What causes a child who felt the lack of a father to try to be the best father he can be to his children?

What causes an angry teenager to channel his anger to winning in sports against all odds?

What causes a person to overcome cancer and become strong and skilled enough to win one of the toughest athletic competitions in the world?

The life of Lance Armstrong is an answer to these questions

Even as a child, Lance must have felt that he was destined to be one of the foremost sportsmen of the world. He seemed to win at almost anything that he tried.

"Even at 13," said his swimming coach, Chris MacCurdy, "we could see his desire to win."

When he moved to cycling, he felt he "was born to race bikes".

When he was 16, Triathlete named him the 1988 Rookie of the Year, saying he could become "one of the greatest athletes the sport has ever seen."

Dedication, discipline, perseverance, commitment- four words used by his friend, lawyer, and agent, Bill Stapleton to describe the sports phenomenon called Lance Armstrong.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS     WHAT HE'S CALLED     TIMELINE     FAMILY     CHILDHOOD     WHAT'S REALLY SPECIAL      FUN FACTS    

 

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ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Five times winner of the Tour de France, from 1999 onwards.

This is the most prestigious cycling race in the world. Every July, racers from all over the world go through a rigorous course all over France, ending at The Champs-Elysées in Paris. This takes almost a whole month. The overall winner is given a yellow jersey.  

The first American to win the Classico San Sebastian, in 1995

Three years earlier, he had been last in the race. This was one of the few times in his life that he had failed. He would have given up had his mother not persuaded him to persevere.  

The first person to recapture his success at the Tour Du Pont, in America, in 1995 and 1996

This regional race starts from North Carolina and gives a rare opportunity for Americans to see Lance Armstrong 

. The first American to win the traditional Belgian spring classic Fleche Wallone, 1996

By 1996, he was the number one ranked cyclist in the world

In 1995 he helped start the Lance Armstrong Junior Olympic Race Series. The series is designed to promote cycling and racing among America's youth.  

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WHAT HE'S CALLED

Du Pont Dominator
'Le Boss'
The Golden Boy of American Cycling
He has achieved this status despite the fact that his countrymen almost never get to see him do what he does so well in person. Most pro cycling races are in Europe.
The number one cyclist in the world
The tough-talking Texan
The Toro de Texas [Bull from Texas]
 

TIMELINE

Sep 18, 1971	Born in Plano, Texas, USA
1984	13 yrs old: Won the Iron Kids Triathlon: swimming, biking, running in one day. He would bike 20 miles each way for his swim class where he was swimming for 6 miles!
1987	16 years: Became a professional triathlete: swimming, biking, running. At the President’s Triathlon, he competed with adult sportspeople and soon became noticed and known.
1990	19 years  old: senior in High School Cycling became his primary sport Lance qualified to train with the U.S. Olympic developmental team in Colorado Springs, Colorado during his senior year.

 

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FAMILY

His parents divorced when Armstrong was really young and Lance was raised by his mother, Linda. "Casa Linda", his home in Texas is named after his mother, his greatest hero. She drove Lance around the country to participate in races, and supported him through her own trials through three divorces and being a single mother.

Lance Armstrong is married to Kristin Richard. They have a son, Luke and twin daughters, Isabella and Grace.

 

CHILDHOOD

Armstrong's childhood in Texas was spent as the son of a strong, loving, supportive, financially struggling, young mother. But his father left when he was two, and he was mostly brought up by a stepfather who was a stern disciplinarian. He would whip the child for every transgression: being messy, being late or just being rambunctious. No wonder that Lance had a lot of anger and hurt.

The mother and son woke at dawn in the early days. "My motive was a hot breakfast: eggs and bacon or biscuits and gravy," Linda recalls. "We made a point to eat at the table--it was a nice start to begin the day. None of the packaged stuff.”

Even at school Lance was an angry kid who longed to fit in but didn’t. This led him to have a lot of grudges. He felt that the only way to be important at his school was if he were rich [which he wasn’t] or if he played football [which he didn’t]. His school mates and teachers didn’t really understand the sports he was so good at.

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Sports were always big in his life; and he began to earn money by winning competitive triathlons when he was in his teens. He had already begun to be famous.

