sportspeople-from-england

"I was brought up with good values, so that's played a huge part in my life. I'm not outspoken, particularly, about my faith, but I'm a believer and I'm very pleased to have had a good life which I've had to this day. I'm very thankful – I've worked very hard, and having good morals instilled in me, behaving well as a citizen – I believe has helped me on the journey to where I am."

"Sometimes you’ve got to do things that you don’t like, to boost yourself."

"Moan about it for a bit and then just move on."

"Everyone has got their opinions about how things are going for them but this is a new era and it’s not always easy to maintain that level of success."

"Doesn’t matter who plays the most, it’s about contributing to the cause and having a successful season."

"Keep pushing them and helping them improve, then they can reach their potential as soon as possible."

"Between 14 and 21 is when a lot of people get lost"

"Scoring a goal is the best part of the best job in the world. So when I see players not even smiling I can’t relate to them."

"Just keep developing. That's the beauty of the game."

"Won’t change my values for anyone or anything. I have strong beliefs, and though I’m not perfect and have much to learn, it’s vital to remain who I am."

"To avoid defeat; sometimes it requires more physicality, other times more aggressiveness, and sometimes it’s about technique and creativity. The approach might vary, but the goal is always the same."

"Nothing worth having is easy. So you have to be willing [to sacrifice]."

"Sometimes I feel like some of these fans can play the game, that’s how passionate they are."

"Time is on our side. You can look at our team and a lot of the players are young."

"29 Jun 2023 — To know Amanda was to love Amanda. She was kind to everyone and never let anything change her sunny disposition,"

"I've heard so many stories of older men and women - because it's not just men, it's a whole generation - who say they won't watch women's football and then they come and watch you play and say 'wow, that was really good'."

"People tweet me saying they have just seen me in town. It's great. But I just want to get on with the football. Just enjoy it - that's all I want to do."

"Women's football has such a platform now. It can only go from strength to strength. I just hope it encourages girls who might not have taken up the game to do it now."

"It is understanding my body, knowing when I need to take an extra day recovery, knowing when I need to do more recovery; like now I do recovery every day."

"Before, I was so worried about doing the same as everyone else, always comparing: ‘She’s on the training pitch so I need to go on the training pitch today,’ and then I’d just break down eventually."

"It's more a case of giving it less thought...last time I really missed racing and I know I'm going to feel just the same when the baby's born. I came back (in 2007) and I'm not saying I started back running too soon 12 days after the birth but rather the scale at which I ramped it up. I had gone through a difficult labour and I didn't give my body enough time to recover."

"It has not been a fab day for me, I have to say...I am very disappointed because I feel like I am in an amazing place. I couldn’t feel my legs [after grimacing in the semi-final], it was a bit weird, but at the end of the day, I can still run, it’s not really a problem. I am in much better shape than that so I am very disappointed."

"If you look at the younger players coming through, they're not that good really. Most of them would do well as half-decent amateurs – or not even amateurs, they're so bad a lot of them. I've probably got to lose an arm and a leg to fall outside the top 50. So that's why I'm hovering around – because of how poor it is down that end."

"Being an athlete, you have to consider whether your meals have enough of everything you need. As a vegetarian, you are forced to be creative, which I find makes me more adventurous with my cooking. Following a strict diet based on performance can be tedious, but because I enjoy the variety of my diet, it makes it easier to follow. … If any cyclists are thinking of becoming vegetarian, then I would suggest giving it a go. There’s definitely no harm in trying it! Be prepared to be experimental and open to new foods – you can’t just take out meat from your existing meals, you need to learn new ways of eating."

"You can talk about fitness but the element people forget about and which has to come first is tenacity. You need that attitude and determination to commit to what you’re doing. It’s not always easy. That tenacity serves you well in races too. I do overload effort in training so when I get to races it all feels easier. I know if I am in pain others will be in pain too."

"Bowls is a young man's game which old men can play."

"I'm not an athlete, more a gymnast and golfer, soldered together."

"I started freerunning when I was 16. It just felt like an evolution of what I always wanted to do as a child: be creative, climb on things. It let me apply an adult mentality to that playfulness. Then I was introduced to veganism. And from there, I found out that the biggest percentage of pollution on the planet comes from animal agriculture. Once I discovered that, it became my calling. I think we all have something to contribute; we just have to look at the bigger picture and ask, “With what we’ve been given, what message can we promote that helps the greater good?”"

