A Fourth Is With Him

Having confronted his own mortality five years ago, when his body was invaded by testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain, cyclist Lance Armstrong now finds himself contemplating athletic immortality.

Armstrong on Sunday won the Tour de France for the fourth consecutive year, continuing his domination of the three-week test of stamina, wits and nerves. Although the 2,036-mile course was reconfigured to save the mountain stages for later than usual on the theory he might be too depleted to make his characteristically strong climbs, he was never seriously challenged in the 20-stage race.

“It’s a difficult race, three weeks,” he said. “It’s difficult mentally. It’s good to finish.”

The 30-year-old Texan, riding for the U.S. Postal Service team, won in 82 hours 5 minutes 12 seconds, 7 minutes 17 seconds ahead of runner-up Joseba Beloki of Spain. Armstrong’s average speed, 24.8 mph, was the fourth-fastest in history--and he owns two of the other top times.

Raimondas Rumsas of Lithuania was third, 8:17 behind Armstrong. No other rider was within 13 minutes. The only other U.S. rider in the top 10 was Levi Leipheimer of Santa Rosa, who rode for the Dutch Rabobank team and finished a surprising eighth, 17:11 out of the lead. There was never much doubt who the leader would be, even though Armstrong finished second to Colombia’s Santiago Botero in a time trial in the ninth stage and the ever-critical French press began to suggest he was cracking.

Armstrong silenced his critics by winning consecutive stages in the Pyrenees, taking the lead in the 11th stage at La Mongie and forging further ahead at the Plateau de Beille. He added to his lead by winning a time trial in the 19th stage.

“I love this race. I love what I do,” he said. “I love being with the team, being with eight great guys.”

Wearing the maillot jaune--yellow jersey--of the Tour leader, Armstrong sipped champagne as he and his U.S. Postal Service teammates began the final stage, from Melun to Paris, at the traditional leisurely pace. The tempo picked up as the pack of riders, known as the peleton, came within view of the Eiffel Tower and reached the Arc de Triomphe.

While rivals scrambled for personal goals, such as Robbie McEwen of Australia bursting away to end German Erik Zabel’s six-year hold on the best sprinter title, Armstrong cruised home, accompanied by the cheers of spectators who jammed sidewalks along the Champs-Elysees waving U.S. and Texas flags.

When he crossed the finish line, this football-loving, Tex-Mex-eating son of the Lone Star State became the first American to win the 99-year-old race more than three times, a feat that had previously been done by compatriot Greg LeMond. Silhouetted against the majestic Arc de Triomphe, holding a bouquet of yellow flowers that matched his jersey, Armstrong held his cap over his heart during “The Star-Spangled Banner” and savored his victory.

“They’re all different, unique, emotional and great in many ways,” he said of his Tour triumphs.

Before his name was inscribed in the Tour record books after those of five-time winners Miguel Indurain of Spain, Bernard Hinault of France, Eddy Merckx of Belgium and Jacques Anquetil of France, he was thinking about next year’s race--and setting the record in 2004. To do that, he said, he would need a solid and cohesive team. This year’s squad, “was one of the strongest in the history of cycling,” he said. “I hope to ride with them for two more years.”

Two months before his 31st birthday, with a wife, three children and an estimated $10-million annual endorsement income, Armstrong remains as driven as he was a decade ago. Matching Indurain’s record of five consecutive wins and standing alone with six wins are feats well within his reach, say those who know him well.

These are friends who saw him finish last in a field of 111 in his first professional race and almost quit before he accepted their advice about tactics, teamwork and near-fanatical preparation.

They’re the friends who shared his despair when he lost his health insurance and his biggest sponsor, and when other companies shied away from someone who seemed unlikely to survive, much less ride again. They saw him lose his hair, eyebrows and muscles to the ravages of chemotherapy, but never lost faith in him.

They know the depth of his determination and force of his spirit, and they know better than to bet against him.

“There are crashes, illnesses, all kinds of variables. But looking at Lance and where he is in life, I think Lance can do it,” said Jim Ochowicz, a former rider and team leader, the surrogate father who brought apple fritters to Armstrong’s hospital room when chemo left him too sore to swallow anything else.

