I had a decision to make. To me, it wasn't a hard one: if I could ride, I was going. Crashes were unavoidable in cycling, and so was bad luck, and if you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on.

Andre's been doing this for 20 years at the highest level, and you just can't argue with that,

The system has seriously failed. And when the system fails, you have to go to the head. And he won't answer the questions.

If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on.

Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down.

I actually spoke to him for about 30 minutes and he didn't say any of that stuff to me personally, ... But to say that I've 'fooled' the fans is preposterous. I've been doing this a long time. We have not just one year of only 'B' samples; we have seven years of 'A' and 'B' samples. They've all been negative.