For every athlete, the roar of the crowd goes away, and we have to learn how to turn the page.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As athletes, we're used to reacting quickly. Here, it's 'come, stop, come, stop.' There's a lot of downtime. That's the toughest part of the day.
The sports space is so full of opinion that you aren't hearing from the athletes just speaking for themselves. We are such a Twitter-oriented society with radio talk shows, TV talk shows and social media - what you are missing is the authentic, unfiltered aspect of who these people are.
Most athletes get intimidated once they see how many fans are out there, but it almost calms me down in a way because I think of it as a fun way to show off what I've been working on.
In all Games, there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games when there isn't much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport.
Sport can bring communities together and can release a lot of pent-up emotions.
When you are an athlete, it's difficult to take time off and say you want to come back without everyone judging you and attacking you.
The crowd gives us so much energy and we are able to really feed off of it. Hitting those shots and having the crowd go crazy helps boost our confidence. We love our fans.
Most importantly, you have to stay true to yourself as well as those fans who made you who you are as an athlete.
When you look at athletes, they have fundamentals.
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.