If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on.

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

I wanted to win the Tour de France. And when I won it once, I wanted to do it again, and again, and again, it just kept going. So there wasn't another competitive environment.

There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart.

We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up or fight like hell.

I didn't live a lot of lies, but I lived one big one.

It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.