Lance Armstrong Interview | Outside Online

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The Tourminator Tells All

What's your favorite stage of all time?
I like Mont Ventoux. It's special.

You mean in a miserable sort of way?
Well, it depends. If you're riding good, you don't suffer that much, really. It's painless.

As you've aged, you've learned to deal with every nuance and every permutation of suffering and pain. Is there an art?
I had to manage it last year because I was suffering a lot more than I had ever suffered before. Yet I was still leading.

Which rival concerns you the most?
Jan Ullrich [of T-Mobile] is the biggest rival we have. Great rider, great team, a lot of experience, a lot of motivation. But there are 10 or 12 riders who are solid threats.

Is your old buddy and former teammate Tyler Hamilton one of them? He's mentioned more and more as someone who could be a contender in the coming years, if not this year. How's he looking this year, and how do you juggle the friendship with the fact that he might be a true competitor?
Tyler's not on the level of an Ullrich, but when I say there's 10 or 12 other guys, he's certainly in there. We don't create race strategy around Tyler, but he's certainly a person that we watch and try and defend against. Tyler's a little bit like me, in that he's not a young guy anymore. These are his peak years, his final years. It has to happen now or never.

People rarely come out of nowhere in this sport, do they?
Rarely. I would be surprised if we were surprised. It's tough to come out of nowhere, to the podium. Can somebody come out of nowhere and finish in the top ten? Or win a stage? Or have some other presence in the race? Yes. But to finish on the podium? Very unlikely.

Choose one: victory in the 2004 Tour or a gold medal at Athens.
That's easy. For us in our sport, the Olympics are a great event but the Tour is of far greater importance: It's the granddaddy—a big, big difference. For me, there's only one bike race this year. That's the Tour de France.

So you're not thinking about Athens at all?
Every day, when I go out on my bike ride and I envision races or tactics or scenarios, it all has to do with the Tour. I never think about Athens. But don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that the Olympics is your corner bike race. It's an important event. And globally, from a sporting perspective, it's the biggest. I'm planning to go to Athens, but it's tricky timing. It's just two and a half weeks after the Tour, which is quite possibly the hardest period after a long race, because you're so tapped out. That's not really enough time to recover and start to come back up in good condition again.

Last year, you won by a thread—just 61 seconds. Does that motivate you, remember how close you came to losing it?
Oh, boy, that was a stressful three weeks—too stressful. Basically, I dodged a bullet. It was a bad year. So this year I hope to go back to the models of '99 through 2002.

What went wrong?
I had several crashes and also illnesses. I had all the problems known to man—stomach bugs, sore muscles, sore hips. I was suffering. And I think last year I was a lot more uptight.

A lot was going on in your personal life, with your separation and later, divorce from your wife, Kristin. That turmoil must have been a factor.
It's not fair to Kristin to say that it was the fault of a struggling marriage that I almost lost a sporting event. And look, Kristin's still important to me. She's the mother of my children. We're in a good place now and communicating well. Helping each other out. That's going better and I'm happy for that.

And how are the kids handling things?
Really well. From what we can see, there's been no ill effects.

How are you different from the Lance Armstrong who won in '99?
Obviously, I'm an older rider, an older athlete. And as we know, you don't improve as you get older. You don't get any stronger. But you learn some things. You grow wiser, more patient. You become better with tactics, better as a team leader, better able to handle the pressure of the race, especially when it goes poorly.

Was the younger Lance was more intense?
Probably he was a little more aggressive. But the rider I am today can still be very aggressive when I need to be. Even last year— when I was passive, 'cause I was suffering—when the moment came, when it was all on the line, I was absolutely aggressive. If I go all out on training and I feel great, I can attack just the way I did ten years ago. That's my nature. That gene is still there.

You seem to be enjoying your success, but at the same time, your life seems insanely complicated. How do you hold it together?
It's not easy. The stress of the Tour, the pressure of having to manage the lifestyle of a five-time Tour winner—it starts to grind on you. The requirements of an athlete like this become a bit overwhelming. I wouldn't want to do it for the rest of my life, but I can see an end to it all.

So, then, are you retiring after this year?
This is the last year Postal will be our title sponsor. If the team continues with a new title sponsor, then I'll continue. If the team disbands, I'll most likely stop. Because then I'd need to go out and find a new team, new directors, new teammates, new equipment, new everything. It would be too much uncertainty—and, frankly, too much of a hassle. I love the people I'm around now. They're my friends. I don't think I'd be up for trying to re-create that.

What will your life be like when you're finished with all this?
I'm not making plans for post-cycling, not yet. ‘Cause that's a bit of a waste of time, I think. Right now I'm hired to do something that I want to do and I believe in, and I don't want any distractions. But, believe me, my life will change drastically. I'll go from living the majority of the year overseas to spending most of my time in Texas with my kids.

Are your kids coming to watch the Tour?
Oh, yeah, to the end. The girls are two and a half. Luke's four and a half. He's old enough to understand what's happening. He totally knows. Even the girls, when I put on my bike clothes, they know Daddy's going to work.

Do you see Luke on a racing bike someday?
Whatever he wants to do, I would be totally supportive. If he wants to play the guitar or be a teacher or a lawyer, whatever. He's smart, so maybe he'll do something with his brain. It would be hard for him to race a bike, because of me. I see that now with Eddy Merckx's son. It's tough to grow up doing a sport that your dad did well.

Is Luke shaping up to be an athlete?
Like me, he doesn't have much hand-eye coordination. I was his soccer coach last year and. . .we got some work to do!

Is Sheryl going to come see the race?
I think so. She'll be around, I suspect.

She's not really into cycling herself, is she?
We went to a Lakers game recently, and some reporter asked her if she'd been on the bike. She said, "On the bike, are you kidding me? I'm just looking for the next Krispy Kreme stand." It was reported on TV, then it got on the chat rooms and bulletin boards, and, well, from then on it was endless doughnut jokes. People speculating that I was neglecting my training and eating poorly. That's the magic of the Internet. If people think I'm sitting around eating Krispy Kremes, they're sorely mistaken.

Are you still counting every morsel?
It depends on where I am in my conditioning. If I'm behind, then everything counts. As of now, I feel good where I am.

Has Sheryl composed any songs about racing?
She hasn't been writing about any pelotons lately.

It's a hard word to work into a lyric. What rhymes with peloton?
I don't know. Telekom? Unabomb?

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