If you're not in it you can't win it.
Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills.
In sport, if you want to be the best you have to compete against the best - I would much rather have come tenth and be judged against everyone than come first and be judged against just a few.
People tend to like an athlete's performance, but if you don't get a feeling for the individual, you're not very emotive about them.
Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.
Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds.
If you work hard in real life, people tend to get in your way - either from inertia or prejudice - and they stop you achieving things. It's the worst thing about real life compared with sports, where you generally get what you deserve: if you're the fastest guy, you win; there are no other games being played.
People don't want to serve apprenticeships any more. Kids expect to be paid and treated really well and all that guff before they've achieved anything. It doesn't work like that. You have to spend five or six years being relatively rubbish and put up with it. For that you don't deserve to be getting lottery money.
In my heart of hearts my motivation would always have been to be the best, and I think that athletics is probably what I was built for.
Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.
Sport fosters many things that are good; teamwork and leadership.
I tend to eat vegetables only when I'm with the kids and the rest of the time, I'm a bit slack. But, I am weight-conscious, so I concentrate on avoiding junk food.
For kids it's natural to be competitive.
Kids have been let down by adults - we've tried to give them too much, we've tried not to impose discipline. We've tried to make their lives easier and, in doing so, we've taken something away from them. Kids like boundaries, they also like to be pushed, need to learn what failure is all about, need guidance.
I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective.
But if kids take up things like hockey and football they will go back to it.
We live in the best place on earth but at times the worst.
When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours.
Most people doing the decathlon these days are quite boring, so people don't relate to them.
Kids are starting at such a low base rate in terms of fitness that it's taking them years to catch up to where people like me started from. Every little bit is making it more difficult for kids to succeed on a world stage.
