I am flawed, deeply flawed. I didn't invent the [doping] culture but I didn't try to stop the culture and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for.

My cocktail, so to speak, was only EPO, but not a lot, transfusions and testosterone.

There was certainly a dishonesty there that I think is totally regrettable and inexcusable. The ringleading, the bullying: not totally true.

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.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

Hope that is the only antidote to fear.

The idea that anybody was forced, or pressured, or encouraged, is not true.