Top 25 Inspirational Quotes by Olympic Legends
Which of these 25 quotes by Olympic legends do you consider as the most inspirational?
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- Michael Fred Phelps II was born in Towson, Maryland, to Deborah Sue (Davisson), a middle school principal, and Michael Fred Phelps, a state trooper. Before the 2004 Olympics started, rumor had it that 19 year-old Phelps was thinking of trying to match or even surpass Mark Spitz's legendary seven gold medals record. By his fourth race with one gold and two bronze it was obvious he couldn't tie it but instead he could match Russian gymnast's Alexander Dityatin's record of eight medals in one Olympics. Every race after the two bronze he came away with gold. After his seventh race he did a truly noble thing by handing over his butterfly leg on the 4 x 200m Freestyle relay to Ian Crocker a temporary rival and now a friend. To everyone this was deemed the most selfless act of the games but to Michael it was just giving his team mate another chance. Throughout the entire week of competition he barely managed to sleep so when he finally got to rest he went to check out how the dominant women's teams were doing and enjoying the culture and atmosphere in Athens. The success in Athens was amazing. He surpassed fellow American, Mark Spitz's record of 7 gold medals, that were set in the 1972 Olympic Games, at Munich, Germany, 36 years earlier. In Beijing 2008: Games of the XXIX Olympiad (2008), after record tying seventh gold medal, Mark Spitz personally called Michael Phelps and congratulated him for his historic feats and records, he achieved in Beijing, China, were well watched as Mark Spitz's record were tied and broken, by Phelps, as he and teammates were 8 for 8, in 2008. All are first place gold medals!(USA gold medalist in swimming): "You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get."
- Kristin Armstrong (born August 11, 1973) is a professional road bicycle racer and three-time Olympic gold medalist, the winner of the women's individual time trial in 2008, 2012 and 2016. Before temporarily retiring to start a family in 2009, she rode for Cervélo TestTeam in women's elite professional events on the National Racing Calendar (NRC) and UCI Women's World Cup. She announced a return to competitive cycling beginning in the 2011 season, competing for Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY12 at the Redlands Classic.(USA gold medalist in cycling): "Embrace your sweat. It is your essence and your emancipation."
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Usain Saint Leo Bolt is a Jamaican sprinter. Regarded as the fastest human being ever timed, he is the first man to hold both the 100 metres and 200 metres world records since fully automatic time became mandatory. He also holds the world record in the 4 × 100 metres relay. He is the reigning World and Olympic champion in these three events.
Bolt gained worldwide popularity for his double sprint victory at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in world record times. He later became the first man at the modern Olympic Games to win six gold medals for sprinting. He was the first to win consecutive Olympic 100 m and 200 m titles (2008 and 2012). At the 2016 Summer Olympics, he became the first track athlete in modern Olympic history to win three gold medals in one discipline, with his win in the 100 m sprint. He also won the gold medal in the men's 200 m, his third gold in the event at the Olympic Games.(Jamaica gold medalist in track and field sprint): "Worrying gets you nowhere. If you turn up worrying about how you're going to perform, you've already lost. Train hard, turn up, run your best and the rest will take care of itself."- Dara Grace Torres (born April 15, 1967) is an American former competitive swimmer who is a twelve-time Olympic medalist and former world record-holder in three events. Torres is the first swimmer to represent the United States in five Olympic Games (1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008), and, at age 41, the oldest swimmer to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, she competed in the 50-meter freestyle, 4×100-meter medley relay, and 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and won silver medals in all three events.
