I want to learn how to play an instrument. I want to break a world record. I'm just a very determined, motivated type of person.

Rivalries don't necessarily mean races being close at major championships. I had a rivalry with Butch Reynolds for many years. I won all the races, but Butch was the world record holder before I came into the sport, he was extremely talented and he was the only other man running 43 seconds.

Breaking the world record in '92 was a very special personal moment, but I'd say my favorite moment as a decathlete was winning the Olympic gold medal.

When we race in London a world record will be the last thing on our minds.

Breaking the world record for the first time in Torun was a very crazy feeling. There was this rush of emotions that flooded through my body as I cleared the bar and it was hard to believe that it actually happened.

It's a great feat for me to have broken my world record.

The world record is like you we went to the theater to see this movie, and it was really good, and it had an unexpected ending, and you left the theater saying, 'Wow, that was such a great movie.'

For me, I've not really focused on a world record. I'm just trying to put a complete race together, and when I do that, then fast times will come.

I have been dreaming of an outdoor world record forever. Now I want them all: the 1500, the 5000, even the 800.

Already in 2007 I thought I would be able to break the World record in the near future. That time Sammy Tangui was the pacemaker in Lausanne. I liked the way he was running. He is tall, he has a strong body and his stride is similar to mine. I told him in one of the coming years I would need him when I try to break the World record.

The world record will come to me when I run the world record race. I'm just trying to perfect my race. I'm looking for perfection.

When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor - a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside.

I felt so relaxed. It just felt very easy, and that's why it surprised me that I had broken my world record.

You don't want people thinking you're a cheat just because you're really fast and have broken the world record by a second.

But I'm after medals more than anything. Championships don't get taken away from you but records do, so I think I'd rather have medals at every championships rather than times. A world record would be a bonus, but I'm still only 25 in 17 days.

Athens is a great place for me. It is my second home. It's where I won my first world championship medal, it's where I set my world record.

If I could set a world record, it would be that I have 150 business partners, all with thriving businesses of their own that started with nothing and I made the difference to make them all billionaires.

I've set no world record.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

And as - funny enough, it actually became - so I've always wanted to be a Guinness world record holder. And believe it or not, before I made this there was not a category for world's largest Nerf gun, but there is now.