“Hey, don't judge me. I was doing the best I could with the circumstance I'd been given.”

“After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.”

“I'd just killed some of the best riders in the world - and I was clean. I'd taken nothing - no EPO, no cortisone, no testosterone, no painkillers, no caffeine. I had justified to myself that I was a great rider without drugs - yet perversely given myself the green light to dope again. I'd proved what I could do clean - how much more could I do if I was doped?”

“I just do the best I can under the circumstances.”

“So I'll do that, and I'll do my best and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”

“I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.”