Medal Quotes

To anyone who has started out on a long campaign believing that the gold medal was destined for him, the feeling when, all of a sudden, the medal has gone somewhere else is quite indescribable.

When you're expected to win and you have the press saying that you are going to win the Olympic gold medal, and you're the only sure thing in the Olympics, it can undermine your confidence.

I think the biggest thing was that I was putting pressure on myself leading up to Beijing. Now I am learning how to take that pressure off and seeing this as an incredible opportunity, but not like, 'I absolutely have to medal.'

An Olympic medal won't define my whole life, although it might look like it to onlookers. When I look back, I should have been able to get an Olympic medal.

Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.

I think as a Canadian hockey player, you go through it in your mind so many times, being able to stand on that blue line and hear your national anthem play and being a gold medal champion, you dream of that. And then to be able to accomplish that and actually win a gold medal and represent your country its an amazing feeling.

Although it was a great accomplishment to win a gold medal, as soon as they put it on you, that's it; your career is over.

If you dream and you allow yourself to dream you can do anything. And that's what this Olympic medal represents.

London 2012 is all about winning a medal. Not just any medal, the gold medal.

No matter what, like, I couldn't - I could break a world record, get an Olympic gold medal, and my mom would be, like, you could have done better. But you looked pretty. That's what she says all the time.

Through everything I've gone through- and I've been everywhere, at the top of the world, in jail, hung over drunk - I never gave up my dream of winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

Here were these college kids beating the Soviets and going on to the Olympic Gold Medal. To me, that's the greatest upset of all time in any sport that I can think of.

Winning an Olympic gold medal is like nothing else.

I graduated a the top of my class in the '84 Olympic Games; I won a gold medal.

If I do something for my kids, I get a medal, because most fathers don't.

I've always dreamed of an Olympic medal.

One minute you're a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do well and win a medal somewhere, and then it's all foisted on you. You never know when it's going to happen. You don't think about the media side of things when you're a young athlete trying to do well.

My skating is a very emotional thing that comes from the heart, never doing it for the medal.

Growing up, watching the Premier League as far back as I can remember, feeling the trophy and having the medal around my neck was an unbelievable feeling.

Yeah, that's what kind of, we get the idea a little bit yeah, because other people from different countries also try as hard as they can to get a medal or a gold medal in the Olympic Games. And you know, if they can work hard, we can work hard as well.

Going to the Olympics as a Maasai I want to make them proud because, after the warm welcome they gave me when I went back and being their leader, I want to also be the warrior in the Olympics. That will be something good because that will be the first Olympic gold medal for the Maasai.

As a teenager I had no idea that I had the potential to win an Olympic gold medal and my athletic career developed only by lucky circumstances.

I definitely want to win a gold medal, that should be everybody's goal.

What I'm going to be given I gather is not the key to the city, which in many cities is the case. It's the freedom medal, and for me freedom has always been associated traditionally within the city.

If I bring back only one gold people are going to say it's a disappointment. But not too many of them own an Olympic gold medal so if I get one I'm going to be happy.

I'm not disappointed with bronze. It's always good to come away with a medal.

Nowadays a gold medal is a $1 million contract. Our athletes are our heroes.

Athens is a great place for me. It is my second home. It's where I won my first world championship medal, it's where I set my world record.

To have this gold medal around my neck is an indescribable feeling. I'm the happiest person right now.

Olympic medals are the one medal that I don't have; I've won just about every other competition that I've been at.