Torres has won twelve Olympic medals (four gold, four silver, four bronze), one of three women with the most Olympic women's swimming medals. She won five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics when, at age 33, she was the oldest member of the 2000 U.S. Olympic Swim Team. She has also won at least one medal in each of the five Olympics in which she has competed, making her one of only a handful of Olympians to earn medals in five different Games.(USA gold medalist in swimming): "Never put an age limit on your dreams." - Producer
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Perhaps the greatest amateur wrestler in history, Dan Gable is synonomous with wrestling. The Waterloo, Iowa, native began wrestling as boy and won three Iowa High School championships and two NCAA championships at Iowa State University. He lost his final college match in 1970, however two years later he won the gold medal in his weight class at the Munich Olympics. What was all the more remarkable about his win was that he did not give up a point in his matches. He later coached the University of Iowa, and won several national championships, before retiring in 1997.(USA gold medalist in wrestling): "Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."- Producer
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Mariel Margaret "Mia" Hamm-Garciaparra (born March 17, 1972) is a retired American professional association football player and two time olympic gold medalist and FIFA Women's World Cup winner. Hamm played many years as a forward for the United States women's national soccer team and was a founding member of the Washington Freedom. Hamm held the record for international goals, more than any other player, male or female, in the history of soccer. until 2013 when fellow American Abby Wambach scored her 159th goal to break the record and Christine Sinclair of Canada past her in August 2016. Hamm is also the third most capped female player in soccer history behind Kristine Lilly and Christie Rampone, appearing in 275 international matches. She also holds the national team record for most career assists with 144.(USA gold medalist in women’s football): "I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match."- Actor
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Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 17, 1963. He was the fourth of five children born to James and Deloris. James Jordan was a mechanic and Deloris Jordan was a bank teller. Soon after Michael's birth, James and Deloris felt that the streets of Brooklyn were unsafe to raise a family, so they moved the family to Wilmington, North Carolina.
As a youngster, Michael immediately became interested in sports. However, it was baseball not basketball that was his first love. He would play catch in the yard with his father, who loved baseball. He soon started to play basketball to try and follow in the footsteps of his older brother, Larry, whom he idolized growing up.
At Laney High School, as a sophomore, he decided to try out for the varsity team but was cut because he was raw and undersized. The following summer, he grew four inches and practiced tirelessly. The hard work paid off as he averaged 25 points per game in his last two years and was selected to the McDonald's All-American Team as a senior.
Following high school, he earned a basketball scholarship from North Carolina University where he would play under legendary coach Dean Smith. In his first year, he was named ACC Freshman of the Year. He would help lead the Tarheels to the 1982 NCAA Championship, making the game-winning shot.
After winning the Naismith College Player of the Year award in 1984, Jordan decided to leave North Carolina to enter the NBA draft. Although he decided to leave college early, he would later return to the university in 1986 to complete his degree in geography.
In the 1984 NBA draft, he was selected with the third overall pick by the Chicago Bulls. As a rookie for the Bulls, he made an immediate impact, averaging an amazing 28.2 points a game, including six games where he scored 40+ points. He was selected to the NBA All-Star Game and named Rookie of the Year. This would just be the beginning of a career filled with awards and accolades. In the upcoming years, he would go on to win five regular season MVP awards, six NBA championships, six NBA finals MVP awards, three All-Star game MVP awards, and a defensive player of the year award.
In 1993, tragedy struck Jordan's seemingly perfect life. On July 23, 1993, his father, James, was murdered off Interstate 95 in North Carolina. Two locals had robbed him, shot him in the chest and threw his body in a swamp.
Three months later on October 6, 1993, following a run of three consecutive NBA championships, Jordan announced his retirement from basketball citing that "he no longer had the desire to play." Now "retired" at age 33, it was uncertain what Jordan would do next. Would he take a year off out of the public eye to grieve and then come back to the Bulls? Would he go out and look for a white collar job in the field of geography, his college major? Or would he take up a completely different hobby like golf?
In early 1994, Jordan decided to take up a new hobby alright. However, it wasn't golf. It was baseball. Despite not playing baseball since high school some 13 years ago, he signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox in 1994. He played one unspectacular season for the Double-A Birmingham Barons.
On March 18, 1995, Jordan, a man of few words since his retirement, sent two important words to media sources everywhere: "I'm Back". He celebrated his return to the NBA by doing what he always did best: winning. Although the Bulls would lose in the playoffs to the Orlando Magic, it was obvious that Jordan was still the same superstar player. He would go on to lead the Bulls to three more consecutive NBA championships and etch his place in the history as the "NBA's greatest player of all-time".
On January 13, 1999, Jordan re-announced his retirement, saying that "he was 99.9 percent sure that he would never play again". Soon after, Jordan became part owner of the Washington Wizards.
Near the start of the 2001-02 season, there were hints that Jordan may try another comeback to the NBA. On September 25, 2001, Jordan confirmed those rumors, announcing that he would once again return to the NBA as a member of the Wizards. His two seasons in Washington were mediocre at best. His statistics were solid and he showed some flashes of his old self but he could not lead the Wizards to the playoffs and missed several games due to injury. He retired for good following the 2002-03 season and was subsequently dismissed as president of the Washington Wizards.
