10ktruth Site Map

Races

Rage

Guest
Rage

Result

Road

Runner
Speak

Q & A

More
Q & A

Sport Quotes
On
Baseball
On Climbing
On
Cycling
On
Football
On
Golfing
On
Hockey
On Running
On
Tennis
On Training
On Truth

More
Famous
Sports
Quotations:

Babe
Didricksen
Zaharias

Muhammad
Ali

Emil
Zatopek

Links

Race Schedule

Training

Home

10k Truth Quotes on Cycling

Cycling Quotes

"What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was--in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it."
- Lance Armstrong, My Journey back to Life

"But to say that the race is the metaphor for the life is to miss the point. The race is everything. It obliterates whatever isn't racing. Life is the metaphor for the race."
Donald Antrim

"I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailer? We are getting soft... As for me, give me a fixed gear!"
Henri Desgrange

"Eat before you are hungry.
Drink before you are thirsty.
Rest before you are tired.
Cover up before you are cold.
Peel off before you are hot.
Don't drink or smoke on tour.
Never ride just to prove yourself."
Paul de Vivie, aka Velocio

"Perhaps the single most important element in mastering the techniques and tactics of racing is experience. But once you have the fundamentals, acquiring the experience is a matter of time."
Greg LeMond

"It never gets easier, you just go faster."
Greg LeMond

"I don't have any more bad days. I have good days and I have great days. Cancer no longer consumes my life, my thoughts, or my behavior. If I have a tough week, all I have to do is sit back and reflect on what I went through, and look at my son, and things don't bother me anymore. I'm not only alive, but I'm responsible for another life, the life of my child. When you almost lose your life to cancer, and then win the Tour de France, and then become a father, it grows you up fast. I'm more thoughtful, and I resist saying the first thing that comes out of my mouth. Before, all of my questions were directed toward the "me," as in "Why me?" or, "What are my chances?" But now I've started looking at other people."
Lance Armstrong

"My career is going to be played out year by year. Will I be here in 2004? I don't know. The record won't keep me here. Happiness will."
Lance Armstrong

"The supporters...It is true that they are dangerous when they run close to the riders. From there to throwing a punch. That is a step...."
Gilberto Simoni commenting on Wladimir Belli punching a heckler (Simoni's nephew) on the last climb of the 84th Giro d'Italia. Belli was expelled from the race.

"...the disqualification is unjust, I understand his reaction. You must understand the riders at certain moments (like climbing an 18% hill) they are stressed and they can react rashly."
Gilberto Simoni's 18 year old nephew's comments after Belli punched him and was disqualified from the Giro d'Italia.

"We know that the rider was provoked, but we are forced to apply the regulations. That involves a fine and the immediate exclusion from the race. The gesture is inexcusable."
Giro d'Italia's Race Jury President about the decision to expel Wladimir Belli.

"There are too many factors you have to take into account that you have no control over...The most important factor you can keep in your own hands is yourself. I always placed the greatest emphasis on that."
Eddy Merckx, Belgian, who won Tour de France five times.

"If you were a spectator on one of the mountain passes today, the super-light bikes would be little different in appearance from the machines of years ago, pedaled by earlier heroes, Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, LeMond, Roche. They would look like the bikes our dads rode when we were kids. But the Tour is a commercial race, and innovation must be given its place on the catwalk, or in this case the vélodrome...."
James Waddington, Bad to the Bone

"The riders come out, knights for the tournament, neck to thigh in slippery lycra with the sheen of deep space condoms, faired helmets on their heads like the glans from another galaxy and neoprene pixyboots to slide the air around their feet, mounted on gaudily caparisoned donkeys — the carbon fibre monocoque monoblade."
James Waddington, Bad to the Bone

"The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community."
Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895

"What was supposed to be a summer of fun on the bike turned into a year, then two years. It certainly wasn't a calculated plan to have a career as a cyclist."
Derek Bouchard-Hall

"There's a lot more pressure when you're a medal favorite. Now, nobody has any expectations for me. Nobody knows what I can do, so I'm riding with nothing to lose."
Chris Witty, speedskater-turned-cyclist of Park City, Utah, on competing in the 2000 Summer Olympics. Her 1998 Winter Olympics performances garnered a silver at 1,000 meters and bronze at 1,500 meters.

"There were something like 50 good, arduous climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in awhile, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in one day, over the course of a six- or seven-hour ride. A 12 mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like."
Lance Armstrong, from "It's Not About the Bike"

"We sped on, across the plains, toward Metz. I hung back, saving myself. It is called the Race of Truth. The early stages separate the strong riders from the weak. Now the weak would be eliminated altogether."
Lance Armstrong, from "It's Not About the Bike"

"Pain is a big fat creature riding on your back. The farther you pedal, the heavier he feels. The harder you push, the tighter he squeezes your chest. The steeper the climb, the deeper he digs his jagged, sharp claws into your muscles."
Scott Martin

"To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain....at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there's no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks."
Scott Martin

"The Ventoux is a god of Evil, to which sacrifices must be made. It never forgives weakness and extracts an unfair tribute of suffering."
Roland Barthes, French philosopher, pioneer of semiotics, sometimes windbag and full-time bicycle racing fan, describes Mont Ventoux, a 13-mile clilmb above the treeline into a desolation of strewn rock, in the Tour de France.

"Physically, the Ventoux is dreadful. Bald, it's the spirit of Dry: Its climate (it is much more an essence of climate than a geographic place) makes it a damned terrain, a testing place for heroes, something like a higher hell."
Roland Barthes, French philosopher and bicycle racing fan, author of Mythologies, describes Mont Ventoux in the Tour de France.

"Nineteen hundred meters up there is completely different from1,900 any place else. There's no air, there's no oxygen. There's no vegetation, there's no life. There's no life. Rocks. Any other climb there's vegetation, grass and trees. Not there on the Ventoux. It's more like the moon than a mountain."
Lance Armstrong, American cycling king, wearing Tour de France yellow jersey on the Ventoux Stage, 2000.

See 10k Truth's Links to Our Favorite Sports Columnists