There's no day when I don't think it would be great to be 25 years old and have the Olympics coming in less than 300 days - and be the best in the world. I can't think of anything so motivating.

Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.

I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective.

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.

I was very self-conscious about my body from a young age. At school, I played football and netball and did ballet as well so was very athletic. I wasn't curvaceous; I had muscles on my arms and shoulders. Often I felt like hiding them rather than showing them off, as I felt they were masculine.

I also tell them that your education can take you way farther than a football, baseball, track, or basketball will - that's just the bottom line.

In the Bible it says God has made everything good for man to eat and to wear their skins. Whenever we eat beef, we eat chicken, we have to kill to eat. But at the same time, hunting is a sport. I think it is a great sport... I would say most hunters are Christian men.

You look at a Pete Rose to be the terrific athlete he is and then he falls on hard times, but when he played the game, I got something from the way he played the game because he hustled every play, and just because he had one mistake in his life, am I supposed to throw back everything that I gained from him?