In June 2006, he became part owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. Later that year, he filed for divorce from Juanita, his wife of 17 years. They have three children together.(USA gold medalist in Men's Basketball): "Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."- Producer
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Gabrielle Christina Victoria "Gabby" Douglas (born December 31, 1995) is an American artistic gymnast. She was a member of the United States women's national gymnastics team, dubbed the Fierce Five by the media, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where she won gold medals in the individual all-around and team competitions. She was also a member of the gold-winning American team at the 2011 and the 2015 World Championships, and the all-around silver medalist at the 2015 World Championships. She was part of the Final Five at the 2016 Summer Olympics, where she won gold in the team competition.
Douglas is the first African-American woman in Olympic history to become the individual all-around champion, and the first American gymnast to win gold in both the individual all-around and team competitions at the same Olympics. She and Simone Biles are the only two American all-around champions to win multiple gold medals in a single Olympic Games. Douglas is the first female reigning Olympic all-around champion to return to the World Championships and medal in the all-around since Elena Davydova in 1981. Gabby Douglas is also the reigning AT&T American Cup all-around champion.
As a public figure, Douglas' gymnastics successes have led to her life story adaptation in the 2014 Lifetime biopic film, The Gabby Douglas Story, as well the acquisition of her own reality television series, Douglas Family Gold.(USA gold medalist in gymnastics): "The hard days are the best because that’s where champions are made."- Andre Kirk Agassi (born April 29, 1970) is an American retired professional tennis player and former World No. 1, who was one of the game's most dominant players from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s. Generally considered by critics and fellow players to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Agassi had been called the greatest service returner in the history of the game. Described by the BBC upon his retirement as "perhaps the biggest worldwide star in the sport's history", Agassi compiled performances that, along with his unorthodox apparel and attitude, saw him cited as one of the most charismatic players in the history of the game. As a result, he is credited for helping to revive the popularity of tennis during the 1990s.(USA gold medalist in tennis): "Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting meaning. This is why we're here."
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Jacqueline "Jackie" Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962) is an American retired track and field athlete, ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the women's heptathlon as well as in the women's long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals, in those two events at four different Olympic Games. Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the Greatest Female Athlete of All-Time, just ahead of Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
After retiring as a competitive athlete, Joyner-Kersee has been involved with many philanthropic efforts and has joined the Board of Directors for USA Track & Field (USATF), the national governing body of the sport.(USA gold medalist in track and field): "Age is no barrier. It's a limitation you put on your mind."- Jesse Owens, arguably the most popular American track and field star in history, was -- along with his contemporary, world's heavyweight champion Joe Louis -- one of the first African Americans to change white society's perception of both black athletes and, more importantly, people of color. The future Olympic champion was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, the youngest of 10 children born to sharecroppers Henry and Emma Owens. When young "J.C." as he was called was eight years old, his parents decided to abandon their small hometown and flee the sharecropper's life of peonage (legal in the U.S. until a 1938 Supreme Court decision outlawed it) by moving north to Cleveland, Ohio to find a better way of life, far away from the Jim Crow segregated south. J.C. was enrolled in a public school, and on his first day of school, the teacher heard his name as "Jesse", which was what he would be known as instead of J.C. for the rest of his life.
Prosperity did not come with the move to Cleveland as southern blacks were to find that racism was prevalent up north too, and Owens had to work while attending school to help support his family. Because he had to work after school, his high school track coach would meet him in the mornings to train him, due to his great talent. He was recruited by many colleges, but decided to go to the University of Ohio, but without a scholarship, he had to again work his way through school. In addition, he had to face discrimination daily on campus and during the travels to track meets, as America was still in the throes of legal segregation.
Owens married his high school sweetheart, Ruth Solomon, in 1935, and they eventually had three daughters together. At the Big Ten meet in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, Owens set three world records and tied a fourth in less than an hour. Owens tied the record in the 100-yard dash at 9.4 seconds, and set records in the broad jump (26 feet 8 1/4 inches), the 220-yard dash (20.3 seconds) and the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds). The stage was set for Berlin.
The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were held in Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and Hitler's Nazi Party used the event as a soapbox to promulgate the theory of "Aryan" racial superiority. Hitler was spectacularly shown up by Jesse Owens and other African American athletes, members of a so-called "inferior" race. Despite the hostile atmosphere, Owens triumphed in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the broad jump. He replaced a Jewish-American member of the 400-meter relay team that went on to win the Gold Medal. In three of his events, Owens -- who became the first American in the history of track and field to win four gold medals in a single Olympics, a feat not duplicated until 1984, when Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the Warsaw Pact nations-free 1984 Summer Olympics) -- established Olympic records. It is disputed whether Owens shook hands with Hitler. By the end of the games, the German fans cheered for him. In fact, in his 1970 autobiography "The Jesse Owens Story", Owens claimed that the Fuhrer himself waved to him.
