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Letter to the editor

He's Superman - and everyman

Why Lance Armstrong is more of a regular guy than you'd think.

By JIM VERHULST
Published May 1, 2005

[AP: 2003]

Lance Armstrong has three children, 5-year-old Luke and twin 3-year-old girls, Isabelle Rose and Grace Elizabeth (shown here with ex-wife Kristin).

	[AP: 1999]
	Lance Armstrong is kissed by his mother Linda on the podium after he won the 19th stage of the Tour de France cycling race, in 1999.
	Graphic: How hard are the mountains to climb?

Lance Armstrong announced recently that he'll retire from racing after this year's Tour de France. You know the six-time tour winner is a superman on the bike and a multimillionaire who's dating a pop music star. But in surprising ways, he has been an everyman in the rest of his life. Here's a look at Lance, off the bike.

UNINSURED. Like 45-million other Americans, Armstrong found himself without health insurance. He lost it when he most needed it, when he was battling near-fatal cancer. He was between employers - he had just switched cycling teams - and his new team's insurance wouldn't cover the treatment because the cancer was a pre-existing condition. In the end, he was covered by insurance provided by Oakley, a sunglass manufacturer with whom he had an endorsement contract.

DIVORCED. Like 49-million Americans, he has gone through a divorce. He got married as he was recovering from cancer and says he compressed a lifetime into a few years. He says the pressure cooker of surviving cancer, winning the Tour many times over and living across two continents made his marriage crumble.

WORK-FAMILY. Like 66-million American men, he has to balance his job with his role as dad. A pro cyclist spends eight months a year away from home racing on foreign soil. The continued drag of that has convinced Armstrong to race the new and relatively minor Tour of Georgia the past two years so he can be nearer home. He is retiring, in part, to watch his kids grow up.

SIZE: At 5 feet 10 and 158 pounds, Armstrong is surprisingly average. He's not like an NBA center or NFL lineman who would stand out on the street.

CANCER: Armstrong is not alone in fighting cancer. About 1,372,910 new cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2005. There are about 9.8-million Americans alive today who have had cancer.

YELLOW WRISTBANDS: Armstrong wears a yellow Live Strong wristband that his foundation has sold to sponsor cancer research. So do 40-million other people.

INFERTILE. One in 10 American men are infertile. Nearly 10 years ago, doctors had to remove a cancerous testicle as well as lesions on Armstrong's brain. Surgery and cancer treatment left him infertile. His children were conceived using sperm that he banked the afternoon before his cancer treatments began.

KIDS. His family is slightly larger than average. He has three children, 5-year-old Luke and twin 3-year-old girls, Isabelle Rose and Grace Elizabeth.

SON OF TEEN MOM. Like half a million American babies each year, he was born to a teen mom, who was 17. Lance is now 33. His mother, to whom he is a fiercely loyal son, is 51.

INCOME. When he came back from cancer, no cycling team really wanted him. He finally hooked up with the then-new United States Postal Service team and was paid a base salary of $215,000, a tidy sum for a regular worker but chump change for a world-class athlete.

ON THE BIKE: Okay, so put Lance on a bike and he's not like us at all. His lungs have twice the capacity of a normal man. His heart is so powerful that it needs to beat only 32 times per minute at rest. During a time trial when he is racing alone without anyone cutting the wind in front of him, he is able to ride more than 33 mph for more than 20 miles. He works so hard on the mountain climbs that capillaries in his eyes burst, making him look bloodshot at the finish.

MOUNTAINTOP: How hard are the mountains to climb? Mont Ventoux, often one of the summits crested on the Tour, is 6,200 feet high. Imagine a ramp that starts at the Pier in downtown St. Petersburg and rises straight up to the top of the Bank of America building nearly a mile away. Ride up that ramp and pretend it keeps going at that steepness for more than another 10 miles. That's the same as riding up Mont Ventoux.

CELEBRITY. He has written two books, has raced Oprah on a bicycle (he used only one leg), knows President Bush well and is recognized around the world. His beloved 1970 GTO was redone on Overhaulin' through the efforts of girlfriend Sheryl Crow. He is great friends with Robin Williams, a surprisingly good cyclist himself, who flies to France each year to watch Armstrong compete in part of the Tour. He calls Armstrong the Uniballer. Quite a friend.

Sources: "It's Not about the Bike"; U.S. Census Bureau; American Cancer Society; American Urological Association. Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.

His name is Jan Ullrich. He is a German rider for a team sponsored by a cell phone company. He's Joe Frazier to Armstrong's Muhammad Ali. Armstrong wins the Tour and Ullrich finishes second, year after year. That's what makes this coming Tour so exciting.

Ullrich is in the best shape since 1997, the one time he did win the Tour, when Armstrong was recovering from cancer and was two years away from his own first victory in the race.

Ullrich badly wants to beat Armstrong once before he retires. Armstrong just as desperately wants to go out on top, winning the last pro race he enters. Should be an interesting Tour.

Armstrong is nicknamed "the Boss," for fairly obvious reasons. Ullrich is called "the Kaiser," or sometimes "the Diesel," because he takes a long time to reach top speed but once there, can keep going all day. Their storied competition shows how victory in the Tour is not the foregone conclusion many Americans expect for Armstrong.

One year, Armstrong accelerated away from Ullrich on a mountain climb and turned around to give him "the Look," which seemed to say "catch me if you can." Ullrich couldn't.

On another day, as the two were racing together on a fast downhill curve, Ullrich missed the turn and tumbled over a guardrail and down a ravine. Armstrong waited for him to climb out and the two of them rode off to continue the race.

Then in 2003, on a tough mountain climb, Armstrong clipped a spectator's bag and went down hard. Ullrich, right behind, swerved to avoid the crash and ultimately waited for Armstrong to catch up. Armstrong, his bike damaged, nearly crashed again when it bent and swayed under the pressure of his pedaling, but he blew past everyone and won the day.

Another day that year, it was so hot that a newly surfaced downhill road began to goo up and become slick. Armstrong was trailing another rider at high speed when the first rider began to fishtail, went down and shattered a leg. Armstrong veered off the road, careened across a hayfield and cut off the hairpin part of the turn and rejoined the race.

On a day near the end of the tour that year, Armstrong and Ullrich pushed each other hard in a time trial when it's every man for himself after leaving the start gate at 3-minute intervals. It was a stormy day with driving wind and sheets of rain. Ullrich pushed too hard, crashed on a turn, skidded across the road still attached to his bike as sparks flew from the metal on asphalt and he banged into bales of straw on the side of the road. He got back up, but the race was lost, barely, to Armstrong.

Remember, all of this is happening astride a bicycle that weighs less than 18 pounds and rides on high-pressure tires not even an inch wide.

[Last modified April 28, 2005, 09:14:03]