For 15 years I was a complete arsehole to a dozen people. I said I would try and make it right with those people, and anybody that gave me an audience, I was there.

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.

Nobody wants to hear how I think I've been mistreated, or how I think my punishment should be lifted, or tweaked, or reduced. Nobody wants to hear me say that, nobody cares what I think about this. I get it.

I have never doped … I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.

I don't need a field of a thousand people. Anybody can tell you that whoever needs help, I'm happy to help.

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.

Losing and dying: it's the same thing.