Topic 76 of 83: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Sun, Jul 16, 2000 (09:28) |
spring training (sprin5)
Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France last year and is wearing yellow again this year. Last time I saw Lance was at Bookstop
a few months ago, he held the door open for me as I was leaving.
39 responses total.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 1 of 39: spring training (sprin5) * Tue, Oct 17, 2000 (08:42) * 4 lines
I see Lance is the poster boy for light rail in Austin now. It's not a popular cause. It will be interesting to see what the
voters say? Anyone here have light rail in their cities?
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 2 of 39: NittanyLion (MarciaH) * Tue, Oct 17, 2000 (20:08) * 4 lines
No, but it is being considered for Honolulu... That finite island is a
nightmare of monumental traffic proportions.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 3 of 39: gena (zx6rider) * Fri, Nov 17, 2000 (12:48) * 8 lines
Is 'light rail' commuter and subway trains?
If so... Boston MBTA Commuter (AMTRAK) allows bikes to roll on during
no-peak times. I hear some of the subway lines allow it (though the GREEN
line is not one of them). In NYC you can tak your bike on the subway
anytime you can get it to fit.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 4 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Mon, Apr 30, 2001 (00:40) * 3 lines
In Austin they have racks for bikes on the fronts of buses.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 5 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Jul 11, 2002 (10:43) * 138 lines
From an amazing New Yorker piece.
July 11, 2002 | home
THE LONG RIDE
by MICHAEL SPECTER
How did Lance Armstrong manage the greatest comeback in sports history?
Issue of 2002-07-15
Posted 2002-07-08
A couple of weeks ago, on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, I found myself
in the passenger seat of a small Volkswagen, careering so rapidly around
the hairpin turns of the French Alps that I could smell the tires burning.
Johan Bruyneel, the suave, unflappable director of the United States
Postal Service Pro Cycling Team, was behind the wheel. Driving at ninety
kilometres an hour occupied half his attention. The rest was devoted to
fiddling with a small television mounted in the dashboard, examining a set
of complicated topographical maps, and talking into one of two radio
transmitters in the car. The first connected Bruyneel to the team's
support vehicle, laden with extra bicycles, water bottles, power bars, and
other tools and equipment. The second fed into the earpieces of the eight
U.S. Postal Service cyclists who were racing along the switchbacks ahead
of us. The entire team could hear every word that Bruyneel said, but most
of the time he was talking to just one man: Lance Armstrong.
We had been on the road for about three hours and Armstrong was a
kilometre in front of us, pedalling so fast that it was hard to keep up.
It was the sixth day of the Dauphiné Libéré, a weeklong race that is run
in daily stages. Armstrong doesn't enter races like the Dauphiné to win
(though often enough he does); he enters to test his legs in preparation
for a greater goal—the Tour de France. Since 1998, when he returned to
cycling after almost losing his life to testicular cancer, Armstrong has
focussed exclusively on dominating the thirty-five-hundred-kilometre,
nearly month-long Tour, which, in the world of cycling, matters more than
all other races combined. This week, he begins a quest to become the
fourth person in the hundred-year-history of the Tour—the world's most
gruelling test of human endurance—to win four times in a row. (In 1995,
the Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain became the first to win five
consecutively—a record that is clearly on Armstrong's mind.)
The cyclists had covered a hundred and eight kilometres, much of it over
mountain passes still capped with snow, despite temperatures edging into
the nineties. Now the peloton—the term is French for "platoon," and it
describes the pack of riders who make up the main group in every race—was
about to start one of the most agonizing climbs in Europe, the pass
between Mont Blanc and Lake Geneva, which is known as the Col de Joux
Plane. In cycling, climbs are rated according to how long and steep they
are: the easiest is category four, the hardest category one. The
seventeen-hundred-metre Joux Plane has a special rating, known as hors
categorie, or beyond category; for nearly twelve kilometres, it rises so
sharply that it seems a man could get to the top only by helicopter.
"We start the Joux Plane with a lot of respect for this mountain,"
Bruyneel said quietly into his radio. "It is long, it is hard. Take it
easy. If people are breaking away, let them go. Do you hear me, Lance?"
"Yes, Johan," Armstrong replied flatly. "I remember the mountain."
With only a few days remaining in the 2000 Tour de France, Armstrong had
what most observers agreed was an insurmountable lead when he headed
toward this pass. He was riding with his two main rivals of that year:
Marco Pantani, the best-known Italian cyclist, and Jan Ullrich, the
twenty-eight-year-old German who won the Tour in 1997, and who in the
world of cycling plays the role of Joe Frazier to Armstrong's Ali. As they
started to climb, Armstrong seemed invincible. Halfway up, though, he
slumped over his handlebars, looking as if he had suffered a stroke, and
Ullrich blew right by him.
"I bonked," Armstrong said later, using a cyclist's term for running out
of fuel. A professional cyclist consumes so much energy—up to ten thousand
calories during a two-hundred-kilometre mountain stage—that, unless some
of it is replaced, his body will run through all the glycogen (the
principal short-term supply of carbohydrates the body uses for power)
stored in his muscles. Armstrong hadn't eaten properly that morning; then
he found himself cut off from his domestiques—the teammates who, among
other things, are responsible for bringing him supplies of food and water
during the race. "That was the hardest day of my life on a bike,"
Armstrong said later. He was lucky to finish the day's stage, and even
luckier to hold on and win the race.
"This isn't just a stage in a race for Lance," Bruyneel said now, as
Armstrong approached the bottom of the slope. "He needs to defeat this
mountain to feel ready for the Tour." This time, Bruyneel made sure that
the domestiques ferried water, carbohydrate drinks, and extra power bars
to Armstrong throughout the day. They periodically drifted back to our car
and performed a kind of high-speed docking maneuver so that Bruyneel could
thrust water bottles, five or six at a time, into their outstretched arms.
Last year, Armstrong won the Tour, for the third time in a row, by
covering 3,462 kilometres at an average speed of more than forty
kilometres an hour—the third-fastest time in the history of the event. In
all, during those three weeks in July, Armstrong spent eighty-six hours,
seventeen minutes, and twenty-eight seconds on the bike. "Lance almost
killed himself training for the last Tour," Bruyneel told me. "This year,
he is in even better shape. But the press still wants to talk about
drugs."
It is, of course, hard to write about cycling and not discuss
performance-enhancing drugs, because at times so many of the leading
competitors seem to have used them. Strict testing measures have been in
force since 1998, when the Tour was nearly cancelled after an assistant
for the Festina team was caught with hundreds of vials of erythropoietin,
or EPO, a hormone that can increase the oxygen supply to the blood. But
the changes have brought only limited success: just this May, Stefano
Garzelli and Gilberto Simoni, two of Europe's leading cyclists, were
forced to withdraw from the Giro d'Italia, Italy's most important race.
Because Armstrong is the best cyclist in the world, there is an assumption
among some of those who follow the sport that he, too, must use drugs.
Armstrong has never failed a drug test, however, and he may well be the
most frequently examined athlete in the history of sports. Whenever he
wins a day's stage, or finishes as one of the top cyclists in a longer
race, he is required to provide a urine sample. Like other professionals,
Armstrong is also tested randomly throughout the year. (The World
Anti-Doping Agency, which regularly tests athletes, has even appeared at
his home, in Austin, Texas, at dawn, to demand a urine sample.) Nobody
questions Armstrong's excellence. And yet doubts remain: is he really so
gifted that, like Secretariat, he easily dominates even his most talented
competitors?
"It's terribly unfair," Bruyneel told me as we drove through the
mountains. "He is already winning, and is extremely fit. Still, people
always ask that one question: How can he do this without drugs? I
understand why people ask, because our sport has been tainted. But Lance
has a different trick, and I have watched him do it now for four years: he
just works harder than anyone else alive."
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 6 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Jul 11, 2002 (10:45) * 684 lines
Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than that of an average
man. During those rare moments when he is at rest, it beats about
thirty-two times a minute—slowly enough so that a doctor who knew nothing
about him would call a hospital as soon as he heard it. (When Armstrong is
exerting himself, his heart rate can edge up above two hundred beats a
minute.) Physically, he was a prodigy. Born in 1971, Armstrong was raised
by his mother in Plano, a drab suburb of Dallas that he quickly came to
despise. He never knew his father, and refers to him as "the DNA donor."
