Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Anyone would love to have the medal and a major trophy on their CV. When you reach Wembley, you think of the amount of hours you have put in training throughout your life, all the games you have played up to that point, and if you win a trophy, it is there forever as a reward.
It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for 'Scent of a Woman.' It was a new feeling. I'd never felt it. I don't see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.
If it doesn't mean more to a normal human being like Dan Evans, who could change his life and career by winning not a gold but a bronze medal for Great Britain, if he doesn't want to take that chance, I would say something is wrong with the Olympics in what it's worth in tennis.
I deferred my third-year studies from university to go full time sailing to try and qualify for the 2012 London Olympics, which I did. I tried to go back to the university, but having won the silver medal, I just haven't been able to get back. And now I'm not sure if I ever will.
I don't know about you, but I lie awake nights worrying about Canadian uranium. I know these people. I grew up there. You have no idea what they're capable of doing. If Sidney Crosby hadn't scored that goal to win the Olympic gold medal, there's no telling what might have ensued.
One thing I learned from the '88 Olympics: It's not a question of if they can screw you over: it's a question of if they will. It's not the gold medal they took away from me. The medal doesn't mean anything. It's that they said I lost. That experience is well and alive in my mind.
From Clara Barton's tireless work founding the American Red Cross to the first female Medal of Honor winner, Dr. Mary Walker, to our first female combat fighter pilot Lt. Kara Hultgreen, no list of American heroes is complete without the names of some of these extraordinary women.
As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.
Going to the Olympics as a Maasai I want to make them proud because, after the warm welcome they gave me when I went back and being their leader, I want to also be the warrior in the Olympics. That will be something good because that will be the first Olympic gold medal for the Maasai.
Someone asked me the other day, 'What is your most memorable moment in your career?' and by far, China was. Being so close - the medal race was one part of the story, and there were a few incidents through the event that amounted to that massive drama at the end that cost us the medal.
I'm actually sort of shocked that I was able to get a medal in 2014 and really have any of the success I had before because as soon as I came out, it was like a whole new world for me, and I felt so free, so confident, that it's actually shocking that I was able to compete any other way.
Without wishing to sound arrogant, when I was younger, I used to win every single martial arts tournament I ever entered. I used to enter the under 14s and under 16s, win both gold medals in those, and then go in the men's tournament just for experience, and end up getting a silver medal.
Winning the gold medal should have been the happiest day of my entire life, and it just wasn't. It felt like the saddest day of my life. Everyone was so angry with us, that Scott and I had fallen in love, because it was so unprofessional, and we were a disgrace and had betrayed everybody.
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.
Maybe there's a little girl who thinks she can be an Olympic athlete, and she sees all the things I struggled through to get here. Yeah, I didn't walk away with a medal or run away with a medal, but I think there's lessons to be learned when you win and lessons to be learned when you lose.
I've never felt that I was less of an athlete or not accomplished athletically because I didn't win an Olympic medal. It's definitely something I would have liked to have added to my resume, but at the same time I think I can look back at my athletic career and feel that I was one of the best.
One minute you're a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do well and win a medal somewhere, and then it's all foisted on you. You never know when it's going to happen. You don't think about the media side of things when you're a young athlete trying to do well.
I wanted to win the gold medal and then go home and further my education in college. I had no intentions whatsoever to become a professional fighter because I had heard horror stories about former boxers who made money but, in the end, ended up with nothing. I didn't want to be one of those guys.
Cricket pays well, so a lot of people are naturally drawn towards the game. But to carve a niche in non-cricket sports is not easy. So state governments need to be proactive. Indians need to be made aware of the power of an Olympic medal. It should be treated at par with an Oscars or a Nobel Prize.
Nobody loves the Boston Marathon as much as the people who make fun of it year after year. This was the race that previously offered as a prize a not particularly expensive medal, a laurel wreath, and a bowl of beef stew. This was the race that, on one memorable occasion, nobody knew who actually won.
It's about never giving up until your hand is on the wall. I think people who get complacent, who think that they are in front, a sloppy touch, can cost you that elusive medal, just as much as the people who are gunning for you. If you believe you can get there right to the very end, miracles do happen.
Teofilo Stevenson won his first Olympic gold medal in 1972 and his last world amateur championship in 1986. He won 302 fights and once went an unbelievable 11 years without a loss. Had Cuba not boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics, many think Stevenson would have won an unmatched four gold medals in boxing.
