Swimmers

"Many of the things I would wish to do are beyond my control. I would need swimming pools of international standard during my training, have more practice time and participate in many competitions before the Olympics."

"At first I tried out a few disciplines before settling for swimming. Then what followed was a lot of learning and training to become a professional."

"Swimming always challenges an athlete mentally and physically. It is an individual sport, you don’t have a teammate to pass the ball to like in football and team sports. You compete against others, but also with yourself."

"Many of the things I would wish to do are beyond my control."

"I have been training for the whole year with my coach, though it has been difficult because it’s not easy to study and do sport at the same time, I want to do my best."

"At the beginning, I thought I was an ordinary athlete, and I didn't think too much about it. But as people asked me for a lot of things, I also felt that I should pay attention to my words and deeds. No longer. Can't let my temper anymore."

"Just treat every day as a new day to swim. When it's used up, recharge it, and when it's used up, recharge it again."

"I didn't even want to train, I was just playing, but I was persuaded to come back by the coach at the time. He said that you can't train like this. Everyone has a low point. Why can't you persist?"

"But I just want to say if I cannot win the gold eventually, I will not let my rivals win easily. We need to fight for it. I can accept not standing on the highest podium, but I will never give up."

"I hope I could inspire some kids and other people along the way and show them that you can also reach your goals when you work hard for your dreams! Also in one of the smallest countries in the world (Liechtenstein)!"

"The atmosphere of the Olympics was out of this world. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It is an empowering experience and something I will forever cherish being surrounded by some of the best athletes in the world. I was very nervous for the entire time I was there though. It can be overwhelming and often you doubt yourself. But overall an amazing experience."

"My passion for swimming started at a very tender age. I used to swim at my mom’s workplace at the Grand Palm, and it was mainly for fun. But the love developed and I took it from there.I got an opportunity to go to the USA to study and do professional swimming by emailing a couple of Universities. So many University coaches wanted me to be in their respective teams. I got enrolled at Florida, and everything transitioned quickly as I was introduced to impressive training facilities, a coach, physical therapy and sports psychology which played a vital role in my performance as a swimmer."

"I think the beauty of Catholicism is its consistency through both successes and difficulties. I’ve counted on my faith to give me strength through both training and competition — but also in school, with my family and everyday life. So while my goals in the pool have changed, my faith remains something that’s consistent and something I can always rely on."

"It has been fascinating to see other cultures, and to see how sports can serve to link these cultures together, even if just momentarily. An interesting common thread I see is the importance of sports in these cultures, the passion that exists for sports and athletic accomplishment. It is wonderful that sports can have this kind of impact on people, and one can only hope that sports and competition will therefore have a positive impact on how various nations view each other."

"霍頓（Mack Horton）、蓋伊（James Guy），你們游得再快一點，就能喝到我美味的洗腳水了。"

"If Horton and Guy can swim a little faster, they can taste my delicious footbath water."

"1500 metre, I am the king."

"You’re a loser, I’m a winner."

"I just won't share a podium with someone that behaves in the way that he has."

"It feels like all my hard work has paid off and being able to back up with two big competitions this year has given me more confidence for the future and I'm really excited to see how far I can go."

"I'll bet if I compare notes with Junie Allyson and Debbie Reynolds and anyone else who's had more than one marriage, the fact is that you fall in love and it's so wonderful to think about something other than yourself and whether the script's right for you and who's going to be your leading man, that you don't really ask yourself questions about the fellow. He's just wonderful looking and he dances well and you have a wonderful time and it's fun to go out, and all of a sudden you're in a lifelong marriage."

"Just make the point we come from the water. It's the most natural medium in the world. It's the only sport you can do from your first bath to your last without hurting yourself."

"You can work out in a pool and sweat, but you don't smell. In the water you are weightless. You are ageless. It feels exhilarating to get wet. And you know the water is a very sexy medium. Why do you think people always get in a hot tub?"

"Lewis Pugh is a maritime lawyer by training and a pursuer of dreams by inclination. There isn't an ocean he hasn't wanted to swim, or a mountain he hasn't wan't to climb, and it's no surprise that he quit his well-paid lawyer's job in the City of London for a more interesting life."

