My job in the Tour is to get the sponsor's logo in the most prominent place.

I want to win wherever I race, the team's invested a lot in me.

It's been reported a lot that I've had two bouts of mononucleosis. The evidence suggests it wasn't two bouts, it was the same bout. I never got over it the first time. That's hard to explain to people. It makes it look like I'm not very resilient, whereas it was completely mismanaged.

If you don't enjoy something you can't keep at it. That's the thing that sticks with me.

The Olympics is where you see out of this world performances, isn't it?

All that matters is to be first across the line.

Cycling is unique in that in any other sport I'd be in a different weight category or discipline. What I do is a different sport to what Chris Froome does.

The perception is that I've always made winning look easy. People think it's easy, but they don't see what's behind it, the time away from the family. The days spent climbing, training out in all weather, climbing but trying to keep the speed for the sprint.

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 do want to race motorbikes when I retire.

A lot of the riders end up in Monaco, but I don't need to be there for the tax purposes because I'm from the Isle of Man.

You can believe or you can doubt yourself. It's the difference between a gap being one metre late that you're gonna launch, then it's three seconds and you're sat on the wheel and you're about to lose.

I think any professional athlete who says they stick to a strict diet and weigh their food out every time is either lying or they're sick.

Since we married, Peta's taken over a lot of my cooking and she's incredible. She'll do different meals for me and the kids, depending on my regime. If I name 10 ingredients she'll change the recipe every day.

I have to cross the line first. Sometimes you can put it as a fear of losing, but actually it's an addiction to winning.

Track and road cycling are very different things. It is easy to look at them both as cycling but going from the road to the track is like asking Andy Murray to play squash: yes, it's a racket sport like tennis, but it's not the same.

The Giro's difficult to predict for the points jersey because there are so many mountain-top finishes and there are as many points on offer for mountain stages as for sprints. It's really for the most consistent all-round rider and it's pretty difficult for me to win it.

You can only pre-plan stuff to a certain degree because there are so many variables - road conditions, weather conditions, mechanicals... You have an idea of whose wheel you want to be on.

The descents are quite fun - everybody has a sort of competition and tries to go for it and then you compare top speeds when you get to the bottom.

If somebody had told me as a kid that I would win 30 stages of the Tour de France I probably wouldn't have imagined it. I probably imagined I could do it - I don't lack confidence - but at the end of the day one Tour de France stage win can make a rider's career.

People's brains work differently. The brain is like a muscle and you have to train it, keep it active, keep active in races. I notice if I haven't raced for a while. It's hard to see things clearly so you have to relearn that.

If I do a circuit, then after three laps I could tell you where all the potholes were.

I have a fondness for junk food - it still calls me, sometimes.

When you're a young pro from an undeveloped country in road cycling then you're on the back foot.