Quotes By Haile Gebrselassie

If your body is damaged, wounded, it can be fixed, but if inside, mentally, you are wounded you cannot fix it, it's hard.

Since I achieved something, running has exploded in my country. For me sometimes it is difficult even to know who the athletes are who are competing at the highest level. There are thousands.

Schooling is so important.

What can you do if a part of it is uphill? You can't work out another route. You've just got to run the one they give you. But they tell me London is a nice course. Even the cobbles, I hope, are not very much of a problem for me.

Always, if you win mentally, you can win physically as well.

I want to go down in history.

That is not enough. Sport has been great for me, a great learning place that if you want to achieve you can, even if you are from the poorest part of Africa.

You must do as your people do. If my people are poor, I must be poor. People ask me, 'Why don't you find a personal coach or a private car?' I can't. Then I won't be part of my people.

Athletics is in my blood.

Why should I say I will retire in three or four years? You retire the very moment you utter those words.

Eradicate poverty. This is all that matters in my country. When I am out training I think about this a lot; when I am running it is going over in my mind. As a country we cannot move forward until we eradicate poverty.

Like some high official, you have to tell your brain: 'Do it. Come on. I have to do it.'

When we race in London a world record will be the last thing on our minds.

I want to avoid injuries by running only road.

You need three things to win: discipline, hard work and, before everything maybe, commitment. No one will make it without those three. Sport teaches you that.

My father thought sport was something fun - he didn't know it was a way to make money. Then I won a Mercedes at the world championships and I gave it to him. From the moment it arrived my father said: 'Good, you can support not just yourself but me too'.

I wanted to experience New York, to look up and see buildings.

When you promise something, you must fulfill it.

My school was six miles away from where I lived on the farm. I had to walk and run, there and back every day, through gorges and over rivers. If I was late, there was a very big stick waiting for me.

First, do enough training. Then believe in yourself and say: I can do it. Tomorrow is my day. And then say: the person in front of me, he is just a human being as well; he has two legs, I have two legs, that is all. That is mentally how you prepare.

If I don't train enough, of course I'm nervous.

You lose the speed before the stamina.

I was the kind of child who worked hard every day with the cows and sheep - I was a very aggressive boy.

At the end of the day, people want to see how fast you run.

I remember in particular my first victory when I achieved a very fast time in what were perfect conditions but since then the wind has always been a factor against me.

I'm lucky. The best possible place in the world for training is Addis Ababa, so I am home all the time except when I am racing. I like to be there, near my family, my kids, also the real estate business I run with my wife.

I wanted to be famous. I wanted people to talk about me.

I can't change everything by myself but I can be one of the people who are trying to change the situation.

I haven't done a marathon for a long time. So we'll see. I will need good luck.

If you are a really good marathoner, you have to run New York.