Owens' life after the Olympics was marred by the lack of opportunities provided to all African Americans, not just athletes. Although he came back to a ticker-tape parade held in in his honor by the City of New York, Owens had to ride the freight elevator to attend a reception for him at the posh Waldorf-Astoria hotel. In his autobiography, Owens remembered, "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Like many African Americans in the first half of the 20th Century, Owens was a Republican. The Democratic Party traditionally counted on the votes of the "Solid South", politicians who were anti-black and pro-segregation, while the Party of Lincoln traditionally was the party of civil rights legislation, which died in committee under long-serving Southern Democratic pols in Congress. It was not until the 1960 Presidential election that a majority of African Americans voted for the Democratic candidate rather than the Republican. Thus, it is not surprising that Owens endorsed Republican Presidential candidate 'Alf Landon' over incumbent President 'Franklin D. Roosevelt' in 1936, who would lose, crushed under the massive landslide racked up by FDR, who began to form a "New Deal coalition" that would embrace African Americans.
After the Olympics, Owens had difficulty making a living and turned to sports promotion, essentially turning himself into an entertainer. Though boxing was integrated, the number of African American contenders was regulated as to not alienate white fans, and the pro sports of baseball, football and basketball were segregated. Black athletes, even those as popular as Owens, did not begin winning serious promotional contracts until the 1970s.
To make an income, Owens engaged in many exhibitions, such as running against race horses before Negro League professional baseball games. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became a radio disc-jockey. He was extremely well-liked, and became an in-demand public speaker. Owen's popularity grew with the time, as he was seen after the war as the man who showed up Hitler and his discredited policies of racial superiority, thus becoming an important public figure in a society that, beginning with the Supreme Court decision desegregating schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), was facing the painful process of overcoming its own racial hatreds and sordid past.
Owens started his own public relations firm, and traveled around the country speaking on behalf of corporations and for US Olympic Committee. His speeches stressed the importance of religion, hard work and loyalty. He also sponsored and participated in youth sports programs in inner-city neighborhoods. In 1976, President Gerald Ford bestowed the Medal of Freedom on Jesse Owens, the highest civilian honor the United States government can award.
Jesse Owens, one of the more remarkable Americans to grace the world stage, died on March 31, 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona from complications of lung cancer, likely caused by his pack-a-day cigarette smoking habit. He was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. Owens was 66 years old. His Owens's memory is kept alive by his widow Ruth and his daughter Marlene, who operate the Jesse Owens Foundation, which provides financial assistance and support to deserving young people s from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Honors continued to accrue to Owens, even after death, testament to his greatness as a symbol of overcoming adversity. In 1984, a street in Berlin was named after him, and a school was renamed Jesse Owens Realschule/Oberschule (Secondary School). On March 28, 1990, Owens was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, which was presented to his family by President 'George H. W. Bush'.(USA gold medalist in track and field): "We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort." - Actress
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Mary Lou Retton (born January 24, 1968) is a retired American gymnast. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a gold medal in the individual all-around competition, as well as two silver medals and two bronze medals. Her performance made her one of the most popular athletes in the United States.
Retton was the first ever American woman to win the all-around gold medal at the Olympics and was the only one to do so for twenty years. She is credited with being a pioneering figure in American women's gymnastics, including by the four American women who have since equaled her feat consecutively: Carly Patterson (Athens in 2004), Nastia Liukin (2008 in Beijing), Gabby Douglas (2012 in London) and Simone Biles (2016 in Rio de Janeiro). Twice during that span, Americans also took silver as part of a one-two finish: Shawn Johnson in 2008 and Aly Raisman in 2016. Furthermore, prior to Retton's Olympic triumph, no American woman had won all-around gold at the World Championships; since then, seven Americans have done so a combined eleven times - in chronological order, Kim Zmeskal, Shannon Miller (twice), Chellsie Memmel, Johnson, Bridget Sloan, Jordyn Wieber and Simone Biles (three times).(USA gold medalist in gymnastics): "Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit."- Mark Andrew Spitz (born February 10, 1950) is an American former competition swimmer, nine-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in seven events. He won seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, an achievement surpassed only by Michael Phelps, who won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Spitz set new world records in all seven events in which he competed in 1972.
