I have never had a single positive doping test, and I do not take performance-enhancing drugs.
I’m not trying to justify myself, or say I’m not sorry, or not contrite.
I have never doped. I can say it again, but I’ve said it for seven years.
I didn’t just jump back on the bike and win. There were a lot of ups and downs, good results and bad results, but this time I didn’t let the lows get to me.
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.
If you’re trying to hide something, you wouldn’t keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.
It’s something I find enjoyable. Whether it is a road bike or mountain bike or tandem bike. I enjoy riding a bike.
I believe that the mind powers the body, and once the mind says we want to do it, then the body will follow.
The biggest losers are those who care only about winning.
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.
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.
For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities.
Whatever your 100% looks like, give it.
It was great to fight in training, great to fight in the race, but you don’t need to fight in a press conference, or an interview, or a personal interaction.
Well, you better ride like you stole something ’cause you are about to win a stage in the Tour de Fance.
People refer to ‘the good ol’ days’, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. As someone who’s battled cancer, if I lived more than 20 years ago, I’d be a dead man.
I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. I rode when no one else would ride.
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.
My house is burned, but I can see the sky.
Athletes don’t have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because, introspection doesn’t get you anywhere in a race.