Also, for a team as strong as like ours, the Tour will always remain the biggest goal of the whole year, and personally I will certainly concentrate most of my energy on this race.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you do have a team where every rider has a huge list of results, that means everybody wants to do the race for themselves. The strongest team in the Tour is not the strongest team on paper.
I truly felt that was going to be my last tour. So here we are again and I'm saying this will probably be my last tour. That's truly the way I'm looking at it.
I have a phenomenal team behind me who have helped get me here and I, along with them, will now put everything we can into the final few weeks of preparations before the Olympic Games, where I am aiming to race well, work well through the rounds, post good times and maybe even a personal best time on the biggest stage of them all.
When the tour is done, that's the end of the U.S. tour. We'll regroup and see what we're going to do.
Especially with the signing of riders with climbing abilities and the new arrival of Tyler Hamilton, who has the strength and ability to become a great leader for the big tours. All in all, I feel this is a very complete team.
I think 'Amazing Race' is sometimes like being on tour.
I'm going to go out on tour when I feel like going on tour.
You can plan physically to try to win the Tour, but I could never plan for what was going to happen after it.
When we are on tour we also take chances.
I know I'll never feel that sensation of racing and winning again and that took a while to get used to. The Tour was a race I never thought I could lose.