Was the beginning of the stage quiet?

The kindergarten was at the other end of the village, and although the first day I went with my mother, there was the cycling camp! My mother had a hairdresser and in the adjacent premises there was a bicycle workshop. Then the education was more tender than now, not your parents, but the people, and always went in the workshop. There for the first time I saw photos of Hinault, Merckx, Anquetil, Perurena, Tarangu, etc., where I got the worm. When I started running at age 6, we had 120 kids on the Bera team, all the kids in the village. Today, they don't reach a dozen.

Is it a sign of social change?

At the age of 9, I was going and coming without problems from Bera to the Palmera factory, at the entrance of Irún. Now I'm scared. Traffic has multiplied, the culture of the car has triumphed, and as a parent, I am the first to try to protect my daughter from that pile of cars. New technologies have also been affected. Little tricks are good in themselves, but they ask for education and I think we use them badly. They have created as many imbalances in society as their potential. You only have to look at the rate of childhood obesity to realize that every day we are a more sedentary society. We should take a step back, move back by bike, go back to walking, spend more time on our body and on the environment. When we were little, we looked for trout, we looked at the cured apples and ate them ... Today, I see my nephews separated from nature. Disconnecting from nature is disconnecting from your roots, and uprooting is easier to lose the course of life.

As we speak of increased traffic, the death of Iñaki Lejarreta filled the covers of the newspapers, it is always heard that a car has crushed a cyclotourist... What can be done?

On the one hand, the fact that there are more cars and cycle tourists makes the statistics tempted. On the other hand, the first driver was already driving, now look at the GPS to try to read the latest WhatsApp that has reached the phone, and a diversion of attention multiplies the chances of an accident. Most accidents come from little attention, from stupidity. However, an active society is essential and the institutions would try to support it. Even if it is only from the point of view of public spending, someone running on the mountain or on a bicycle always means less expenditure for society. To this must be added the work of raising awareness, the responsibility of taking the car, and, above all, the attention.

In this race to be an active society, it seems that anyone can run a marathon, anyone can participate in Quebrantabones, anyone... Is it healthy?

These obsessions cover other deficiencies or stains. How, if not? I can understand the obsession of those who practice sport because there is a lot at stake, but the level of obsession at which popular sport comes has neither feet nor heads. I have experienced this obsessive endeavor every year as a professional and I assure you that it is not good for you or your environment. For me, sport is freedom. I like to know this world that we live in, and I don't want my body to be the limit of that knowledge. The sport allows you to enter the beach of Hondarribia and swim wherever you want, or run with childhood friends through the mountains of Bera. That's freedom. The practice of a single sport, however, greatly limits that freedom. Imagine, for me, the hardest part of my profession was to do just one sport.

The amateur obsession is debuting in professionals. You jumped late. It would not be easy either.
Cycling has helped me overcome my fears and complexes. At the age of 15-16, at the end of adolescence, I had obvious gaps or anemic decadences, and the bicycle taught me to overcome my own conclusions. In the amateurs, I made a lot of personality, and whether or not I went to professionals, I was indebted to cycling. Cycling gave me certainty and balance as a person and made me make the first draft of Patxi today. So it was clear that I would do everything in my hand to make the leap, but I wasn't obsessed. Moreover, for half a day I worked with the physically and mentally handicapped, and what I lived at work helped me enormously in relativizing road accidents.

By then you had already played a second division handball game, you had become fifth in the Winter Triathlon World Cup, you had a diplomatura in your pocket... Do many gamble blindly on juveniles and then?

