Alberto Contador has accomplished more in his short career than most riders could expect to achieve in a lifetime. At just 28, the same age at which Lance won the first of his seven Tours, the Spaniard already has six grand tour titles to his credit—the Tour de France in 2007, 2009, and 2010; the Giro d’Italia in 2008 and 2011; and the Vuelta a España in 2008—as well as countless one-week stage races.

Despite his impressive cycling palmarès, Contador’s image has taken a beating in recent years. In the 2009 Tour, Contador engaged in a very public squabble with his then-teammate Lance Armstrong, which ultimately ended when Contador won the race. More recently, there’s the protracted doping scandal. Following his 2010 Tour de France victory, anti-doping officials announced that a blood sample taken on the second rest day of the Tour contained traces of the banned substance clenbuterol. Contador has repeatedly and categorically denied any wrongdoing; last January, after a months-long investigation, the Spanish Cycling Federation cleared him of the charge. But the UCI and WADA appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration of Sport in March, leaving Contador to compete—he won the Giro d’Italia in May and took fifth place at last summer’s Tour de France—while he awaited the outcome of the appeal, which is now set for November.

Last week, the Spanish champ made a surprise visit to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Specialized, one of his main sponsors. Over the course of two days, he sat down and talked with us about his cycling career, the tough season behind him, and whether he’ll be able to continue to dominate cycling as he has for the past five years.

With a full schedule in the spring, two grand tours, and all the politics surrounding your clenbuterol trial, it must have been a tough season for you. How are you spending the off-season?
I have a lot of stress all year with the competition. So in these months I relax and take time away from the bike. I have been riding only a couple of times a week and it’s usually with friends, sometimes on the mountain bike, just for fun. I need this time for relaxing my head.

How did you get into cycling?
I didn’t start cycling until I was 15 years old because my family couldn’t afford a bike. In my family, we are one sister and three brothers. My younger brother has cerebral palsy, and this is expensive, and my parents did normal work. My father was a factory worker and my mother worked at town hall, and buying a bike costs a lot of money. My older brother, who is three years older than me, had a bike two years before me, and when he finished high school my parents bought him a new bike and I took the old one. It was an Orbea, but it was maybe 13 years old and it had only five gears in back and all the other kids made jokes about it. But after three weeks of riding, I was stronger than my brother.

The next year I went to a team, and they gave me a new bike and after one month I was training with the riders who were two and three years older than me because in the mountains I was strong. I never won races in those years; I didn’t understand the tactics yet and other riders always won. But I always won the climbs.

Rather than targeting just one big race a year, as many of the top grand tour contenders do, you race throughout the season and you race a lot. Where do you find so much motivation?
For me, I like the competition. I like to race my bike, and I like to win. And I love to have an objective and go for it. So it all starts by saying this is going to be my objective, and then I give 100 percent to get it. Also, racing smaller races like the Volta ao Algarve and the Volta a Catalunya helps me find the rhythm for racing and lets me and the team practice for the bigger races.

I assume the objective at the Tour de France last year was to win? So was finishing fifth a disappointment for you?
Yes, I went there for the victory. But remember, the norm for most riders isn’t to win. Most riders would work very hard and take fifth and this would be a good result. But when everyone looks at me they expect that I always win. It’s just because I win so many races. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to always win. So it was a good learning experience for me to remember that.