ST. ETIENNE, France–The word unique often is misused to convey a sense of the extraordinary to a person or an event that merely is unusual.
To describe Lance Armstrong, unique is exactly the right word, what would be called le mot juste in France, where he has earned his renown.
As Armstrong nears Sunday’s planned end of his career as a competitive athlete, an end that will include a celebration of his seventh straight victory in the Tour de France, he has come to occupy a unique place in the pantheon of American sports heroes.
Not only has he won cycling’s legendary race more than anyone in history, he also has made his country pay attention to an event that might as well have been taking place in another galaxy until Armstrong began winning it with such regularity, inheriting the mantle from countryman Greg LeMond, who won it three times.
Not only did he beat 50-50 odds on his survival after testicular cancer spread to his brain and lungs, it was after the cancer went into remission that he also beat the nearly century-old odds against an American rider on an American team winning the Tour de France.
Because bicycle racing still is so alien to most Americans–the idea that the Tour champion need not win any of the individual stages remains puzzling to most–it is hard for a country dazzled over the years by stars in familiar sports like baseball, basketball, football, boxing and golf to appreciate just the sporting magnitude of what Armstrong has done.
“His achievements rank him with Michael Jordan, Ali, Tiger Woods, Reggie Jackson and Pete Sampras, among the best,” said another sports icon, Olympic champ Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
If his story had not included the battle against cancer, it might have become a quickly yellowing page in American sports history, like that of LeMond, the first U.S. rider to win the Tour de France, rather than the evergreen best seller Armstrong’s 2000 autobiography became.
“If I was never sick and came back and won the Ping-Pong world championships, there wouldn’t be the frenzy outside,” Armstrong said.
Ironically, LeMond won his second and third Tours after nearly dying when he was accidentally shot while hunting.
“What I admire about Lance is that he came back from cancer and succeeded in a sport that meant nothing to Americans,” sports historian David Wallechinsky said. “Most aspiring athletes are inspired by role models and have grown up with their stories. Armstrong had only Greg LeMond, and he surely must have noticed that LeMond got little recognition in the U.S.”
In the process, Armstrong has become recognized as a touchstone for tens of millions of cancer patients and their families worldwide, giving him a dimension different from that of any other superstar athlete in the history of American sports.
“Lance Armstrong is an inspiration to me,” soccer superstar Mia Hamm said. “Every year around this time I sit and watch with amazement at what he and his team accomplish. Just as he finds strength in his team, others have been inspired by his journey.”
In eight years, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has raised $85 million for cancer research, much of it from the sale of 52 million yellow LiveStrong bracelets. Yellow is the color of the jersey worn by the leader of the Tour de France, a three-week-long event in which riders cover about 2,000 miles in daily stages, several with climbs so steep as to defy reason.
“The sports world produces many champions but few inspirations. Lance is both,” said Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion.
Armstrong began bike racing almost accidentally. He was, to phrase it euphemistically, an adventure-seeking teenager from suburban Dallas, son of a single mother who gave birth to him when she was 17.
As they grew up together, Linda Walling channeled her son’s ferocious energy into sports. Armstrong was a promising triathlete when he realized cycling was far better suited to him than that sport’s other disciplines, swimming and running.
When Armstrong rode–and failed to finish–his first Tour de France in 1993, Miguel Indurain of Spain was winning his third title in the race. Indurain would become the first to win five straight and fourth to win five overall, joining two Frenchmen and a Belgian. Armstrong would top them all by winning his sixth Tour last year.
“Lance Armstrong is among the great athletes of all time,” two-time Olympic figure skating medalist Michelle Kwan said. “He will be a legend, a name that will not be forgotten. He has transcended sport to become almost an invincible action hero.”
At 33, he will leave the sport as a man who won the race more easily than he won over the French public, as a man whose reputation has been clouded by persistent allegations that performance-enhancing drugs played a part in his success.
Although he never has been found to have used a banned drug illegally, in a sport riddled with the use of such substances, many have found Armstrong’s utter dominance of the Tour since 1999 implausible even without the element of cancer.
“An individual can never dictate his own legacy,” Armstrong said Thursday. “What people decide it is, it is. I’m a kid from Texas who learned how to ride a bike fast and overcame a life-threatening illness to come back and win the hardest sporting event in the world, hopefully seven times. I will let other people write on the tombstone.”
