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You think if you win the Olympics, you'll become a millionaire overnight. But I was still scraping the barrel, looking down the back of the settee for pound coins to buy a pint of milk.
One thing I do get aggravated by is people shouting with frustration if they get pushed and shoved in sprints. I don't push and shove anyone, but I don't care if somebody does it to me.
I always found that the more extreme and the more eccentric I was, that's what would separate me. I always felt that I needed that separation; otherwise, I'd just be like everybody else.
The key is being able to endure psychologically. When you're not riding well, you think, why suffer? Why push yourself for four or five hours? The mountains are the pinnacle of suffering
I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs whether banned or unbanned, on or off the list, at any time. In fact, I underwent hundreds of tests during my career and all were negative.
It's incredible the muscle damage you do in a sprint. You don't see it after the line, because we're smiling. But if you see the tent that we're in straight afterwards, you just collapse.
You train all year for the physical aspect of cycling, but you can't plan for what comes next. You're still the same person. External perceptions might change, but inside, you're the same.
Perhaps the single most important element in mastering the techniques and tactics of racing is experience. But once you have the fundamentals, acquiring the experience is a matter of time.
You can only pre-plan stuff to a certain degree because there are so many variables - road conditions, weather conditions, mechanicals... You have an idea of whose wheel you want to be on.
It's an Olympic Games, at the end of the day, and to represent your country at the Olympics is about as good as it gets. Put a gold medal on top of that, and it doesn't ever get any better.
I guess if I looked at it from an athletic standpoint, I don't really need to win another Tour. Seven Tours for me was a dream, six broke the record, so that eight doesn't really mean much.
You take for granted that you can walk. You do it every day, and then suddenly you can't walk, and you have to remember, 'How did I get out of this chair and start walking in the first place?'
The last thing I'll say for the people that don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.
The Europeans look down on raising your hands. They don't like the end-zone dance. I think that's unfortunate. That feeling - the finish line, the last couple of meters - is what motivates me.
Pace judgement is everything in the hour record. If you can ride 16.1 or 16.2-second laps constantly for 221 laps, and not go 15.9s or 16.4s, it's keeping it on the line every lap, lap after lap.
If you're winning bike races ahead of guys who're older than you then they're going to get upset. When some young guy appears from nowhere, some people who are slower assume they ride dangerously.
I think I bit off more than I could chew. I thought the marathon would be easier. For the level of condition that I have now... that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done.
When you get into the final week of the Tour de France, it becomes a different kind of race. As the distance and the fatigue really tell, that is when it becomes a proper test of everyone's fitness.
I used to work in a bank when I was younger and to me it doesn’t matter whether it’s raining or the sun is shining or whatever: as long as I’m riding a bike I know I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
What athletes do may not be that healthy, the way we push our bodies completely over the edge to the degrees that are not human. I've said all along that I will not live as long as the average person.
Seattle is very similar to Minneapolis. I like the culture; I like the people. I raced a bike and won a national championship on Lake Washington in 1977, so I've had a connection there for a long time.
You can believe or you can doubt yourself. It's the difference between a gap being one metre late that you're gonna launch, then it's three seconds and you're sat on the wheel and you're about to lose.
I would love to be in a place, and I may never get there, where I can help people. It's something that I never really cared to advertise. It got advertised. I still do it on one-on-one level almost daily.
It gave me a chance to re-evaluate my life and my career. Cancer certainly gives things a new perspective. I would not have won the Tour de France if I had not had cancer. It gave me new strength and focus.
We sped on, across the plains, toward Metz. I hung back, saving myself. It is called the Race of Truth. The early stages separate the strong riders from the weak. Now the weak would be eliminated altogether.
Nobody wants to hear how I think I've been mistreated, or how I think my punishment should be lifted, or tweaked, or reduced. Nobody wants to hear me say that, nobody cares what I think about this. I get it.