Lance also recognized the lack of money. "He kept a card file of sponsors and product people," explains Linda. "He'd call the sponsors of the races and ask `Can you get my mom and me there?' He needed better equipment for cycling and triathlons, but there was no way. By the ninth grade, Lance was arranging it all. He knew that you must be grateful for anything that's given to you that helps you accomplish, so he'd write thank-you notes." © Carolanne Griffith Roberts

His interest in cycling came about while living across the street from a small bike shop that offered sponsorships to young athletes who performed well. Lance got his first bicycle when he was seven and started riding every day. Some days he would cycle all the way to Oklahoma and would have to call his mom to come pick him up. Early in his life, his excellence at endurance athletics was showing. Eventually, Lance Armstrong was able to bike home himself and started entering amateur races.

In his high school years, Lance realized that he was not cut out for traditional sports. He began competing in triathlons and road races, winning virtually everything he entered, and often beating people with three times more experience. He was a loud and disrespectful adolescent, often aggravating his cycling peers, and angering his sponsors. The arrogance that got him there was to be replaced in his adulthood with a zest for life and renewed strength after surviving the ordeal with cancer.

During his senior year of high school, he moved to Colorado to train with the US Olympic development team for cycling.

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His mother would come home from work on Fridays and find him ready to go to a race that weekend, the car already packed. They'd drive anywhere, once all the way to New Mexico.

Figuring it was hot in Texas so it must be in New Mexico, too, they failed to pack any warm riding gear. Lance went out for his warm-up early the next morning only to burst back into the hotel room a few minutes later, wailing to his mother that it was freezing. All he had to wear were shorts and a short-sleeve jersey. Linda, a tiny woman, half the size of her broad-shouldered, 6-foot, 160-pound son, had only a lightweight pink jacket to offer, and she gave it to him.

"It was so small," she said, "that it bound him in like a straitjacket, so that he could barely reach the handlebars." Mother told son to hurry up and win because she was cold and wanted to go home. He won.

© Kevin Sherrington

At the back of his mind, Lance kept the memory of people who felt that he and his mother would never amount to anything. Many years later, in 1993, when he won the World Championships at Oslo, he felt “it was the end of the long, hard climb of childhood.”

 

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WHAT'S REALLY SPECIAL

What shapes him?

Mother

From childhood, a strong shaping influence is his mother, Linda. She was just 17 when Lance was born, but she gave him all the love that she could, the care that a young single mother could give, and a wise upbringing that turned his anger and hurt into strength and energy. “Turn every negative into a positive”, she said, and as he adored her, he did just that.

 

Sports

His other savior, throughout his life, is sports. His love of sports was the ideal way for his anger and hurt to turn to a competitive spirit. He pushed himself and showed his strength and endurance at an early age.

 

Cancer

And in a dramatic way, as an adult, Lance has been shaped by the cancer that threatened to destroy him when he was almost at the peak of his career. Today he says in his autobiography, “In a way, the old me did die, and I was given a second life..... The truth is that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me...it did wonders for me.”

 

This is because, as he changed physically, he also examined his life and changed mentally. He realized that he had to grow up as a man.

 

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His challenges

No Father

Being abandoned by his father and beaten by a strict stepfather were sources of great pain and rage for Lance. He suppressed his feelings but was able to turn them into the qualities he needed for racing. “Maybe if I ride my bike on this road long enough it will take me out of here”, he would think as a child.

 

Lance believes the obstacle of his fatherless-ness became an opportunity to develop an overcoming attitude. “All I felt for them [stepfathers] was a kind of coldness, and a lack of trust."

 

One of Lance's toughest challenges is resolving the pain and loss in his childhood. Yet one of the profound truths about being a dad is that you can be challenged to go beyond the experience of your past and, where necessary, put things in proper order.

 

His race against Cancer

Lance was literally forced off his bike in excruciating pain in October 1996. He had cancer that had spread to his lungs and his brain.

 

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Cancer left him scarred physically and emotionally, but he now maintains it was an unexpected gift; a viewpoint that is shared by many cancer survivors. Getting cancer was "...the best thing that ever happened to me," Lance said, in relation to the maturity and life focus the disease forced him to face.

