I get incredibly angry when I'm accused of doping, or even when it's merely implied. That accusation is like saying to someone else: you cheat at your job; you cheated to get to where you are now.
I made a particular effort to explain it to Hervé Bombrun, a journalist from l'Equipe. I'm good friends with him, so fortunately I was able to make my point without him punching me in the face.
He asked me: "What is that anger all about? It's all right you saying all this kind of stuff but …"
"Have you got kids?"
"Yeah, I'm married with kids."
"What if I said to you they're not your kids?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if I said, your wife had an affair at the time, so she got pregnant by someone else?"
"No, it was definitely me. I know they're my children."
"Well, no, I don't think they are."
So he started getting upset, and I explained: "Look, it makes you angry, doesn't it? It makes you want to come out fighting. It's like people telling me I'm cheating at what I'm doing; it gets me angry."
"Ah oui, oh gosh."
As time has gone on, the reasons why I would never use drugs have become far more important. It comes down to my family, and the life I have built for myself and how I would feel about living with the possibility of getting caught.
The question that needs to be asked is not why wouldn't I take drugs, but why would I? I know exactly why I wouldn't dope. To start with, I came to professional road racing from a different background to a lot of guys. The attitude to doping in the UK is different to on the Continent, where a rider such as Richard Virenque can dope, be caught, be banned, come back and be a national hero. There is a different culture in British cycling. Britain is a country where doping is not morally acceptable. I grew up in the British environment, with the Olympic side of the sport as well as the Tour de France.
If I doped I would potentially stand to lose everything. It's a long list. My reputation, my livelihood, my marriage, my family, my house. Everything I have achieved, my Olympic medals, my world titles, the CBE I was given. I would have to take my children to the school gates in a small Lancashire village with everyone looking at me, knowing I had cheated, knowing I had, perhaps, won the Tour de France but then been caught.
All my friends in cycling are here, and my extended family. My wife organises races in Lancashire. I have my own sportif, with people coming and paying £40 each to ride. Cath's family have been in cycling for 50 years, and I would bring shame and embarrassment on them: my father-in-law works at British Cycling, and would never be able to show his face there again. It's not just about me: if I doped it would jeopardise Sky – who sponsor the entire sport in the UK – Dave Brailsford and all he has done, and Tim Kerrison, my trainer. I would not want to end up sitting in a room with all that hanging on me, thinking, "****, I don't want anyone to find out." That is not something I wish to live with.
The problem with the accusations is that they begin that whole process of undermining what I have achieved. That's why I get angry about them.
This is only sport we are talking about. Sport does not mean more to me than all those other things I have. Winning the Tour de France at any cost is not worth the risk. That boils down to why I race a bike. I do it because I love it, and I love doing my best and working hard. I don't do it for a power trip.
At the end of the day, I'm a shy bloke looking forward to taking my son rugby training after the Tour. If I felt I had to take drugs, I would rather stop tomorrow, go and ride club 10-mile time trials, ride to the cafe on Sundays, and work in Tesco stacking shelves.
I haven't followed all the ins and outs of the Lance Armstrong case, but I know the broad lines: he's not contesting the doping charges against him (although he's still protesting his innocence); as it stands, his Tour titles have been taken away from him; there is Tyler Hamilton's book, which is pretty damning; the Usada (United States Anti-Doping Agency) report on the case of the US Postal team makes it clear that he was doping in a sophisticated way. Regardless of what I've said over the years, I have always had my suspicions about him. When the news broke it was like when you're a kid and you find out Father Christmas doesn't exist. It's shocking still, but not a huge surprise. When he made his comeback in 2009, it became more relevant to me because I was actually racing against him.
By 2009 it had become clear that many of the top guys weren't clean at the time Lance was at his best – a lot of the guys who finished second to him were subsequently caught, and quite a few of those who finished third, fourth or fifth – but when he came back to the sport I quite liked him. He seemed much more relaxed, he seemed to be returning for reasons other than winning. He was quite gracious in defeat in some of those races; he was quite respectful, encouraging of what I was trying to do. I thought whatever had happened in the past had happened; it hadn't affected me in those years.
At the time I stuck to my line that Lance's return was a good thing for the sport. Without Lance's achievement in the Tour, Livestrong, his cancer charity, wouldn't have such a high profile and perhaps wouldn't be able to do the work it does. Without Lance, cycling mightn't be as popular – he made it cool in a way. The fact alone that he was coming back to the sport had raised cycling's profile; he announced his comeback on the cover of Vanity Fair, not a cycling magazine, which shows how he had given the sport its current broad appeal.
I didn't know, of course, that eight or nine months down the line I was going to go toe-to-toe with him for a place on the podium in the Tour de France. With hindsight, I'm glad I never criticised him. I had to go and race with the guy and everyone around him. I know what Lance is like if you make an enemy of him. We've seen it in the past. He could have made my life very difficult.
But if it were confirmed that he was doping in 2009–10, then he can get ****ed, completely. Before, he wouldn't have been alone in what he was doing, but the sport has changed since he retired the first time. After 2009, what Lance was or was not doing directly affected everybody, because the sport was making a real effort; Garmin and other teams were being pretty vocal about riding clean. Ultimately I finished fourth in the Tour that year, by 38 seconds to Armstrong who was in third place; getting on the podium of the Tour might have been my only chance. *
On a personal level, the way I look at it now is that, as the yellow jersey, the pressure is on me to answer all the questions about doping – even though I've never doped. I was asked the questions in the Tour and I gave the answers I did.
So I'm ****ed off that Lance has done what he did; it feels as if he's disappeared and I have to answer all the questions. That really, really annoys me. And where is he? Halfway around the world, doing this, that and the other. But we are the ones in this sport today who have got to answer all the questions.
It feels like Lance has dumped on the sport and we've got to clean it up because he's not around any more: he's not managing a team, he's not at the races like other riders from the past – Sean Kelly, Eddy Merckx – he's out there carrying on as he was before. He's still giving statements saying he's standing by this, it's a vendetta, everything that's been said out there is all rubbish. But as things stand today, I've won more Tours de France than he has.
If I'm asked what I feel about it, there is a lot of anger. We are the ones here, in this sport, right now, who have to pick up the pieces. We are the ones trying to race our bikes, the ones sitting there in front of the press trying to convince them of our innocence, continuing to do things in the right way; they've trashed the office and left; we're the ones trying to tidy it all up. I'm doing what I do. I just hope that by conducting myself as I have done this year, by winning the races I have and doing what we're doing clean, we're creating a legacy for the next lot of riders who come along.