"He just pulls on his Speedos and gets on with it. It's Britishly mad."

"I have seen what the challenge of the impossible does to some athlete's minds - once their minds accept that the impossible is achievable, their bodies soon follow."

"Four-point-two kilometres is a long way for a frozen body to sink."

"My father taught me to understand that not much was impossible, if you had a mind to go after it. What seems beyond you is only unreachable if that’s what you believe."

"Nothing excited me more than opening up the atlas and seeing places and seas, imagining what they looked like and what kind of life the people had."

"My love for the water would always be tempered by respect for dangers that must never be underestimated."

"My own feeling was that witnessing the explosion of an atomic bomb, and having to examine all the dead animals, had a profound effect on my father."

"Always when we walked, it was clear to me how much he loved nature, wild flowers, animals in their natural habitat and the simple pleasures of a beautiful sunset. My love for the environment did not develop out of a vacuum."

"Going against the tide has never been difficult for me. It wasn’t even a conscious decision but the natural consequence of following my own instinct."

"It took me over three years to get the beret and the most enriching part of the experience was getting to know men for whom you would have given your life on the battlefield. It is a big thing to say there are people who are not your family for whom you would give up your life. But that is how close we became."

"Ultimately I wanted to be a pioneer swimmer, a distant descendant of Scott, Amundsen and Hillary, except that I would be an explorer of the water."

"I resolved to follow my dream. I wanted to push every boundary. I wanted to swim further than anyone else. I wanted to cross seas and round capes that no one had dreamed of swimming before. And I wanted to swim in waters that were so cold no one thought it was possible to survive in them. And though it promised to make me poor and would take away the security provided by a career in law, that didn’t worry me."

"I could not believe what I was seeing: everywhere there were whale bones. Thousands of them stacked on top of each other. They rose from the seabed almost to the surface of the water. There were big bones. I could make out many of them: rib bones, jaw bones, vertebrae. In some places they were piled so high that, when I took a stroke, my hands touched them. I thought of all the beautiful whales I’d seen around the coast of South Africa and Norway that add so much to the area. How many whales were hunted and brought to this island before having their carcasses burned for oil and their bones dumped in this way? It disgusted me to such an extent that I considered stopping the swim to move it elsewhere, but I decided I had to press on."

"I have been haunted by that swim through the whale graveyard and haven’t been able to get the image of the bones out of my head. Man hunted whales almost to the point of extinction, not seeming to care that we would lose one of the wonders of the sea world forever. It is the coldness of the water in Antarctica that preserves the bones and makes it look like they were left there yesterday but I like to think they are there as a reminder of man’s potential for folly."

"...when you swim from England to France you’ve got to leave your doubt on the beach at Dover."

"When people say to me, you must have a very strong mind to swim across the North Pole, or off Antarctica or on Mount Everest, I tell them that endurance swimming builds good mental strength."

"I don’t know of any sport where the goalposts can shift the way they do with endurance swimming."

"Thoughts alone won’t make extraordinary things happen. But nothing ever happens if you don’t visualise it first."

"A massive turquoise glacier feeds into Magdalenefjord, with chunks of ice as big as buildings breaking off and landing in the water to float away as icebergs. As I swam past them, with my head in the water, I heard a tantalising sound: a snap-crackle-pop, just like Rice Krispies in milk. It was the sound of tiny air bubbles being released from the ice – air that had been trapped there as much as 3,000 years ago. To swim through this sound, I thought, is to swim in history."

"They have [...] a split personality. One moment they’re your best mate, and next they are trying to drag you down to the bottom of the sea to drown you. [...] It’s just astonishing."

"The essence of any great achievement is to believe in your purpose."

"I knew now that I had to stand up and start speaking about protecting our environment. From that moment on, every swim should have the aim of inspiring people to protect and preserve the world’s oceans and all that live in them."

"The most powerful form of self-belief comes from believing in something greater than you. Because when you’ve got purpose, everything becomes possible."

"I’m not a rule-breaker by nature. But there are times when you need to untangle yourself from red tape. Because the truth is, if you wait for permission, some things will simply never happen."

"When you have hope in the future, you have power in the present. And when you lose that hope, your dream goes with it."

"Never plan for victory and defeat in your mind at the same time."