I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish.
From Sebastian Coe
I can be a bit impatient sometimes. If I'm really focusing on something, I can expect everybody to move at the same pace, and that's probably not massively endearing.
There's a difference between hurting when you lose and being a bad loser. You don't compete at the highest level of sport to feel comfortable about losing, but you behave in a civil way when it goes wrong because that is the flip side.
Football was not what I was put on this planet to do.
Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan.
Some people found it difficult to understand my relationship with my father, but that may have been because they couldn't get beyond their relationship with their own parents.
There is nothing so marginal as a party that has been in power for 18 years and slides into opposition. You influence nothing.
Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something.
During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year.
5 perspectives
4 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives