Goran Ivanisevic Quotes

There were butterflies, otherwise, you're not really ready to play. The locker room, I remember, was quiet and we were very focused on playing that game.

No matter what you do in the offseason, you can't simulate putting spikes on and standing in the grass and being around your teammates. When you're around your teammates, you step it up a notch. It's just kind of instinctive you do that.

Even if we're in fifth place in September, I get butterflies before a game. I'm nervous.

I get that every game. High school. At Duke. When I do the introductions, I get a little butterflies. Once I step on the floor, I'm fine.

No, I don't get nervous when I play basketball.

Learning how to compete is one of the most important things that an athlete can do. You can train as well as you possibly can and go compete and completely choke.

I play in front of 70,000 fans week in and week out, and I may drop the ball in practice, I may run the ball the wrong way, but once it's game time, it's game on.

You find sprinters testing other sprinters' mental capability. But these are my good friends on the track. I don't think we need to do that.

Ninety percent of hockey is mental and the other half is physical.

It's just good to be back in the locker room.

As a player you are always made to feel welcome, but at the same time, there is too much pressure.

I had a couple friends from all the different cliques in school, but my true friends were my gymnastics teammates. I grew up competing with them for ten years.

In front of the world, all of a sudden I'm a great athlete and I'm put into an environment with 25 other women and I'm expected to go to team meals, team functions.

If you talk to most athletes, the place you're most comfortable is your playing field. I'm not so comfortable at a podium or talking about events.

You cannot treat someone differently just because they have become captain. We still took the mickey out of Alastair Cook when he was in charge. You have to treat them first and foremost as a team-mate.

I went out almost every night with the guys on the team between 1975 and 1981. We were winning in those years. It was fun.

That's one of the nice things about being a sportsman is that once you cross that white line, it is a freedom, you are away from everything in life really. You are playing cricket and that's an escape from everything. That's as clear as you get really.

Luckily, I'm not one of these players who get nervous.

With every side I've played for, I've always tried to fit in and joke with my team mates while enjoying good times with them on and off the pitch. And that's what's happened with Les Bleus.

Some people seem to think football is like theatre and that everyone has to play the good guy. But I think that you transform when you cross the white line: you're not the same person as off it.

As a player, I don't want to come off the field.

People don't understand how it feels to be with a guy who you call your teammate and you're with more than your family during the course of a season.

Every moment, every practice, every game, everywhere; I just love competing. Competition is in my DNA.

I love making the big play. I love being out there with my teammates. I love the camaraderie. I can't say I always love practice. But it's a means to an end.

Solitary pursuits like playing video games and skateboarding can't compete with the thrill of mobbing a teammate as he scores the winning run - nor do they end with a postgame trip to Dairy Queen.