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I have never cheated anybody out of a victory, I have worked hard for every single race that I have won.

When I went to the starting line of the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal, it was with the unsettling conviction that some of my competitors were cheaters.

I'm not a cheater, but if I win Olympic gold and people are looking at me and saying I am a cheat because I've won, it's hugely disrespectful given the hard work I've put in.

It might sound stupid, but I don't enter a race to win - I enter a race because I love racing.

Anytime you have a tight race and you lose, it's not pleasant.

In athletics there's always been a willingness to cheat if it looks like you're not cheating. I think that's just a quirk of human nature.

I save the race for the race and I don't let it all out in practice.

Whenever anyone pulls out of the race, you know, unless they've just been trounced in the days before, there's also - always a lot of questions about why that happened.

I race to win, not to please people.

You can call me a cheater and doper until the cows come home. But the fact remains that in a race where everybody had equal opportunity, I played the game, and I played it well.