London 2012 Olympics: Five Olympian legends discuss the pressures experienced by the biggest names on raceday There's a lot of camaraderie in the Finn fleet and I want to be part of that, but at the same time you have to keep a bit of distance between yourself and your rivals because, ultimately, you have to beat them on the water and you can't let friendships or emotions get in the way. There is some "sledging" that goes on with certain sailors. Again, I have always just tried to let my results do the talking. If people want to say: "This has happened or that has happened" then that's fine but if they can't back it up on the water, well, they just look stupid. I wasn't the overwhelming favourite in Sydney and I was happy with that position of being the slight underdog to Robert Scheidt. I was ready for the race in a way I hadn't been in Atlanta in 1996. Then, I had panicked a bit, been a bit overawed by the occasion. But that was my second Olympics and I was calmer. Denise Lewis, heptathlon gold medallist 2000 Sydney The pressure on the morning of competition is always hard. Even the most experienced athletes think, "Oh my God, this is it." It starts with the moment your alarm goes off but you're already anticipating it because you didn't get any sleep anyway. I didn't get much kip the night before Sydney and I had to play the same song on a repeat loop before I actually fell asleep. It was Whitney Houston dueting with Mariah Carey on When You Believe. After my terrible injury struggle, the words just resonated with me: "There can be miracles when you believe / Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill." I went to sleep with that message ringing in my ears. My ritual was always laying every bit of my kit out the night before, so I'd now exactly what I needed and what I was wearing. I'm a pretty neat and organised person. Somehow, when the competition was biggest it brought out the best in my organisational skills. There were about eight of us housed in the same apartment block but I had my own room and that was important. I think heptathlon is an event which lends itself to you needing your own space. Heptathlons always start early and that morning in Sydney I think I was up about 5am. Because it's so early and the dining room is such an eerie, quiet place with not many people about at that time in the morning, you'll see your competitors at breakfast. I saw Eunice Barber, Yelena Prokhorova and Natallia Sazanovich, all my big rivals. You want to look the freshest, most rested and that's when the gamesmanship really starts to kick in. Sometimes you don't need words. I can still remember waiting for that first race, over the 100m hurdles. I didn't feel nervous; I just had this sense it was time to put everything I'd been through for the past four years into practice. At that point, waiting for your race, there was no external pressure. You've gone through all that emotion before you've been on the start line. You cannot afford to be thinking of pressure. In fact, in a weird way, the fact that it was kind of remarkable that I was there at all after the injury calamity did take the pressure off. It stopped me thinking how my life would change and what it would mean to me. It kept me in the present. Sir Chris Hoy, four-time cycling gold medallist 2004 Athens, 2008 Beijing (x3) On race day it's crucial to be able to block out the numerous distractions that are all around you. Whether it's the crowd, the TV cameras, your opponents, or anything else, you have to filter them out. Music can help with this, plus having your headphones on can let other people know you want to be left alone. The choice of tune depends on my mood. Sometimes I need to be pumped up so I'll put on a specific playlist to help, tracks by The Chemical Brothers have featured most regularly over the years. Very occasionally I'll take a different approach if I feel I need to calm things down a bit. In Athens I listened to Angel by Massive Attack right before I raced as the atmosphere and tension was already so high. The GB pen where we're based in track centre is important, it's nice to have your bit of territory wherever you are in the world, with your team-mates and friends around you. On the day itself it's about having your own game plan and sticking to it. It's also about trying to enjoy the whole experience and giving your absolute best. You need to focus on performance and process, not the outcome of the race. You can't use a crystal ball to look into the future, you've got to stay focused on the here and now. If you're potentially going to be racing many times that day, you're not thinking ahead about what might happen in the semis or the finals, you just focus on getting through each round. I treat it like a hurdles race, all you need to do is get over the hurdle right in front of you and don't look beyond it. You need to make sure you have done every single bit of training you have set yourself to the level you require, so you can go to the start line with complete peace of mind, and not feeling as if there is more that you could have done. The only task then is to execute the race you have prepared for. If you have done the work you will feel excited on race day, rather than under pressure. Edwin Moses, two-time 400m hurdles gold medallist 1976 Montreal, 1984 Los Angeles The pressure of a race day never got to me. I convinced myself I was going to win because there had been so many things lined up against me: I did not have a track, or an athletics stadium. I was going out to public high school track meets and waiting for the gaps between races so I could run a 500m. I was just so hungry. Once I was out on a track I felt like I was in heaven. There were two or three places I could try to race on but this was in the era before cell phones so I would have to drive out to these different tracks to see if they were free. If they weren't I'd be back in the car looking for somewhere else. I didn't even have good running shoes. The meets I was running in were in division three, for the smallest colleges. Electric timing was only just coming in and they were still hand-timing at the meets I was competing in. So there were a lot of guys out on the west coast, which is where most of the top athletics colleges were based, who were saying I was a fraud - that my times were not accurate. I wanted to get into a meet with them and wear them out. Three months into my preparations for the 1976 Games, I had my opportunity. I was like a killer. I was a serious gladiator. There was no way anyone was going to beat me. No one was training as hard. At the Olympic Games in Montreal I knew the exact moments I would be on the track: the first day at 10am, the second day at 5.30pm and on the third day at 7.30pm. Those three times were the focuses of my life. I did not care who else was on that track. After all the adversity I had come through I was in control. Sir Steve Redgrave, five-time rowing gold medallist 1984 Los Angeles, 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney You can never really practice for the pressure that you will come up against before an Olympics. When you are waiting around for an Olympic final, it is impossible to realistically imagine yourself in that position. It is something you simply have to deal with as and when it happens. I have been to five Olympic Games, and what athletes most want to hear from me is, "If you do this, you will achieve that." But what I have learnt is that it is a different experience each time. There is no convenient way of coping that works for every athlete on every occasion. You manage stress as you go along, but you feel different each time. We all like to have props we can mentally fall back on, to look for good signs and bad signs. For some, the uncertainty of the last few hours is sheer hell. Within my sport, we used to go for contrasting warm-ups on the morning of the final. We had gone into the rest area, checked over the water one last time, gone through the briefing from our last training session, and changed into our Olympic kit. The squad in 2000 were a real mix. Matthew Pinsent used to curl up in a ball and go to sleep. James Cracknell would put headphones on and listen to his loud music. Tim Foster would just sit down and read a book, staying very quiet. As the tactician among the four, I would go through the strategy for what we wanted to do. I was going through every possible circumstance. What you do not want is the unexpected, because that usually means the favourites will not win. Whatever scenario arises within a race, you need to make sure you have an answer for it. But you might hear the sound of a national anthem for somebody else's gold medal and think, "Can I do this?" You do have a little bit of doubt. There is a frenzy of pressure that you cannot prepare for. You just have to experience it as it unfolds. Thirty-five minutes before the final started, we would put our boat on the water. That was when the pressure eased: you were in your environment, in control. That is where it switches in our sport. Once the boat moves away from the landing stage, the support staff no longer have an input. It is not like a football match, where you have a coach who can change tactics or personnel - you are on your own. As an athlete, that is a situation you should feel fairly comfortable with coming into such an important race. Yes, it can be a nightmare for the back-up people, for the family and friends, because they cannot do anything about it. You just have to wait for the 30 minutes of tension to tick by, and hope that the next six will be enjoyable as you cross the line first.