Track And Field Athletes

"Brix's portrayal was the only time between the silents and the 1960s that Tarzan was accurately depicted in films. He was mannered, cultured, soft-spoken, a well-educated English lord who spoke several languages, and didn't grunt."

"All I knew about shot putting was that my brother could do 44 feet … I decided I wanted to beat him. … So I got a shot and went to work and made up my mind to do 45 feet."

"I guess the one thing I really learned from participating in sports was to just never say "no", never stop trying, and to always believe that you can do better than the next fellow. I tried to follow this throughout my life, but I always tried to be respectful about it."

"There was only a single sharpshooter up in the trees to keep the croc away from me."

"I wish I would have had more to do in the film. I hated to get killed so soon."

"I thought Bolt was amazing, I mean, beating the world record and slowing down at the end, how galling has that got the for the other athletes? I never managed to do anything in 9.69 seconds, it took me ten seconds to watch him do that."

"I still haven’t learned to deal with situations like that very well — but I don’t think you should, because then you’re accepting defeat. It’s good to be stubborn, to be hard on yourself."

"The important question is, do we want more women in management positions, or less assholes in general. I lean toward the latter."

"Ankier is anxious to avoid what she calls the “Anna Kournikova syndrome” — “I realise that a lot of the media attention I’ve got is because I don’t look horrible, but that can bring attention you don’t want.”"

"This year I’m planning on hibernating from October until the Olympics next August. It’s that important to me. It drives me. And it’s very addictive. One of the cruellest things about the sport is that you’re never fulfilled or completely happy with your performance. You’re running against a clock so you always want to go faster and think that you can. That becomes an addiction."

"Don't tell me I cheated the system because that's [expletive]. I didn't get treated fairly by the system. They cast me out and they were jealous because I turned in the fastest time ever run by a human and it was impossible at the time."

"Nobody can write a story about the Celtics and not talk about Red Auerbach. Much of my success as a professional is a result of the way he first approached me. A lot of guys said I'd never make it because I couldn't shoot. My first day with Red he told me right out that he didn't care if I never scored a point. He said they had the guys on the Celtics who could score. What he wanted from me was defense and rebounding. That suited me fine. He and I had one big thing in common — the will to win. When he appointed me coach he just said. "The job is yours." He never put pressure on me. He never even came to practice unless I invited him. Of course, I did — often. I would have been crazy not to take advantage of one of the smartest guys the game has seen. In moments of weakness, I almost like Red — a little."

"People didn't give us credit for being as good as we were last season. Personally, I think we won because we had the best team in the league. Some guys talked about all the stars on the other teams, and they quote statistics to show other teams were better. Let's talk about statistics. The important statistics in basketball are supposed to be points scored, rebounds and assists. But nobody keeps statistics on other important things — the good fake you make that helps your teammate score; the bad pass you force the other team to make; the good long pass you make that sets up another pass that sets up another pass that leads to a score; the way you recognize when one of your teammates has a hot hand that night and you give up your own shot so he can take it. All of those things. Those were some of the things we excelled in that you won't find in the statistics. There was only one statistic that was important to us — won and lost."

"He told me he couldn't wait for the basketball season to end, so he could go back to baseball and get out of shape."

"What do you think of the Chicago Bulls winning three in a row?" -- Russell: "Not much."

"I'm a pretty direct man. You say something I like, I'll tell you so; you say something I don't like, I'll tell you also. A diplomat I'm not. So I'll tell you right out that there are no secret or hidden or financial or philosophical reasons behind this. I just don't feel like playing anymore. As for coaching — that prime incubator of ulcers — no, thank you. I don't want to coach anymore, either. I never considered myself primarily a coach, anyway. Anytime I was ever around a group of coaches I'd feel nervous — all that nonsense about how to "handle" kids, how to "motivate" them! I was a player. Now I'm not a player or a coach anymore."

"If you're really looking for a reason why I feel I've played enough, I'll tell you this. There are professionals and there are mercenaries in sports. The difference between them is that the professional is involved. I was never a mercenary. If I continued to play, I'd become a mercenary because I'm not involved anymore. I have a year to go on my contract with the Celtics. It's one of the most lucrative in sports, and I was very happy with it. A couple of my friends think I should at least stick out that year because of the money. Believe me, I wouldn't mind having all that money. But I'm not going to play basketball for money. I've been paid to play, of course, but I played for a lot of other reasons, too."

