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Motivation Quote by Lynn Davies

"As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman"

About this Quote

There’s a disarming plainness to Lynn Davies’ line: no mythmaking, no tortured backstory, just the clean origin story of a life organized around motion and desire. “As a youngster” puts the emphasis on instinct rather than strategy. Sport arrives first as pleasure, not branding, and the ambition that follows feels almost inevitable - the private thrill hardening into a public aim.

The phrase “enjoyed sport” matters because it refuses the modern script where greatness is supposedly engineered from day one by parents, programs, and hyper-specialization. Davies frames aspiration as something that grows out of play. That’s also the subtext: elite performance, at least in his telling, starts as joy before it becomes work. The sentence is modest, but it quietly argues against the culture that treats youth athletics as a pipeline and childhood as a training camp.

“Ambition was to be a great sportsman” is old-fashioned in the best way. Not “a champion,” not “the best,” but “a great sportsman” - a word that carries a moral charge: character, composure, respect for the event and the opponent. Coming from an athlete whose era prized amateur ideals even as global sport professionalized, it reads like a self-portrait and a value statement. He’s not just recalling what he wanted; he’s signaling what kind of greatness he believes still counts.

Quote Details

TopicSports
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Davies, Lynn. (2026, January 17). As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-youngster-i-enjoyed-sport-and-my-ambition-79421/

Chicago Style
Davies, Lynn. "As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-youngster-i-enjoyed-sport-and-my-ambition-79421/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-youngster-i-enjoyed-sport-and-my-ambition-79421/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.

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Lynn Davies: childhood play and sporting ambition
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About the Author

Lynn Davies

Lynn Davies (born May 20, 1942) is a Athlete from United Kingdom.

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