I've got a little boy coming and I can't wait. It's going to be the biggest thing that has happened to me in my life so far. Bigger than any Tour de France win.

The problem with being a Tour de France winner is you always have that feeling of disappointment if you don't win again. That's the curse of the Tour de France.

For whatever reason, maybe it's because of my story, but people associate Livestrong with exercise and physical fitness, health and lifestyle choices like that.

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.

I guess I'm a semi-retired person. I work out of my house. I'm a skier in the winter - downhill and cross country. I have a place in Montana for the down-hilling.

The team wasn't just riders. It was the mechanics, masseurs, chefs, soigneurs, and doctors. But the most important man on the team may have been the chiropractor.

What matters is ultimately what collectively those people on the street - whether that's the cycling community, the cancer community - it matters what they think.

In the second part of my life, away from cycling, I hope I will be able to benefit fully from my family and children in the same way that cycling gave me such joy.

I am flawed, deeply flawed. I didn't invent the [doping] culture but I didn't try to stop the culture and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for.

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.

I wanted to give an honest insight into a consuming Tour. It's turned out pretty interesting because there aren't many books out there documenting someone's failure.

I ended up in Hampstead for two weeks after the Tour, visiting a hospital every day before my granddad died. But he was more than my granddad. He was like my father.

Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.

The day it all changed. The day I stated never to take anything for granted. The day I learned to take charge of my life. It was the day I was diagnosed with cancer.

Obviously, I come from one background, and the people that design fitness equipment have been doing it for years and years, and they know what works and doesn't work.

My ruthless desire to win at all costs served me well on the bike but the level it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw. That desire, that attitude, that arrogance.

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

I've got a EC3-35 Gibson, which is pretty cherished. I've got a vintage Reichenbacker 330 in fireglow, which is the other one I look after and don't let the kids touch.

But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

Your past forms you, whether you like it or not. Each encounter and experience has its own effect, and you're shaped the way the wind shapes a mesquite tree on a plain.

People refer to 'the good ol' days', but I don't know what they're talking about. As someone who's battled cancer, if I lived more than 20 years ago, I'd be a dead man.

I know Im British. I havent spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasnt British, what would I be? I am British.

Sincere apologies are for those that make them, not for those to whom they are made. Sincere apologies are for those that make them, not for those to whom they are made.

I spent a long time trying to build up an organisation [the Lance Armstrong Foundation that changed its name to Livestrong after his confession] to help a lot of people.

In a sprint you make 100 decisions a second. What if X goes now and Y goes then? Should I take this gap or that one? You have to be sharp. Over time it becomes instinct.

I know what happened to my foundation, from raising no money to raising $500m, serving three million people. Do we want to take that away? I don't think anybody says yes.

When I made the decision - when my team-mates made that decision, when the whole peloton made that decision - it was a bad decision and an imperfect time. But it happened.

I know I'm British. I haven't spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasn't British, what would I be? I am British.

I have always struggled to achieve excellence. One thing that cycling has taught me is that if you can achieve something without a struggle it's not going to be satisfying.

I have always struggled to achieve excellence. One thing that cycling has taught me is that if you can achieve something without a struggle, it's not going to be satisfying.

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.

When I won gold in Athens, I said to my wife Cath, who was pregnant, 'This baby of ours will never want for anything.' There was real pride in that - but it just didn't happen.

It never gets easier, you just go faster. To put it another way, training is like fighting with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you’re tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired.

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 may never get back to the track. The problem was that I was dominating my event, and the winning became slightly boring. I wanted new challenges, and I've got that on the road.

Everybody who rides a motorbike thinks they can ride MotoGP. Anybody who does a Gran Fondo thinks they can do pro cycling. Anyone who drives a Corsa thinks they can do Formula 1.

I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour.

Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I'm here.

During our lives...we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope.

I'm lucky that mountian biking wasn't around when I was 20, because I wouldn't have won the Tour de France. It's my kind of sport - hard, individualistic, and not a lot of tactics.

Also, for a team as strong as like ours, the Tour will always remain the biggest goal of the whole year, and personally I will certainly concentrate most of my energy on this race.

The more time I was spending with the British team, the more of a laugh I was having with them. It's clean, their way of cycling; it's more about what you can produce as an athlete.

If you didn't go out every time it was raining, you wouldn't get anything done. So it's a case of making the right clothing choice in terms of waterproof, breathable, warm clothing.

At this point in my career I feel that the Tour takes priority. There may come a time at some point down the line where other races may take preference, but for 2015, it's the Tour.

Hey. Pain can last a moment, it can last a day, it can last a week, it can last a long..long time, but it can't last forever and the only thing that can last forever is if you quit.

I never want to abandon my bike. I see my grandfather, now in his seventies and riding around everywhere. To me that is beautiful. And the bike must always remain a part of my life.

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

Lance Armstrong won seven Tours, that's 147 days of racing, and he never had a puncture or a mechanical. You can really minimise your chances of a mistake if you do everything right.

If I was racing in 2015, no, I wouldn't do it again because I don't think you have to. If you take me back to 1995, when doping was completely pervasive, I would probably do it again.

When I was younger, I didn't really train for the sprint - I trained to get over the mountains. I have to train it now I'm getting older. But the sprint is more born, rather than made.

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