Teddy Sears

My childhood ambition was to be an Olympic swimmer like my aunt, but that died a quick death when I discovered other sports. I swam very competitively till I was 15, then I swam for fun until I was 18. But athletics remain a very big part of my life.

My siblings and I, we were raised on TV and films. Not a day went by that we weren't watching one of three movies - 'Caddyshack,' 'Animal House,' 'Beverly Hills Cop' - on rotation. Our comedy, our personalities were set watching 'Sesame Street': these really sort of wacky, Jim Henson-y characters.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.