Take pride in exactly what it is you do and remember it's okay to fail as long as you don't give up.
When I was little, I wasn't allowed to put sugar on my breakfast cereal because it made me so hyper.
The decathlon includes ten separate events and they all matter. You can't work on just one of them.
To me, the decathlon is its own little society and I am part of that culture.
It's important for me to think I'm mixed-race.
It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me.
Try everything, because you're never sure what you're going to be great at.
I got interested in decathlon because a coach that I had was a big fan of Bruce Jenner, and he just saw the ability in me - but when it came down to it, I knew my best chance at a college scholarship would be in track and field.
I've always had to have some kind of failure before I was successful.
Nowadays, to be a good world-ranked decathlete, you need to be good at everything.
After the failure in '92, my goal was to be a good pole vaulter. I used that as motivation.
When my world record got broken in 1999, it hurt a little bit, to say the least. But I was in a leg brace at the time and I had just had knee surgery and I couldn't do anything about it.