He has written that "the main thing you need to know about my childhood is
that I never had a real father, but I never sat around wishing for one,
either. . . . I've never had a single conversation with my mother about
him."
He was a willful child and didn't like to listen to advice. "I have loved
him every minute of his life, but, God, there were times when it was a
struggle," his mother, Linda, told me. She is a demure woman with the kind
of big blond hair once favored by wives of astronauts. "He has always
wanted to test the boundaries," she said. Armstrong admits that he was
never an easy child. In his autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike,"
which was written with the journalist Sally Jenkins, he said, "When I was
a boy I invented a game called fireball, which entailed soaking a tennis
ball in kerosene, lighting it on fire, and playing catch with it."
Armstrong was an outstanding young swimmer, and as an adolescent he began
to enter triathlons. By 1987, when he was sixteen, he was also winning
bicycle races. That year, he was invited to the Cooper Institute, in
Dallas, which was one of the first centers to recognize the relationship
between fitness and aerobic conditioning. Everyone uses oxygen to break
down food into the components that provide energy; the more oxygen you are
able to use, the more energy you will produce, and the faster you can run,
ride, or swim. Armstrong was given a test called the VO2 Max, which is
commonly used to assess an athlete's aerobic ability: it measures the
maximum amount of oxygen the lungs can consume during exercise. His levels
were the highest ever recorded at the clinic. (Currently, they are about
eighty-five millilitres per kilogram of body weight; a healthy man might
have a VO2 Max of forty.)
Chris Carmichael, who became his coach when Armstrong was still a
teen-ager, told me that even then Armstrong was among the most remarkable
athletes he had ever seen. Not only has his cardiovascular strength always
been exceptional; his body seems specially constructed for cycling. His
thigh bones are unusually long, for example, which permits him to apply
just the right amount of torque to the pedals.
Although Armstrong was talented, he wasn't very disciplined. He acted as
if he had nothing to learn. "I had never met him when I took over as his
coach," Carmichael told me. "I called him up and we talked on the phone.
He was kind of rude. Not kind of rude. He was completely rude. He was,
like, 'So you are the new coach—what are you going to teach me?' He just
thought he was King Shit. I would tell him to wait till the end of a race
before making a break. He just couldn't do that. He would get out in front
and set the pace. He would burn up the field, and when other riders came
alive he would be done, spent." Still, Armstrong did well in one-day
races, in which bursts of energy count as much as patience or tactical
precision. In 1991, after several years of increasingly impressive
performances, he became the U.S. amateur champion, and the next year he
turned pro. In 1993, he became the youngest man ever to win a stage in the
Tour de France; he won the World Road Championships the same year.
In 1996, Armstrong signed a contract with the French cycling team Cofidis,
for a salary of more than two million dollars over two years. He had a
beautiful new home in Austin, and a Porsche that he liked to drive fast.
Then, in September, he became unusually weak and felt soreness in one of
his testicles. Since soreness is a part of any cyclist's life, he didn't
give it much thought. One night later that month, however, several days
after his twenty-fifth birthday, he felt something metallic in his throat
while he was talking on the phone. He put his friend on hold, and ran into
the bathroom. "I coughed into the sink," he later wrote. "It splattered
with blood. I coughed again, and spit up another stream of red. I couldn't
believe the mass of blood and clotted matter had come from my own body."
Within a week, Armstrong had surgery to remove the cancerous testicle. By
then, the disease had spread to his lungs, abdomen, and brain. He needed
brain surgery and the most aggressive type of chemotherapy. "At that
point, he had a minority chance of living another year," Craig Nichols,
who was Armstrong's principal oncologist, told me. "We cure at most a
third of the people in situations like that." A professor at Oregon Health
Sciences University who specializes in testicular cancer, Nichols has
remained a friend and is an adviser to the Lance Armstrong Foundation,
which supports cancer research. Nichols described Armstrong as the "most
willful person I have ever met." And, he said, "he wasn't willing to die."
Armstrong underwent four rounds of chemotherapy so powerful that the
chemicals destroyed his musculature and caused permanent kidney damage; in
the final treatments, the chemicals left burns on his skin from the inside
out. Cofidis, convinced that Armstrong's career (and perhaps his life) was
over, told his agent while he was still in the hospital that it wanted to
reconsider the terms of his contract. That may have turned out to be the
worst bet in the history of sports.
Armstrong did recover, but his first attempts to return to competition
ended in exhaustion and depression. "In an odd way, having cancer was
easier than recovery—at least in chemo I was doing something, instead of
just waiting for it to come back," he wrote. In 1998, he decided to make a
more serious effort to return to racing. Again, he couldn't stick with it.
"The comeback was still amazingly risky," Carmichael told me. "There
wasn't a doctor on this earth who could say that Lance Armstrong's lungs
weren't fucked up, the cancer wasn't going to come back. Nobody said, 'You
will be successful and, by the way, you will win the Tour.' He was afraid,
so he just quit. I was shocked. He beats cancer. Goes to hell and back.
Goes to Europe. Trains his ass off. Trained harder than ever. In the Ruta
del Sol"—a five-day race held each year in Spain—"he was fourteenth. He
had never done better, even before cancer, and all indications were that
he was on the verge of the greatest comeback in sports, and he said, 'Hey,
I'm quitting.' My coaching side just wanted to scream."
Carmichael and Bill Stapleton, Armstrong's close friend and agent, helped
persuade him that this wasn't the way to end his career. "We said, 'You
will look back on this and be disappointed—you are going out as a
quitter,' " Carmichael told me. Armstrong agreed to prepare for one last
race, in the United States. He, Carmichael, and a friend went to Boone, a
small town in North Carolina where Armstrong liked to train. "Early
April," Carmichael recalled. "The first day was nice. Then the weather
turned ugly. I would follow behind in the car as they trained. One day, we
were to finish at the top of Beech Mountain. It was a long ride, a
hundred-plus miles, then the ride to the top. Something happened on that
mountain. He just dropped his partner and he went for it. He was racing.
It was weird. I was following behind him in the car. This cold rain was
now a wet snow. And I rolled down the window and I was honking the horn
and yelling, 'Go, Lance, go!' He was attacking and cranking away as though
we were in the Tour. Nobody was around. No human being. Not even a cow. He
got up to the top of that mountain and I said, 'O.K., I'll load the bike
on the car and we can go home.' He said, 'Give me my rain jacket—I'm
riding back.' Another thirty miles. That was all he said. It was like
throwing on a light switch."
Armstrong now says that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to
him. Before becoming ill, he didn't care about strategy or tactics or
teamwork—and nobody (no matter what his abilities) becomes a great cyclist
without mastering those aspects of the sport. Despite Armstrong's
brilliant early start in the 1993 Tour, for example, he didn't even finish
the race; he dropped out when the teams entered the most difficult
mountain phase, in the Alps. (He also failed to finish in 1994 and 1996.)
As Carmichael pointed out to me, Armstrong had always been gifted, but
"genetically he is not alone. He is near the top but not at the top. I
have seen people better than Lance that never go anywhere. Before Lance
had cancer, we argued all the time. He never trained right. He just relied
on his gift. He would do what you asked for two weeks, then flake off and
do his own thing for a month or two. And then a big race would be coming
up and he would call me up, all tense, telling me, 'God, I have got to
start training, and you guys better start sending me some programs.' I
would say, 'Lance, you don't just start preparing things four weeks before
a race. This is a long process.' "
Cycling is, above all, a team sport, and the tactics involved are as
complicated as those of baseball or basketball. "Ever try to explain the
infield-fly rule to somebody?" Armstrong asked me when we were in Texas,
where he lives when he is not racing or training in Europe. "You have to
watch it to get it. As soon as you pay some attention to the tactics,
cycling makes a lot of sense."