“He’s definitely in the top 10 historically now. As he continues to find success, you certainly have to move him up the ladder. Others have won four tours. However, they didn’t win those Tours post-cancer, which changes the dynamics of what he’s done. It’s awfully hard to do a comparison when you bring that into the equation.

“No other great athlete has done what he’s done. I know of other sportsmen who were not at the level Lance was at who came back from cancer, but none who was at his level.”

Sean Petty, vice president of marketing for USA Cycling and formerly its athlete performance director, believes Armstrong will be affected less by age and weariness than will his rivals. Because he focuses so intently on the Tour de France to the exclusion of other races--”basically this is what I devote my life to,” Armstrong said--Petty said Armstrong should extend his prime beyond the early 30s.

Armstrong, who has a home in Spain and ranch land near Austin, competes in about six races a year and skips the one-day classics he rode earlier in his career. His U.S. Postal Service teammate George Hincapie, by contrast, will probably compete in a dozen races between late winter and early fall. Because there are few elite races in the U.S., Armstrong rarely competes in his homeland. However, he’s scheduled to race in the New York City Cycling Championships next weekend.

“Traditionally, 31 has been old,” Petty said. “If you look at Bernard Hinault, who won five Tours, he retired when he was 32. But Hinault was really riding hard all season in some major events. Not that Lance isn’t riding hard. But he doesn’t ride in as many races as some people did or do.

“The big thing, I think, is that Lance can take his mental and physical preparation to new levels. As long as Lance is mentally challenged and hungry, I think he’ll do the Tour de France, and that’s the key. He has to feel there’s some kind of challenge.”

That he found a challenge this year is clear to Mike Plant, an Olympic speedskater turned cyclist who became president of USA Cycling and is on the board of directors of the Union Cycliste Internationale, the sport’s governing body.

“I can just see how Lance is riding. He’s in an element of his own,” said Plant, an executive vice president of Turner Sports in Atlanta. “When he’s ready to go, he knows when that is and no one is going to go with him. You can’t predict these things, but if he can hold this kind of form, he should have no problem winning five or six, and certainly five or six in a row.

“You have to take into consideration he’s a very talented and gifted athlete. He knows how to win when he has to. I’ve known only two athletes like that: Lance and [Olympic speedskating quintuple gold medalist] Eric Heiden. There aren’t too many people who know how to dig that deep. They do.”

Said Ochowicz, who flew to Paris for the finish: “Psychologically he’s prepared to go forward and win five or six Tours de France. It’s demanding, no question. It requires a lot of support from close friends and family, a good sponsor, a good team and good teammates. You don’t win the Tour de France by yourself. You can’t race 23 days and win by yourself. You must have help from your teammates. The Chicago Bulls didn’t win without Michael Jordan. It’s the same with Lance. He’s the winner on the team, but they operate as a team, and he always acknowledges that.”

Blessed with a metabolism that lets him take in and use oxygen more efficiently than most people and produces little lactic acid--the chemical generated when the body tires--Armstrong was a swimmer and triathlete as a teenager. He was a good cyclist before his illness, maybe very good. In 1993, at 21, he persuaded Ochowicz to let him ride in the Tour de France and he became the youngest rider to win a Tour stage, finishing first in the 114-mile leg from Chalons-sur-Marne to Verdun. He didn’t finish the Tour, but he did win the world championship.

Yet, his riding was more a calculated obsession than a passion.

“I didn’t love the bike before I got sick,” he said in his autobiography, “It’s Not About the Bike,” a searing account of his life, illness and recovery. “It was simple for me: It was my job and I was successful at it. It was a means to an end, a way to get out of Plano, a potential source of wealth and recognition. But it was not something I did for pleasure or poetry.”

That changed when he became ill. He was diagnosed with cancer on Oct. 2, 1996, and within a week underwent surgery to remove two lesions from his brain and began rigorous chemotherapy. He thought his career was over, that he might go to school or simply play golf. Only while talking to the nurse who managed his chemo treatments did he realize he missed riding.

