I Decided I Wasn't Going To Come

Awards Become Corroded, Friends Gather No Dust.

It Dawned On Me With Blinding Brightness. I Realized: I Had Jumped Into Another Rare Kind Of Stratosphere - One That Only A Handful Of People In Every Generation Are Lucky Enough To Know.

Although I Wasn't Invited To Shake Hands With Hitler, I Wasn't Invited To The White House To Shake Hands With The President Either.

One Day Or Another Every Athlete Feels Like Taking It Easy. He Stops Trying To Exceed His Limits, And Thinks He Can Keep Winning Because Of His Lucky Star, Or The Bad Luck Of His Opponents. You Must Overcome This Negative Instinct, Which Affects All Of Us, And Which Is The Only Difference Between The Person Who Wins A Race, And Those Who Lose. This Is The Battle You Have To Fight Every Day Of Your Life.

The Road To The Olympics, Leads To No City, No Country. It Goes Far Beyond New York Or Moscow, Ancient Greece Or Nazi Germany. The Road To The Olympics Leads — In The End — To The Best Within Us.