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My main idea was to create a sports facility for the basics. This is why I established the club.

I played baseball in college, and then I went to Russia to study acting and played some pro ball over there.

I had a very ordinary background in Sheffield; I went to a secondary modern, but I saw something on TV in 1968 that inspired me to join an athletics club, and 12 years later, with great coaching and the support of people who loved me a lot, I ended up at an Olympic Games.

I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.

Fighting at the Olympics has been my lifelong dream, and I cannot believe I am there now.

I was a Ukrainian folk dancer in my teens, and I toured the country in 1991, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union.

My childhood dream was to play basketball, actually.

I was the very first athlete in East Germany allowed to go professional.