Between 1968 and 1972, Spitz won nine Olympic golds, a silver, and a bronze; five Pan American golds; 31 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) titles; and eight National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) titles. During those years, he set 35 world records, but two were in trials and unofficial. He was named World Swimmer of the Year in 1969, 1971, and 1972 by Swimming World Magazine. He was the third athlete to win nine Olympic gold medals.(USA gold medalist in swimming): "If you fail to prepare, you’re prepared to fail." - Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner (December 21, 1959 - September 21, 1998), also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete. She is considered the fastest woman of all time based on the fact that the world records she set in 1988 for both the 100 m and 200 m still stand and have yet to be seriously challenged. During the late 1980s she became a popular figure in international track and field because of her record-setting performances and flashy personal style. She died in her sleep as the result of an epileptic seizure in 1998 at the age of 38. She attended California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).(USA gold medalist in track and field sprint): "If you want to run as fast as the men, you've got to train like the men."
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Muhammad Ali beat more champions and top contenders than any heavyweight champion in history. He defeated heavyweight kings Sonny Liston (twice), Floyd Patterson (twice), Ernie Terrell, Jimmy Ellis, Ken Norton (twice), Joe Frazier (twice), George Foreman and Leon Spinks. He defeated light-heavyweight champs Archie Moore and Bob Foster. Ali defeated European heavyweight champions Henry Cooper, Karl Mildenberger, Jürgen Blin, Joe Bugner, Richard Dunn, Jean-Pierre Coopman and Alfredo Evangelista. He defeated British and Commonwealth king Brian London. All of Ali's defeats were by heavyweight champions: Frazier, Norton, Spinks, Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick. Ali also beat undefeated fighters Sonny Banks (12-0), Billy Daniels (16-0), 'Rudi Lubbers' (21-0) and George Foreman (40-0).(USA gold medalist in boxing): "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."- Producer
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Sanya Richards-Ross (born February 26, 1985) is a former Jamaican-American track and field athlete who competed internationally for the United States. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, she won gold in the 400 metres after finishing third at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Richards-Ross has also won Olympic gold in the 4×400 meters relay at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the 2012 Summer Olympics. She was the best 400m runner in the world for a decade, ranking No. 1 in the world from 2005-2009 and again in 2012.
In addition to her Olympic accolades, she is also a seven-time medalist at the World Championships in Athletics (five of which are gold). In 2009, she was the World Champion in the 400 metres.(USA gold medalist in track and field): "Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can’t handle."- Actor
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Frederick Carlton "Carl" Lewis (born July 1, 1961) is an American former track and field athlete, who won 10 Olympic medals, including nine gold, and 10 World Championships medals, including eight gold. His career spanned from 1979 to 1996 when he last won an Olympic title and subsequently retired.
Lewis was a dominant sprinter and long jumper who topped the world rankings in the 100 m, 200 m and long jump events frequently from 1981 to the early 1990s. He set world records in the 100 m, 4 × 100 m and 4 × 200 m relays, while his world record in the indoor long jump has stood since 1984. His 65 consecutive victories in the long jump achieved over a span of 10 years is one of the sport's longest undefeated streaks. Over the course of his athletics career, Lewis broke ten seconds for the 100 meters 15 times and 20 seconds for the 200 meters 10 times.(USA gold medalist in track and field): "If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win."- Yolanda Gail Devers (born November 19, 1966) is an American retired track and field athlete. A three-time Olympic champion for the United States Olympic Team, she is also an inductee of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
Devers was born in Seattle, Washington, and grew up near National City, California, graduating from Sweetwater High School in 1984. Sweetwater's football and track stadium would later be named Gail Devers Stadium. A young talent in the 100 m and 100 m hurdles, Devers was in training for the 1988 Summer Olympics, started experiencing health problems, suffering from among others migraine and vision loss. She qualified for the Olympics 100 m hurdles, in which she was eliminated in the semi-finals, but her health continued to deteriorate even further.
