To get this prize, I was required to talk about how important a particular European feminist woman writer had been to me. Now the truth was that I had never managed to finish this feminist writer’s book. It did not speak to me. It would have been a lie to claim that she had any major influence on my thinking. […] I could have said that this woman was important to me, and I could have talked the talk, and I could have been given the prize and a shiny present. But I didn’t.

I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a back seat, work on my mindfulness. And I knew that the girls would do an absolutely great job and I didn't want to risk the team a medal for kind of my screw ups because they've worked way too hard for that. So I just decided that those girls need to go in and do the rest of the competition.

There’s been a lot of stuff that I turned down.

We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

The realisation that I am not the best version of myself.

As a great man.

When I lost that 100m final I spiralled. I went quite aggressive. It is an Adam I don't really recognise.

I was on a cliff in Dartmoor, doing a Royal Marine abseil. I fell upside down and thought, “I’m going to die here.”

To the people who, because of my career, I cannot spend time with. I have to be selfish, unfortunately.