It doesn't get any easier; you just get faster.

I'm lucky that mountian biking wasn't around when I was 20, because I wouldn't have won the Tour de France. It's my kind of sport - hard, individualistic, and not a lot of tactics.

It is cycling as a professional sport that represents the problem. It can transform someone into a liar.

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 more optimistic about cycling right now than I've ever been.

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

Sincere apologies are for those that make them, not for those to whom they are made.