My parents never forced things on my brother and me: not our faith, not our sports, not our friends. Yet they taught us about surrounding ourselves with the right people: the kind of people we want to be.
What happens is once you start to understand football, you realise that it's not just about the physical side of the game and chasing after a ball. It's a strategic sport which requires a lot of intelligence. It's a very mental game.
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
Leadership is one of sports' intangibles. Guys can score, guys can fight, guys can skate faster than anybody else. But not everybody can say, 'Follow me.'
Every NBA player, every athlete, I think once you get to this level in life, whether you have kids or you're about to have kids, understands that this is so much bigger than this sport.
In real life I am a bit of a tomboy. I like the footy and sports. I am more comfortable in running gear than I am in heels, because I usually trip up in them.
I never thought acting would be my life. I only started doing it because I needed something to occupy my weekends after I dislocated my knee and couldn't play sport.
My favorite sport, frankly, is college football. I'm a college football junkie, even though I'm associated with golf and like golf and have played it all my life.
In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their child a better life. So they came to the United States and put me in gymnastics.
J.J. Watt is larger than life and Houston's newest sports hero, in every sense of the word. He is a guy who spends NFL Fridays at high school football games and actively seeks out those in need of his kindness.
I've been a sports fan all my life, and like most other actors, I'm convinced I could have been a pro athlete if Hollywood hadn't come calling.
In my sports or workout life, I like to prove to myself I can do something, whether it's a half marathon or whatever it is. I like to take challenges that scare me because then once we've accomplished it, we feel stronger.
My stance has always been that there's no place in our sport for drug users. I've always said it's a ban for life if you come up positive. I stand by that.
It's important to just kind of get away from your sport until you miss it. It's about taking time to enjoy other aspects of life or learn new things. It helps rejuvenate.
My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that.
So while you're an athlete, and you have that platform, what you want to be able to do is make it work for you as much as possible, because there's going to be life after sports.
I'm very lucky to live my life through a sport that I love. I'm in a very privileged position that my work is my hobby.
It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, for all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly.
I want to get fitter. And yes, I'm learning hot yoga to get a bikini body. I don't believe one has to sport a size-zero figure to flaunt it. One just needs a fit, sexy and toned body.
You know, I love wearing heels. I wish I could wear them all the time, but, you know, my sport doesn't really permit it.
We don't swim for the attention. We don't swim to be rock stars. There is something beautiful about being in an anonymous sport and being fairly anonymous. It enables you do something you love without any of the other effects.
