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.

Regardless of one victory, two victories, four victories, there's never been a victory by a cancer survivor. That's a fact that hopefully I'll be remembered for.

Everything in my life is in perspective. OK, perspective ebbs and flows. I've had bad days, but they weren't in the last years. A bad day is 2 October 1996: 'We've got bad news for you, you've got advanced testicular cancer and you've got a coin's toss chance of survival.' That's a bad day.

What is stronger, fear or hope?

What athletes do may not be that healthy, the way we push our bodies completely over the edge to the degrees that are not human. I've said all along that I will not live as long as the average person.

So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us.