"You've got to hold your hand up and say `This guy is the business', otherwise you end up sounding like a sad bastard."
Eddie Irvine on Ferrari team-mate Michael Schumacher.
"We had 99 per cent of the game, it was the other three per cent that cost us."
Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit after seeing his side get their Premiership campaign off to a terrible start at Coventry.
"I did not like talking about the world record. I just wanted to run it with my legs."
Wilson Kipketer, after beating Sebastian Coe's 16-year-old 800 metres world record in Zurich.
"There are no mountains in Wolverhampton." Astute geological observation by QPR man- ager Stewart Houston when asked if his side "had a mountain to climb" in the second leg of their English League Cup first round tie with Wolves, after losing the first leg 2-0 at Loftus Road.
"My wife was a bit worried about it, but my mum is the worst. She thought I'd been in a rugby brawl or committed a crime against the state. It was nothing more than handbags at 10 paces." Essex seamer Mark Ilott after his shoving match with Glamorgan's Robert Croft in the NatWest Trophy semi- final.
