Daley Thompson
Daley Thompson
Francis Morgan Ayodélé "Daley" Thompson, CBE, is an English former decathlete. He won the decathlon gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1980 and 1984, and broke the world record for the event four times...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDecathlete
Date of Birth30 July 1958
athlete people feelings
People tend to like an athlete's performance, but if you don't get a feeling for the individual, you're not very emotive about them.
people boring these-days
Most people doing the decathlon these days are quite boring, so people don't relate to them.
athlete careers people
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.
people easy difficult
It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know.
people answers want
I'm obsessive. I want to know the answer to how good I am. Most people aren't.
people lucky found
I didn't even know what it was when I started. But I was lucky. I found it at 16. Most people don't discover decathlon until they're 21 or 22.
athlete long people
The decathlon takes so long to learn that people who are good athletes don't want to go back to the beginning again.
kids years people
Kids are starting at such a low base rate in terms of fitness that it's taking them years to catch up to where people like me started from. Every little bit is making it more difficult for kids to succeed on a world stage.
kids years people
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.
sports people mind
Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds.
people quality facts
What used to drive me was the fact that I wanted to be better than everybody at something. One of my best qualities is that I used whatever other people found to be an adverse thing to be a positive thing for myself.
era glory people steve
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.
bit olympic takes
You can be an Olympic champion in 9.5 secs, but to be the greatest, there's more to it. It takes a bit of forethought and a lot of mental application.
best english-athlete
We live in the best place on earth but at times the worst.