In 2011, she was elected into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. The following year she was elected into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame. In November 2012, Devers was announced as a 2013 recipient of the NCAA Silver Anniversary Award, presented annually to six distinguished former college student-athletes on the 25th anniversary of the end of their college sports careers.(USA gold medalist in track and field): "Remember all things are possible for those who believe." - Bobby Knight was born in Massillon, Ohio, and grew up in Orrville, Ohio. He began playing organized basketball at Orrville High School. Knight continued at Ohio State in 1958 when he played for Basketball Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor. Despite being a star player in high school, he played a reserve role as a forward on the 1960 Ohio State Buckeyes team that won the NCAA Championship and featured players John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. After completion of graduation from Ohio State University in 1962, he coached junior varsity basketball at Cuyahoga Falls High School in Ohio for one year. Knight then enlisted in the United States Army and accepted an assistant coaching position. In six seasons at West Point, Knight won 102 games, with his first as a head coach coming against Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
In 1979 Knight guided the United States Pan American team to a gold medal in Puerto Rico. In 1984 Knight led the U.S. national team to a gold medal in the Olympic Games as coach of the 1984 basketball team.(USA gold medalist in basketball): "The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important." - Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 - November 12, 1994) was an American track and field sprinter, who competed in the 100 and 200 meters dash. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960.
In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games. A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. As a member of the black community, she is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer. Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (who later became Muhammad Ali), Rudolph became an international star due to the first international television coverage of the Olympics that year.
The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth". The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Nera ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl").(USA gold medalist in track and field sprint): "Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirits." - Emil Zátopek was a Czechoslovak long-distance runner best known for winning three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won gold in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs, but his final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life. He was nicknamed the "Czech Locomotive".
Zátopek was the first runner to break the 29-minute barrier in the 10,000 metres (in 1954). Three years earlier, in 1951, he had broken the hour for running 20 km. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest runners of the 20th century and was also known for his brutally tough training methods. He was the instigator of interval training and hypo-ventilation training. In February 2013, the editors at Runner's World Magazine selected him as the Greatest Runner of All Time. He is the only person to win the 5,000 metres, 10,000 metres, and marathon in the same Olympics.(Czechoslovakia gold medalist in long-distance running): "If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years, then will power is no longer a problem. It’s raining? That doesn’t matter. I am tired? That’s besides the point. It’s simply that I just have to." - McKayla Maroney was born and raised in California. The daughter of Mike and Erin Maroney, she was home-schooled so that she could train as an elite gymnast. She started her senior career in 2011 at the age of 15. At that year's world championships, Maroney won gold medals in the team and vault competitions. She was then named to the 2012 U.S. Olympic team and helped the Americans win the team gold medal. In the vault competition, she won the silver medal, and her look of disappointment while standing on the podium was photographed and became an Internet meme. Maroney made her acting debut in the series Hart of Dixie (2011) later in 2012.(USA gold medalist in gymnastics): "Don’t practice till you get it right, practice till you can’t get it wrong."
- Katie Taylor (born 2 July 1986) is an Irish sportswoman from Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland who has represented her country at both association football and boxing. Widely-regarded as one of the greatest female boxers of all-time, she is the current undisputed and undefeated women's lightweight world champion.
Taylor is a former Irish, European, and Olympic champion in the 60kg division and is credited with raising the profile of women's boxing worldwide. As the Irish athlete of her generation, she was the flag-bearer for Ireland at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, England before going on to win the gold medal in the lightweight division.
Hugely popular in Ireland, Katie is also a 3-time winner of the RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year award.(Ireland gold medalist in boxing): "Only the strongest shoulders can carry the hopes of a nation." - Actress
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Dawn Lorraine Fraser (born 4 September 1937) is an Australian freestyle champion swimmer and former politician. She is one of only three swimmers to have won the same Olympic event three times - in her case the women's 100-metre freestyle. Fraser was born in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, New South Wales in 1937 into a poor working-class family, the youngest of eight children. Her father, Kenneth Fraser, was from Embo, Scotland. She was spotted at the early age of 14 by Sydney coach Harry Gallagher swimming at the local sea baths. Within Australia, she is often known for her controversial behaviour and larrikin character as much as for her athletic ability.(Australia gold medalist in swimming): "Make yourself an example, achieve it, but don’t hurt anyone on the way up. I don’t think I did that."- Kristi was the Gold Medalist in figure skating at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. She was World Champion twice, in 1991 and 1992, and U. S. National Champion in 1992. Kristi was also U.S. National Pairs Champion twi ce, in 1989 and 1990, before deciding to focus on singles. In 1988, she won the Wo rld Juniors Championships in both singles and pairs.(USA gold medalist in skating): "Focus, discipline, hard work, goal setting and, of course, the thrill of finally achieving your goals. These are all lessons in life."