't give up.
Through everything I've gone through- and I've been everywhere, at the top of the world, in jail, hung over drunk - I never gave up my dream of winning a gold medal in the Olympics.
As a young child, I was never a crier. I never cried to get my way, or even when I was in pain.
I was playing little league baseball when Bruce Jenner was winning the gold but I don't think I was really paying attention at that time.
I was a good decathlete until I got with a coach that really knew how to train specifically for the event... I'd really describe it as like being a juggler; you have ten balls and you're trying to get them all in the air at the same time.
And there is such a thing as a decathlon high. It's like a rock rolling down hill, picking up momentum. You get better and better.
Breaking the world record in '92 was a very special personal moment, but I'd say my favorite moment as a decathlete was winning the Olympic gold medal. It was a lot of years of work, and when I won it, it was more a sense of relief than jubilation or exaltation.
You have to be able to be a good loser. You have to be okay knowing you're going to fail every day in something without getting mad and upset.
Try everything, because you're never sure what you're going to be great at.
It's important for me to think I'm mixed-race.
If you never give up, you'll be successful.
The decathlon includes ten separate events and they all matter. You can't work on just one of them.
As athletes, we're defined by what we've accomplished. Those are what most people remember and what you get paid for. But I learned more from my failures than from all of my successes put together - failures as an athlete and as a person.
I call myself a chameleon.
I just love playing so much, competing so much. You're able to put your losses behind you. One of the greatest attributes a decathlete can have is the ability to forget... to look ahead, not behind.
It really means a lot that I won the gold medal - but I woke up the next morning expecting to feel different. I felt the same.
To me, the decathlon is its own little society and I am part of that culture.
As a young athlete, it was first about having fun; then it was about winning.
It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me.
I think what my parents did was perfect. They were strict, concerned about my safety and held me back just a little.
When I was little, I wasn't allowed to put sugar on my breakfast cereal because it made me so hyper.
You need to become more than one type of athlete. You have to be a sprinter, a weight man and a distance guy all in one.
I didn't get a ton of interest from colleges in baseball and football, but I was outstanding in track and had the sense that this would be my meal ticket... Track was a sport where I saw immediate improvement, and I had a lot of good support behind me... and the coaches had a lot of experience and pushed me in that direction for sure.
After the failure in '92, my goal was to be a good pole vaulter. I used that as motivation.