Riding through the French mountains with Bruyneel, a genial
thirty-seven-year-old who has been with U.S. Postal since 1999, soon after
Armstrong joined the team, I saw what he meant. (Armstrong's athletic
advisers complement each other: Carmichael is the physical strategist, and
Bruyneel the tactician.) "It looks like Victor is good today, so let's
save him a bit longer for the Colombiere," Bruyneel radioed to Armstrong
about halfway through the day's ride. "Sounds like a good idea," Armstrong
replied. In other words, Victor Hugo Peña, a promising young Colombian
climber on the team, seemed strong enough to lead Armstrong over one of
the big peaks that the racers would encounter before the Col de Joux
Plane. Riders like Hugo Peña "work" for Armstrong; they are not attempting
to win the race themselves but, rather, focussing on preventing another
team from defeating Armstrong. Their job is to patrol the peloton. If a
competing star tries to escape from the pack in a breakaway, they must be
ready to chase him down, in order to tire him out and make him less of a
threat later in the race.
Until it is time to sprint, climb, or attempt a breakaway, there is
usually at least one team rider positioned in front of his leader. Riding
directly behind another man—which is called drafting—can save a skilled
cyclist as much as forty per cent of his energy. Asker Jeukendrup, a
physiologist who directs the Human Performance Laboratory at the
University of Birmingham, has carried out extensive studies of the energy
expended by cyclists when they race. Several years ago, Jeukendrup
attached power meters to the bicycles of several Tour participants during
critical stages. A power meter records a rider's heart rate, his pedal
cadence, his speed, and, most important, the watts that he generates with
every turn of the wheels. (Watts provide the most accurate measurement of
the intensity of exercise; heart rates vary and so does speed. The amount
of work needed to climb a hill remains the same no matter how fast you
ride.)
Jeukendrup recorded the effort expended by a cyclist riding for six hours
at forty kilometres an hour in the middle of the peloton, shielded from
the wind. He compared this figure with the power needed to propel that
same man riding alone. In the pack, the cyclist used an average of
ninety-eight watts—which would never tire a well-trained professional. On
his own, however, the cyclist expended an average of two hundred and
seventy-five watts—nearly three times the power—to maintain the same
speed. It is easy to see what this means: in any race, the guy out front
is often suffering in his attempt to lead the peloton, while somebody like
Armstrong, safely tucked into a cocoon of teammates, can cruise just a few
yards behind the leader and be "pulled" at essentially the same speed,
conserving energy for later.
The peloton can cover up to two hundred and fifty kilometres a day without
stopping, like a rolling army; there is a "feed zone" about halfway
through each stage, where cyclists slow down enough to be draped with a
cloth pouch, called a musette, which is filled with fruit, power bars, and
other high-carbohydrate snacks. The team members take turns "working," or
pulling, at the front to give each other a rest. (Even competitors, when
they ride together, take turns out front, sharing the advantages of
drafting.) In some ways, cycling retains an odd chivalry that is more
readily associated with the trenches of the First World War. During last
year's Tour, for instance, at a crucial moment in the Pyrenees, Jan
Ullrich veered off the road and into a ditch; Armstrong waited for him to
get back on his bike and catch up. Ullrich almost certainly would have
done the same for him. When a leader needs to urinate, the whole pack
slows down. It is an unspoken but very clear element of the etiquette of
professional cycling that nobody is permitted to benefit by breaking away
while an opponent urinates (or, worse yet, when part of the peloton is
caught at a train crossing). Anyone who did would be unlikely to finish
the race. After all, it takes little to knock a man off a bicycle,
particularly at high speeds; this is called flicking, from the German
ficken—which means "to fuck."
Apart from the Olympics and World Cup soccer, the Tour is the most popular
sporting event in Europe. In France, July is a carnival, complete with
thousands of cars, buses, motorcycles, and helicopters following the Tour,
and daily television coverage. This year, at least fifteen million
people—a quarter of the country's population—are expected to line the
highways to watch the cyclists whiz by in a blurred instant. Every
morning, kids mass outside the team buses, begging for autographs. If a
spectator is lucky, someone in the peloton will toss a used water bottle
his way; it is the cycling world's version of a foul ball.
The Tour de France is exactly what its name suggests: a tour of France.
The race takes place over the course of three weeks, with a day or two of
rest, and the course is altered slightly each year, so that it passes
through different villages. Each day, there is a new stage; when all the
stages have been completed, the man with the fastest cumulative time wins.
(This year's Tour will be the shortest in its history; some people believe
this is an attempt to reduce Armstrong's advantage.) As a commercial and
logistical endeavor, the Tour could be compared to a Presidential campaign
or the Super Bowl. Its budget is in the tens of millions of dollars, and
the winner receives close to four hundred thousand dollars. The money
comes from location fees, paid by towns that host a stage, and from
advertising revenues and broadcast licenses. The Tour is treated as if it
were its own sovereign state within France: it has a police force and a
travelling bank (the only one in the country open on Bastille Day). The
entourage includes riders, mechanics, masseurs, managers, doctors, cooks,
journalists, and race officials. Each team starts the race with nine
riders (though it is common for as many as half to drop out), who usually
work to further the goals of their leader, like Armstrong or Ullrich—who
injured his knee earlier this year and will not compete.
Since individual excellence can get one only so far in a race of this
magnitude, it is also crucial to have the right team, to provide
organization, finances, and experience. U.S. Postal has all that; it is,
in its way, pro cycling's Yankees—with climbing specialists, sprinters,
and a powerful bench. This is why so many cyclists agree to work as
domestiques, putting their success second to Armstrong's. "You work for a
teammate who is older and more experienced," Victor Hugo Peña told me late
one day between stages of the Dauphiné.
I was curious why a talented cyclist would agree to play such a role. "It
is an apprenticeship—you have to learn the business," Hugo Peña said. "If
you get respect, work well, and are good, you move up." Armstrong himself
worked as a domestique when he was starting out. He told me that he finds
the system reassuring. Bruyneel, who was a successful professional, and
won two stages in the Tour, agreed. "What does a man gain from riding for
himself and coming in fiftieth?" he said. "If you see your job as helping
your team win, you will get more out of that than simply riding and
losing. It's fun to be part of a winning team." And it is also profitable;
even a journeyman cyclist can make a hundred thousand dollars a year.
(This is nothing like what the winners make, of course; between his salary
and the endorsements, Armstrong earned about fifteen million dollars last
year.) Still, there comes a point when a talented cyclist no longer wants
to occupy a supporting role and tries to establish himself as a potential
leader. For several years, Armstrong's deputy on the U.S. Postal team was
his friend Tyler Hamilton. This year, with Armstrong's encouragement,
Hamilton began riding for a Danish competitor, CSC Tiscali, and, as one of
its leaders, he placed second in the Giro d'Italia.
The physical demands on competitive cyclists are immense. One day, they
will have to ride two hundred kilometres through the mountains; the next
day there might be a long, flat sprint lasting seven hours. Because
cyclists have such a low percentage of body fat, they are more susceptible
to infections than other people. (At the beginning of the Tour,
Armstrong's body fat is around four or five per cent; this season,
Shaquille O'Neal, the most powerful player in the N.B.A., boasted that his
body-fat level was sixteen per cent.)
The Tour de France has been described as the equivalent of running twenty
marathons in twenty days. During the nineteen-eighties and nineties, Wim
H. M. Saris, a professor of nutrition at the University of Maastricht,
conducted a study of human endurance by following participants in the
Tour. "It is without any doubt the most demanding athletic event," he told
me. "For one day, two days—sure, you may find something that expends more
energy. But for three weeks? Never."
Looking at a wide range of physical activities, Saris and his colleagues
measured the metabolic demands made on people engaged in each of them. "On
average, the cyclists expend sixty-five hundred calories a day for three
weeks, with peak days of ten thousand calories," he said. "If you are
sedentary, you are burning perhaps twenty-five hundred calories a day.
Active people might burn as many as thirty-five hundred." Saris compared
the metabolic rates of professional cyclists while they were riding with
those of a variety of animal species, and he created a kind of energy
index—dividing daily expenditure of energy by resting metabolic rate. This
figure turned out to range from one to seven. An active male rates about
two on Saris's index and an average professional cyclist four and a half.
Almost no species can survive with a number that is greater than five. For
example, the effort made by birds foraging for food sometimes kills them,
and they scored a little more than five. In fact, only four species are
known to have higher rates on Saris's energy index than the professional
cyclists in his study: a small Australian possum, a macaroni penguin, a
large seabird called a gannet, and one species of marsupial mouse.
