I guess if I looked at it from an athletic standpoint, I don't really need to win another Tour. Seven Tours for me was a dream, six broke the record, so that eight doesn't really mean much.

Hard work, sacrifice and focus will never show up in tests.

Marathons are hard because of the physical pain, the pounding on the muscles, joints, tendons.

There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say: 'Enough is enough.'

The unwillingness to accept anything short of victory, that underlying fury, is the fundamental building block of my bottomless motivation to succeed. It is my credo in all that I do in life from battling cancer to bicycle racing.

Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.

Forever is a big word. I'm not going anywhere.