A biography for Daley Thompsonhasn’t been written yet.
“Retiring was hard. I'd spent 15 years doing something I loved, but when you get older everything seems to go. When I started spending too long with the physio and the doctor, I knew it was time to call it a day. But I had no preparation for being retired and I didn't know what to do.”
“There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.”
“Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills.”
“Even if you've been involved in a World Cup, the Olympics is huge. Only the Games has the power to change communities.”
“Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.”
“There were only ever two black kids at my school. I never considered myself to be 'a black kid'. I was who I was. Which isn't to say things haven't happened to me that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't black.”
“I am an education ambassador, mainly working with schools.”
“Ever since I was a kid, whatever situation I was presented with, I always made the most of it.”
“The stopwatch doesn't lie. The tape measure doesn't lie.”
“What used to drive me was the fact that I wanted to be better than everybody at something. One of my best qualities is that I used whatever other people found to be an adverse thing to be a positive thing for myself.”
“We live in the best place on earth but at times the worst.”
“I've still got a small fitness and conditioning business where I travel round the world doing stuff for individuals and corporations, mainly fitness training.”
“Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.”
“For kids it's natural to be competitive.”
“I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective.”
“Los Angeles was great fun because it was the polar opposite of Moscow in 1980. It was sunny and bright, lots of colours around, whereas Moscow was dark and oppressive.”
“Sport fosters many things that are good; teamwork and leadership.”
“I did not want to be the best black man of the year; I wanted to be the best man of the year.”
“Kids are starting at such a low base rate in terms of fitness that it's taking them years to catch up to where people like me started from. Every little bit is making it more difficult for kids to succeed on a world stage.”
“People tend to like an athlete's performance, but if you don't get a feeling for the individual, you're not very emotive about them.”