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" Interviewing Hugh McIlvanney, I got to read lots of his stuff again. I'm a big fan of his writing. "

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" I'm not sure there are enough coaches in the system that can take young talent and consistently get them into the top five in the world. "

" My motivation to compete was always about improving one year to the next. At 34, I realised I'd never run any quicker, so why hang on? But I love running and still run along woodland trails and beaches every few days. "

" I still run every other day. Longer at weekends. I probably do 35 miles a week. "

" I don't want to go back into politics - absolutely not. "

" I've always referred to my father as 'my coach' because we were always able to separate our relationship into the roles of coach and parent. "

" I'm a Chelsea season-ticket holder, and I've supported them for 37 years, so any judgment of Manchester United by me is seen as biased. "

" Good running is the ability to have a very well defined on-board computer. The ability to judge distances when running in traffic. "

" Football was not what I was put on this planet to do. "

" At university level, I had an economics lecturer who used to joke that I was the only student who handed in essays on British Airways notepaper. "

" The London Games will be designed for the athletes and we will provide them with the very best venues and the very best conditions to pursue their sporting dreams in London. "

" I think I'm probably just an old-fashioned Tory. I don't wake up each morning trying to figure out what kind of Conservative I am; for me it's quite instinctive. "

" I wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse, and he's one of my heroes, so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable, and they've got brains the size of golf balls. "

" My mum was critical in getting me to recognise very early on that although what I was doing was pretty serious, quite selfish, and probably to most people pretty obsessive, there actually was more to life than running quickly twice round a track. "

" In 1981, I spoke at the Olympic Congress. I was scandalised that I was the first athlete to be given that chance. But I made the most of it. "

" I started daily training at the age of 14. When I was 16 years old, I was running twice a day. "

" I can be a bit impatient sometimes. If I'm really focusing on something, I can expect everybody to move at the same pace, and that's probably not massively endearing. "

" I don't think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative. "

" There's a difference between hurting when you lose and being a bad loser. You don't compete at the highest level of sport to feel comfortable about losing, but you behave in a civil way when it goes wrong because that is the flip side. "

" I have always been very good at being able to structure my time. My mother had a huge influence on me. My dad was my coach. He was a hugely influential figure. "

" Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully. "

" All pressure is self-inflicted. It's what you make of it or how you let it rub off on you. "

" Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young. "

" The biggest fragility in a project is often just the inability to be able to explain to people why you are doing it, and when you're going to do it, and what's going to happen. "

" Some people found it difficult to understand my relationship with my father, but that may have been because they couldn't get beyond their relationship with their own parents. "

" The great thing about athletics is that it's like poker sometimes: you know what's in your hand, and it may be a load of rubbish, but you've got to keep up the front. "

" Getting the Games for London has been the fulfilment of a dream. It is one which I truly believe can change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people for the better. But in the end, nothing can quite compare with winning your first Olympic gold medal. "

" I will go to my grave believing that participation is best driven by the well-stocked shop window. "

" In all Games, there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games when there isn't much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport. "

" To anyone who has started out on a long campaign believing that the gold medal was destined for him, the feeling when, all of a sudden, the medal has gone somewhere else is quite indescribable. "

" I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life. "