![]() ![]() ![]() I've made so many improvements in my time trialling this year. It's realistic to think I can win that now. I was already thinking about the Olympics on Saturday. I've just a done a world-class time trial, on Saturday, averaging a ridiculous amount of power after three weeks of bike racing and two really tough Pyrenees stages, a 222km stage on the Friday at a 44km per hour average speed with a lead-out in the finale, and then I still did that on Saturday. Everything is in place for the next goal. We always knew I would be chasing the win in the Tour, and that after that I would be going for the win in the time trial in the London Olympics, so we planned for this happening, although we weren't taking it for granted by any means. We have prepared for this for a long time. In the short term, it's gold or nothing in London now, if I'm 100% honest. My job is to ride a bike and that's what I like doing: going out on my bike, and training. In the medium-term, I want to go on until the end of the season, at this stage I want to keep going. ![]() The biggest accolade is respect from your peers. And there are messages like the one I had from Sir Chris Hoy: it's humbling to hear praise of that kind. It's almost a kind of disbelief that this is happening it's little things like seeing the front page of L'Équipe, with my picture on it in the yellow jersey. It's a little bit like when I won the Olympics for the first time in 2004. So I'm almost the last person to soak it up and know what it feels like. That's quite a nice feeling, that you can have that impact on someone. The thing that's struck me most over the last 12 hours or so is just what it means to other people around me, like my personal photographer breaking down in tears in my room, and my mechanic in tears as well: you just think hell, it's not just me who's gone through this, everyone else around me has lived it too. It's very difficult to sum up what I'm feeling in words. But coming on in the yellow jersey surrounded by the guys who have put me there, with all my family there waiting for me – Well, I won't swear but … When you come on there the roar, even when you finish last in the Tour, is the same for everyone. It's what I've dreamed of for 20 years but I never dreamed it could become reality.Ī lot of riding up the Champs-Élysées is goose-pimple stuff. It sounds cliched, but it's the stuff of childhood dreams really. I never imagined that 19 years later I'd be coming down there in the same position as Indurain. I remember thinking how big it was, how huge it was, seeing the riders whizzing past. We'd come over from London for the weekend, gone up the Eiffel Tower the day before, then watched the Tour come into town on the Sunday. ![]()
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