I can't believe that I'm on the Olympic team.
I started track and field when I was 12 and didn't get to an Olympic Games until I was nearly 23. By any stretch of the imagination that's a very long apprenticeship.
It's typical of Italian culture that we only start to feel emotional about something when we have the possibility to see it in front of us. By February, Italy will have Olympic fever.
The Olympic movement is divided into two very distinct eras.
If you skate with an Olympic level skater, they make you so much better because you're skating behind them, and you're trying to imitate their stride and their stance. It's like having the world's greatest training wheels.
People say, 'Wow, you've achieved it all this year: two world championship wins and an Olympic gold medal.' And I think, 'Yeah, but how come I feel so unsatisfied and under pressure all over again?'
2012 has been an extraordinary year for our country. We cheered our Queen to the rafters with the Jubilee, showed the world what we're made of by staging the most spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Games ever and - let's not forget - punched way above our weight in the medals table.
To have full and multiple criteria is the best way to decide who is best prepared to be on that Olympic team.
The spirit of the Olympic movement is great for young people because it teaches them about the training and discipline required to compete. Even if they don't make the teams, they can rededicate their lives to the art of sport, discipline, and physical fitness.
When you have traveled the world, won Olympic gold, and gone through a very public court battle against your parents all by the age of seventeen, surprises don't come easy.
We are experiencing such large support for the Olympic relay that our advice is to stay in your neighbourhood, stay in your borough and wait for it to come near you.
I think sometimes I guess you see records, say you want to get there and use that as motivation. In a way, it's kind of cool if there is a possibility to rewrite history and be up there with the greats of Olympic history.
No, I don't run all the way. I'm not like an Olympic class runner.
The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic Idea.
I can't even imagine what it's like and right now I'm like in shock, I can't believe that I'm Olympic Champion.
The Olympic Games is the ultimate level of competition.
As an Olympic champion gymnast, I have always stayed involved in my sport.
Join me in Olympic Heros for Abstinence. The best sex is no sex.
My only real claim to fame is that I was southern England show-jumping champion in 1966. The day after my father died, 'Horse & Hound' magazine tipped me as a future Olympic champion, and I took it seriously. You can only really enjoy something if you take it seriously.
My senior year of high school, when I was getting recruited for college, my dad goes to me, 'You can become an Olympic champion.' And that's the first time that I'd heard someone else say that to me. I was like, 'Uh, are you talking to me?'
I'm excited to be a part of the Olympic movement again.
Qualifying for the Olympic Games was one of those moments where you just cry because it was like you've climbed Mount Everest.
Growing up I definitely looked up to Dominique Moceanu. She was my favorite gymnast and she was on that '96 Olympic team. She was always so fun to watch. I kind of wanted to model my career after hers.
I graduated a the top of my class in the '84 Olympic Games; I won a gold medal.
I never had one day that I didn't want to be on the ice, because I always had an objective for that day. I had a rigorous plan and schedule in place that I had to adhere to. It was a step-by-step process of slowly but surely inching toward the Olympic Games and using every day as a series of goals to be accomplished.
I never really felt I had the same respect as my male team-mates. My opinion wasn't worth as much. I used to sit quietly in meetings and not say anything, as I knew my opinions would be disregarded. And that's after I had become Olympic champion and multiple world champion.
In our view the Olympic idea involves a strong physical culture supplemented on the one hand by mobility, what is so aptly called 'fair play', and on the other hand by aesthetics, that is the cultivation of what is beautiful and graceful.
I just want kids to have a chance to go and try an Olympic sport. Every kid has a bike - that's how I started, and one kid coming along and giving it a go could make that journey to the Olympics.
We have made drugs an Olympic event. It receives most of the coverage at the Games and even the suspicion of guilt can ruin a reputation for life.
The reality is being an Olympic windsurfer is bloody hard work, and it is a huge commitment.
I really didn't feed off the whole Olympic experience at all, and I regret that from an athletic perspective, and also from a personal experience. I feel like I missed out, so I'm not going to do that this time.
Many track and field people know that if I stay relaxed and run my race like I'm supposed to, I will be the winner at the Olympic Games.
For sure, 2010 was the best year I've ever had. It couldn't have gone any better for me. Even if I just won the Olympic gold medal, that would have made it the best year of my career and the best day of my life, period. Winning the World Cup races and the overall title just topped it off.
Now that I have an Olympic medal in my room, it makes me hungry for another and a different color one.
I have a phenomenal team behind me who have helped get me here and I, along with them, will now put everything we can into the final few weeks of preparations before the Olympic Games, where I am aiming to race well, work well through the rounds, post good times and maybe even a personal best time on the biggest stage of them all.
I still can't believe I'm an Olympic athlete.