This spring, Armstrong, who doesn't relax much to begin with, was spending
up to thirty-five hours a week on his bicycle. When I met him, in April,
he had just flown to Austin from Europe, where he had been racing, for a
forty-eight-hour "drop-in," in order to raise money for the Lance
Armstrong Foundation. This required him to take the Concorde from Paris to
New York, change planes, and, once he'd landed in Austin, drive to an
afternoon photo shoot. Then he signed books, cycling jerseys, and posters
for cancer survivors and sponsors of the foundation. After that, he went
to a fund-raising dinner. A few hours later, the foundation's annual
charity weekend, the Ride for the Roses, would officially begin, with an
outdoor rock concert at the Austin Auditorium Shores arena. But Armstrong
was feeling restless; he hadn't been on his bicycle for nearly a day. So
he changed, and went for a thirty-five-mile spin. At eight-thirty that
evening, he was standing backstage at the benefit concert, which featured
Cake and the Stone Temple Pilots. I met up with him there; Armstrong, who
is surprisingly slight, wore jeans, sandals, and a Nike golf cap. He
didn't seem a bit tired.
Every ounce of fat, bone, and muscle on Armstrong's body is regularly
inventoried, analyzed, and accounted for. I asked him if he felt it was
necessary to endure the daily prodding and poking required to provide all
this information, and to adhere so rigidly to his training schedules.
"Depends whether you want to win," he replied. "I do. The Tour is a
two-thousand-mile race, and people sometimes win by one minute. Or less.
One minute in nearly a month of suffering isn't that much. So the people
who win are the ones willing to suffer the most." Suffering is to cyclists
what poll data are to politicians; they rely on it to tell them how well
they are doing their job. Like many of his competitors in the peloton,
Armstrong seems to love pain, and even to crave it.
"Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it's absolutely
cleansing," he wrote in his autobiography. "The pain is so deep and strong
that a curtain descends over your brain. . . . Once, someone asked me what
pleasure I took in riding for so long. 'Pleasure?' I said. 'I don't
understand the question.' I didn't do it for pleasure. I did it for pain."
Armstrong mentioned suffering (favorably) in each of my conversations with
him. Even his weekend in Texas, which was ostensibly time off from the
grinding spring training schedule, seemed designed to drive him to the
brink of exhaustion; there were dozens of meetings with donors, cancer
survivors, and friends. On Sunday, he led the foundation's annual ride
with his friend Robin Williams, a surprisingly fit and aggressive cyclist.
Williams and Armstrong rode at a fairly rapid pace for about two hours, at
which point a car suddenly pulled up alongside them on the highway.
Armstrong hopped off his bike, climbed in, and was driven to the airport
to catch a plane for New York and then Paris. During his forty-eight-hour
drop-in, the Lance Armstrong Foundation raised nearly three million
dollars.
In Austin, Lance (other than Dubya, he is the only one-name Texan) has a
more devoted following than Bush, Lyle Lovett, and the Texas Longhorns
football team combined. One night during my weekend in Austin, I drove
over to Chuy's, an informal Tex-Mex place that is one of Armstrong's
favorite local restaurants. (It was famous locally even before a
hardworking bartender carded President Bush's nineteen-year-old daughter
Jenna.) Armstrong has a weakness for Chuy's burritos. I asked my waiter
what he thought of Armstrong. "When he walks in here, you can feel the
buzz coming right off him," he said. "When Lance shows up, people are
delirious. They love the guy. His life is like an Alamo-level myth, and
everybody loves a myth, particularly in Texas."
Armstrong tries to resist being described as a hero of any kind. "I want
my kids to grow up and be normal," he told me, backstage at the concert,
as he tentatively ate exactly two Dorito chips. He and his wife, Kristin,
have three children: a son, Luke, who is two, and twin girls, Isabelle and
Grace, born last year. "I want them to think their father worked hard for
what he got, not that it was the result of some kind of magic," Armstrong
said.
Three types of riders succeed in long stage races like the Tour de France:
those who excel at climbing but are only adequate in time trials, in which
a cyclist races alone against the clock; those who can win time trials but
struggle in the mountains; and cyclists who are moderately good at both.
Now there appears to be a fourth group: Armstrong. He has become the best
climber in the world, although he wasn't much of one in his early years.
And there is no cyclist better at time trials. He lost nearly twenty
pounds when he was sick, but he is no less powerful and is therefore
faster. Still, many people have wondered how, so soon after a nearly fatal
illness, he managed to take such complete control of the sport.
"After the cancer, Lance got a second chance," Carmichael explained to me.
"It was that simple. You get a second chance at something that you took
for granted before and all of a sudden you see everything you could have
lost. When he came back, he just went into a different zone. He works as
if he is possessed. It's a little bit nutty, in fact, what he puts himself
through so that he can win the Tour de France each year." As a young man,
Carmichael was an Olympic cyclist himself, but he almost died in a
freakish skiing accident, in 1986. He returned to competition, but
something was gone. While he was trying to figure out what to do next, he
took a job coaching the United States national team. He has now been
training people for fifteen years. He works with many élite athletes in
addition to Armstrong—runners, hockey players, even one Indy driver—and
also with thousands who just want to ride faster every Sunday with their
local club. He has a company, Carmichael Training Systems, based in
Colorado Springs, that employs more than seventy-five coaches; his
clients, including Armstrong, log on to the company Web site to find their
latest training instructions.
Carmichael believes that rigorous training is what ultimately turns a
talented athlete into a star. "Who hits more practice balls every day than
any other golfer?" Carmichael asked. "Guess what? It's Tiger Woods. Well,
Lance trains more than his competitors. He was the first to go out and
actually ride the important Tour stages in advance. He doesn't just wake
up in July and say, 'God, I hope I am ready for this race.' He knows he is
ready, because he has whipped himself all year long."
Armstrong describes his bike as his office. "It's my job," he told me. "I
love it, and I wouldn't ride if I didn't. But it's incredibly hard work,
full of sacrifices. And you have to be able to go out there every single
day." In the morning, he rises, eats, and gets on his bike; sometimes,
before a particularly long day, he waits to eat again (in order to store
up carbohydrates) before taking off. "We schedule his daily workouts to
leave late in the morning, so that he can ride for six hours," Carmichael
said. "He returns home about five or six o'clock, in time for a quick
dinner—a protein-carb smoothie, a little pasta. Then it is time for bed."
During the cycling season, Armstrong calculates each watt he has burned on
his bike and then uses a digital scale to weigh every morsel of food that
passes his lips. This way, he knows exactly how many calories he needs to
get through the day. When he is racing, his meals are gargantuan. (It took
three men to lug the team's rations—boxes full of cereal, bread, yogurt,
eggs, fruit, honey, chocolate spread, jam, peanut butter, and other
snacks—into the hotel breakfast room during the Dauphiné.) On days when a
race begins at noon or later, Armstrong will eat two heaping plates of
pasta and perhaps a power bar three hours before the race, after having
had a full breakfast.
When I visited Carmichael in Colorado Springs, he showed me Armstrong's
training schedule for a few weeks this spring. On April 28th, a Sunday,
Armstrong competed in the Amstel Gold, a one-day annual World Cup race in
Holland. He finished fourth, covering the
two-hundred-and-fifty-four-kilometre course (which included thirty-three
climbs) in six hours, forty-nine minutes, and seventeen seconds. His
average speed was 37.32 k.p.h., the same as that of the winner, who beat
him by about three feet. Carmichael scheduled a rest day and urged
Armstrong to stay off his bicycle. "He almost never listens when I tell
him to do that," Carmichael said. "But I tell him anyway." Tuesday was an
easy day: a two-hour ride, maintaining an approximate heart rate of a
hundred and thirty-five beats a minute. The next day was more typical:
five hours over rolling terrain, with a heart rate of about a hundred and
fifty-five beats a minute and an average effort of three hundred and
twenty watts. Friday was a slow ride for two hours. Then, on Saturday,
Armstrong rode for four hours with two climbs, each lasting about half an
hour, during which he kept a heart rate of a hundred and seventy-five
beats a minute with a power expenditure of about four hundred watts. After
that, Carmichael had him draft at a fast rate behind a motorcycle for two
hours without a break. In addition, Armstrong always stretches for about
an hour a day, and during the off-season he spends hours in the gym,
improving his core strength. "Nobody else puts himself through this,"
Carmichael said. "Nobody would dare."
