OLYMPIC QUOTES OF THE WEEK

All I do is eat, sleep and train six hours a day, six days a week. Michelle Smith, Ireland's triple gold medal winner, responds to innuendo about her astonishing improvement.

We are drowning out there and we have become a laughing stock. David Wilkie, Britain's former 200m gold medallist, on the British swimming team in Atlanta.

The diet that we have in the Caribbean is superior because we don't have a lot of fatty foods. Also, there's a winter over here in the US, so you can't go out running year round. Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago, on why the Caribbean produces so many sprinters.

A new [basketball] ball costs 100 dollars. That's two months' pay to someone in Zaire. So 20 people have to share one ball. We need balls for young people to train them. Mongamaluku Mozingo, coach of the Zairean women's team, after losing 107-47 to the United States.

Something you don't want to do is toss the ball and see that coming down. Andre Agassi, when a flock of geese interrupted his tennis match with droppings from overhead.

I cried so much before the ceremony that when I arrived at the podium, the emotion was almost gone. Italian cyclist Andrea Collinelli, after winning the individual pursuit gold.

Victory over Yugoslavia would be sweeter than any other, but we must not let our emotions take over. We don't need extra motivation. It could ruin our concentration. Croatian water polo captain Perica Bukic.

Everyone's expected to do something spectacular with the ball. But there are no guys in the trenches setting picks and doing the dirty work, the guys who just swing the ball from one side to the other. You miss those guys when everybody's trying to be a one-man show. The Lithuania coach, Donn Nelson, on the American 'Dream Team'.