Strength and Skill Quotes in Olympics Books

"Jesse, just do what you always do," she said to him in their bedroom on their final night together. "You know you're better than anyone else. Just stay healthy and everything will work out." (Triumph)

When you row, the major muscles in your arms, legs, and back – particularly the quadriceps, triceps, biceps, deltoids, latissimus dorsi, abdominals, hamstrings, and gluteal muscles – do most of the grunt work, propelling the boat forward against the unrelenting resistance of water and wind. At the same time, scores of smaller muscles in the neck, wrists, hands, and even feet continually fine-tune your efforts, holding the body in constant equipoise in order to maintain the exquisite balance necessary to keep a twenty-four-inch-wide vessel – roughly the width of a man's waist – on an even keel. The result of all this muscular effort, on both the larger scale and the smaller, is that your body burns calories and consumes oxygen at a rate that is unmatched in almost any other human endeavor. (The Boys in the Boat)

On the morning of the meet, I nonetheless awakened with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. My mind was clouded with self-doubt. Will I be able to perform my skill, even after an injury? Yes, I was physically prepared – but mentally, I wasn't confident at all. The sprain and weeks of recovery had thrown me off. I tried to summon that same strength David once used to battle Goliath, but weakness is all I felt. (Grace, Gold and Glory)