I have been riding a bicycle since I was a boy, and over the years, as the
technology improved, I kept trading up, from heavy steel to aluminum, and
then to titanium. Only once have I travelled more than a hundred miles in
a day; I have never entered a race (or wanted to), and I don't ride
particularly fast. Yet, like a lot of middle-aged cycling enthusiasts, I
now have a bicycle that is far better than I am and I have become a
fetishistic devotee of the sport. I have never quite permitted myself to
attend bicycle camp or to take lessons from a bicycle mechanic (though I
have considered both). But I have never seen Campagnolo gears, an
aerodynamically advanced set of wheels, or a complicated cycle computer
that I didn't want to buy. My apartment is littered with catalogues
advertising "carbon titanium supercycles," and bicycling magazines with
stories about obscure pro races.
Every month or two, Carmichael tests Armstrong's capacity to generate
power—or watts—and, when I told him that I rode a lot, he suggested that
if he tested me in the same way I might have a better sense of what these
measures really meant.
Our plan was to cruise up into the mountains not far from Carmichael's
office, in a converted grain barn in downtown Colorado Springs. The wind
was strong enough so that he asked if I wanted to reconsider. The answer
was yes, of course, but that's not what I said. We rode for about five
miles through the thin air six thousand feet above sea level. Carmichael
chatted the whole time—about pedal motion, femur length (the longer the
better, since length improves leverage), gearing choices, and the finer
details of carbon-fibre technology. I gasped and answered only when I had
to. We rode into North Cheyenne Cañon until, finally, it looked as if we
had ridden as far as he could ask me to go. Carmichael got off his bike.
"Now the test begins," he said. He pointed at the mountain slope—it wasn't
as steep as some of the slopes in France, but it looked unconquerable
nonetheless—and said, "I want you to ride as fast as you can up that road
for ten minutes and then come back."
I was seriously winded within two minutes. My legs were burning within
five. I remember watching four men and women climbing a steep rock face
and rappelling down. They waved at me, but I was far too light-headed to
risk lifting an arm from the handlebars. Finally, I couldn't take it
anymore. (I managed to continue for eight minutes and thirty-two seconds.
Naïvely, I had asked Carmichael what I should do when I reached the top.
"You won't be seeing the top," he had said.) I turned the bike around and
met up with Carmichael, and we coasted most of the way back to the office.
Then we looked at my data: I had generated an average of two hundred watts
on the test, and had climbed exactly one mile. Carmichael told me that a
decent pro cyclist would have put out at least four hundred watts, and
that the stragglers at the end of the peloton (known as the gruppetto)
would clock in at perhaps three hundred and fifty. Armstrong—in top Tour
shape—would have come close to five hundred.
I stared at the graph of my performance, which Carmichael and his
colleagues had printed out for me. I had managed to generate four hundred
and seventy watts for just ten seconds. That's about average for Armstrong
over the course of a four-hour ride.
After that humbling experience, I went across town to see Edmund Burke, a
former physiologist for the U.S. Olympic cycling team, who has written
several books on training for cyclists (including one with Carmichael). "I
think the genius of Chris is that he understands how much small gains
matter," Burke said. "In fact, small gains are all you will ever see.
People will say, 'You have shown only half a per cent of improvement.'
Well, half a per cent is huge. I am not talking marketing or sales here. I
am talking about élite athletic performance."
Carmichael takes nothing for granted and relies heavily on technology. (He
noted with approval, for instance, that Greg LeMond won the Tour by just
eight seconds, on the last day of the race, in 1989. He was the first
cyclist in the Tour to use aerodynamically tapered handlebars for the
final time trial. "It made all the difference," Carmichael said.
"Technology might not win you the Tour. But why wouldn't you want to have
the best chances possible?") Every few months, Armstrong trains in a wind
tunnel, which allows Carmichael to measure his aerodynamic efficiency
under a variety of conditions. He will push his seat back a centimetre or
his stem up a few millimetres. (Each adjustment is a trade-off between
power and speed; when you sit farther back, you can use more of your leg
muscles, but you also expose more of your body to the resistance of the
air.)
Carmichael takes the same radical approach to the physical limits of
endurance. It had long been assumed, for example, that aerobic power
doesn't vary greatly in adults. Carmichael refutes this emphatically.
"Look at Lance," he said to me in his office one day. Over the past eight
years, through specific programs aimed at building endurance and speed,
Armstrong has increased this critical value—his aerobic power—by sixteen
per cent. That means he saves almost four minutes in a sixty-kilometre
time trial.
In fact, Armstrong is superior to other athletes in two respects: he can
rely on his aerobic powers longer, and his anaerobic abilities are
unusually high as well. When muscles begin to work beyond their aerobic
ability, they produce lactic acid, which eventually accumulates and causes
a burning sensation well known to anyone who has ever run too far or too
fast. Somehow, though, Armstrong produces less lactic acid than others do,
and metabolizes it more effectively. "For whatever physiological
reason—and science can't really explain it, because we don't know that
much about what is occurring—the effect is clear," Carmichael said. "Lance
goes on when others are done."
At the end of last year's Tour, the French sports newspaper L'Équipe ran
an article with the headline "SHOULD WE BELIEVE IN ARMSTRONG?," suggesting
it was time to consider the possibility that, since Armstrong has never
been found guilty of doping, he may indeed be innocent.
After I watched Armstrong train and spent time with his coaches, the only
way I could be convinced that he uses illegal drugs would be to see him
inject them. After all, the doubts about him have always been a function
of his excellence. Greg LeMond, America's first Tour de France champion
(he has also won three times), put it well, if somewhat uncharitably,
after Armstrong won the 2001 Tour: "If Lance is clean, it is the greatest
comeback in the history of sport. If he isn't, it would be the greatest
fraud." It is impossible to prove a negative, and so Armstrong can do
nothing to dispel the doubts. But his frustration is clear; in 2000, he
made a television ad for Nike in which he said, "Everybody wants to know
what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day.
What are you on?"
If the French don't approve of Armstrong, it is not only—or even
principally—because they suspect him of using drugs. They don't believe
that he suffers enough. French intellectuals love the agony displayed on
the roads each July in the same way that American writers love to wail
over the fate of the Red Sox. Thirty years ago, before much was known
about sports nutrition, riders would finish the race—if they could—having
lost twenty pounds, their eyes vacant even in victory. Armstrong
represents a new kind of athlete. He has been at the forefront of a
technological renaissance that has made European cycling purists
uncomfortable. Referring to the gulf that now exists between the race and
the racers, the French philosopher Robert Redeker has written, "The
athletic type represented by Lance Armstrong, unlike Fausto Coppi or Jean
Robic"—two cycling heroes from a generation ago—"is coming closer to Lara
Croft, the virtually fabricated cyber-heroine. Cycling is becoming a video
game; the onetime 'prisoners of the road' have become virtual human beings
. . . Robocop on wheels, someone no fan can relate to or identify with."
"It's so funny to hear people talk that way about Lance," Craig Nichols,
Armstrong's oncologist, told me. "The fact is that no cyclist can have
seen more pain than he has. The hard work and the inconvenience of the
Tour just can't scare him, because he has been through so much worse."
Despite Bruyneel's warning not to push himself on the treacherous slope of
the Col de Joux Plane, Armstrong was spinning the pedals a hundred times a
minute, faster than any other competitor. (This cadence is a technique
that he, Carmichael, and Bruyneel have been working on for years.) With
just two days to go, Armstrong was in the lead of the Dauphiné Libéré, and
there was little doubt that he would go on to win the race. ("There are
not so many guys left," Bruyneel said to me with a smile and a shrug. "If
he feels good, you have to let him go.") It would have been
understandable—maybe even smart—for Armstrong to take it slow just a few
weeks before the Tour. Yet clearly he wasn't going to be satisfied unless
he also took this stage.