“She asked me about cycling and I found myself telling her about the bike with a sense of pleasure I hadn’t realized I possessed,” he wrote.

That epiphany pushed him back onto his bike. He began with trips around his Austin neighborhood, outings that exhausted and humbled him when recreational riders zoomed past him on mountain bikes. But he forced himself to persevere.

“To race and suffer, that’s hard. But it’s not being laid out in a hospital bed with a catheter hanging out of your chest, plutonium burning in your veins, throwing up for 24 hours straight, five days a week,” he wrote.

“The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.”

He described himself as “leaner in body and more balanced in spirit” after his cancer battle. Petty agreed.

“Obviously, there’s a physical difference. He came out a different person,” Petty said of his slimmer, less muscular post-cancer physique. “There was a huge difference, making him more of a Tour rider than a one-day rider.

“Mentally, coming as close to death as possible, it had to affect him. I don’t want to say it has softened him, but that cocky confidence he had is not as visible. And I think that’s not just the cancer. It’s also having a family and kids. Everything has rounded him out.”

Rounded, but not dulled.

Despite persistent rumors he has taken performance-enhancing drugs and even had doctors add them to his chemotherapy medication, he adamantly denies being a doper. He has never tested positive, and the French government recently said its nearly two-year investigation into allegations against his team has found no evidence of cheating. However, Armstrong told Cyclingnews that French tax authorities are claiming he’s liable for taxes on his 1999 Tour de France prize money. The money traditionally goes to the team, which doles out shares to riders, mechanics and others. This year’s prize is about $438,000.

“A lot of it’s sour grapes. There’s a witch hunt going on,” Plant said. “Maybe it’s because a French rider hasn’t won since 1985. It’s unfortunate. The facts are the guy gets tested probably more than anybody, and he always comes up clean.”

But someday, those annoyances might become too much. When that happens, Petty can see him devoting more time to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which funds cancer research. “I know for a fact it’s not just his name,” Petty said. “He knows all the research that’s being done and where the grants are going.”

He’s also feeling bound by family ties. He and his wife, Kristin have a 2 1/2-year-old son, Luke, and 8-month-old twins Isabelle and Grace, born through in-vitro fertilization using sperm he banked before his chemo treatments. His children greeted him at the finish line Sunday, the twins wearing sun bonnets against the summer heat.

“It’s harder and harder to be away from home with a wife and three children,” he said. “My girls started crawling while I was away at the Tour de France. But it’s not my last Tour de France.”

Nor is it likely to be his last victory.

“At the end of the day, I don’t need to race anymore. I’ve done a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I’d do,” he told Cyclingnews in March. “Done better in terms of results, financially, traveling, experienced, introductions ... you name it, it’s been a hundredfold [more]. So if I didn’t love it, I would have been gone by now. But I still just, I really dig it....

“I still have a ton of passion for bike racing, and it’s 12 months a year. I mean, there’s months that I don’t do much, but man, I go three or four days without riding my bike, I get really cranky. I like riding my bike. I crave it.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tour de France by Stage

Includes Lance Armstrong’s time margin, either behind the leader (-) or as leader (+):

(text of infobox not available)

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*--* Top Five Finishers P Rider Country Time 1 Lance Armstrong USA 82:05:12 2 Joseba Beloki Spain + 07:17 3 Raimondas Rumsas Lithuania + 08:17 4 Santiago Botero Colombia + 13:10 5 I.G. de Galdeano Spain + 13:54

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Most Victories

*--* Rider Country No Jacques Anquetil France 5 Eddy Merckx Belgium 5 Bernard Hinault France 5 Miguel Indurain Spain 5 Lance Armstrong United States 4 Philippe Thys Belgium 3 Louison Bobet France 3 Greg LeMond United States 3

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Consecutive Victories

*--* Rider No Years Miguel Indurain 5 1991-95 Lance Armstrong 4 1999-2002 Eddy Merckx 4 1969-72 Jacques Anquetil 4 1961-64

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