The Easier the Course, the Tougher for Him

Lance Armstrong has won the grueling Tour de France four consecutive times. In July, he will try to join a small fraternity of cycling stars who have won it five times.

Armstrong and 19 teammates who ride for the U.S. Postal Service team completed a 10-day training camp here Thursday. Earlier this week, Armstrong talked about this year’s Tour de France, the state of his sport and his place in it:

Question: How does this year’s Tour de France course suit you?

Answer: It’s probably the least suited of all of the last five years. There are a lot of downhill finishes and shorter time trials. They’re 40 kilometers and in the past they have been about 50, 55, close to 60. And then you just don’t have that many big mountain-top finishes. They took out a lot of those. You have climbs and descents. It’s a different dynamic than finishing on top. [The race] will be tight. It will be closer.

Q: Does the course change the way you train for it?

A: No. It will be important to know those descents because they’re dangerous and you don’t want to take any unneeded risks there.

Q: You have said that you don’t really think about what it would mean to win five or a record six Tours in a row. Why not?

A: It’s so much easier for me. I think it’s natural to take the easy road. Easy for me to just focus on this year and not look at the magnitude of trying to equal or break a record. It’s distracting. It’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of trying to win this year’s race. I prefer to sit back and count later. Not now.

Q: What kind of message do you think cycling is sending, regarding the doping situation?

A: The sport has done more than it’s ever done before. I know the sport of cycling has done more than any other sport to combat the problem -- soccer, tennis, track and field, whatever. Show me a sport that has done as much and has been under as much scrutiny as cycling. You’ll never find it.

We are doing what we can do. Are we perfect? No. Is everybody clean? No. Is there going to be another positive case next year? Yes. Is there going to be a police raid at the Giro? Probably. These things are like rainstorms. They are inevitable. But on balance, which is how everybody wants to be judged, I think cycling can look itself in the mirror.

Q: Given the current political climate and the attitude toward Americans in some parts of the world, will you feel any kind of personal threat racing in the Tour de France this year?

A: What we’ll do is control what we can control. We’ll control the hotels. We’ll control the starts and the finishes. We’ll control my home, my family. On the open road, it’s completely out of our control and that’s the nature of the beast. Cycling is a sport of the people, a sport of the open road. I’ve always, in the past, looked around to see if any crazies are there.

Q: So it’s not something that sticks in your mind?

A: I’m not scared about that. No. It depends on what somebody wanted to do. If they wanted to tackle you, you would lose time, maybe get a scratch. If they wanted to shoot you, you would lose a lot of time, maybe some blood. It could be a problem.... As an American abroad, it’s scary to think of being over there in a big public event with a war going on.

Q: If someone in an official capacity said, “You shouldn’t go ride. It’s a risk for you to ride,” would you go?

A: I could see that happening. I know that after 9/11 they went to a certain athlete here in America who was going to play in an international event in France and they told him not to go. And he didn’t go. So what would I do? I’d probably go.

Q: You’re 31. As you get older, are you feeling more vulnerable to physical challenges than you did a few years ago?

A: I get out of bed slower. This morning, I went to get out of bed and went to the gym. And now, this afternoon, I can barely walk, my back hurts so bad, which wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago. But at the same time, when everything is flowing and working fine and not sore, I feel stronger than ever.... The strength is different. It’s deeper than before, than it was 10 years ago or even last year. I feel like I have more strength.

Q: What do you do to get away from the pressure and expectations?

A: The easiest thing for me to completely remove myself from this world, the world in general, is just go hang out with my kids. Go roll around with a 3-year-old who wants to play tackle on the floor. Or two little 1-year old girls that just want to run around and scream. That’s so far from cycling, from the Tour de France, from training, from the pressure of that world. It’s a great distraction, the best thing you can have.

Q: As a cancer survivor, is there anything you can envision yourself doing that would raise awareness of the disease even more?

A: Right now, the best thing I can do is continue to win the Tour de France. That’s what gets the story told again and again and again. That’s what’s on a real emotional and motivational level. The person in the hospital, the family member in the hospital [is] watching the Tour de France on television in America while they are getting chemotherapy or recovering from surgery. That’s what they like. They look at that thing and they think, ‘There’s my brother.’ They look at that like that. And that’s a strong powerful tool that I will never be able to do again.”

Q: You wrote in your book that you were motivated early in your career by the slights you suffered while growing up. When you’re climbing a mountain on your bike today, do the same kinds of things motivate you?

A: You have years when you’re mad about certain things or mad about rivals that have said or done something. Now, I’m more motivated by the fear of losing than anything else. I do not want to lose, personally. I don’t want to lose and have to go to the dinner table with eight other guys and look them in the eyes ... having just lost half an hour on a climb.... That’s enough to keep me working hard, racing hard, motivated. I don’t want to let them down. I wouldn’t want to let myself down or the coaches, the directors, the sponsors.