Cyclists should continue to develop their personal training. It is a matter of organization. The professional trains an average of three and a half hours a day, it takes eight hours of sleep and the rest of hours what? What about those who make that wager and are left without moving forward or going back on the amateurs? I've met many cyclists, many better than me, who have stayed on the road without debuting in professionals. What do you do at the age of 24, throwing away the six or seven years essential to your personal development, when only with high school do you have to start a new life? Even the caste of being the best in the world can shatter his knee by training, and no one in life gives him anything just for being the best in the world in his youth. In addition, failure, frustration after obsession, generates personality problems. The one who has reached the amateurs has won something in the youth, he has won in his environment, he is used to stepping the podium, but when he has left the bicycle, from morning to night, it is nothing and is considered a failure. So we have to look at those people when it comes to improving how cycling works and imagining the future.

What does current cycling sell? What are their values?

Cycling, in any case, is a European sport. We are in the midst of a crisis of civilisation, and if there is nothing to be achieved in old Europe, in cycling too. Current cycling does not reflect its own values, but has been drowned by globalisation. When I went up to the professionals, the platoon was going to be between seven and eight Americans, and today there are more than 50. The same is true of the Australians and the British. All these countries have joined the platoon with their signs of identity, but there is a permanent collision, because they are very different worlds and values. When this is homogeneous, the values of the new cycling will appear, but at the moment we are at the point where the river and the sea are mixed, unable to guess whether we are in salt water or in fresh water. The classic values of cycling have disappeared and the news is about to appear.

In the meantime, doping cases are the most frequently repeated. Do you see things the same before and after your positive?

If cycling did not really fight doping, neither Contador nor I would have been positive. In other sports, mine is not positive, cycling is positive. So the mistake was mine. I am responsible for the appearance of some substances that cannot appear to me. I know that that doesn't work out by paying the toll of the moment, that the spot is there. We are both sitting at the table, you in your shoes and I in mine, and everyone knows where your shoes have gone. I am the one who every night has to lie down with myself and sleep quietly. Unfortunately, what you learn the most is when life sticks. A child is educated with no, not with yes. That is why the positive has been positive for me, and I would like what I have paid to be beneficial for cycling.

Treat cyclists as criminals, vent the Armstrong case now... What's the point?

In the '90s, biking made the wrong decisions, and we dragged the ballast back then. We are primarily responsible, because we have not done things right. Laws are laws and must be clear. From the moment you leave room for interpretations, you question your credibility. A tour is possible by drinking water and eating macaroni. Of course, yes! The problem is that for years cyclists have considered us superheroes and we're not. Armstrong's one, I put it in that logic. In any case, what does it do ten years later with old rags shaken? How far are we going to go? What do we know about those who were behind in the classification? The only thing we know is that then everyone passed all the controls and they were not captured, and then those of one and the other have not been re-examined. It's a pity. It doesn't fix anything, it gives the present to past waters, it pokes everything, and all the efforts to go down the good road as a collective are sent to shit. Let us not fool ourselves, current cycling is by no means what it was ten years ago.

Does solidarity between cyclists only serve to win the stage?

In today's cycling, there are very good runners, but very bad leaders. There was a time when a few leaders decided on the development of cycling, there was a conscience to look after the common good. Now, that has been lost and everything has been broken. For example, when I went to professionals, I had all the platoon riders I collaborated with, today with a jersey and tomorrow with another, but the field of work was the platoon. Today, he's just a teammate, not a platoon mate, and that's a limit when playing with solidarity. As a collective, we're losing everything.

If the current cycling is not ten years ago, how will it be ten years from now?

The future will come from defining the new values of cycling and focusing on them. What kind of cycling do we want? Is the return to Beijing more successful than Euskal Bizikleta? Why did the Basque Country Bizikleta have to disappear with an incredible hobby and tradition, and why does it wake up when the return to Beijing has only money? At the moment, one of the main challenges of cycling is to organize a sustainable coexistence between tradition and economic resources. I know the classics and the big laps have been saved, but while the organisers in Beijing only confirm the check, it makes no sense for the Vuelta al País Vasco to have to look for formulas to survive without stopping with its history and success. If we want a healthy coexistence, the people who invest in Beijing will have to help the Return to the Basque Country. For the moment, cycling is here.