There was more happiness in the process, in the build, in the preparation. The winning was almost phoned in.

My mother told me...if you're going to get anywhere, you're going to have to do it yourself, because no one is going to do it for you.

Nothing goes to waste, you put it all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy.

If you're trying to hide something, you wouldn't keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.

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.

Life to me is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits

Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down.