Quotes of the year 2014

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Vincenzo Nibali

"We still have some isolated incidents now because unfortunately, the mother of the imbecile is always pregnant. I can't be the spokesman for the whole peloton, certainly, but the goodwill to improve and do something more is certainly exceptional." - Vincenzo Nibali when tasked with answering some difficult questions surrounding his decision to race with the Astana team.

"At night you sit there in your room and you know that you have to go through it all over again the day after. Then it's onto the next race and it's the same scenario again and again and at night when it's just you and your thoughts and no one to talk with you lie there and you ask yourself 'what's wrong with you?" Andy Schleck on his injury problems in July of this year. Within three months he had retired from the sport due to a longstanding knee injury.

"Some of the media seems to have concerns about Steven [de Jongh] and his past and what that might mean for Tinkoff-Saxo and Alberto. I'll tell you what it means: nothing. Steven just one of our sports director, one of the key management in the team. I have met him only once and I know nothing about his past, therefore I can't talk about it. I didn't even know that he was former pro rider from the nineties. Should I know? Should I be concerned? Absolutely not. I don't overload my brain with the information that isn't important to me. To have a zero tolerance policy for the past is just PR and Marketing." - Oleg Tinkov writes a blog for Cyclingnews ahead of the Tour de France.

"Take Bradley Wiggins for example, and his claim that he thought Lance Armstrong was clean up until the reasoned decision. I do have a little sympathy for him. While he's not particularly bright or articulate, if you read between his curse words it's clear that he has insecurities resulting from the fact that despite all the measures he took to win the Tour he wasn't even the strongest rider." - Floyd Landis highlights what he sees as the contradictions and hypocrisy within the sport.

"None of my team will answer the phone to me. I under-performed at the nationals. I'm now so scared about losing my Tour spot I can't sleep."
"For the record, I was going to be ready for the Tour, so sad my team didn't believe in me, after everything we've been through. Not cool." - David Millar takes to Twitter after being left out of the Garmin-Sharp Tour de France team. The wounds somewhat healed by the end of the season with Millar thanking the team management for their support during his time on the team."Thank you @dellisny and @vaughters for this whole experience."

"It was really just that my normal motorpacer was out of town. [Armstrong] lives a couple blocks down the road. He has a Vespa and some free time, so I just asked him. I was just like, 'Hey, can you spare an hour? People can think what they want, but I think the story is old enough now, and I think with all the other riders in his similar position, he's been punished enough. I don't think he's … I don't know. I'll stop there." - Tejay van Garderen on why Lance Armstrong motorpaced him this season.

"Really, I don't know if what they are saying is a joke. It makes me laugh, because in reality everyone present and everyone who watches on TV knows what really happened. It's not like I went down the Stelvio in a car or on a motorbike. I came down on a bike on the same roads everyone else came down." - Nairo Quintana looks to calm the situation after his ride on the descent of the Stelvio saw him take the race lead.

“If I had said that Lance did this, there wouldn’t have been a lot left of me. I was supposed to ride a bike. That’s my job. And I’ve done it pretty well now and then. Others will have to discover who doped or not. That issue I raise in my book as well. Why doesn’t the anti-doping government catch those who cheat? I think that’s worth raising questions about.” - Thor Hushovd on why he did not report Lance Armstrong to anti-doping authorities in 2011 when the American is alleged to have said 'Thor, let’s face it. Everybody did it'.

"It's the World Championships and when you're the champion, it always hurts to give away your title. But we did what we could. I was riding for a world title, not for a medal. That's how it is, and we have to live with it. That's cycling. That's part of the game. There comes a time when such a sequence comes to an end." - Rabo-Liv Woman Cycling Team Marianne Vos said after losing her world title at the UCI Road World Championships in Ponferrada, Spain, where she placed 10th in the elite women's race.

“Marianne, I don’t know why she didn’t work, and Emma Johansson, for sure I don’t know why she didn’t work. She’s got another silver medal [Johansson actually finished third - ed], maybe she likes them, I don’t know.” - Great Britain's Lizzie Armitstead gives here take on the same race.

"I'm absolutely heartbroken to leave the Tour de France. I built my season around the Tour, and the team has supported me every step of the way. I had hoped the rest day would allow some time to recover from my crashes. But it proved to be too much." Garmin-Sharp's Andrew Talanksy, after abandoning the Tour de France. He battled through nearly half of stage 11 alone with an injured back and eventually finished 32:05 minutes behind the stage winner, and a little over five minutes inside the time cut. He went on to say, “I wanted the team to keep up the fight for the stage, and in turn for them, I wanted to fight to the finish. It’s been hard for me personally with the crashes, but I'm really proud of how we rode together here. These guys are so strong and there is so much more they can do over the rest of the Tour. I'll go home now and rest and recover but I will be watching from there and cheering for my team every day.”

"We haven't had a lot of time to do the how-to-beat-Chris-Horner math. But frankly, I plan to kick his ass every time he tries."
- Phil Gaimon when Cyclingnews asked him how he and other US domestic riders could beat Chris Horner when he shows up for US races next year.

"The thing is with Chris, he's so stubborn. If he feels like he has unfinished business, he's definitely got that stubbornness to see it through. If someone says he can't do something, like I said, he's got that stubborn streak in him. He'll show them right."
- Gord Fraser speaking about former teammate Chris Horner's return to the US domestic circuit with Airgas-Safeway, a second year Continental team.

"In tests the new bike was proven to be better than the old bike but I think I wasn’t used to the position and it was slightly different. I made the wrong decision to use the bike. I can’t say where I would have been if I used the old bike but I had cramp after 10km and I never had that before. I knew it was risk. I couldn’t put any power on the pedals with the cramp. The race was over after 20km more or less. The old bike was on the roof and at one moment I thought about changing but the muscles was already fucked by then." - Bauke Mollema on his disastrous final time trial of the Tour de France which saw him drop from seventh to tenth overall.

"There's a big difference between winning and getting second. I quantified it - I looked at how many text messages, how many calls, how many Tweets I got [after the second place in Denver, compared with his win in Aspen]. It's not 10 percent less when you finish second. It's 10 percent of what you got when you won. There aren't many people who will remember who was second there, but you put as much work into getting that result as you do to win." - Kiel Reijnen on heartbreak on the final USA Pro Challenge stage.