 

Throughout this life- threatening ordeal, Lance knew his priorities were changing. His physical well being, something that had never been challenged, was suddenly fragile. He was given the chance to fully appreciate the blessings of good health, a loving family, and close friends.

 

Lance described his bout with cancer as "a special wake-up call." He heeded the call to activism by becoming a spokesperson for testicular and other forms of cancer and formed the Lance Armstrong Foundation within months of his diagnosis. This international, non-profit Foundation was established initially to benefit cancer research and promote urologic cancer awareness and the importance of early detection. Its focus now is on being the world leader in the concept of "Cancer Survivorship" - helping people manage and survive cancer.

 

In May of 1998 Lance celebrated his victory over cancer and his "official" return to U.S. cycling by winning under the lights in dramatic fashion the Sprint 56K Criterium along the streets of downtown Austin.

 

His team, Cofidis terminated his contract soon after the news of his illness. Within months, however, Lance proudly announced a new affiliation with the United States Postal Service pro cycling team with whom he rides today. Their faith in him strengthened his resolve to live up to his own and his team's expectations and resume his position as one of the world's top cyclists.

 

Lance founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation to benefit cancer research and the Lance Armstrong Junior Race Series to promote cycling and racing for American kids.

 

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FUN FACTS

Lance’s mom read to him as a baby- and he was reciting verses at the age of two,. He did everything fast: babies normally walk when they’re 1 year old; but he walked when he was 9 months old.

The owner of Richardson Bike Mart gave his mom a good deal on a bike for Lance. So, at the age of 7, he had his first bike. “it was an ugly brown, with yellow wheels, but I loved it.”

His first racing bike was “a Mercier, a slim, elegant road bike” that he got for the junior triathlon, IronKids at the age of 13.

He was so inept when he joined the City of Plano Swimmers at 12 that his coach put him back with the 7- and 8-year-olds. In two months, he was one of the best in his age group. In a year, he was one of the best in the state.

When he was 14, Lance would sometimes boil spaghetti for himself. His mom taught him “how to throw a strand against the wall to make sure it was done.” His celebrity friends are actor Robin Williams. “We either talk about cycling, which he loves, or he just cracks jokes.”

U2 lead singer Bono is also a good friend, “I respect and admire him very much.”

As is the theme with other athlete-named buildings at Nike, 'The Lance' - as it has already been nicknamed by employees - is truly a monument to its namesake athlete. Various parts of the facility have been named for people or places that are important to Lance, including his wife ('The Kik' game room, Lance's nickname for wife Kristen), mother (Linda's, a large fitness studio), son (Luke's Landing, overlooking the swimming pool) and even his childhood swimming coach in Plano, Texas, for whom the Steve MacCurdy natatorium is named.

 

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READ MORE

(With Sally Jenkins) It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life , Putnam (New York, NY), 2000.
Armstrong, Kristin Lance Armstrong: The Race of His Life, All Aboard Reading
Thompson, John Lance Armstrong Overcoming Adversity series, Chelsea House Publishers, 2001

Lance Armstrong, in Sports Stars. Series 1-4. U*X*L, 1994-98. (An in-depth profile of the athlete's life and achievements.)
Lance Armstrong: On the Road to Atlanta by Jim Young, The Olympia n (United States Olympic Committee) May/June 1996, p. 30
Life Cycle : Mom's Support, Cancer Fight Energized Armstrong by Kevin Sherrington Tour de Lance. Sports Illustrated for Kids, August 1, 2003 v15 i8 p38
What it takes to raise a winner by Carolanne Griffith Roberts, Southern Livin g July 1996, pp. 74-78

http://www.ecmtb.com/scene/LanceBook.shtml
http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p3667.htm
http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/armstrong12048-des-.html http://www.lancearmstrong.com/,
http://www.lancearmstrong.com/thelance.html
http://www.lancearmstrong.com/lance/online2.nsf/html/bio2
http://www.mompop.org/news/mtt0803.html
http://www.penguinputnam.com/Book/BookFrame/0,1007,,00.html?id=044842407X
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/28/1059244526067.html
http://www.texasmonthly.com/mag/issues/2001-07-01/feature4-3.php?1548364002

 

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