USA's Anthony Ervin and Maya Dirado talked to SNTV on Saturday (12th August) about their Olympic victories.

SOUNDBITE (English): Anthony Ervin (on changed perspective on gold medal from 2000)

"More than anything the perspective changes how I really see that this isn't me up here. That swim, it was ike 37 strokes, in water. That's all it really was. It took an enormous amount of people, that loved me, that cared about me, that wanted to see me succeed, and wanted to be happy doing it. Thinking of my family and my friends, those who supported me through the highs and the lows, that's what got me here. When I was younger, I don't think I fully understood that. I was still wayward with my ego thrusting forward. You know so, the weight of this gold feels much lighter knowing that it's being carried by my people."

SOUNDBITE (English): Anthony Ervin

"Well, I suppose the easy answer is when you achieve great success at this, you don't know how to do much else. Your sense of self worth and value is caught up in what you have achieved as a competitor. At a certain point your judgement gets clouded by the competitiveness that brought you to where you are, at the cost of what made you fall in love with doing what you do in the first place. Maybe that's what leads to the retirement, that the competitiveness isn't there, and that sense of play and love for why you got into it in the first place, is gone missing. So that's why I'm not talking about retirement. I don't want to go back to that place. The competition part of it has to be, is the end-all be-all of why I do it. Because that can be a dark lonely place if you get stuck there."

SOUNDBITE (English): Anthony Ervin

"I just love the lifestyle. I love swimming. Being in the water is a sanctuary, and I'm not going to give that up, whether I'm the best in the world, or competitivey irrelevant. So that's where I stand with it. I'm just going to keep going until I'm not wanted any more."

SOUNDBITE (English): Maya Dirado

"With that race, that was the kind of the most I've ever wanted to try and win something, and beat the person next to me. For them (teammates) to believe in me so much, for Greg (coach Greg Meehan) to believe in me so much, for my teammates to express that and just be so confident in it, not kind of in a pushy way, but like: 'we know you can do this.' It was amazing. To just flip at the 150 and and push off and know that I had a shot to just dig, and be in a race, and then hear the crowd getting louder and louder and knowing something special was maybe about to happen. And then hitting the wall and seeing that I had done it by six-one hundredths of a second. The emotions just came out because it was like, I felt really lucky, and I felt really...I don't know, just like, I can't believe this got to happen to me, I can't believe I'm the one who gets to experience all these amazing people. And then the emotions just kept flowing after that."

SOUNDBITE (English): Maya Dirado (on Michael Phelps)

"It's so incredible to watch it in person, and to be on the team while he's doing it. His 200-fly, the team went nuts. And we thought he had just seized up at the flags, and there was no way he was going to do it. And then he just gets his hand on the wall and that's what he's done his entire career. And then to go and bounce back and do that in the relay. And then to just shut out the entire field in the 200 IM. We sit and look at each other and we're like: 'How?' Like we know he's the greatest, we know. It's been decided. He just keeps doing it, and like, I'm so honored to be on his last team, we're pretty sure it's his last. Yeah, I hope they just crush it tonight."

SOUNDBITE (English): Anthony Ervin (on Michael Phelps)

"Michael, he's he greatest of all time, he's the G.O.A.T. You know, I don't want to precipitate that retirement is going to be permanent or not. I hope not. The guy's still so good, he can offer so much as a competitor."