I wanted to be an Olympic champion and I didn't care about the goings-on around me. In my heart and with all of my soul I was ready, willing and I was very able. I had a deadly sense of self-belief. I'd go to another level and say I had a deadly sense of self-conviction where you can say whatever you want, you can do whatever you want but you're not going to touch me.
National Museum of Australia, 1 January 2021 source ↗
That is true. That one little corner of South Africa, Port Elizabeth and its immediate surroundings, is a region that I know like the back of the hand that holds my pen as I write about it. I can stand on a street corner in Port Elizabeth, look at anybody and put together some sort of biography. I know where they come from, where they’re going. I have a feel of the textures of their life. If I stand on a street corner in New Haven, which is a place I’ve gotten to know as well as any place outside of South Africa, I am still at a total loss to identify the people passing me on that street.
I love training. It's not just about the competing. I had an amount of natural talent – you need that to go so far – but, actually, what I had, I think, is an ability to make myself work hard, to do the things I didn't like doing, to do the things that I wasn't so good at.
Curiosity is a form of humility — acknowledging that you don't know everything. Responding to curiosity allows other people to speak freely. Facts and details matter and inform a deeper and deeper analysis that allows you to continually revise and update your plans. This, of course, also means that you are constantly admitting prior mistakes. You need to shed sacred cows, seek out blind spots and challenge the status quo.
Literally can not tell up from down. It's the craziest feeling ever. Not having an inch of control over your body. What's even scarier is since I have no idea where I am in the air, I also have NO idea how I am going to land. Or what I am going to land on. Head/hands/feet back…
But I was not really planning to create what seems to be a lasting impact. I was just always about personal expression and pride in who I was as an Australian Indigenous girl. It was more about me sharing all of me with the world. But, certainly after all these years, it makes me really proud.
I looked straight across at the clock and I was disappointed with the time. I should have run under 49 and I didn't. And I knew I had a lot more in me.
I was really vulnerable right before I left the coach, and I said to him, 'Are you still going to love me if I don't win this thing?'
Magnus Carlsen, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Chris Hoy, Eliud Kipchoge, Simone Biles, Edmund Hillary
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