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.
I just remember watching Federer the first year he won Wimbledon. He was struggling with his back problem. I remember it vividly. It looked like there was a chance he was not going to finish. He had that look in his eye. Then, somehow, he found the wherewithal to dig a little deeper, and suddenly he wins the thing, and he's a different player.
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success.
Whatever there is of greatness in the United States, or indeed in any other country, is due to labor. The laborer is the author of all greatness and wealth. Without labor there would be no government, no leading class, and nothing to preserve.
Whatever you got you have to accentuate. I ran my female card up and down the ladder my whole career, because I was in a man's world. It was worked by women but owned by men. I was the only female owner in my field at that time.
The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.