Beckham is unusual. He was desperate to be a footballer. His mind was made up when he was nine or ten. Many kids think that it's beyond them. But you can't succeed without practising at any sport.
Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life.
After I went through two years of not winning an event, what kept me going was winning one more major. Once I won that last U.S. Open, I spent the next six months trying to figure out what was next. Slowly my passion for the sport just vanished. I had nothing left to prove.
Every time I reach a major milestone in my career, I expect it to make more of a difference than it does, and I guess that means I'm in the sport for the right reasons. I'm not in it to win it because winning can only last for so long, and it's a very fickle thing, sport.
Oh, there's a lot of breaks in our sport. Strained muscles, breaks, tears. I've seen teeth fly out before mouth guards were compulsory. Feet fractures are quite common, cheeks, faces, jaws, legs.
Homophobia is rampant in soccer, probably more so than in any other sport. I'm not sure why.
So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race.
Survival is the main objective. There are going to be some awful days, I know that from my background in the sport.
I call tennis the McDonald's of sport - you go in, they make a quick buck out of you, and you're out.
Politics is a blood sport.
Traditionally, sport has looked down at number crunchers, but the reality is that they give sport the financial sustenance it needs.
I'm not in this sport to say a guy can beat me.
In sport there is never any moment that is the same as the other. I have been in Formula One for 12 years, and out of that I had one year with the perfect car.
This match is about sport and I separate that completely from politics.
If you're giving me tickets to the football game, baseball game or hockey game, I'm taking the tickets to the hockey game. For me, it's by far the most fun sport to go and watch live and be part of. I just don't know why it doesn't translate as well on TV.
Politics is a contact sport.
It's not a sport you get famous at. If I wanted to be famous, I would have stuck with hockey.
As an Olympic champion gymnast, I have always stayed involved in my sport.
I grew up in a house where I was a spectator to the sport of cooking. In that way, I just learned so much about what it really takes to make food.
I don't think anyone would say that the women on the United States national team are not great role models and ambassadors. Everywhere we go, we connect with fans, sign autographs, and represent our sport and federation with class.
It's very simple. We are asking baseball to come clean and set the record straight. Either baseball officials seriously want to rid their sport of doping, or they want to brush the issue under the carpet. So far, we haven't seen much evidence of the former.
Even though people involved in racing think that it has a big sporting stage, it is a minority sport compared to some of the other high-profile events: football, Formula One or golf.
I've been exploring different options for when I'm done skiing. I have the Turtle Ridge Foundation, which is helping a bunch of worthy causes around the Northeast. I've also started SkiSpace, which is an online social network that basically deals with all things based around any snow sport.
I've done sport for a long time.
I'm a competitive person. Business is a much more competitive sport than any real sport. It's 24x7x365. I'm a business adrenaline junky.
I had too much respect for the game to leave it behind or to make it my second or third sport in college.
The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.
I know netball is the number one female sport in Australia, but hockey also offers a lot.
I have been listening to sport and watching sport on the BBC since I was a tiny boy.
Swimming is a life-saving skill, so just the fact that the sport that I love can give so much back to other people - and inspire them to join something that they never thought they could do or go after their dreams - is something that is really special to me.
In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept constructive criticism. Without one-hundred percent dedication, you won't be able to do this.
With athletes, it's never fully understood the level to which we push ourselves. Especially in an endurance sport.
Snooker has just been a British-based sport for such a long time and when I started at 18 the furthest you'd go would be London.
More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self-control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill - none have wrestled without pride.
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.
You had to be into sport and, sad to say, I'm a traitor to my country because I don't have a sporting bone in my body.