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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Sebastian Coe Quotes

I’m a Chelsea season-ticket holder, and I’ve supported them for 37 years, so any judgment of Manchester United by me is seen as biased.

– Sebastian Coe

The characteristic shared by people at the top of their profession is that, to get better, they crave criticism. Most people don’t like criticism, but if you are trying to shave two tenths of a second at 800 metres, that is what you crave.

– Sebastian Coe

The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race.

– Sebastian Coe

Some people found it difficult to understand my relationship with my father, but that may have been because they couldn’t get beyond their relationship with their own parents.

– Sebastian Coe

World records are only borrowed.

– Sebastian Coe

I’m not sure there are enough coaches in the system that can take young talent and consistently get them into the top five in the world.

– Sebastian Coe

I think I’m probably just an old-fashioned Tory. I don’t wake up each morning trying to figure out what kind of Conservative I am; for me it’s quite instinctive.

– Sebastian Coe

In all Games, there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games when there isn’t much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport.

– Sebastian Coe

I’m such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I’ve got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish.

– Sebastian Coe

I’ve never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, ‘Can you text this message to somebody.’ I don’t even have a computer on my desk.

– Sebastian Coe

The great thing about athletics is that it’s like poker sometimes: you know what’s in your hand, and it may be a load of rubbish, but you’ve got to keep up the front.

– Sebastian Coe

I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity – all the things you want. It’s a pretty good metaphor for life.

– Sebastian Coe

Marathons don’t come to you overnight.

– Sebastian Coe

Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into ‘talent identification’. I am much more interested in passion – finding people who are really excited about doing something.

– Sebastian Coe

I don’t think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative.

– Sebastian Coe

Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through.

– Sebastian Coe

I actually don’t believe in big government, and half the time I’m never quite sure I believe in government, generally.

– Sebastian Coe

I will go to my grave believing that participation is best driven by the well-stocked shop window.

– Sebastian Coe

I can remember the day I decided I would retire from competitive athletics as vividly as if it were yesterday.

– Sebastian Coe

The London Games will be designed for the athletes and we will provide them with the very best venues and the very best conditions to pursue their sporting dreams in London.

– Sebastian Coe

I started track and field when I was 12 and didn’t get to an Olympic Games until I was nearly 23. By any stretch of the imagination that’s a very long apprenticeship.

– Sebastian Coe

I still run every other day. Longer at weekends. I probably do 35 miles a week.

– Sebastian Coe

Football was not what I was put on this planet to do.

– Sebastian Coe

In 1981, I spoke at the Olympic Congress. I was scandalised that I was the first athlete to be given that chance. But I made the most of it.

– Sebastian Coe

You hope all good athletes run on the balls of their feet. You don’t want them coming down heel first. The perfect style is the foot to come down with a slight supination and on a tilt to the outside.

– Sebastian Coe

Sport is a universal language, building more bridges between people than anything else I can think of.

– Sebastian Coe

Good running is the ability to have a very well defined on-board computer. The ability to judge distances when running in traffic.

– Sebastian Coe

There may be problems we still need to tease out, but we will leave no stone unturned in our bid to make London the host city.

– Sebastian Coe

Since the break-up of the 1990s, Russia has not had winter sports facilities. All the winter sport venues were effectively located in countries that are no longer part of the federation. There is a strong argument for saying Sochi’s legacy will be this country will have winter sports facilities it did not have before.

– Sebastian Coe

Our success in Singapore was a Herculean effort by the whole team. Now I am determined to deliver on all we promised. I will be watching like a hawk.

– Sebastian Coe

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