To have this gold medal around my neck is an indescribable feeling. I'm the happiest person right now.
In the military, they give medals for people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may survive. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others.
You want to come home from a tournament with a winner's medal. That's not the fans or the media putting us under pressure, that's the pressure we put ourselves under.
Athens is a great place for me. It is my second home. It's where I won my first world championship medal, it's where I set my world record.
I wasn't really expecting me to win the gold in this race. To get another medal for myself and for the U.S. was a pretty good thing to happen, I'd say.
Gold medals are made out of your sweat, blood and tears, and effort in the gym every day, and sacrificing a lot.
The number of medals on an officer's breast varies in inverse proportion to the square of the distance of his duties from the front line.
When you've won a gold medal and you're at the top of your sport, everyone's trying to beat you. I find that incredibly motivating.
I am not interested in medals or titles. I don't need them. I need the love of the public and I fight for it.
People could see in me who I am now, an Olympic champ, the best in the world.
The benefit is competition, the thrill of playing in the Olympics, being an Olympian, playing against the best.
I raced locally for a year, went to Europe the year after and went to the Olympics the year after that.
It was so much fun being in the Olympic Village and meeting all the athletes.
I always wanted to be Olympic champion and do clean programs.
I had dreamed of being at the Olympics since I was 7 years old.
I always thought, it would be neat to make the Olympic team.
My experience at the 1992 Winter Olympics was my fulfillment of dreaming the Impossible Dream.
Getting to know athletes from all over the planet is a big part of the Olympic experience.
The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.
Of course, when you're training your whole life to get to the Olympics, you train for gold.
Even before I competed in the Olympics, I always wanted to write a book.
