Long road back

Cancer survivor Lance Armstrong is on the verge of his first Tour win.

By BRUCE LOWITT

He would read about the day's stage of the Tour de France. He would wonder where in the standings he would be. Then Lance Armstrong would put the race out of his consciousness and get back to thinking what he thought most about during his waking moments -- the cancer that threatened to kill him.

This was less than three years ago, when he was given no better than a 50-50 chance of surviving the testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. He was 25, a world-class cyclist, and his career seemingly was at an end.

"Winning the Tour de France once was almost an obsession. No more," he said then, describing himself as "just a recreational cyclist. ... Three weeks like the Tour de France, I think that is pretty much out of the picture."

Look at the picture today. As the Tour resumes after a day of rest, the 27-year-old Armstrong is front and center, leading the race by 7 minutes, 44 seconds. If things go as expected, he will pedal the last of 2,288 miles through the streets of Paris to victory Sunday.

"This is like a French team winning the Super Bowl," said U.S. Postal team manager Mark Gorski, getting a bit ahead of himself.

Armstrong finished only one of his previous four Tours de France, in 1995 when he was 30th. He said he never had a chance to win any of those races. This year, though, Armstrong is so dominant that two-time winner Bernard Thevenet of France said the remaining cyclists are competing for second place.

The awareness of his mortality has changed Armstrong, said Bill Shook of Tampa, a U.S. national team member in the 1970s, now a designer of bicycle parts and sponsor of the American Classic cycling team. "His recovery from cancer has given him a new attitude. "Before, he was arrogant, cocky, because he was so genetically gifted. I think what he went through humbled him. He's a much better individual for having gone through the experience. He's seen how human he is, how frail the human experience is. It comes across in his attitude."

Dr. Albert B. Einstein Jr., associate center director for clinical affairs at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, called Armstrong "an outstanding example, an inspirational example, of someone who is diagnosed with cancer, goes through an immense amount of personal discomfort to become cured and, in fact, is reaping the benefits of all that. People need that kind of role model, to be able to say, "Well, if he can do it, why can't I?' "

'You can't kill me'

Armstrong grew up in the Dallas suburb of Plano. By the end of grade school, it was obvious he wouldn't be big enough, strong enough or fast enough to play football or baseball. He devoted himself to running and swimming and, soon after, cycling, moving to Austin on his own to train with the U.S. team.

By 18, he was a two-time national triathlon champion. Two years later he became U.S. amateur road-racing champion. At 22, he was a world road-racing champion. He won a stage of the Tour de France that year and again in 1995. He was compared to three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, the only American to win the Tour. Armstrong had a two-year, $2.5-million contract with Cofidis, a French team. Fellow U.S. cyclist Davis Phinney called Armstrong "the best rider in the world, clearly."

But clearly there was a problem.

Armstrong had been feeling pain in a swollen testicle. He ignored it. Wasn't pain part of the cyclist's lot in life? It was the natural offshoot of riding a bike for hours at a time, he told himself.

He pulled out of the 1996 Tour in the sixth stage, complaining of bronchitis and a strep infection. At the Atlanta Olympics, he led the road race briefly but faltered, finishing 12th.

And the pain intensified. Armstrong began coughing up blood. His physician suspected an infection and suggested he see a urologist. He underwent X-ray and ultrasound examinations. The malignancy was discovered and one testicle was removed.

But the cancer had spread to Armstrong's lungs and abdomen. Then, more bad news. A brain scan showed two lesions. He began chemotherapy by telling his doctors: "I want you to treat me as hard as you can because you can't kill me."

Such an inspiration

The Tour de France is no ride around the neighborhood. It is what its name implies: a ride around France, up and down mountains, the Pyrenees and the Alps, "hot or cold, rain or shine," said ex-pro cyclist Tony Prioli of Chainwheel Drive, a Clearwater bike shop. "And the roads aren't as nice as they are in America, so you've got a lot of really rugged terrain. And no guard rails on the roads. So what you have is 60-mile-an-hour descents on poor, poor roads. I'd compare the Tour de France to the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

A number of years ago a sports magazine set out to find the most grueling sport in the world. It narrowed the field to channel swimming, cross-country biking and marathon running, and couldn't decide among the three. (That was, in effect, the birth of the triathlon.)

"The Tour de France is the equivalent of getting up every day for a fortnight (two weeks) and running a marathon or swimming the English Channel day after day after day," Shook said. "It is absolutely incredible that Lance could come back at all and be competitive. He had to endure cancer that almost killed him, and chemotherapy. Chemo is like taking poison every day. It very nearly kills the individual in trying to kill the cancer."

Armstrong was still undergoing chemotherapy when he resumed training. "He struggled to ride 10 to 15 miles," said Chris Carmichael, his trainer since 1990. "That's how far down he was." Armstrong sat out the 1997 season and, when he announced he was returning to cycling, he discovered no one was interested in sponsoring him or signing him.

Cofidis' attitude, Armstrong said, "was, "No, thanks. He's finished.' " Added Bill Stapleton, his agent: "We decided to look for another team, but for every 20 calls we made, perhaps three were returned. ... It was a very humiliating experience." Armstrong eventually signed with the U.S. Postal Service team for a fraction of what Cofidis had paid him.

At $200,000, it's a steal.

"To be 100 percent healthy and do what he's doing is extraordinary," said Eddie Mull-alley, owner of the Neptune Lounge and Cyclery in Tarpon Springs and member of the Tampa-based Best of the Bay Cyclists. "To do it with the odds he's come back from is unreal.

"It's just such an inspiration to anybody that you can come back, not only come back but be the best in the world. If he wins, I think it'll be the biggest story in cycling ever. I mean, I've heard (five-time Tour de France winner) Eddie Merckx and other guys say they've never seen anything like this. Cycling couldn't have written a better script."

-- Information from Times wires was used in this report.