Dan O'Brien

After the failure in '92, my goal was to be a good pole vaulter. I used that as motivation.

As a young athlete, it was first about having fun; then it was about winning.

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.

I think what my parents did was perfect. They were strict, concerned about my safety and held me back just a little.

It really means a lot that I won the gold medal - but I woke up the next morning expecting to feel different. I felt the same.

As athletes, we're defined by what we've accomplished. Those are what most people remember and what you get paid for. But I learned more from my failures than from all of my successes put together - failures as an athlete and as a person.

It's important for me to think I'm mixed-race.

You have to be able to be a good loser. You have to be okay knowing you're going to fail every day in something without getting mad and upset.

Take pride in exactly what it is you do and remember it's okay to fail as long as you don't give up.

I just love playing so much, competing so much. You're able to put your losses behind you. One of the greatest attributes a decathlete can have is the ability to forget... to look ahead, not behind.

I didn't get a ton of interest from colleges in baseball and football, but I was outstanding in track and had the sense that this would be my meal ticket... Track was a sport where I saw immediate improvement, and I had a lot of good support behind me... and the coaches had a lot of experience and pushed me in that direction for sure.

To me, the decathlon is its own little society and I am part of that culture.