I just love racing: I'll even race you to the door.

My biggest motivation is knowing what it feels like to win medals and thinking that I want that feeling again. It was incredible to succeed in Beijing and come home to your whole country behind you but, importantly, all your family and friends.

Making the Australian team is the hardest part, and going to the Olympics is the easy part. You're there representing your country - you're representing every single person in it, strangers you don't know - and there's a lot of positive energy, but you have to know to channel it the right way.

Until 2005, I still thought of my surf lifesaving career as fulltime and kayaking as a pastime. I watched the 2004 Athens Olympics and saw people racing that I knew I could beat, and that was probably the turning point: I decided I should either do it properly or stop wasting time kayaking and concentrate fully on Ironman.

I try to do the right thing. If you do what you know is right, and you're a good person, you might not win short-term all the time, and financial gains might not be there all the time, but ultimately, you can be pretty happy, and you can do some pretty good things in the world. Keep a positive outlook.

Humility is the true key to success. Successful people lose their way at times. They often embrace and overindulge from the fruits of success. Humility halts this arrogance and self-indulging trap. Humble people share the credit and wealth, remaining focused and hungry to continue the journey of success.

My theory about creativity is that the more money one has, the more creative one can be.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?