Laurels for Lance

GEETA PADMANABHAN

On 29th July, Lance Armstrong of the U.S. Postal team rode down the Champs-Elysees in Paris in his helmet and yellow jersey to create bicycle history. He had just won the Tour de France for the third consecutive year.

If you were a bicycle enthusiast, you would know that the Tour de France is the most prestigious annual bike race in the world. It is also the most strength-sapping, endurance-testing contest spread over 22 days. Here the fittest athletes in the world ride the bike for 2286 miles (not kms) in 20 stages in summer. While pedalling on mountain roads, into valleys and through city streets in heat and humidity, these racers fight not just their rivals but also constant exhaustion. It is a race that challenges your determination as much as it tortures your body.

During the competition, leaders in various categories are honoured with the privilege of wearing specially coloured jerseys. The best sprinter is given a green jersey. The best mountain climber gets to wear a polka-dotted one. But what they all covet is the yellow one, given to the biker who finishes the race in the shortest time- the winner. Armstrong won the stages before he became the overall winner. But he was not supposed to win this year's tournament. And I'll tell you why.

Lance Armstrong was a sports prodigy. As a 12-year-old in a football-crazed High School in Plano, Texas, he discovered that he wasn't good at sports that involved a ball. He had to find something he could succeed at. He took to distance running. He also joined a swimming club. It did not bother him that the pool was at the end of a 20-mile bike ride. It was a gruelling schedule for a teenager. Work-outs from 5 to 7:30 am, the bike ride and 6000 metres of swimming practice.

At 13, Armstrong entered a triathlon - a combination of biking, swimming and running contests. He won it on his new Mercier bicycle. One race followed another and soon he was the junior triathlon champion of the state. He hadn't had any training for it. "I was discovering 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 the sport was - in a straight- ahead, long-distance race, I could beat anybody." Still he felt that he was "born to race bikes."

Before he left high school Armstrong was training with the Junior National cycling team and in a year, he had competed in Moscow and had been signed up by a sponsor. He had also won the U.S. Amateur Championships. His aggressive style and his will to win made Armstrong a natural champion.

1996. This supreme athlete, considered physically invincible, training for stardom, began to feel "sore in the saddle." The vague but nagging headaches, the blurry vision and the groin soreness could no longer be ignored. One evening he coughed up blood. He was ill. Very ill. The diagnosis was devastating. He had testicular cancer, a massive one that had spread to his lungs, abdomen and even his brain. There were eleven golf ball- sized masses in his lungs alone. His chances of survival were a mere 50/50.

Suddenly Armstrong's world came crashing down. He was finished as a biker. All that he had struggled for, he had given his blood and sweat for, he had practised hours on end for had to be given up. There could be no racing, no future, no life. Or so he thought.

But that was only for a short while. Armstrong decided to fight cancer the way he had battled to be the top racing cyclist in the world. He would not give in so easily. He had outdone his rival bikers with "back-breaking hard work". He would confront this internal enemy with his emotional strength. He would will his body to heal.

He consulted the best doctors in the US - doctors who would treat his tentacled foe aggressively. He began his long, lonely combat with the killer disease. He underwent surgery and high doses of chemotherapy during a year of constant pain, depression and wretchedness. Those were the darkest days of his life. Uncertainty and despair were his constant companions. But incredibly at the end of two years he tested negative for cancer cells. He had won the greatest victory of them all.

1997 was a very special year for Lance Armstrong. He returned to training , to catch up with where he had left off. He terms this his 'wake-up call'. He founded a cancer research society, changed his pedalling action and slowly moved forward in his rankings. And after only a year of tournaments, he won the Tour de France in 1999. He made headlines in sports magazines throughout the world. He said, "I used to ride to make a living. Now I just want to live so I can bike."

The next year he repeated his triumph at France and picked up a bronze medal at the Sidney Olympics. In the recently held Tour de France he made his historic hat-trick. Lance Armstrong is now the first American to have won the tournament three times in a row.

Armstrong said: "If there's one thing I say to those who use me as their example, it's that if you ever get a second chance in life, you've got to go all the way." He did just that.

Read more about him in these books: It is Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong, The Race of His Life by Kristin Armstrong.

pr-geeta@yahoo.com

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