Before his battle with cancer, Armstrong’s tactical grasp of the sport was not what it would ultimately become. He possessed a costly combination of youthful impatience and perhaps a misdirected ego that distracted him from focusing on the fundamentals of staying well positioned within his races. He hadn’t yet trained himself to be strategic and smart about when to conserve energy and when to “let it rip.”
But, having to fight beyond the cancer, having to look death in the face, having to rebuild his body all required a newfound mental discipline. He developed a willingness to push himself beyond his old limits and deal courageously with doubt and fear. As a result, he developed an unprecedented level of maturity. He developed patience and a remarkable capacity to WIN.
Now strong, now ready, Lance not only went on to beat cancer and win the Tour de France, (described as the most difficult sporting event in the world), but he won that race an unprecedented six times in a row.
“I knew if I could beat cancer, I could get over any mountain,” he said. “Once I got back into racing in 1998, I could always draw strength from the fact that, no matter how hard things might look at a given moment, they could never be as hard as when I was back in Austin in a hospital bed with my hair falling out.”
Armstrong's triumphant return to the Tour in 1999 was a shock to some people and it was inspiring to many. Many people doubted that he would ever survive let alone win the world's most grueling sports event six times.
Imagine.
Lance Armstrong’s story never gets old. We can listen to it again and again because it is much more than just a story of an athlete who wins the race. It is the story of the triumph of the human spirit over insurmountable odds. It is the story of a man who, when faced with the fight of his life, was unwilling to settle for mere survival. Rather than merely survive, he remained intent on living the dream and living it bigger than he knew that he could.
