July 31, 2005

There is more to it than skills and strengths that have converted Lance Armstrong from a mere cyclist to a true sporting great

SOON after breakfast on July 17, 161 of the world’s top cyclists mounted their machines at Lezat-sur-Leze in the Pyrenees and embarked on one of the toughest stages of the world’s most gruelling sporting challenge, the Tour de France. They spent the best part of seven hours in the saddle and, in draining heat, tackled 205.5km (128 miles) of hills, passes and climbs of unremitting cruelty at speeds which averaged 28-30mph, but sometimes reached 65mph. No wonder the riders described the Tour as three weeks of torture.

As expected, Lance Armstrong was in the lead. Cycling’s icon and figurehead was chasing an astonishing seventh consecutive win in an event which requires superhuman qualities. His tactics were simple: “It’s attack until they crack, or I do,” he said before the final round.

With his win, the American has rewritten the annals of sporting achievement and redefined the limits of human endeavour. Unhappily for his rivals, the 33-year-old Texan had more heart than them for the task — quite literally.

“Genetically Lance is a freak,” says his friend Tony Doyle, the British former pursuit cycling world champion. “His heart and lungs are bigger than most people’s, and most other elite cyclists”, so they make him more efficient as an athlete. He also generates far less lactic acid than the others, and he recovers quicker — vital in a race where you push yourself to the limit day after day after day.

Most usefully, though, Armstrong is a survivor. “Although the Tour is excruciatingly painful, for Lance it is still not as tough a battle as when he overcame testicular cancer,” explains Doyle. “That means that he is mentally strong, very driven and has a lot higher pain threshold than the other guys because he has beaten a life-threatening disease. He can suffer that bit more.”

Cancer gave Armstrong the worst times of his life. Hearing he had a 60 per cent chance of dying, he had surgery to remove one testis. He then chemotherapy to fight tumours that had spread to his lungs and brain, spending five months in hospital as he defied doctors’ expectations. But illness was also the making of him.

“In a strange way cancer did him a huge favour,” says Daniel Coyle, author of the recent biography Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force. “It removed 15lbs of muscle and re-sculpted his body into the leaner shape. Before then he had been too big and too muscular, especially in the upper body. And it gave him the discipline that, allied to his talent, turned him into the sporting phenomenon he is today.

“He was already a world champion, but he had been an undisciplined kid: brash and uncontrollable. After he was diagnosed with cancer, he began displaying discipline at the millimetre level.”

When the doctor told him his body was riddled with tumours, Armstrong took in the news for a couple of minutes and then said: “Let’s get started. Let’s kill this stuff.” Coyle says: “He adopted a very scientific approach to fighting the cancer.” Out went coffee, red meat and dairy products. “He went after the cancer in a very organized, methodical, aggressive way, and came away with an appreciation of what discipline could do for him.”

He approaches cycling the same way. He weighs his food to ensure he does not go above his optimum weight, and constantly monitors his bodyfat ratio. “After cancer, he turned the Tour into a problem he wanted to solve,” says Coyle.

“He pays attention to every last detail that contributes to the pursuit of excellence. That is what sets him apart,” believes Dave Brailsford, the performance director at British Cycling. “He is always looking to make a tiny improvement to his nutrition, his position on the bike, or the science of how he trains.”

Thus he avoids ice cream, in case it causes indigestion, or carbonated water, lest it induce diarrhoea, or chocolate mousse — excessive sweating — and does not shave his legs the night before racing, in case the minimal energy required to regrow the hair makes a difference.

He has two key numbers: 74, his optimal weight in kilos, and 500, which is his maximum sustainable power in watts. If they are both right, he will produce 6.7 watts per kilo. If he does that, he will almost certainly win. And he did. His key advantage was that he could sustain that power for an hour at a time, even up and down the Pyrenees. Germany’s Jan Ullrich, his nearest rival, could not quite match Armstrong’s consistency.

“He is not happy until he has found ‘the shit’ — the coolest helmet, or fastest bike or best teammate. He is about trying to make himself into ‘the shit’, the thing nobody has seen before,” said Coyle before the last leg started. His eight teammates in the Discovery Channel team, and their 30-strong back-up squad of specialists, all shared one goal: for Armstrong to win.

His feats have inevitably prompted speculation that his success might be down to performance-enhancing substances. Allegations to that effect in a book last year have led to ongoing legal action. Armstrong denies the accusations and has always tested negative.

Any conversation with one of cycling’s cognoscenti about what makes Armstrong so good comes back to his cancer and the tough childhood which forged his iron will. He was born Lance Gunderson in Plano, Texas, in September 1971, when his mother, Linda Mooneyham, was 17. Her marriage to his father, Eddie Gunderson, broke down when he was just three. Armstrong has never spoken to, or about, his father since. “Lance would undoubtedly not have turned out the way he has ... if I had stayed with his mother,” Gunderson admitted recently. “I would probably have destroyed the whole thing up.”

Armstrong was named after Lance Retzel of the Dallas Cowboys gridiron team; his surname came from his mother’s second husband, Terry Armstrong, his ex-stepfather. Times were hard for mother and son, financially and emotionally. “When things got tough, I would always tell Lance that ‘this isn’t a problem, this is an opportunity’,” she said. “We weren’t afraid of failing, only of giving up. Losing is worthwhile if you learn something worthwhile from it.”

But losing is the last thing on Armstrong’s mind. On that mid-July Sunday, come what may, he had already planned to retire — and wanted to bow out on a high, as a champion and a history- maker. This is just what he did.

His place in posterity assured, he now plans to unwind, spend more time with the three children from his first marriage, start a new family with his girlfriend, rock singer Sheryl Crow, and devote even more energy to his cancer charity.

An adviser to George W. Bush on the President’s Cancer Panel, there is even talk of a career in politics, and following in Bush’s steps by running for governor of his home state. — Dawn/ Guardian News Service

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