Motivation Quote by Carly Patterson

A perfect little deflation of the hype machine: "Well, first I have to make the team, of course" is what you say when the world wants a coronation and you’re still living inside the math problem of elite sport. Carly Patterson’s phrasing is doing quiet combat with expectation. The "Well" buys a beat of human time, the kind athletes rarely get in interviews, before the sentence snaps back to procedure and reality. It’s not false modesty; it’s a boundary.

The subtext is all about the structure of gymnastics in the U.S., where even a reigning star can be one ankle tweak or one selection-camp wobble away from watching the biggest meet on television. Patterson is pointing to the harsh funnel: your talent doesn’t compete directly against the world until it survives your own country’s depth chart. That’s why the line lands. It reminds listeners that the Olympics (or Worlds) aren’t just an international stage; they’re the last stage of a brutal domestic audition.

The "of course" matters, too. It’s a small rhetorical shrug, signaling she knows the question is premature, maybe even a little rude. It’s also a self-protective spell: say the practical thing, keep the superstition at bay, don’t tempt fate by speaking past the next routine. In one plain sentence, Patterson recasts ambition as process, and celebrity as something secondary to the most fragile job in sports: being selected, then staying intact.