careers briefly overlapped in the mid 1990s.
I don't know what it was that first turned me off to Lance Armstrong. Maybe it was that so much was written about a young kid who wasn't even a cyclist and how he was going to be "the next Greg LeMond."
It might have been his brash attitude. Or that young lady who was always hanging all over him in podium shots who was never identified (I eventually learned it to be his mother, Linda, who had Lance when she was a teenager).
When he started winning - world titles, the Tour duPont, the million dollars bonus for the "Triple Crown" series win, etc. - I started looking the other way. After all, this was a triathlete who was parlaying his way into the sport of cycling. He had no regard for the tradition or how the "patron" of the peloton called the shots (at that time, LeMond was the patron, but not a strong one).
It wasn't until Lance was stricken with cancer that I started following his career. Tragic story. Tragic ending to a career. Much like people did when LeMond was shot in a hunting accident, I wrote off Lance.
In 1998, I started taking notice - and becoming a fan. Lance raced the Cascade Classic a year after I officiated it with my friend, the late Sue Hefle. Not only did he compete (a feat in itself), he won. Wow. Then he finished fourth at the Tour of Spain. Crazy! Americans weren't even racing "The Vuelta" back then.
So it set the stage for his heroics in 1999. That first Tour de France win. I'll admit it - I don't cry much (at least I didn't back in those days) but I did when Lance donned his first yellow jersey. Here I was, thinking no American would ever wear "the golden fleece" and here was a guy from Texas who survived cancer winning cycling's greatest prize.
But as time wore on and the evidence mounted that Lance wasn't just drinking Gatorade and eating energy bars to collect those yellow jerseys, I started looking the other way. It just seemed too good to be true. (And it still does, frankly.) So when Lance hung it up in 2006, I hardly batted an eyelash.
Fast-forward to last September. Lance announces he is coming back. No surprise, really. He was burning bridges with companies he still endorsed through his antics with Hollywood-types. The "Lance Brand" was getting a bad name. If he could run a sub-three-hour marathon, perhaps he could get in shape to ride his bike again, many agency types (and anyone who was making money off of Lance) probably wondered aloud.
So he's back. And he wants to win. And one thing stands out above all the rest - his work ethic. Perhaps it was epitomized in this commercial:
Accurate or not, Lance is training like a mad-man. And thanks to his Twitter feed, I've become somewhat of a fan. What other pro athlete is providing their daily training regiment to me - in virtual real-time? I work with professional cyclists every day. But only one is telling me every day what he is doing to get ready for the season (and he doesn't even know me).
Here's a sample of a typical Lance day - as tapped out on his Blackberry:
5 a.m. - wake up
6 a.m. - breakfast
7 a.m. - begin training
12:30 p.m. - lunch
3 p.m. - massage
4 p.m. - golf (usually six holes)
6 p.m. - drink a beer
7 p.m. - dinner
9 p.m. - bedtime
Pretty impressive.
3 comments:
I liked Lance before he abandoned his wife and three young children. I like him less through his flitting around with Hollywood types. I now feel contempt for him since discovering he has conceived a child out of wedlock with his girlfriend (since July). No training schedule or "come back kid" story will change how immoral he has been in his personal life.
Very good points raised. When you become a public figure, like Lance certainly has been for the better part of his life, your personal life is sure to be scrutinized.
Being a 'cheater' myself, I can't dislike Lance just because of evidence linking him to banned substances. I still feel he brings hope to those who are in the darkest times in their lives. So, I still cheer for him and hope he does well.
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