"Good job, Lance!" Bruyneel cheered into the radio. "Go! Go! Go!"
Armstrong picked up speed; he was dropping his opponents one by one.
"Moreau is done, Lance, he is over!" Bruyneel shouted into the radio as
Armstrong whizzed by Christophe Moreau, the lead rider for Crédit
Agricole. "Go if you can. But, remember, the mountain is not your friend."
"Kivilev is dropped, Kivilev is dropped!" Bruyneel screamed, as Armstrong
began to pedal faster. "Lance, get on Menchov's wheel. He is a great train
to the top." Denis Menchov, of the Ibanesto.com team, is a fine climber.
Bruyneel had hoped that Armstrong would glide in behind him and conserve
energy on the way up. Instead, Armstrong blew past Menchov, and then
overtook the last two men between him and the summit. He wove through the
fans gathered at the top of the mountain.
Armstrong shifted into a higher gear to descend, and suddenly he was in
trouble. His radio stopped working, his leg began to cramp, and Kivilev
and Moreau were gaining on him. 'Twenty-seven seconds," Bruyneel said. He
was screaming. "Lance, they are gaining!" We could see the little ski
resort of Morzine in the near distance. Chalets were built everywhere into
the steep slopes of the mountain. The thickening wall of fans suggested
that we must be near the end, but we were driving so fast that it was hard
to tell.
Incredibly, Bruyneel drove right up beside Armstrong. He was in pain and
was massaging his thigh while pedalling as fast as he could. "Six
seconds!" Bruyneel shouted out the window at full speed. "Move!"
Armstrong barrelled across the finish line, six seconds before his rivals.
He got off his bike and hobbled directly into a tent that had been set up
for drug testing. When he emerged, he came over to say hello. I
congratulated him on winning the stage. "It's always fun to win," he said,
smiling broadly. "But, man, I am in such agony."
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 7 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Tue, Jul 16, 2002 (20:55) * 23 lines
http://www.olntv.com/listenlive.html
(a frame in http://www.letour.fr/2002/us/index.html)
This is great! There's a *live webcast* of the Tour de France. No
commercials. You need WMP.
Here's the schedule.
Wednesday, July 17 - Stage 10 9:30am-11:30am ET
Thursday, July 18 - Stage 11 8:30am-11:30am ET
Friday, July 19 - Stage 12 8:30am-11:30am ET
Saturday, July 20 - Stage 13 9:30am-11:30am ET
Sunday, July 21 - Stage 14 9:30am-11:30am ET
Monday, July 22 - Rest Day No Live Audio
Tuesday, July 23 - Stage 15 9:30am-11:30am ET
Wednesday, July 24 - Stage 16 7:30am-11:30am ET
Thursday, July 25 - Stage 17 8:30am-11:30am ET
Friday, July 26 - Stage 18 9:30am-11:30am ET
Saturday, July 27 - Stage 19 9:30am-11:30am ET
Sunday, July 28 - Stage 20 9:30am-11:30am ET
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 8 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, Jul 19, 2002 (22:18) * 38 lines
The New Yorker article. It was great.
Did I say.
It was great. They pointed out that Lance's resting pulse is 32 beats per
minute, his heart is a third bigger than the average mans, and his thigh
bones are the perfect height for pumping pedals, which is pumps about 100
times a minute on hard mountain climbs.
I encountered him at BookPeople at Central Market one time. I was walking
out of the store and he spotted me and held the door open for me when I
was about 40 feet away, he smiled and strode off across the parking lot.
I got the impression of a small but exceeding powerful and conscious man.
He's friends with Robin Williams, another cyclist. Did you catch his
comments on Lance in the HBO Special ("he' not on chemicals, you idiots .
. . he's on *chemo* . . . having his testicle removed makes him more
aerodynamic.
Here's an article on his rigorous training regimen:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/sports/othersports/29LANC.html
Here are some super places to follow the rest of the Tour de France, about
ten more days.
http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/tdf2001/
webcast audio and comprehensive covrage
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2002/tour02/?id=stages/stage11
http://www.olntv.com/listenlive.html and
http://www.letour.fr/2002/us/index.html
And finally the great NYer article:
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/020715fa_fact1
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 9 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Jul 21, 2002 (23:35) * 8 lines
Surprise! oln blew away CBS today with it's coverage of the Tour de
France. Lance came in third but he about doubled his overall lead to 4
minutes and something. What a powerful stretch drive by Austin's cycling
powerhouse up France's most daunting challenge of the Tour de France.
The Spaniard challenged him and he just turned on the afterburners and it
was bye bye to the rest of the pack.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 10 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Jul 25, 2002 (11:25) * 33 lines
Lance maintains a plus 5 minute lead over Botero with two others neaby.
Thursday, July 25 - Stage 17
8:30am-11:30am ET -Live!
3:00pm-5:00pm ET - Re-air of live coverage
9:00pm-11:00pm ET / 10:00pm-12:00am PT - Commentary & analysis of day's stage
Friday, July 26 - Stage 18
9:30am-11:30am ET -Live!
3:00pm-5:00pm ET - Re-air of live coverage
9:00pm-11:00pm ET / 10:00pm-12:00am PT - Commentary & analysis of day's stage
Saturday, July 27 - Stage 19
9:30am-11:30am ET -Live!
3:00pm-5:00pm ET - Re-air of live coverage
9:00pm-11:00pm ET / 10:00pm-12:00am PT - Commentary & analysis of day's stage
Sunday, July 28 - Stage 20
Live audio coverage available on olntv.com - 9:30am-11:30am. Visit the Listen Live page.
CBS Coverage
2:00pm - 3:00pm ET
OLN Coverage
9:00pm-11:00pm ET / 10:00pm-12:00am PT - Commentary & analysis of day's stage
Thursday, August 22 - Post-race Show
8:00pm ET/PT
Join Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen for a re-cap of the most exciting
moments of the 2002 Tour de France.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 11 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Jul 25, 2002 (22:42) * 3 lines
Sunday August 4th 1pm OLN, New York City bike race.
Lance will be there.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 12 of 39: JOE (g7hvp) * Fri, Jul 26, 2002 (11:55) * 2 lines
Will Lance Cycle the Atlantic first or take the long path he
hi good enough to do it.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 13 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, Jul 26, 2002 (14:00) * 1 lines
All he has to do now is play it safe, avoid crashes and sickness. Five minuates may not seem like much, but it's actually a pretty huge lead.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 14 of 39: NittanyLion (MarciaH) * Fri, Jul 26, 2002 (14:18) * 1 lines
5 minutes is like hours in a contest like this. He should bide his time and not do anything stupid like overextending himself or taking risks. I am pulling for him!
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 15 of 39: JOE (g7hvp) * Fri, Jul 26, 2002 (15:52) * 2 lines
I watch the race every day live and they all deserve a medal but Lance seems
to be a rarity which pop up from time to time in sport.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 16 of 39: NittanyLion (MarciaH) * Fri, Jul 26, 2002 (20:36) * 1 lines
Yup, he will be like all the record holders in any sport. One for the books! And, he did it the hard way - fighting for his life. I have also been watching and looking at the scenery in the background whenever possible.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 17 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, Jul 26, 2002 (21:53) * 1 lines
Tomorrow are the time trials and Lance is out to win this one.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 18 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Jul 28, 2002 (00:03) * 1 lines
And he did! Tomorrow's the big ride around the Champs Elyses.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 19 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Jul 28, 2002 (09:43) * 10 lines
Can't get the oln feed today.
oln tv is blocked out in favor the the CBS delayed and sanitized version at
1 pm CST.
So I found another live audio feed:
http://www.eurosport.com/home/pages/L0/home_multimedia_Lng0.shtml
You'll get commercials in French but the commentary is in English.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 20 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Mon, Jul 29, 2002 (11:59) * 1 lines
Lance won and displayed great class in his interviews and comments afterward. That makes four in a row and only one other man has won five in a row, Indurain.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 21 of 39: JOE (g7hvp) * Mon, Jul 29, 2002 (13:59) * 2 lines
Lance says he will race for at least two more years, new records to come?
