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It's a fact that children with cancer have higher cure rates than adults with cancer, and I wonder if the reason is their natural, unthinking bravery... Adults know too much about failure; they're more cynical and resigned and fearful.
I want to provide the best possible life for my daughter. I want her to be so proud of me. You know, I never rode just for myself. I did it for my team as well. But this feels different. This feels like I'm riding my heart out for her.
Bike riding requires permanent sacrifice. It means training 11 months out of 12 and 110 days of racing, whatever the weather conditions. Early in life, I realised I did not have intellectual potential, so I dedicated myself to cycling.
Training-wise, I don't have an extreme plan I stick to. I know what I have to do, I know the goal. But it's not really structured. That's the beauty of road cycling. It all depends on the conditions on the day and where you are in the world.
I think an Olympic medal is the only thing missing from what I can physically achieve as a cyclist. I can't win the Tour de France, but I've pretty much won everything else that I can within my physical realm, so that's the only thing missing.
If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell.
I don't think history is stupid.History ultimately rectifies a lot of these things. If you had to ask me what I think happens in 50 years, I don't think it sits empty in 50 years. Maybe somebody else's name is there. But you can't leave it empty.
When I did win the Tour, I felt I was feted more in the U.K. for being an Olympic gold medallist... Then I come back to Europe to race, and they're not interested in the Olympic gold; it's about being the winner of the Tour de France - here he is.
I'm a fan of motorsport and a fan of McLaren and I was lucky to work with the company on a small scale across my career but to be able to race now with that brand on my jersey, it's pretty special. I still have to rein in my fanboy attitude sometimes.
A mountian bike race is a constant hard effort for two to three hours. In road racing the efforts often come in surges. You ride easy for awhile then you have to make an extreme, hard effort. They are two different efforts, two different forms of suffering.
The perception is that I've always made winning look easy. People think it's easy, but they don't see what's behind it, the time away from the family. The days spent climbing, training out in all weather, climbing but trying to keep the speed for the sprint.
I know too that we Americans like to think of ourselves as cleaner than clean, a healthy nation who would never take anything when a recent poll suggested that 65 per cent of the population would risk dying in 10 years if they would be guaranteed Olympic gold.
I'm on JetBlue and United. So I spend a lot of time on airplanes with other people and in terminals or just traveling around and going to restaurants or whatever. The interaction I get on a daily basis is always positive. I've never had a negative interaction.
The most important decision I ever made in my career was to live my life in sports as honestly and ethically as possible. Never having compromised my values allows me to look back on my life with no regrets and feel satisfaction in what I was able to accomplish.
I started getting into decent food after I got a house in Tuscany, near the British cycling academy's training base. For a cyclist, the area is incredible, with the flats of the basin of Florence, the heights of the Apennines and the small climbs around Chianti.
If somebody had told me as a kid that I would win 30 stages of the Tour de France I probably wouldn't have imagined it. I probably imagined I could do it - I don't lack confidence - but at the end of the day one Tour de France stage win can make a rider's career.
Pluto's warm-up is a reminder that no matter where you are climate happens. It always has, it always will - with or without SUVs. And it should remind us to continue taking with an ever-increasing grain of salt these claims that your car acts as a weather machine.
I wanted to live, but whether I would or not was mystery, and in the midst of confronting that fact, even at that moment, I was beginning to sense that to stare into the heart of such a fearful mystery wasn't a bad thing. To be afraid is a priceless education. P 99
I wouldn't recommend people to go up and ride their road bikes in Kenya. Bikes are not meant to be on the roads. But the mountain biking is fantastic. You can go right up into the tea and coffee plantations up in the highlands. You can descend the great Rift Valley.
[The] pain is temporary. It may last a minute, an hour, a day, or a year, but eventually it subsides. And when it does, something else takes its place, and that thing might be called a greater space for happiness ... Each time we overcome pain, I believe that we grow.
Of course, if this season turns out to be terrible for me - if I get injured again and this prevents me from reaching a satisfying level, then I could change my decision again. But at this moment, it absolutely feels like the right thing for me to continue through 2003.
The Giro's difficult to predict for the points jersey because there are so many mountain-top finishes and there are as many points on offer for mountain stages as for sprints. It's really for the most consistent all-round rider and it's pretty difficult for me to win it.
I'm fortunate in one way and I can take pride from the fact that I've consistently performed for 10 years, which is something that not many people can do. I've consistently stayed near the top for 10 years which is maybe something that is overlooked and taken for granted.