"When I became vegan I stopped training for myself and started training with a purpose greater than my own. Veganism for me is about mindfulness. I do this to liberate animals. … Before I went vegan I had tendonitis, and I would get joint aches and ligament strains, and my knees would be sore. All that went away as soon as I switched to a wholefood plant-based diet. It’s anti-inflammatory, and your digestive system gets a break. … I didn’t understand what it meant to be an athlete. I was big, muscularly, but I was swollen; it wasn’t ‘healthy big’. Now I’m leaner, sharper, quicker, and my mind’s sharper too."

"At first it was for health and athletic performance but it also became about ethics and the environment. My strength increased. I put 20lbs on my dumbell benchpress (10lbs each arm) in only 2 weeks and my endurance improved. Running is much easier now. I have more energy and recovery is better too. The whole protein myth is complete nonsense. Plant-based foods have plenty. … As an athlete you want your , the inner lining of your arteries, to be as healthy as possible. It is responsible for nitric oxide production which transports oxygen to the muscles and dilates the arteries. More oxygen means better performance whether it be strength or endurance. Plant-based foods are inherently loaded with antioxidants too, which aid athletes in recovery. If someone wants to be the best athlete they can be they need to fuel their body with the best diet available and that is a whole food, plant-based diet."

"I started out like most people just finding my local martial arts gym … and it's quite easy to start thinking that whatever you're in is the best thing that you can do, so … I assumed that Taekwondo is the best. … I started thinking, “Well, maybe there's something else that the other arts have offer,” so I started cross-training. Anyway, that got me into competing in mixed martial arts. So, I thought my diet was pretty good … and it was until I got injured … that I actually had some time to sit back and really analyze what I was eating, and I realized I hadn't applied the same scrutiny to my diet as I had to the martial arts training. So I saw a parallel there, that in martial arts there's a lot of nonsense out there, people teaching stuff that really doesn't work, and I'd realized that and started finding the truth in martial arts, and basically I realized I hadn't found the truth in nutrition, so last year I spent over 1,000 hours looking at peer reviewed medical science and realized that a plant-based diet is superior and optimal for health and athletic performance."

"Most people think I have a lot of fun and that I'm a pretty good driver but they don't take my driving all that seriously."

"I have to say that I had the best car, but James drove incredibly well towards the end."

"In a straight fight I think James was more than Niki's equal. Our car was fairly ordinary and James just gave it a hell of a drive."

"Monaco is a silly event, not a proper Grand Prix at all. It ceased to be a real race many years ago when wide tires and wings came to be used on Formula 1 cars, making them entirely unsuitable for the absurdly confined spaces in the streets of Monte Carlo... The Monaco Grand Prix is really just an exhibition in which the unfortunate drivers are asked to perform and it still exists only for the benefit of the sponsors who want to show off in the 'glamorous' atmosphere and for the people who want to preserve the 'image' of Formula 1. They should have a parade instead. Then all the cars could parade around like the idiotic 'jetset' poseurs who are thicker on the ground at Monaco than anywhere else in the world."

"We run, not only because we think it is doing us good, but … because it helps us to do other things better."

"It is actually quite exciting when you're flying headfirst into a barrier—the initial part, the initial part is actually quite fun, especially when you hit the gravel trap and you get some air, and then you see it coming and you think 'erk—it's gonna hurt!'"

"Ultimately, you want to feel great. You want to have energy, to be consistent. You don’t want to have the big oscillations and highs and lows in your energy levels. Veganism has eradicated that. … One of the things was my sleeping pattern and not feeling right in the stomach. Your gut is your second brain. We’re taught to drink milk and eat meat for protein and I started looking into other areas of research around all this. The first thing was, what’s happening to the animals? Secondly, the impact it can have on your body. That’s a free advantage I’m going to take. If no one else wants it, well that’s their loss."

"We all wanna feel great. We all wanna look great, have more energy. The most important thing is about having the right fuel in your body. I can't remember feeling this great in my whole life."

"Sure every driver has his value and you want to be respected but again money is not something that drives me."

"They could start by removing some personnel: the head-butting, move-retracting, tournament-rigging, Zurab Azmaiparashvili for instance. He is a disgrace to the organisation. But never let it be said that he is a dunderhead."

"A friend of mine recently joked that his mobile phone will beat Magnus Carlsen. I said, ‘What are you talking about? My microwave could beat Magnus Carlsen.'"

"It is curious that it is far easier to maintain a high "manners" rating if, like Kasparov, you simply don't speak to anyone. I still have much to learn from the great man..."

"Rublevsky is not a sexy player."