I look forward to a time when lawyers aren't in the top three calls every day, and all you care about is how your kids are doing in school or what the weather's like and the great day you had with your family.
Since we married, Peta's taken over a lot of my cooking and she's incredible. She'll do different meals for me and the kids, depending on my regime. If I name 10 ingredients she'll change the recipe every day.
If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war.
In sport you always think the strongest guy should be going for it and getting the best results. The thing is, cycling also has a very important team aspect, which I don't think that a lot of people fully grasp.
I've read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you don't fly up a hill. You struggle slowly and painfully up a hill, and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else.
That was my decision, so I have to be responsible for that. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I don't have a good reason for why I wanted to come back, I don't have a good reason for doing it all.
Kenya, being a third world country, from a young age your eyes are open to the real world. I'd like to think growing up there taught me to stand on my own two feet, make my own decisions about what I wanted to be.
A lot of people in the Isle of Man support me and it makes it all worthwhile when people are interested in what you're doing. I dunno if the word 'famous' is appropriate, but I'm quite well known on the Isle of Man.
The physical demands of cycling is that it actually lowers your immune system, and you expose yourself to a tremendous amount of elements - so certain people might get a chronic overload and develop, say, bad asthma.
I used to walk down a street and nobody would notice me. Now, I get stopped all the time; people saying, 'well done'. It makes me really, really proud to have done my bit to help make cycling a little bit more popular.
If you're on the top for 10 years it's going to seem like you have more crashes that someone on the top for three years. If you don't win as much in your ninth or 10th year it's going seem like you are on your way out.
I want to tell the world of cycling to please join me in telling Pat McQuaid to resign. I have never seen such an abuse of power in cycling's history - resign, Pat, if you love cycling. Resign even if you hate the sport.
Me and running don’t always see eye to eye. Some days it hurts more than others. But it doesn’t mean I don’t do it. I deal with it and I keep running because not everything that is good for you, always feels good for you.
Sometimes the hardest part of the stage is right at the beginning. The other teams will leave it to us to chase down a breakaway, and we can't allow a big group to go up the road - anything more than four riders is trouble.
Crashes are the worst thing because your wounds stick to you, so you are sweating into your road rash all day and when you try to sleep your wounds are sticking to the bed sheets. It is part of the job and we know the risks.
Especially with the signing of riders with climbing abilities and the new arrival of Tyler Hamilton, who has the strength and ability to become a great leader for the big tours. All in all, I feel this is a very complete team.
People's brains work differently. The brain is like a muscle and you have to train it, keep it active, keep active in races. I notice if I haven't raced for a while. It's hard to see things clearly so you have to relearn that.
It's true that this year, following my accident in the pre-season, I kind of lost morale and I felt like quitting at the end of this year. But today I can say that I want to be a professional bike rider in the year 2003 as well.
I don't know why, but despite winning how many world championships, how many Tour stages, and being 31 years old, some people still thought I had to prove myself, you know. So I had to do the Track Worlds to try to prove myself.
The unwillingness to accept anything short of victory, that underlying fury, is the fundamental building block of my bottomless motivation to succeed. It is my credo in all that I do in life from battling cancer to bicycle racing.
At the end of the day I'm not racing for recognition, I'm not racing for popularity, that's not who I am. I'm focused on the result and trying to get the best out of myself from a sporting capacity. That's what really motivates me.
I want to be remembered going off the front, not the other way. After winning my seventh king-of-the-mountains title and winning a stage on Bastille Day, I asked myself, 'What more can I do in cycling?' I want to go out at the top.
Track and road cycling are very different things. It is easy to look at them both as cycling but going from the road to the track is like asking Andy Murray to play squash: yes, it's a racket sport like tennis, but it's not the same.
I feel a different person in a lot of ways. I feel much more professional and dedicated to my trade than I used to be. I appreciate this ability I've got - and don't take it for granted any more. That fits every aspect of my life now.