I made myself a little angry before beam. That's the best way to do beam. It's important to fuel yourself with some devastating things, but I also realized that if I daydream about doing well and having this silver medal, it's more motivating than focusing on the negatives. So I learned to focus on the positive.
After I got my gold medal, I thought, 'This isn't just me. It belongs to my team, my friends, my family, the fans, everybody who's impacted my life - this is our gold medal.' So when someone asks to try it on, I'm like, 'Sure, why not?' I might be a little too relaxed about it, but why would I keep it to myself?
Most coaches would consider leading a team to an Olympic gold medal a capper for a pretty good year. The same goes for winning an NCAA national championship. Or a FIBA world championship. Mike Krzyzewski, head coach of the Duke Blue Devils and Team USA, led teams to each of these honors... within about 24 months.
I always feel I had a very lucky life. For example, I sure didn't want to go in the army: when I was drafted in the Korean War, I wanted to go as a photographer. But luckily, they put me in the infantry - luckily because the official photographer was photographing the medal awarding and all the official situations.
A lot of skaters hole themselves up in hotels and focus - and that's great, and that may work for them. But for me, having the Olympic experience was as great as winning the medal. I have so many memories of living in the village and meeting other athletes, seeing other sports, and feeling the energy. It's so magical.
While starving refugees in Homs were providing target practice for government snipers, Bashar al-Assad's strongest international backer was in Sochi, at the Iceberg Skating Palace, visibly moved, smiling with deep satisfaction, as the Russians beautifully glided and leaped their way to the gold medal in the team event.
Winning is great, but being able to finish my last Olympic Games on American soil was very important. Even though I was injured, I didn't let my psyche get the best of me and cause me to doubt myself, so I was willing to pull every muscle in my body in '96 in order to get the job done and I came away with the bronze medal.
Playing college soccer was going to be the top of my athletic feats. I wasn't going to the Olympics. I was a decent player, but it's because of hard work, not because I was Freddy Adu. I wouldn't have a medal from the Olympics if I wasn't in a chair. I wouldn't have gone to the Olympics and experienced the whole atmosphere.
I think as a Canadian hockey player, you go through it in your mind so many times, being able to stand on that blue line and hear your national anthem play and being a gold medal champion, you dream of that. And then to be able to accomplish that and actually win a gold medal and represent your country its an amazing feeling.
The first time I won a medal in the all-around competition is when I realized that's what I wanted to do pretty much for the rest of my life. Even though I was still doing baseball and soccer at the time, I think I just found that that was more my passion, where I saw a lot more success... I was probably eight or nine years old.
Americans have a profound longing for heroes - now perhaps more than ever. We need our explorers, our sports icons, our Medal of Freedom winners, our Nobel laureates. We need our Greatest Generation warriors, our 'Sully' Sullenbergers, our Neil Armstrongs. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat.
At the age of nine, I could cross the length of Glasgow on a succession of buses, wearing regulation garter-topped stockings and compulsory cap and - if I'd done well enough to earn the honour in last week's test - with a First World War medal on a striped ribbon pinned to my brown blazer. I must have looked like a chocolate soldier.
When I was in school, sport was given utmost importance. I think it's fantastic for character building, for team playing, and I think it's a great profile for a nation. One in every six people on Earth is an Indian, and I look forward to the day when we can compete with the heavyweights of the sporting world and do well in the medal tally.
Fear is there. Anything can happen at an Olympics. I want to use the experience I gained from Athens and Beijing - the fear, too - and build a me that can't lose. I will do everything to make sure I win a third gold medal in London. That target drives me. I'm bulking up and have more power now. I'll be fighting fit to take the gold back home.
When I was a West Virginia lad of 17, I met a Massachusetts lad of 42 by the name of John F. Kennedy. At the time, I was in a bright orange suit that I had just purchased to wear to the 1960 National Science Fair, where I hoped my home-built rockets would win a medal. Kennedy was in West Virginia trying to win the state's presidential primary.
I played college soccer before I was hurt, and just to be able to jump back into something that you could be so competitive at or you can achieve, to get to the Paralympics, that's the first really big achievement that you can have. It's the second biggest sporting event in the world. To be a part of it and to get a medal for that, it's unreal.
