Are you convinced we’re watching a clean Tour now?

[Pauses] ... I’m not convinced any sporting event in the world is clean. But I reckon, at this point in time, cycling would have to be one of the cleanest sports. I mean, how many sports force their athletes to carry a biological passport? Look, I think there’ll always be one. But those riders generally don’t last long. They’ll hang around for 12 months, then they’ll get caught. But in general, yes, I think it’s clean.

You left Europe in 1999 and moved to the United States. Why?

I had a big falling out with Stuart O’Grady. We grew up together and we’d been living together as racers. But after we fell out, I just realised I’d had enough of Europe. I wanted a new lifestyle in America. And what a life it was! Racing $10,000, $20,000-crits twice a week. I won the US pro championships in Philadelphia in front of 400,000 people; I won 20 races a year for four or five years. I just wanted that lifestyle change. It was pretty cool ...

Then you had that horror crash ...

Yeah, I’d just beaten Boonen at Ghent-Wevelgem. I was flying. Then I had a race at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and crashed at 104km/h. And I was fucked. I ruined myself. I’m honestly lucky to be walking. I broke my neck, my head opened like a cut orange, my right ankle looked like a broken windscreen. The doctors called it an “aviator’s fracture” because when the B52 bomber pilots had to crash-land their plane, the first thing to break would be their ankles, which were braced on the floor. And their ankle bones would literally explode. When they X-rayed my foot after that crash, they said, “We’ve got to operate on this in five hours or this foot’s going to die of necrosis.” I took the surgery and they put six 9mm screws in there. They’re still in there ...