Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
Interpretation
Success in sports can be influenced by genetics and the choices one makes, including their upbringing.
Sebastian Coe's quote highlights a tongue-in-cheek perspective on the factors that contribute to becoming a champion runner. While hard work and determination are essential, genetic predisposition and a supportive background can play a significant role in athletic success, suggesting that some advantages come from one's heritage and environment.
In practice
In a speech about sports and competition, one might quote this to emphasize the role of genetics in achievement.
Throughout my athletic career, the overall goal was always to be a better athlete than I was at the moment β whether next week, next month or next year. The improvement was the goal. The medal was simply the ultimate reward for achieving that goal.
Blink and you miss a sprint. The 10,000 meters is lap after lap of waiting. Theatrically, the mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding.
Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something.
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 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 Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race.
My jersey hanging from the ceiling is going to be a symbol of the hard work of the people I played with.
As you become more successful, the gender barrier disappears. The credibility challenges you have during your growing up years starts disappearing when you start demonstrating success.
When I started skating, it was such a small community. You didn't aspire to be rich or famous or make a career out of it because that wasn't something anyone had done yet.
My goal one day is to be in the same sentence as Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall.
Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure.
I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing.... Though I hadn't a penny left, I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.
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