6 Olympians answer 22 FAQs

You can pick your favourite Olympian to answer the below FAQs below or hear voices from everybody on all FAQs

Click here to start the Video

* How to improve your concentration
* What contribution can sport make to everyday life?
* How do you pass on your enthusiasm to others?
* How do you overcome your fear?
* How do you hang on to the funside of things?
* How do you get ready for a Big challenge?
* How do you set goals?
* How do you make sure you do a good job?
* How do you choose an idol, a role model, someone to imitate?
* How do you learn from failure?
* How do you loose with dignity and win with modesty?
* What are the best ways to train yourself mentally?
* How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
* How do you overcome an obstacle?
* How do you maintain your sense of fair play?
* how do you keep your self-esteem after a setback?
* How do you handle stress?
* What essential qualities do you need to succeed?
* why is team important?
* How do you resist the temptation to take forbidden substances?
* How do you deal with voilence and aggression?
* How do you visualise your dream and make it come true?

Become a Career Olympian!

You may not be a professional sportsman, but here are 10 tips to become a Career Olympian.
Article by Michelle Yozzo Drake, CEO, Cove Group

1. Create a "life skills" line: Record everything you know how to do - from birth until the present - and all the skills required to do them. What have you excelled at? (And they don't have to be just work-related...you'd be surprised how the skills you have in your hobbies translate into success into the workplace.)

2. Make a "life activity" line (layer it right over your "life skills" line). Identify the activies at work and at home that you enjoy doing. If your skill is problem-solving, activities you might like are troubleshooting at work or working on your car's engine. A career that is satisfying and challenging with incorporate some of those skills and activities.

3. Rate your enjoyment and aptitude of each entry on your line: 1 if you're excellent at it and love doing it; 5 if it's one of your weaker areas or if you wouldn't want to do it for more than a few hours. And with this info, you're going to then...

4. Create a clear picture in your mind of your next 5 career moves (they're not set in stone!). They could be in order and progressing up through your organization, or they could be lateral moves into other organizations or industries. Plotting out these career moves starts to set you up with a strategy for career advancement (and we all know how much I LOVE strategy!).

5. Map out opportunities within your organization. You got those 5 career moves in your head - where are they in your organization? Create a "treasure map" that you can follow, leading you to each of those 5 career moves. Who's holding those jobs now? What are your chances of earning that position? If there's a star blocking your route of advancement (think Don Draper of "Mad Men") who shows no signs of budging, then you should first do everything in your power to succeed and prove your worth in your current position (a shift all the way up line might occur) or you might want to consider moving to another company, which leads me to...

Details of below key points can be found on Michelle's blog

6. Map opportunities outside your organization.
7. Assess people in higher levels of your organization.
8. Make a list of people who would help you if they knew your career aspirations.
9. Use an interview as an excuse to go and speak to someone who has the job that you want.
10. Join an industry organization.

Michael Phelps to write new book

Olympic superstar Michael Phelps will write a book telling the story behind his historic eight gold medal swims just in time for the holiday season, Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced Friday.

In "Built to Succeed," Phelps will also cover his philosophy on training and competition, as well as his life being raised by a single mother and coping with an attention-deficit disorder, the publisher said.

The book is scheduled to be released in December.

Phelps, 23, became the winningest Olympian ever at this summer's Beijing games, winning eight golds to add to six previous Olympic first-place victories. He holds seven world records.

Beauty Secrets of Olympians

Find out how swimmers Natalie Coughlin and Katie Hoff stay chic—in and out of the water

Olympians Katie Hoff and Natalie Coughlin are used to being in the spotlight—after all, their swimming performances in Beijing have been flashed across millions of television screens across the globe. Over the past weeks, the athletes' glowing appearances (even amid the stress and strain of competition) have had many women wondering about their beauty secrets. Luckily, we recently had a chance to ask the athletes about their beauty routines. Here's what the ladies had to reveal:

Katie Hoff

Q. How do you stay hydrated during your travels?
I always bring Burt’s Bee’s chapstick with me on flights, because my lips always get dry when traveling. And I don’t always like the taste of water, so I drink diluted Juicy Juice during training and when I travel.

Q. Do you have any beauty rituals before bedtime, or maybe before training sessions or performances?
I don’t wash my hair every day, and I use Victoria Secret So Sexy conditioner for dry/damaged hair and Aloe Rid shampoo. I’ve been using both for a while and they really work—especially since I'm always in chlorine. For moisturizer, I use Lubriderm, then apply two concealers: Studio Tech and Mineralized Skin Finish Natural by MAC. I also always make sure I wash my face before I go to bed.

Natalie Coughlin

Q. How do you keep your makeup on throughout your performances?
I don't wear anything when I compete other than sunscreen. I like to use Kinesys SPF 15, which is a super-lightweight spray-on sunscreen.

Q. How do you stay hydrated during your travels?
I always have water with me. Although I love my caffeine, I try to limit it when I'm traveling—especially on longer international flights. Also, I like bringing my favorite herbal teas for some added comfort on the road.