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 22 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Mon, Jul 29, 2002 (14:23) * 1 lines
Rumsas and David Millar could put up a challenge to Lance next year, his chances hinge on whether or not he can come back with a good team again.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 23 of 39: JOE (g7hvp) * Tue, Jul 30, 2002 (09:39) * 1 lines
Dave Miller says he hopes to win the tour in abour 3 years after Lance retires
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 24 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Tue, Jul 30, 2002 (12:06) * 1 lines
Rumsas wife got busted with a carload full of doping products yesterday, Rumsas may be on the run and the cycling governing body is going to slap him. I guess Rumsas stock is going down. Lance considers h9im to be the biggest threat.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 25 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Tue, Jul 30, 2002 (12:08) * 65 lines
Third Place Is in Doubt
Police Say Rumsas's Wife Had 'Doping Materials' in Car
advertisement
Raimondas Rumsas's third-place finish in the Tour de France remains in place Monday pending the results of an investigation and drug tests. (Thomas Kienzle - AP)
_____What the Jerseys Mean_____
• Yellow: Overall race leader; shortest time for total distance covered. The most coveted jersey.
• Polka dots: King of the Mountains. The best climber wears this jersey.
• Green: The best sprinter. Points are awarded for intermediate and final sprints on flat terrain.
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By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 30, 2002; Page D02
PARIS, July 29 -- The ever-present specter of doping cast a shadow over
the Tour de France when the Italian team Lampre-Daikin announced it was
suspending its captain and star, Lithuanian rider Raimondas Rumsas, after
his wife was detained by French customs police for carrying "suspicious"
medical products.
Rumsas finished third overall Sunday in the Tour and shared the podium
with Lance Armstrong, who was celebrating his fourth consecutive Tour de
France win. Rumsas, 30, stood to Armstrong's left as a French military
band played "The Star-Spangled Banner."
But hours before Sunday's final race stage began, customs police detained
Edita Rumsas after searching a car she was driving at Chamonix in the Alps
near the Italian border. A police spokeswoman said customs police
discovered "medications that could be considered doping materials" in the
car.
Edita Rumsas is in police custody in Lyon, although she has not been
formally charged. Rumsas has returned to his home in Marlia, Italy, with
the rest of the team. Edita had been with her husband throughout the race,
but left by car before the race ended.
Police declined to specify the kind or amount of material she was carrying
when apprehended.
On Sunday night, French police in Paris entered
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 26 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Tue, Jul 30, 2002 (12:10) * 13 lines
July 30, 2002 08:30 AM ET
MADRID (Reuters) - Lithuanian rider Raimondas Rumsas, who became embroiled
in a doping probe after customs officials found drugs in his wife's car
following this year's Tour de France, has denied taking any banned
substances.
"I have ridden this Tour in a completely honest and legal manner," the
30-year-old cyclist, who came third in the race, told Spanish daily El
Mundo Tuesday.
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=2XBX3KUBSWW3SCRBAELCFEY?type=sportnews&StoryID=1268443
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 27 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Tue, Jul 30, 2002 (21:06) * 1 lines
Lance will be back in Austin in September, I'm looking forwarding to attending the homecoming. It will be a grand occasion for Austin, Texas.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 28 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Apr 16, 2003 (04:51) * 5 lines
http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news?slug=ap-armstrong-marriage&prov=ap&type=lgns
Armstrong's wife says that she and Lance are working at reconciling their
marriage, and plan to reunite in Europe before and through the TDF.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 29 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Jul 17, 2003 (19:34) * 28 lines
US Postal got off to a good start by winning the team time trial on day
one. As usual, Outdoor Life Network is doing great coverage, live, every
day except on the weekend when do a delay in the evening. Victor Hugo
Pena of Postal got the first yellow jersey with Lance just a second
behind.
http://www.khou.com/sharedcontent/sports/tourdefrance/tourdefrance/071802dnspotourlede.eee.html
"This year [2002], Mr. Armstrong has been appearing regularly on French
television, speaking in French. He's signing more autographs and seems to
be making an effort to become more open with the passionate French cycling
fans. "
http://www.postconsumer.com/blogfrance/archives/000461.html
"He speaks french! Badly, though: "Il est le plus grand threat!" (he meant
menace). "
Tyler Hamilton is riding with a broken collarbone, victim of an early
crash in the Tour.
http://www.velonews.com/tour2003/diaries/articles/4452.0.html
The OLN announcers are great with Phil Ligget and Paul being joined by a
flirtatious, bold blond newcomer Kristen Bug and funnyman Bob Roll. Roll
won't be coming to a Comedy Club near you any time soon.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 30 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Jul 24, 2003 (21:55) * 5 lines
Lance is ove a minute ahead of the second place Jan Ulrich going in to the
final few days on the road to Paris. Magnificent effort by Tyler Hamilton
a couple of days ago in the last mountain stage. "He made a bold move",
said Lance, of the rider with the broken collarbone.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 31 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sat, Jul 26, 2003 (10:20) * 15 lines
Both Ulrich and Armstrong are out on the course as I write this.
This most likely will decide this years Tour de France.
It's a 30 mile individual time trial. Man against man.
It's rainy and treacherous out on the course. At least it's not hot,
that's what did Lance in during the last time trial.
Ulrich is ahead by 6 seconds so far, Lance is ahead by a minute five
overall.
I hope they don't risk too much. This is a very tricky run.
Follow it on OLN or http://olntv.com
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 32 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, Aug 1, 2003 (03:41) * 20 lines
Lance did a two hour interview on OLN tv (channel 608 if have Directv) and
it may still be in reruns.
When asked about the crash, he said he looked at the reruns and it didn't
look to him like Ullrich was "waiting" for him; he said Jan had on his
same
face and it looked like he was bearing down until Tyler Hamilton ran up
and
got everyone to slow down. He said the race was full of "little problems"
like cooling down with misting machines way too much before the first time
trial which caused him to break out in a sweat and he went in to a bunch
of
other stuff. The stuff he referred to as the stuff that "people don't
know
about" in an interview during the race.
It was a riveting two hour wrap up with Paul Sherwyn and Phil Leggett and
I
highly recommend it if you can catch it on an OLN rerun.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 33 of 39: Admin Guy 2004 (admin) * Thu, Feb 12, 2004 (14:01) * 1 lines
We still have it tivoed.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 34 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Feb 18, 2004 (09:20) * 4 lines
Lance is getting ready for this years tour in central California. He's
been seen laying around the beach with Cheryl Crow.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 35 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Feb 16, 2005 (10:12) * 87 lines
from http://thepaceline.com
Lance News
+ Larger Font | + Smaller Font
By Chris Brewer
I knew Oprah was popular, but I'll be honest: I never knew she was THAT
popular - wow… so check out some of the news – and what was not really
“new news” – that we experienced last Friday…
The Preparation
The show was taped back on Jan 23 in Chicago, so the production was “in
the can” as they say. What was going on behind-the-scenes at the Lance
Armstrong Foundation that day? Well, a solid case of Oprah fever had set
in, that was for sure. Things started out relatively mild since the show
is seen in a few markets in the morning, but there was plenty of action in
preparation beforehand.
To help promote the event over 1 million emails had been sent out to LAF
supporters the day prior. Every web page for the LAF.org and
LiveStrong.org web sites had been reviewed, scrubbed, plus new content
added. All 3 web servers had their memory doubled and our engineers
tweaked them up to make sure they were ready to handle the expected load.
Word had been put out to our service providers to expect a big (BIG) spike
in web traffic and e-commerce orders (we even upped our data line capacity
for 3 days from 10 megabit to 100). And finally, the LAF fulfillment
company went to around-the-clock staffing to get the wristbands out ASAP.
Now the question on everyone’s mind was “Just how big an impact would it
be?" It would all come down to the afternoon window when Oprah is
literally seen across the country.
The Show
The show started out with a quick profile of Lance’s public image, from
teen athlete to pro cyclist to cancer survivor to 6-time Tour champion.
Lance then walked in wearing a light gray 2-piece suit to a tremendous
standing ovation, the Oprah set completely done up in yellow with
LIVESTRONG™ emblazoned everywhere.
