When Lance Armstrong rides down the Champs-Elysées and into history on Sunday, he will join the pantheon of athletes who transcend their sport.
Cycling fanatics will forever debate whether Armstrong, who at nearly three minutes ahead is poised to claim his seventh consecutive victory in the Tour de France and then retire, is the best their sport has ever seen. But there is no question he is its most famous rider and first pop-cultural superstar, a man worthy of taking his place with the likes of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.
Lance Armstrong is a true American hero.
I read his powerful memoir “It’s Not About the Bike” last year (at the urging of a pal who also won a battle against testicular cancer). The book details not only the depths of his sickness — he was truly on death’s doorstep — but his determination to beat the odds and return to cycling.
To the naysayers who claim he used steroids to regain his strength, I say this: read the part in the book where he describes the hell that was his chemotherapy regimen. His sickness gave him a renewed will to live, and he says he’d never ingest any foreign substance that would endanger his health. I, for one, believe him.
For more on Lance, check out this excellent 2002 New Yorker article about his comeback.