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Choose what is best for you

I was always very comfortable with running, but I also played football, rugby and cricket. I'd always enjoyed the physical sensation and the mental release of running and I don't think anybody takes up a sport unless they physically really enjoy that sport. I have seen so many talented people that have been physically very suited to a sport, but mentally it just hasn't done it for them.

Be one step ahead

The 800 metres is one of the most demanding track events because it starts in lanes, it then breaks into a bunch at 110 metres. You then have to pick your point, you have to be aware of the other athletes running around you at speed and you are all fighting over eight square yards on the track! It's like chess on legs, you've got to think about all your exit routes and you've always got to be thinking that one step ahead.

It's a very unforgiving event, I know from the mistakes I have made. You can make errors in the 1500 metres event and get yourself back. But if you make an error in 800 metres, it's normally terminal. So you need to be focusing all the time on where you are in the race and what the traffic is. The architecture of the stadium, and even the noise from the crowd, is something that you're really not aware of. The second the race starts you become even more cocooned.

It's all about team work

Track and field is a uniquely individual sport although often overlooked for the amount of team work involved. For every athlete you see getting up onto an Olympic rostrum, there are five or six people in the background including coaches, nutritionists, physiologists, anatomists, friends, close members of their family, possibly even sponsors. It's not as obvious as Ryan Giggs running out with Manchester United on a pitch. You're very much on your own and frankly no coaching from the dug-out is going to help you with one lap to go facing the best athletes at 1500m that Morocco can throw at you.

Becoming chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games is all about working with teams and I am surrounded by extraordinarily talented people. I think good people in team situations actually relish being surrounded by talented people.

Education is key

Education is one of the founding principles of the Olympic movement and it's one of the guiding principles of the Olympic charter. If you look at the seamless path of Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee, and what he mapped between sport, culture and education, he was right when he talked about it in the late 1890's, as he would be right today. Through sport young people can gain a greater understanding of the world that they live in.

The vision and the dream

In order to get to an Olympic level as a competitor, you need to have the vision and the dream. Now you don't suddenly wake up one morning and say I want to be an Olympic athlete, but as you start competing for your school, for your town, for your region and then for your county as I did, the idea begins to dawn on you that in four years time there is an Olympic Games. My dream was to put a British vest on and if I really dared to dream, it was a British vest in an Olympic stadium. If I started to dream outrageously, it was to step up onto a rostrum wearing that British vest. That's how it developed for me.