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We need to educate our elite coaches more and have a better approach to teaching the athletes about how to be healthy rather than berate them, humiliate them, use tactics that could scar them for life.

The top athletes are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. Approach yours the same way.

It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.

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.

Athletes are sort of part of the community at large. They have to be dedicated to what they do, and go through lots of peaks and valleys. And there's a lot of training that goes into their careers. It's a struggle. Very dramatic.

One of the great lessons I've learned in athletics is that you've got to discipline your life. No matter how good you may be, you've got to be willing to cut out of your life those things that keep you from going to the top.

You don't have to try to hurt people and be angry to be an athlete.

Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up.

I think everybody gets bullied in their own way. Even athletes probably get it from their parents. To a degree everybody gets bullied.

As athletes, we all have egos, we all think we can help, and when you're not given that chance, it's hard to watch.