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" 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. "

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

" I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition. "

" Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something. "

" Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan. "

" I had a very ordinary background in Sheffield; I went to a secondary modern, but I saw something on TV in 1968 that inspired me to join an athletics club, and 12 years later, with great coaching and the support of people who loved me a lot, I ended up at an Olympic Games. "

" I've never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, 'Can you text this message to somebody.' I don't even have a computer on my desk. "

" When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I'd like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies. "

" 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. "

" We need to be confident. We need not to blink. "

" 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 actually don't believe in big government, and half the time I'm never quite sure I believe in government, generally. "

" 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. "

" 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 can remember the day I decided I would retire from competitive athletics as vividly as if it were yesterday. "

" There may be problems we still need to tease out, but we will leave no stone unturned in our bid to make London the host city. "

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

" My mother was Indian, brought up in Delhi. My grandparents were born in Bow and Poplar. "

" There is nothing so marginal as a party that has been in power for 18 years and slides into opposition. You influence nothing. "

" During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year. "

" Marathons don't come to you overnight. "

" When I moved to Sheffield and went to a secondary modern in the Seventies, there were certain challenges: if you've got a name like Sebastian, you either learn to fight or to run. "

" 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. "

" I'm probably one of the few people who can say I did all three types of state sector schooling. "

" It is really important that we promote competitive support in schools. It is very important that we recognise that has to be underpinned by good quality physical education and by getting people into patterns of exercise. "

" Our success in Singapore was a Herculean effort by the whole team. Now I am determined to deliver on all we promised. I will be watching like a hawk. "

" Quite simply the Games are the biggest opportunity sport in this country has ever had. It is one that we must not squander. "