Lance Armstrong - The growing pains of a world champion

You Are Here:

Home >> "I'm Not the Next Greg LeMond. I'm the First Lance Armstrong."

Today's Question
What's the best way to learn to live off the land? answer

Is it better to buy or make a survival kit? answer

Today's Question
What country has the best ratings for eco-tourism? answer

What is the greenest rental car? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside magazine, July 1994

Page:

"I'm Not the Next Greg LeMond. I'm the First Lance Armstrong."

The four riders have been on the road for a few hours when the sign for the town of Marble Falls comes into view. They've already shed their tights and jackets, the day turning warm and sunny in the rugged Texas hill country west of Austin. The hills roll up in swells, each scrub-brushy summit an overlook upon a seemingly infinite spread of premium longhorn and Brahman ranchland. In far-off thermals, teams of turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks orbit with calculating grace—rising and falling, searching for their next meal with no discernible effort.

This is Armstrong's favorite ride, a 120-mile circuit around sprawling Lake Travis, past Nameless Road to the Circle K, and back to Austin. Armstrong happily grinds along in a big, macho gear over the rolling terrain, good-naturedly baiting his partners to follow his lead. "Meow, meow," he purrs, leaking a dimpled smile from beneath his sunglasses.

Along for the ride today are Frankie Andreu, Björn Stenersen, and George Hincapie, Motorola teammates who've descended on Austin to train with Armstrong before heading for the Tour of Mexico. They don't respond to Armstrong's taunts until he starts flicking his head around to take stock of who's where and jockeys into position for a sprint. The 20-year-old Hincapie, a newcomer to the team this season, is in trouble. He's gobbling Fig Newtons when he sees Armstrong swivel around, and now he's madly trying to stuff them down.

Too late. Armstrong bursts out of the saddle as if he's heard a starter's pistol. In the moment they all break it looks like some whimsical pantomime, a kind of vaudevillian flurry of arms and paddle-wheeling legs. Heads are down, chests pinned to handlebars to shed the headwind. The bikes violently rock side to side in the flail of effort, torqued so hard that it's amazing they don't slam right over. The sprint lasts perhaps 100 yards. Armstrong wins. He always wins. "Hey, he's world champion," says Andreu, who was Armstrong's roommate last year in Europe. "He's supposed to kick our butts."

It isn't that Armstrong looks domineering. He's of average height and weight—five-foot-ten, 165 pounds—with the square shoulders, broad smile, blemish-free skin, and glossy, gapless white teeth of a milk-ad model. When he goes unshaven, his beard looks more like an act of adolescent desperation than the menacing accent on a game face. What's menacing, of course, is what's underneath the hood.

At this point in his career, Armstrong's coaches say he is physically and emotionally suited to one-day races, the sport's abusive, eight-hour, 200- to 300-kilometer marathons. Specifically, he is one of the handful of riders who can make an explosive surge even with 150 miles in his legs. "A lot of riders can race at 200 kilometers," says Jim Ochowicz, Motorola's general manager and directeur sportif, who brought the first U.S. squad, then Team 7-Eleven, to Europe in 1985. "Lance is one of the few who can do it at 250." Some explain the ability as one-in-a-million genetics. Edward F. Coyle, who oversees the human-performance lab at the University of Texas, says that Armstrong generates perhaps only one-fourth as much fatigue-causing lactic acid as most elite cyclists. Others, like his mentor and former national-team coach Chris Carmichael, attribute Armstrong's capabilities in large part to something else: his predatory instinct.

To grind out a win in a long, one-day cycling race, says Carmichael, you've got to want to inflict pain. "Ever read how people say it's really personal when you stab somebody?" he asks. "Well, a bike race is that kind of personal." There's nothing neat or clinical about it, he explains. There's no divorcing the passion and emotion from the act. It's visceral.

Watching Armstrong, the comparison can almost be taken literally. He often imagines himself as a boxer, and when he drops an opponent in the late going he sometimes can't help himself. As he rides away he lifts his right hand from the handlebar, winds up with a clenched fist, throws the knockout punch, sees the head snap.

Armstrong and his girlfriend, Sonni Evans, climb into his curvy, coal-black Acura NSX, which, he beams, "hits 85 in second gear." It's his $70,000 gift to himself for winning the World Championships. Armstrong and "the Sonster," former high-school classmates in Plano, plan to live together in Europe this season, having rekindled an old relationship only weeks ago. Today, at his mother's request, they're en route to a small military ceremony in which Armstrong's uncle will be promoted to the rank of army captain. Captain Mooneyham. "Oooh," Armstrong utters, hearing the name. He imagines dropping Armstrong, the name he got from a stepfather he hasn't seen, or wanted to see, in more than five years, and adopting his mother's maiden name. He sees the winner's stand, hears the words—Lance Mooneyham—and winces.

Armstrong's upbringing in a broken home has been rehashed so often in the cycling press that it can sound hollow. "I'm sure there are people who say, 'Come on with the ma-and-kid story,'" he says. He feigns a melodramatic voice-over. "'She was 17 when she had him, we all know she had a tough time, we all know he loves her and she loves him, and aw, give us a break.' But what do you want me to do? It happened."

Armstrong's father disappeared before Lance was two, and his stepfather, whom his mother married at 19, was, according to Armstrong, "deceitful." When Lance was 16, he says, they "kicked the guy's ass out." Linda Armstrong had never finished high school and received no support from her family. She and her son grew up together and toughed it out together—at least that's how they felt.

Ma-and-kid weekends were spent driving to one sports event or another. Armstrong, who had found solace and a certain talent in the pool, became a top junior swimmer and then branched out into triathlon. His mother cautiously kept him motivated. "I never, ever pushed him to do any of this—I just support him," says the now happily remarried Linda Walling. "Lance and I are both super, super go-getters."

Page:

•	Subscribe to Outside and get a FREE Gift!

•	Give the gift of Outside Magazine!

•	Subscribe to Outside Online's free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring gear reviews, fitness advice, galleries, podcasts, and more.