Some already have expressed their opinion in chalked messages on the roads and shouts that Armstrong was a doper. He has been spat upon by fans, who are allowed to push and douse riders in an event where crowd control is all but non-existent.
Even before France’s relationship with the United States soured over the war in Iraq, many French found Armstrong’s personality overbearing. This is a country so accustomed to having its best athletes humiliated in major events–consider Paris’ recent failed bid to be host of the 2012 Olympics–that it may mistake self-confidence for arrogance.
“When I see people criticize Lance for whatever reason, I think, `How can you criticize someone who gives millions and millions of people hope to live, to beat an illness that can potentially kill you?'” said New Yorker George Hincapie, the only rider to have been Armstrong’s teammate in all his Tour victories.
“Every once in a while we get booed in some of these villages. People will think because you’re a big star like Lance, it doesn’t affect you. That stuff hurts. For him to stay focused like he does, to keep fighting for a cause he believes in, to keep trying to win–I’ve gotten to see that firsthand, and it’s very impressive.”
Armstrong brought some of the condemnation on himself because of his stubborn refusal until last fall to disassociate from the sulfurous Italian sports scientist Michele Ferrari, accused of being involved in doping. Only when an Italian court found Ferrari guilty of sporting fraud and illegally acting as a pharmacist did Armstrong end his lengthy working relationship with the doctor, who monitored his training.
“Perhaps too much was made of the relationship between me and Michele,” Armstrong said a week before the 2005 Tour began. “I know my body. I work with a number of people, and one person isn’t going to make that much difference.”
Simple jealousy may have figured in France’s inability to appreciate Armstrong. No French rider has won the country’s landmark sporting event in 20 years, while an Armstrong victory Sunday will mean U.S. riders have won half the races in that period.
“If he were more open, people might have known him better, but that is not his nature, and he is not going to change it for someone else,” said Laurens Matthias, a passionate sports fan from Albi, where the Tour’s 18th of 21 stages began
“The French have always recognized his talent. He earned everything he did in the Tour. Doping or no doping, it is a very hard event. To dominate it seven years in a row–bravo. The Tour will miss him.”
With the help of an exceptional Discovery Channel team, Armstrong turned victory into a foregone conclusion with a week left in this race. Only in 1999, when he and his team both were unproven, has there been any real surprise about the final results. Only in 2003, when dehydration left him to struggle late in the race, has there been suspense in the final week.
“Some can say it’s boring, but I understand what it takes to arrive at a race at 100 percent when everyone knows you are there to win,” said Chris Horner of Bend, Ore., in 25th place, riding for the Spanish Saunier Duval team.
Armstrong has concentrated all his efforts on the Tour de France since winning his first, less than three years after he was diagnosed with cancer. He trained like a madman and applied science to a sport that had clung for years to antiquated ideas about diet, preparation and equipment. Such methods are second nature to U.S. athletes, familiar with college and pro teams that have embraced the technology developed for the space and computer ages.
He also fell in love with the event.
“I learned in 1999 what it felt like to win the Tour, how much happiness it brings to myself and to the [team] program and to a country of non-cycling fans,” Armstrong said.
Many Americans, whether cycling fans or just Armstrong fans, undoubtedly will share Hincapie’s emotions when, after underlining his supremacy by winning Saturday’s stage, Armstrong rides up the Champs-Elysees in Paris in the yellow jersey for the final time.
“It will be sad, for sure,” Hincapie said. “There never will be another Lance.”
That is, after all, what it means to be unique.
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4 superstar athletes who transcended sport
Michael Jordan
ACCOMPLISHMENT: NBA titles: 6. Olympic golds: 2. NBA league MVPs: 5. Considered by many the greatest ever to play basketball.
SOCIAL IMPACT: Commercial appeal redefined the modern professional athlete and enhanced legend.
Muhammad Ali
ACCOMPLISHMENT: Three-time heavyweight boxing champ was 56-5 overall.
SOCIAL IMPACT: Political activism and charisma made Ali world’s most famous athlete.
Jesse Owens
ACCOMPLISHMENT: World’s fastest man won four gold medals in ’36 Olympics.
SOCIAL IMPACT: Struck a blow for anti-Nazi movement by dominating Games in Berlin. Later awarded Medal of Freedom.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias
ACCOMPLISHMENT: Olympic track and field gold medalist also won 82 golf tournaments.
SOCIAL IMPACT: Women’s sports pioneer who played in PGA event 58 years before Annika Sorenstam.
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