"I played because I enjoyed it — but there's more to it than that. I played because I was dedicated to being the best. I was part of a team, and I dedicated myself to making that team the best. To me, one of the most beautiful things to see is a group of men coordinating their efforts toward a common goal — alternately subordinating and asserting themselves to achieve real teamwork in action. I tried to do that — we all tried to do that — on the Celtics. I think we succeeded. Often, in my mind's eye, I stood off and watched that effort. I found it beautiful to watch. It's just as beautiful to watch in things other than sports. Being part of that effort on the Celtics was very important to me. It helped me develop and grow, and I think it has helped prepare me for something other than playing basketball. But so far as the game is concerned, I've lost my competitive urges. If I went out to play now, the other guys would know I didn't really care. That's no way to play — it's no way to do anything."

"Tony DiNozzo: William Felton Russell, 5-time MVP, greatest basketball champion ever. He used to get so nervous, so pumped, he had to throw up before every game... One night, the Celtics take the court. It's a big game, huge. Red's watching them warm up from the sidelines, but something's not right. He can tell, not clicking. He clears the floor, takes them all back down to the locker room. Why? Because Russell didn't throw up. You know what Red says next? Leroy Jethro Gibbs: "Get in there and puke, we've got a game to win.""

"[The sound of Russell throwing up] is a welcome sound, too, because it means he's keyed up for the game, and around the locker room we grin and say, 'Man, we're going to be all right tonight.'"

"How much does that guy make a year? It would be to our advantage if we paid him off for five years to get away from us in the rest of this series."

"Something everybody else but Bill Russell excelled in was giving the coach good advice. I made the decisions, but I listened an awful lot. Sometimes in practice the other guys would talk for half an hour and I wouldn't say a word. I encouraged them to tell me what they thought."

"I want to be a millionaire, and I don't ever want a real job."

"In fact, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet. Moreover, by continuing to eat a vegan diet, my weight is under control, I like the way I look. (I know that sounds vain, but all of us want to like the way we look.) I enjoy eating more, and I feel great. … I remember vividly making the decision in July of 1990 to become a vegan. … And I had my best year as an athlete ever! … Your body is your temple. If you nourish it properly, it will be good to you and you will increase its longevity."

"It's like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it."

"People who worked with me or knew me still called me the "world's fastest human" because I almost never stopped. I'd found that I could get more done with no regular job or regular hours at all, but by being on my own, flying to speak here, help with a public relations campaign for some client there, tape my regular jazz radio show one morning at 5:00 a.m. before leaving on a plane for another city or another continent three hours later to preside over a major sporting event."

"We'd get into these little towns and tell 'em to get out the fastest guy in town and Jesse Owens would spot him ten yards and beat him."

"It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards. … The secret is, first, get a thoroughbred horse because they are the most nervous animals on earth. Then get the biggest gun you can find and make sure the starter fires that big gun right by the nervous thoroughbred's ear."

"After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job."

"It dawned on me with blinding brightness. I realized: I had jumped into another rare kind of stratosphere — one that only a handful of people in every generation are lucky enough to know."

"I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever."

"To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first "second" is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final "second" — the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete — is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening."

"I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago... the only victory that counts is the one over yourself."

"It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close."

"She was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count. I fell in love with her some the first time we ever talked, and a little bit more every time after that until I thought I couldn't love her more than I did. And when I felt that way, I asked her to marry me … and she said she would."

"We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?"

"Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under."

"The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us."

"I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward."

"People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway."

"The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that's where it's at."

"Another old friend gone!"

"Hitler Salutes Jesse Owens"

"The real snub of Owens came from his own president. Even after ticker-tape parades for Owens in New York City and Cleveland, President Franklin D. Roosevelt never publicly acknowledged Owens' achievements. Gold in the 100 meter, 200 meter, 400 meter relay, and long jump. Owens was never invited to the White House and never even received a letter of congratulations from the president. Almost two decades passed before another American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, honored Owens by naming him 'Ambassador of Sports'. In 1955."

"You smoke? That's no good. No good!"

"I'm old now. It's all right."

"Hitler didn't snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."

"Mr. Hitler had to leave the stadium early, but after winning I hurried up to the radio booth. When I passed near the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me and I waved back at him.""

"It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler... You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II."

"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."