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. – Daley Thompson
When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours. – Daley Thompson
If you work hard in real life, people tend to get in your way – either from inertia or prejudice – and they stop you achieving things. It’s the worst thing about real life compared with sports, where you generally get what you deserve: if you’re the fastest guy, you win; there are no other games being played. – Daley Thompson
Even if you’ve been involved in a World Cup, the Olympics is huge. Only the Games has the power to change communities. – Daley Thompson
Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest. – Daley Thompson
People don’t want to serve apprenticeships any more. Kids expect to be paid and treated really well and all that guff before they’ve achieved anything. It doesn’t work like that. You have to spend five or six years being relatively rubbish and put up with it. For that you don’t deserve to be getting lottery money. – Daley Thompson
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. – Daley Thompson
Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions. – Daley Thompson
Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can’t afford losing one. – Daley Thompson
I wouldn’t swap the era I competed in for anything, not a day of it. I started out as an amateur, and people like myself, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Tessa Sanderson and the rest did it for the glory of winning medals for our country. – Daley Thompson
Most people doing the decathlon these days are quite boring, so people don’t relate to them. – Daley Thompson
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. – Daley Thompson
I tend to eat vegetables only when I’m with the kids and the rest of the time, I’m a bit slack. But, I am weight-conscious, so I concentrate on avoiding junk food. – Daley Thompson
I think one of the things about being a good coach is to recognise when you have given all that you can. In fact there should be some sort of unspoken law that says that a coach cannot have anyone for three or four years – if you have not passed on most of the stuff you know in that time, then you are not doing a good job. – Daley Thompson
I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world’s best athletes. – Daley Thompson
Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills. – Daley Thompson
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. – Daley Thompson
Kids have been let down by adults – we’ve tried to give them too much, we’ve tried not to impose discipline. We’ve tried to make their lives easier and, in doing so, we’ve taken something away from them. Kids like boundaries, they also like to be pushed, need to learn what failure is all about, need guidance. – Daley Thompson
We crave instant success these days. If you are a really good sprinter and long jumper, you don’t want to spend two or three years on a whole new set of events. You’re used to doing well and it’s difficult to give that up. – Daley Thompson