Q. Do you have any beauty rituals before you bedtime, or maybe before training sessions or performances?
I ALWAYS have to wash my face before bed. No matter what. Since I'm in the sun so much, I've been really proactive with the anti-aging products. I started using Prevage a few months ago and really like the results. I use that before bed along with DDF Ultra-Lite Oil-Free Moisturizing Dew. Before I train I always use Kinesys sunscreen. And after my workout I like to use Oil of Olay oil-free moisturizer for combination skin in SPF 15.

Source:http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Beauty/Beauty-Secrets-of-Olympians.html/?cid=226

Beijing Olympics: What lessons can we learn from Britain's gold rush?

London House can be found in Beijing’s bar district, alongside places called Sip and Purple, drinking dens so Westernised they might well have been airlifted in from Shoreditch.

Slick and sharp, all minimalist fittings and designer script on the menus, the venue has acted as a night-time haunt for the British during these games, a little Notting Hill home from home, a place where you can happily forget you are in China at all.

On Thursday, after nearly a fortnight of Olympian precision and perfect time-keeping, 14 days in which you could set your watch on the departure of your bus, or the start of the second heat in the women’s 75kg Greco-Roman wrestling, London House was hosting the only function in Beijing that was running late. Boris Johnson was in town, scheduled to address the media about London’s plans for the 2012 Olympics.

The mayor was due to begin at 5pm, and by 5.30pm there was no sign of him. Bustling PR people fluffed around oozing self-importance; administrators from the LDA or the BOA or LOCOG or any one of the alphabet soup of organisations running London 2012 talked anxiously on their mobiles; a worried-looking Sloane with a clipboard checked her list to see if he might have slipped in unnoticed. And as you watched and waited, you thought: if only British sports people could be put in charge of 2012, if only Rebecca Adlington, Chris Hoy and Ben Ainslie were running the thing, all would be well. Because these are people we can rely on.

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Q & A: Physiology golden for Phelps and Bolt, expert says

Roberto Quintana has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology and is the director of the Human Performance Lab at California State University, Sacramento. He spends much of his day studying athletes, so he's not easy to impress.

We asked him to reflect on the Beijing Olympics and the achievements of swimmer Michael Phelps (eight gold medals, seven world records) and sprinter Usain Bolt (gold medals and world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes.)

Michael Phelps has amazed sports fans. Did he impress you as a sports scientist?

For him to go through that many events and win eight gold medals, it's just mind-boggling. For what he's accomplished, it requires a lot of mental focus.

What happens to the body after a hard effort like the 200-meter butterfly?

He has to make sure he's rested. He has to replace the glycogen he used. The glycogen allows his muscles to perform at a very high level. We know from research that if your glycogen stores are compro- mised even a little bit, it alters the amount of force you're able to generate by the muscle.

How about the records?

I'm not so impressed with the world records. A lot of that was with the swimsuit.

Then there's Usain Bolt. Might he be a sprinter for the ages?

What he has done is mind-boggling because the technology in running really hasn't changed. We don't have a suit that cheats the wind.

Phelps and Bolt are both great athletes, but they're a little bit different. Considering that most of the 100- and 200-meter (track) races are won by hundredths of a second, he beat everyone by 0.6 seconds in the 200. That's the equivalent of Michael Phelps winning by a whole lap. We probably won't see anything like that again for 20 or 30 years.

When you first saw Bolt as a sports fan and as a scientist, what did you think?

I was in awe. Usually larger individuals like that (Bolt is 6-foot-5) take a while to accelerate. The crazy thing about him is he can accelerate very quickly like the smaller runners. But he's like Carl Lewis in that he can hit a very high speed. Lewis was limited because he needed about 70 or 80 meters to hit top speed and separate himself from the field. Usain Bolt is hitting his peak speed at around 50 meters.

He seems to have come out of nowhere.

This year, something must have happened in his training to elevate his game in this way.

Are you suspicious at all?

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The thinker and the swimmer are making lists and thinking of London

WHAT more can Michael Phelps do? With eight gold medals from the Beijing Games, a career tally of 14 and a pot of endorsement gold in the offing what more is there for him to achieve?

Well, plenty, according to his coach Bob Bowman. When he left Beijing yesterday, he already had a sizeable list.

The rest of the world may have watched in awe as the 23-year-old American put together a seemingly flawless Olympic campaign, but Bowman examined the greatest Olympic performance in history with a more critical eye.

Phelps is still being mobbed every time he puts his head up in Beijing (he has acquired a full-time security detail), his agents have put him on a pedestal with Tiger Woods, but Bowman is already thinking about the next four years culminating in London 2012.

At the top of his list is getting another crack at the 200m butterfly. Phelps' goggles filled with water during that race in Beijing, affecting his vision, and he only narrowly bettered his own world record, clocking a new standard of 1:52.03.

Bowman says that time could have been 1:50, "and if he takes a shot at it on its own (without a heavy competition program around it) it could be 1:49".

The 100m butterfly is also a target. It was Phelps' last individual event in Beijing and his performance was affected by fatigue. He still clocked 50.58sec, but Bowman believes Phelps can be the first man under 50 seconds for the event (the current world record is 50.40sec).

Bowman will abide by his promise to Phelps that he can drop the 400m individual medley after Beijing, having set a towering world record of 4:03.84, although the coach thinks that could have been faster too.

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