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Cancer. Just typing those six letters sends a chill down my spine. Everyone has a story about that horrible disease and mine is inexorably tied to Lance Armstrong.
It is now a year since Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. The opening minutes, saw Armstrong’s series of “yes” answers take him from being a genuine contender for the greatest athlete of all time to the undoubted greatest cheat in sport.
Right up to that moment when Armstrong confessed, I wanted to believe.
He’d passed every drug test. His reputation was on the line. It was the ultimate Hollywood story until…”yes”
In 2001-2 my best mate, Craig, was dying of cancer.
To counter the sleepless nights and as a distraction I read It’s Not About The Bike. Lance Armstrong’s story of a troubled teen raised by a young single mum, who rises (nearly) to the top of his sport, and is struck down by cancer.
The cancer spreads to his abdomen, lungs and brain and the doctors give Lance a 10% chance of survival. Somehow he survives, recovers and gets back on his bike. Hollywood would have rising music, his bike heading into the sunset, audiences reaching for tissues, the credits roll and everyone applauds.
But wait there’s more-so much more. Armstrong rides and wins the Tour de France, the toughest sporting event on earth. He does it an unprecedented seven times, all the while decimating all manner of records along the way.
Craig died of cancer in 2002 in his mid 30s. It was about then I started watching the Tour de France. The nightly 30 minute SBS highlights package which I was sure was put together by French Tourism board.
Chateaus, mountains, beaches, lakes, vineyards, cathedrals, medieval towns and sunny skies were the backdrop to this amazing event.
The brilliant commentary duo of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen comprised the best commentary duo in the business and made the tour come alive.
And it was Lance, still miraculously alive, that I cheered for. He embodied the very definition of a champion-the person who gets up when anyone else would say down. He rode for everyone touched by cancer and he especially rode for my best mate.
Armstrong’s story was enough to turn the most cynical soul.
My workplace had too many people who saw sport as “sweaty nonsense” and treated the kinds of wins we all love with disdain.
“Is that sport?” attitude prevailed to any of my “did you see…” stories on a Monday morning.
As the peculiar breed of sport nut who’ll get up and stupid-o’clock to endure the Wallabies or cheer on Southampton, Lance Armstrong’s story was gold.
“Have you heard about Lance Armstrong?’ “You’ve got to watch the Tour” I was enthralled and was prepared to tell everyone.
Pre-Lance the Tour de France was an obscure European event that all seemed a bit odd.
Its occasional mentions on news bulletins and almost indecipherable names and results system was too hard for me and most Australians to try to decode.
Post Lance it’s a global event. Cycling has made its way to the middle lane of mainstream sport.
I bought a Trek. Yes I bought a Trek – Lance’s bike.
I hadn’t really ridden since I was a teenager, but here I was doing my own personal time trials, mountain stages and sprint finishes around town.
I gave up the ciggies, have lost 15kilos and am immeasurably fitter.
I know my Alpe de Huez from my Tourmalet. The longest and steepest hill in town I dubbed Lance Armstrong Hill and would punch the air every time I made it to the top without getting off to push.
I sat mesmerised in 2011 as Cadel Evans rode a time trial to victory. Moreover, I became a regular donor to Livestrong.
Lance Armstrong’s cancer charity, Livestrong, has raised over $600 million to provides services for cancer patients and those affected by cancer. It has become the biggest ‘anti-cancer’ fund in the world.
In 100 years from now I hope it’s Livestrong that everyone will talk about.
For his entire career there were doubters and the rumours that Armstrong must be on drugs.
I desperately wanted it all to be true.
Lance Armstrong took us all for a ride-to an incredible and now obviously impossible series of victories.
As the overwhelming evidence against Armstrong mounted I stood by the “He’s never failed a drug test” mantra.
Post Oprah I read David Walsh’s “Seven Deadly Sins-My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong”.
I read it without rose-coloured glasses and in the cold hard light of Lance the Cheat.
Walsh called out Armstrong as a drug cheat in his first Tour win in 1999 and had pursued him, and the truth, ever since.
Armstrong had the temerity to threaten Walsh with a multi-million dollar lawsuit, despite obviously being, and knowing, he was in the wrong.
It’s Not About The Bike is a true story. But everything else about Armstrong belongs in the fiction section.
It’s like finding out that John Eales actually missed that kick in the 2000 Bledisloe.
When our team wins we want to believe that “this’ll be our year”. Sport does that to us. Lance Armstrong destroyed that belief and hope of the purity of sport.
Every year at the Biggest Morning Tea cancer fundraiser I give and an especially large donation, stand quietly in the corner, think about Lance Armstrong, going for a ride that day and about Craig.
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