Ken Wallace

My biggest motivation is knowing what it feels like to win medals and thinking that I want that feeling again. It was incredible to succeed in Beijing and come home to your whole country behind you but, importantly, all your family and friends.

Making the Australian team is the hardest part, and going to the Olympics is the easy part. You're there representing your country - you're representing every single person in it, strangers you don't know - and there's a lot of positive energy, but you have to know to channel it the right way.

Before the last Olympics, we had meat raffles at the local surf club to get petrol money to go to training, to help out with the bills. But I know there are a lot of athletes worse off and that all athletes, at some stage of their careers, have made sacrifices.

Then, there was Greenpeace, I remember that when they first started out with the boats in the waters, and the guys in the boats between the whales and the boats that will hunting the whales with spear guns.

But Hale's warning the President about going to Dallas was that there was great infighting among the members of the Democratic party and the Democratic stars in the state and he didn't want the President to become involved in a factional disagreement.