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I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life.

The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic Idea.

People who aren't perhaps that into sport are going to be following me and wanting to be part of the Olympics. That definitely does bring added pressure but as an athlete the Olympics are the ultimate competition.

The Olympics have their own unique atmosphere and energy. People might say it's just the same as any other competition, but don't kid yourself. There's a hunger for victory.

For any athlete growing up, the Olympics is the one thing you watch with your family, and it's the one thing you dream about. Seeing your country's flag go up as you get a gold medal is the best thing you can achieve.

The Olympics is about showing what you've done with your life, your dream as an athlete and sharing that with the world.

Sport allows us to engage in dialogue and to build bridges, and it may even have the capacity to reshape international relations. The Olympic Games embody perfectly this universal mission.

The advice I will give my children, if and when they have Olympic aspirations, will be to go for it.

I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.

You hit one level of the sport, and then you want to get to the next level. Until, eventually, the Olympics becomes part of that dream, part of that goal set and the mindset of wanting to get there. And then you realize there's so much incredible hard work and determination and effort that you need to put in along the way.