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Outside Magazine, July 2005
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Tour de France
Breaking Away (cont.)

Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong (Photograph by Cliff Watts)
THE IRONIST
The interview was held on the patio of Lance's ranch house, which is perched high on a spot overlooking the West Texas Hill Country as it rolls away to infinity. As we spoke, I was thinking about the Ed Ruscha canvas hung in the living room inside. More sign than painting, it reads, in bold white capital letters set against a stormy blue background, SAFE AND EFFECTIVE MEDICINE.

The painting works, dizzyingly, on all the levels that Armstrong himself works. It can be read as a sincere acknowledgment of the medical intervention that saved his life, the surgery and the drugs and the rehab that brought him back for an exquisitely
"There'll be moments when it's hard. But it's done. It can't be any simpler: The farewell will be on the Champs-Elysées."
leaner, more potent second chance. Or as a reflection of the gratitude, passion, and empathy he brings to his work with the Lance Armstrong Foundation on behalf of cancer survivors.

The painting, one speculates, is also a defiant example of the withering aggression Armstrong aims toward his detractors and tormentors, the conspiracy theorists who say there has to be something more to his amazing achievements than healing, training, natural ability, calibrated teamwork, and angry, focused, uncompromising prowess. Namely, performance-enhancing drugs.

Or finally, could it be a dark joke? If Lance has secretly managed to dope all these years—a myth as unkillable as the one about the ruthless efficiency of the CIA—the Ruscha painting is just about the most cynical gesture imaginable, a true leap into the moral abyss.

Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong (Photograph by Cliff Watts)
God knows the things people are capable of, but the idea of Lance leading a Faustian double life of dishonesty and deception just won't fly. Forget the straight-arrow stance, forget the courage and intelligence of his victories, the total absence of stupid moves. Look at the conclusion of Coyle's paper in the Journal of Applied Physiology, a revealing longitudinal study that required Lance's voluntary participation over its seven-year duration.

"Clearly," Coyle writes, "this champion embodies a phenomenon of both genetic natural selection and the extreme to which the human can adapt to endurance training performed for a decade or more in a person who is truly inspired."

SIXES AND SEVENS
A few months after the Texas interview, Lance was training in the mountains near Los Angeles. We caught up with him by telephone just before he announced that 2005 will mark his last Tour.

Are you sure you're ready to hang it up?
There'll be moments when it's hard. At first Sheryl said, "There's no way you're stopping." But it's done. It can't be any simpler: The farewell is going to be on the Champs-Elysées.

Last year, obviously, was a mountaintop experience in every way.
Six held a special place in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul, as an athlete. But the jinx thing really worried me—like, This just can't happen. If guys like Merckx and Indurain can't do it, then nobody can do it. So I was like, God, maybe that's true. Maybe I should do it and I deserve to do it, but something freaky comes along and, you know, sticks a shovel in my wheel.... But to do that—it was special.

Now, seven. For me, I have to eliminate the first six and go back to focusing on just one Tour. And being used to winning, and accustomed to winning, being able to provide a victory for my team and for the sponsors and seeing the joy in their faces, 'cause they really, really love it. And to remember what it's like to look in their eyes at the dinner table and just get through on that.

How would it feel to lose?
I don't want to lose. At all. It's a hard race; you suffer a lot. It's a long race, so it's long suffering, which is worse than suffering. Now, having said that, if I train hard, and if everything equates the way it should in terms of my preparation, and I know that I'm where I need to be—if somebody beats me, hey, you get beat by somebody better. That's sport.

What do you think about the course this year?
Only three uphill finishes, only one long time trial. Kinda not so hard, but maybe not bad for a guy who's getting older. You've got other mountain days, but they're not so tough. You've got Courchevel [Stage 10], which is tough, and big mountains before it. Then you come down around the bottom [of France] and you've got Pla-d'Adet [stage 15], which I won in 2001. Took the jersey finally in 2001, which is a tough, tough day. So you've got those and then, you know, you stay close there and then you've got the long time trial, which, you know, you use all our experience and hard work and technology. Tuck and go.


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