A Legend Rides Under the Radar

Come Sunday, Robert and Jill Kahler of Tustin will have the gang over to celebrate what’s expected to be another Tour de France triumph for Lance Armstrong. In the past, about 40 people have showed up. For cycling devotees, the final, televised day of the grueling race is like Super Bowl Sunday for football fans.

For people like me, Armstrong’s expected victory ride down the Champs-Elysees will go unnoticed. If I’m home, I can almost guarantee you I’ll be watching a ballgame.

Poor programming choice.

Like lots of people, cycling is off my radar and TV screen. Which means I’ve missed one of the great sports stories of the modern age: Armstrong’s recovery eight years ago from cancer that invaded a testicle and then his abdomen, lungs and brain. Doctors gave him a 50-50 chance to live.

He lived, but didn’t -- as would any ordinary human being -- take it easy after that.

No, Armstrong dived back into a sport that, at his level of competition, demands uncompromising commitment. And because now, at 32, he’s about to win his sixth consecutive Tour de France -- something no one else has done -- he has become the equivalent of Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth or any other sports luminary you want to mention.

Which is why Robert Kahler, who owns a bicycle sales and repair shop, says the Armstrong story is off the charts. “The thing that characterizes him, compared with all the other great champions, is that he has a level of motivation that far exceeds anyone else’s. And that is because of his relationship with death, almost near-death, and cancer. As a result, he has a greater appreciation for just being around.”

Kahler once was a national-caliber cyclist himself. He knew the Armstrong reputation: arrogant, a bit angry and sometimes hard to get along with. And while no one is saying that Armstrong is saintly today, he has shed a lot of baggage, Kahler says.

In a world where superstars’ deportment can make you cringe, Armstrong is a consummate sportsman, Kahler says. And, of course, there’s the cancer foundation that he started.

But what has burnished the Armstrong legacy is his training regimen, known for riding 500 miles a week. “I don’t think most people know how many hours a day that cyclists train,” Kahler, 56, says. “Even for someone like me, when I was a top amateur, just to be, say, national caliber in the top 25, you had to train 350 miles a week. That included endurance training and speed work.”

Allan Crawford belongs to the Orange County Wheelmen cycling club. He and his wife, Laura, just returned from France, where, high in the Pyrenees Mountains, they saw Armstrong in action.

“There were, literally, a million people on the climb, to watch,” Crawford says. “What’s so remarkable is to see the expression on Armstrong’s face as he comes by, four feet from you. It’s one of absolute focus. It’s just so intense. He doesn’t look left, he doesn’t look right. He knows what he needs to do, where he needs to do it, and he knows where to attack.”

A Zeus-like god to cyclists, Armstrong is a feel-good story for the rest of us. Cyclists realize their sport isn’t a prime-time attraction, Crawford says, and aren’t resentful that Armstrong’s place in sports history might not be widely appreciated.

I plead guilty, even as my brain is telling me that I’ve overlooked one of the great stories in American sports. “It’s partially his success, and the other part is this fantastic human-interest story of his rise from basically the dead to possibly the greatest cyclist who ever lived,” Kahler says.

Come to think of it, I don’t think the Super Bowl or World Series has ever had a story line to match that.

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana. parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.