To Amber Neben, it’s not the Olympics but it’s still good

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Like Lance Armstrong, Amber Neben has survived cancer. She has also survived meningitis and switched from being a high school running star at Orange Lutheran to becoming a cyclist because of leg stress fractures.

Wednesday in Varese, Italy, Neben, 33, won the world time trial championship beating, among others, her American countrywoman Kristin Armstrong who had won the Olympic time trial gold medal in Beijing last month.

Neben, of Irvine, only participated in the Olympics road race (where she finished 33rd). Armstrong and Christine Thorburn were chosen for the time trial, a decision that Neben had said in Beijing was a disappointment.

At the 2007 world championships in Stuttgart, Germany, Neben had been a pre-race favorite and finished a disappointed fourth. A month later Neben went to see her doctor because of a curiously-shaped growth on her lower back that was diagnosed as melanoma, a skin cancer. ‘I was lucky the cancer wasn’t advanced,’ Neben had said in Beijing. ‘It hardly kept me away from training.’

Neben was an early starter Wednesday and told reporters in Varese that she was a nervous observer the rest of the day. ‘I tried not to get too excited before everybody came through,’ she said. ‘I was just praying and waiting and hoping.’

After her disappointing Olympics Neben said she came home to Irvine resolved to turn her disappointment into training fury. ‘I had a lot of motivation left in me,’ Neben told reporters in Italy.

The men’s time trial is Thursday and Olympic bronze medalist Levi Leipheimer of Santa Rosa, Calif., is among the favorites.

-- Diane Pucin