Oprah then showed a montage of Lance’s life, complete with some pretty
rare images: Lance on his first bike at age 6, long-distance running at
10, and his first triathlon at 14. In addition to the now-familiar cycling
highlights they also showed the great Nike commercial culminating with the
line, “What am I on? I’m on my bike busting my ass for 6 hours…”
Lance was asked about his statement that cancer was the best thing that
ever happened to him – was that still true? “Absolutely, it forced me to
take a look at my life and at my sport. I haven’t been perfect (since
being diagnosed) but I’ve attacked the bike and the sport in a way I would
not have pre-cancer.” While it’s not uncommon for Lance to talk
graphically about his cancer experience, he was clearly surprised when
Oprah recounted his symptoms. “Lance, you had testicles the size of a
lemon…” “Just one!” he corrected. “I told you not to talk about that (he
joked) – but now we can talk about anything…”
The story then went on to highlight the importance of Lance’s mom Linda.
The reality of the cancer experience was that she was the one who was by
his side throughout the treatments and we can look forward to many more
details in her upcoming book ”No Mountain High Enough : Raising Lance,
Raising Me”. Lance then told a quick story of how he went to a recent
video shoot at Oprah’s house and he knew that his mom was a big fan of
her. So he invited her along, but didn’t tell Linda where they were going,
just that it was an old friend and that they were bringing the kids, too.
Exhibiting true Texan hospitality, Linda said “We should bring some
guacamole and chips.” “Sure, why not?” Lance said – and off they went,
much to Linda’s total surprise as they met Oprah at the door… (and yes,
they ate the chips and guacamole!)
The Challenge
Oprah then asked her viewers to see of they could beat the one-day sales
record of 382,000 LIVESTRONG yellow wristbands. She noted the huge
popularity of the yellow wristbands that support the Lance Armstrong
Foundation, from celebrities to kids to cancer survivors and their
supporters, the demand is now truly international. With over 32 million
now sold, this is a true phenomenon and she wanted her viewers to do their
part as well. She basically asked her viewers to go to Oprah.com - and now
- where a special page was ready and waiting for them to take their orders
as well as ask them to fill out a survery for the LAF.
And away they went, too! As we monitored the web traffic the spike in data
flow and orders was literally off the chart, such is the influence this
show commands...
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 36 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Feb 16, 2005 (10:13) * 78 lines
from http://thepaceline.com - Lance's fan site.
After a commercial break, the show then moved to Oprah’s house where Lance
had literally just ridden in from a 5-hour training ride. She noted how
she was a tad intimidated to ride with the 6-time Tour champ – as most
people would be – but she not only handled her MTB quite well, but managed
to do a rolling interview with Lance in the process. Prior to a “race”
with Oprah – and Lance could only use one leg (and of course he still won)
- she asked him if being naturally physically gifted was what allowed him
to be so successful on the bike. “I prefer to think I work the hardest,”
he replied.
Back to the live set and Lance’s girlfriend Sheryl Crow joined them on
stage for their first-ever joint interview. She recalled how the two had
first “courted” via Blackberry text messages and that a year ago she
started riding a road bike, one of several Lance has given her. “She
already rode up Alpe d’Huez,” Lance noted. “Yeah, but it took me an hour
and 37 minutes to get up, and the record is 37 minutes,” Sheryl replied.
Oprah then looked at Lance and asked “How long did it take you to get up
that mountain” Without missing a beat Lance deadpanned: 37 minutes.
The biggest news (that was not really news) was Oprah asking Lance if he
would go for a seventh Tour de France victory. Lance looked at Sheryl and
said, “Yeah, absolutely.” Now that may have been a surprise to those who
don’t follow the sport closely, but LA noted weeks ago at the Discovery
Channel presentation press conference that competing in another Tour was
part of his contract with the new title sponsor. As for whether or not
that will in 2005 or 2006, that’s still to be determined. And after the
show in an audience Q&A not broadcasted, someone asked Lance, “Did I just
hear you announce you will be riding the Tour in 2005?” and Lance said no,
he didn’t say that specifically, and he re-explained his contract
obligation.
A Special Meeting
Without a doubt the best moment of the show was when they brought out a
very special cancer survivor, first grade teacher / breast cancer survivor
Andre Rice. She was diagnosed 6 years ago, had her treatments and went
into remission. Unfortunately 4 years later she recurred and she is now
back in chemotherapy treatment. And through it all, Lance has been her
role model. Prior to the Oprah show, over 100 friends and family carrying
yellow balloons surprised her with the announcement that she had been
selected to come out to the show’s taping and to meet Lance. She came onto
the set and gave Lance a huge hug, then told him, “You are my hero; I am
in the fight of my life. On the days I can’t go on my husband says: You
are my Lance, and you can do it!” She then went to explain the amazing
inspirational impact of the yellow wristbands, and Lance noted this was
the original intent of the program. Lance then rolled out a nice Trek
cruiser bike and gave it to her, signing the frame as Andre stood there
stunned – an
there wasn’t a dry eye in the house…
As the show wound down, they spoke a little about Lance’s kids. “They are
miracle children (recalling their creation via IVF). My son Luke is my
twin,” Lance noted. “Their mom is great, and we have an excellent
partnership raising the kids – we each have them half the time.” Oprah
asked Lance if he wanted more kids. “There’s a few more tadpoles left!”
Lance joked. “But in a year or 2 I’m not going to have too much to do –
why not go and chase around a bunch of kids?” And finally Sheryl debuted a
new song titled “I Know Why” from her upcoming CD.
The Result
Can you say “a-maze-ing”? I knew that you could…
The previous one-day record of 382,000 wristband sales was smashed.
The wristband sales for from Friday's Oprah air date were over 900,000,
plus an additional 300,00 more on Saturday!
Over 13,500 LAFsurvey responses were compiled. * You can get more details
from the show over at the Oprah.com web site.
So all in all it was an amazing day for Oprah and the Lance Armstrong
Foundation, and it’s hats off to the folks at Oprah, their viewers, and
the LAF supporters around the world – thank you all!
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 37 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Feb 17, 2005 (13:15) * 1 lines
I'm inspired, I've gone to a daily pain inducing workout with performance enhancing drinks (Trek), see the fitness topic.
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 38 of 39: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, Mar 18, 2005 (10:36) * 30 lines
CRAPONNE-SUR-ARZON, France (Reuters) - American Lance Armstrong has pulled out of the Paris-Nice race with a sore throat.
The six-times winner of the Tour de France will return to his home at Girona in Spain for treatment, according to a statement on his Discovery team's Web Site.
"I had finally adjusted to the jet lag of the trip but woke up this morning with a sore throat that seemed to get worse all day," Armstrong said on Wednesday. "I will return to Spain to rest up and be back on the bike in a couple of days."
Paris-Nice was the first major event on the agenda of the Texas rider after he decided to enter the Tour de France in July and chase for a seventh consecutive victory in the most gruelling cycle race of the world.
But even before he returned to France, the American made it clear that he did not expect anything from Paris-Nice apart from spending time on his bike in race conditions.
"This is my first race of the season and I'm not physically fit at the moment," he said. "I'm certainly a bit late in my preparations as I have spent more time than usual in the United States this winter."
Armstrong finished at a disappointing 140th place in the Sunday's prologue, an individual time-trial of 4.5 kilometers in the Paris suburbs.
The Discovery team leader then lost more ground on leaders when he was trapped in a collective fall in the first stage near Chabris on Monday.
SCHEDULE CHANGES
He then finished twice with the bunch but he seemed to suffer from the bad weather as the second and the third stages, shortened because of the snow, were raced in sub-zero temperatures.
When he pulled out, Armstrong was 62nd overall, one minute 35 seconds behind race leader Tom Boonen of Belgium.
His withdrawal means that Armstrong will now have to reshuffle his schedule and bring in some changes in his preparations for the Tour de France.
He is considering taking part into the Setmana Catalana next week before returning to the United States for the Tour of Georgia.
Armstrong had said that he wanted to focus on spring's one-day races and he could race in the Tour of Flanders on April 3 before entering either the Dauphine Libere or the Tour of Switzerland
Topic 76 of 83 [sports]: Lance Armstrong and bicycling as a sport
Response 39 of 39: Conf admin (cfadm) * Fri, Mar 31, 2006 (20:38) * 1 lines
http://touroftexas.com
sports conference 
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