I know I'll never feel that sensation of racing and winning again and that took a while to get used to. The Tour was a race I never thought I could lose.
My epiphany came in that police cell: I realised I was about to lose everything and it didn't bother me, not in the slightest. I'd come to hate cycling because I blamed it for the lie I was living.
I think if I get the training spot on, the equipment perfect and I'm in the right state of mind, I can get a result there from no competitive action.
Bad thoughts can be dangerous if left to simmer and weaken the heart slowly and invisibly. Like termites that destroy the beams of a house, secretly, in the dark until it's too late and everything collapses.
Nothing was being done to help the non-dopers, to encourage or support them. Even the clean riders like myself and Moncout knew how easy it was to cheat the tests.
Hoping you were the first to do something, and fearing you weren’t the first, won’t change the future by altering the past. If you can’t be Neil Armstrong, then be Neil Armstronger.
One group of riders doped, the others alongside them racing clean. You can work out for yourselves which group was fastest.
Once you start lying, you get kind of comfortable. You start believing it. Especially if you truly believe you didn't really cheat because you were doing what everybody else was doing.
I never thought we'd catch him, and when I saw he was ready to drop I felt sorry for him. I wanted to show it's not true I'm trying to win it all. My goal is the Tour of Spain.
I'm kind of well-known in Holland, which is nice. But in Holland, we're down to earth; there are no paparazzi in my garden and no autograph hunters at the door. We have 'Strictly Come Dancing,' but I've not been asked.
I want to tell the world of cycling to please join me in telling Pat McQuaid to resign. I have never seen such an abuse of power in cycling's history - resign, Pat, if you love cycling. Resign even if you hate the sport.
I believe BMX has shaped me into who I am today, so if this journey never would have begun, then who knows the person I would be or what I would be doing with my life.
Bike riding requires permanent sacrifice. It means training 11 months out of 12 and 110 days of racing, whatever the weather conditions. Early in life, I realised I did not have intellectual potential, so I dedicated myself to cycling.
Everything that's going on within the peloton - there's about ten different races going on. There is also a survival element to it - I love the fact that it's so epic. You crash on a bike, the first thing you do is try and get back up on it. No whing...
The physical demands of cycling is that it actually lowers your immune system, and you expose yourself to a tremendous amount of elements - so certain people might get a chronic overload and develop, say, bad asthma.
Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' is my ultimate karaoke song. It is a wonderful world. People forget we only have a certain amount of time, and it can all end at any moment. Armstrong and Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' are the ultimate one-two pu...
I really liked it best when I was a nobody.
I'm from Holland, and I'm used to rain.
I had grown used to getting a pat on the back and being told after a good result: 'Well done, David - you should be happy, you're the first clean rider.
Lance Armstrong has a 17th-century, 15-foot Spanish fresco of the crucifixion hanging on the wall of his Austin mansion. This doesn't mean - and some of you Armstrong acolytes might want to sit down for this - that Lance is Jesus.
It's true that this year, following my accident in the pre-season, I kind of lost morale and I felt like quitting at the end of this year. But today I can say that I want to be a professional bike rider in the year 2003 as well.
