Ten years later and what should have been an awesome, fun 10-year anniversary turns out to be one of sadness and disappointment. A guy who fought and beat cancer and raised so much money to help others affected by that horrible disease, a person who should be celebrated, is now looked down upon as a lie and a cheat. If you haven’t figured it out already, I am talking about Lance Armstrong.
July 24, 2015, would have been the 10-year anniversary of Lance Armstrong’s record-setting 7th straight Tour de France win. I remember it like it was yesterday, him and the Discovery Channel team sipping champagne as they finished the last lap of the last day with the Eiffel Tower in the forefront. Just a few minutes later he was being praised and putting on the final yellow jacket, putting the final stamp on his amazing comeback and takeover of the biking world.
Armstrong was born Lance Edward Gunderson in 1971, in Texas, to Linda Gayle and Eddie Charles Gunderson. He was named after Lance Rentzel, a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver. I guess if you want to be in sports, name your kid after someone who is already there. His parents divorced when Lance was two. His mother later married Terry Keith Armstrong, who adopted Lance in 1974.
At the age of 12, Armstrong started his sporting career as a swimmer and finished fourth in the Texas state 1,500-meter freestyle. He stopped swimming-only races after seeing a poster for a junior triathlon, called the Iron Kids Triathlon, which he won at age 13. In the 1987–1988 Tri-Fed, Armstrong was ranked the number one triathlete in the 19-and-under group. Armstrong’s total points in 1987 as an amateur were better than those of five professionals ranked higher than he was that year. At 16, Lance Armstrong became a professional triathlete and became a national sprint-course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990 at 18 and 19, respectively.
As we can see, Lance was an amazing athlete as a young man, way before (at least from what I can tell) he got involved with PEDs and EPO. In 1992, Armstrong turned professional with the Motorola Cycling Team. (This is where I believe he started doping and cheating.) He was accused by another cyclist competing against him in the CoreStates Road Race–the last of three big road races, win all three and take home $1M–of having bribed (an amount hinted at to be around $200K) that cyclist so that he would not compete with Armstrong for the win. His breakthrough victory was the UCI Road World Championship held in Norway.
Before his World Championships win, he took his first win at the Tour de France, in the stage from Châlons-sur-Marne to Verdun. He then retired after stage 12. Then the next year he took the stage to Limoges in the Tour de France, three days after the death of his teammate Fabio Casartelli, who crashed on the descent of the Col de Portet d’Aspet on the 15th stage. In 1996, however, he was able to compete for only five days in the Tour de France. In the 1996 Olympic Games, he finished 6th in the time trial and 12th in the road race. In August 1996, following the Leeds Classic, Armstrong signed a 2-year, $2 million deal with the French Cofidis Cycling Team. Joining him in signing contracts with the French team were current teammates Frankie Andreu and Laurent Madouas.
On October 2, 1996, at the age of 25, Armstrong was diagnosed with stage three or advanced testicular cancer. The cancer had metastasized or spread to his brain, lungs, and abdomen. On his first visit in Austin, Texas, for his cancer symptoms, he was coughing up blood and had a swollen testicle. On October 3, Armstrong had an orchiectomy to remove his diseased testicle. Asked in a later interview what he thought Armstrong’s chances really were, Dr. Reeves said, “Almost none. We told Lance initially 20 to 50% chance, mainly to give him hope. But with the kind of cancer he had, with the x-rays, the blood tests, almost no hope.”
Armstrong decided to finish the rest of his treatment at the Indiana University medical center in Indianapolis. The standard treatment for Armstrong’s cancer was a cocktail of drugs, called BEP. (I would type them out but I really have no idea what they are.) The first chemo cycle that Armstrong underwent was BEP; however, for the three remaining chemo cycles, he was given VIP, an alternative, less harsh version of BEP, to avoid the lung toxicity associated with BEP. This decision most likely saved his cycling career. On October 25, his brain lesions were surgically removed and were found to contain extensive necrosis. Necrosis is a form of cell injury that results in premature death of cells in living tissue.
It is here after his brain surgery that some former teammates of Lance’s have stated that he freely told the doctors and nurses that he was doping. Lance knew he would be okay telling the doctors and nurses due to doctor-patient confidentiality. The teammates would later come out and confess after years of being threatened. We will get into more of that later on.
Armstrong’s last chemotherapy treatment was received on December 13, 1996. In February 1997, he was declared cancer-free, but shortly afterward came the news that his contract with the Cofidis team had been cancelled. A former boss at Subaru Montgomery offered him a contract with the US Postal team on a salary of $200,000 a year. By January 1998, Armstrong was already engaged in serious training for racing, moving to Europe with the team, and on his way to the top of the biking world.
Well that is all for this week. We will continue on next time with Lance’s rise to the top, the building of the Lance Armstrong foundation, and his “retirement.” And with my Little League Baseball season done, look for a post on what happened throughout the tournaments. I’ll see you next time on “Ballgame.”