Sports Eye
Can Armstrong do it again?
By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.
BY the time you read this piece, the three-week 2009 Tour de France already commenced and maybe two or more stages had already been finished.
This year’s center of attention is the comeback of seven-time winner Lance Armstrong. And the big question is – can he do it again after four years of layoff and at the age of 37? The oldest winner, so far, was Fermin Lambot, 36 years old from Belgium.
When Armstrong announced on September 8 last year about his return to this year’s Tour de France, the first to text me was former Pangasinan Governor Oscar M. Orbos and asked me if Armstrong can still make it to be the “king” again despite his age and the long layoff? Same query was raised by media colleague Jun Velasco, my U.S friends Randy Oriel, Joey Coz, the brothers Blandino and Amor Caguioa, and my three cousins Dago and Pete Soto, Jr. and Mike Mata, Jr. all cycling aficionados. My simple answer is it depends if Armstrong remained athletic, didn’t gain too much weight and resumed his scientific training that catapulted him for a record-breaking seven consecutive victories.
Let me give you a bit of profile about him.
Born as Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971 in Plano, Texas, his parents divorced when he was two years old and was adopted by his mother’s second husband and they christened him Lance Edward Armstrong.
Although not happy with his foster father whom he described him as deceitful, Lance maintains Armstrong as his last name and has indicated he has no intention to change it.
Started as a triathlete (swim-bike-run), his first national victory came at age 13 with sterling ability in the biking event and soon decided reality that his prowess and strength lie in cycling. He shifted his sport to the two-wheeled event and tasted his biggest triumph as an amateur cyclist when he won the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1991. That victory paved the way for him to represent the U.S. in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games where he placed 14th.
He turned true-blue professional cyclist the following year and won the 1993 World Road Race Cycling Championship held in Oslo, Norway, convincingly, crossing the finish line all by his lonesome.
But his participation in the Tour de France up to 1996 was turbulent, dropping out of the 1996 Tour after the seventh stage after becoming ill. Few months after the big race, he was diagnosed with a testicular cancer, a tumor that metastasized to his brain, abdomen and lungs.
Doctors told him he got less than 50% to survive the illness but miraculously lived to tell the tale.
He gradually returned to cycling the following year (1997) and placed fourth overall in the 21-day 1998 Vuelta Espana, a sign of his complete recovery.
In the 1999 Tour de France, the overall leader Armstrong’s urine showed traces of a corticosteroid hormone. Found below the positive threshold, he was not formally accused of doping and won his first of his seven Tours.
Now he’s back with some tune-up races in Australia in January placing 29th; Tour of California in February finishing seventh; crashed and quit during the first stage of the 2009 Vuelta Castilla y Leon in Baltanas, Spain and broke his collarbone.
He made a successful progress after the operation and his latest and best performance was a second place finish in the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico in April 29.
The welcome back to a still hugely apprehensive France may be tepid. Armstrong, now living in Austin, Texas keeps on saying that he was the world’s most-tested athlete during his glory years and was never found positive of prohibited drugs. He’s a marked man by his rivals and under radar again by France’s anti-doping agency called AFLD.
He will be teamed up this time with 2007 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of the Astana team and are expected to have a major battle with pre-race favorites defending titlist Carlos Sastre, 2007-2008 runner-up Cadel Evans of Australia and the Russian Denis Menchov who won the just concluded Giro d’ Italia, to name a few.
What is Armstrong’s chance to win anew the Tour? I would say 50-50. But if Armstrong finally wins in the mountain stages, cycling fans all over the world will troop again to France like what they did in 2004 when Armstrong broke the five-time victory barrier shared by Frenchmen Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, Belgian Eddy Merckx and Spaniard Miguel Indurain. And if that happens, it will be another record because he will be the oldest man to win the Tour, considered as the richest, longest, oldest, the most popular and the most prestigious bicycle race in the world.
So, let’s wait and see.
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