We each cope differently with the specter of our deaths. Some people deny it. Some pray. Some numb themselves with tequila. I was tempted to do a little of each of those things. But I think we are supposed to try to face it straightforwardly, armed with nothing but courage.
Live strong is exactly I guess what it says. It's one thing to live, but it's another thing to live strong, to attack the day and attack your life with a whole new attitude. This was a gift for me. I guess before the illness I just lived. Now, after the illness, I live strong.
If you want a lot of endorsements then you'd pick the Olympics. But I've had a passion for the Tour since I was a kid. Let's put it this way: it would be harder to win a stage on the Tour de France so that would mean more. I'd take the Tour win first - but I'm aiming for both.
I want to finish by saying that I intend to be an avid spokesperson for testicular cancer once I have beaten the disease. I want this to be a positive experience and I want to take this opportunity to help others who might someday suffer from the same circumstance I face today.
Unfortunately this is the legacy that has been handed to us by the people before us, people who have won the Tour only to disappoint fans a few years later, if this is part of the process we have to go through to get the sport to the better place, obviously I'm here, I'm doing it.
Cycling is a part of my life; it always has been, and I will always continue to cycle. I won't be doing it on the world stage, doing it competitively, but I'll still be out on the weekend with the masses riding around Richmond Park in my Team Sky jersey or whatever. I just love it.
The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts.
I certainly feel I'm carrying the flag for Britain. I feel an honour in that but, at the same time, knowing my roots are in Africa, I'd like that to help motivate people from there. Even coming from a third world country, it is possible to get to the top of wherever they want to be.
I realize that there are many variables outside my control in my quest, but focusing on the big goal down the road really motivates me. To help me stay focused, I set micro-goals such as races or training achievements that bring me one step closer to being at my best for major goals
It's been reported a lot that I've had two bouts of mononucleosis. The evidence suggests it wasn't two bouts, it was the same bout. I never got over it the first time. That's hard to explain to people. It makes it look like I'm not very resilient, whereas it was completely mismanaged.
Between 20km and 10km to go, you want the whole team at the front. You don't necessarily want to take control, and the speed will be dictated by how many surges you get from the other teams. You don't want to go so fast they can't come, but you want to be just ahead so you're in control.
There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart.
Everything in my life is in perspective. OK, perspective ebbs and flows. I've had bad days, but they weren't in the last years. A bad day is 2 October 1996: 'We've got bad news for you, you've got advanced testicular cancer and you've got a coin's toss chance of survival.' That's a bad day.
I had a small investment in Twofold, following guidance from my professional advisers. I had, however, claimed no tax relief of any amount in regard to this investment. Given the concerns raised about it, I have now instructed my advisors to withdraw me from the scheme with immediate effect.
The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.
You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit.
There's only one rule: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Period. Because you won't die. Even though you feel like you'll die, you don't actually die. Like when you're training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always, always do one more.
Nineteen hundred meters up there is completely different from1,900 any place else. There's no air, there's no oxygen. There's no vegetation, there's no life. There's no life. Rocks. Any other climb there's vegetation, grass and trees. Not there on the Ventoux. It's more like the moon than a mountain.
In my eyes, I will never be up there with the Sir Steve Redgraves and the Sir Chris Hoys of this world. It's not something that drives me; I just enjoy going to the Olympic Games. Just to be mentioned in the same breath as those people is an honour for me. I don't ever think about those kind of things.
As I see it, I'm just getting better and better as a rider - physically and mentally. I'm as motivated as I ever was. I enjoy it as much as I ever did. When you're a good rider on a good day, the bike doesn't rattle and bounce. You're smooth. Even if it's rough you can find a way to make the bike float.
You speak to the press at the Tour every day, but most often in a negative sense. Ninety per cent of the questions you are asked in the post-race press conferences are challenging or provocative, so you have to justify yourself; you have to try to give the right answers about every topic across the board.
I drank because I enjoyed it. I was happy sitting at the end of the bar on my own, reading the paper. I've always enjoyed my own company, and that stems from riding alone. I never trained with anyone - and I still don't. I've always been happy with my own thoughts, and that sums me up as an individual-pursuit rider.
I raced because I was paid to do a job and I felt like I had to do the job. Number two: I raced because I loved the process, I loved training, getting ready for the race, I loved all of that. And number three I raced for my memories. Regardless of what somebody wants to give or take away, you can't take my memories.
When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.
Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.
Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.
There were something like 50 good, arduous climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in awhile, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in one day, over the course of a six- or seven-hour ride. A 12 mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like.