Cycling: Armstrong still fights odds

By CHRIS RATTUE

When Lance Armstrong attacked his Italian cycling rival Marco Pantani this week, it was a case of the super hero up against the bad guy.

If anyone deserves the loudest cheer at these Games, then it is Texan Armstrong.

There are other star athletes of great character in Sydney, among them Cathy Freeman, who battles a natural shyness to push the cause of the Aborigine.

But has anyone battled back from such adversity to reach sporting greatness the way Armstrong has?

Fighting back from cancer to win the last two Tour de France races defies belief. Just completing that race is beyond comprehension for most of us ... actually winning it after defying a death sentence is something else.

Cancer is a horrible word, and it doesn't get any nicer when you break it down into real terms.

In October 1996, Armstrong went for a doctor's appointment after suffering a painful swelling in the groin that he thought was a cycling injury.

Doctors discovered a large tumour on his testicle, a dozen more in his lungs, and later two lesions on the brain.

After surgery, Armstrong had four cycles of chemotherapy, leaving him lying in the foetal position and retching continuously.

He lost 9kg and all the condition he had built up in his career.

He even lost his cycling contract - the French team Cofidis dumped him.

Remarkably, Armstrong now puts down his success down to the cancer. "There's no question in my mind that I would never have won the Tour if I hadn't gotten cancer," he says.

After a post-cancer "holiday", Armstrong found a new resolve and a body even more suited to the bike.

He found inspiration through wife Kristin, who he met just after finishing the cancer treatment.

It was Kristin who got him off a post-cancer life of being a couch potato, which involved channel surfing, beer drinking and eating Mexican food.

The only time he got up was to play golf.

In Armstrong's words, his wife-to-be wanted to know if she needed to support his golfing lifestyle, or whether he was going to aim his life in some direction.

Armstrong found that his body had been reshaped, giving him a lighter frame that made him feel incredibly light on his cycle.

With new purpose in life, he trained like mad after finding a team that paid him a fifth of his old $1m a year salary.

Then, he won the Tour de France. Twice.

He not only won, but triumphed in a manner which had some of the cycling greats talking in superlatives.

Now the 29-year-old Armstrong has the chance to add to the legend, although his campaign for the Sydney Olympics was set back when he was hit by a car in Nice and suffered a fractured vertebrae last month.

Armstrong's body would already have been suffering the effects of cancer when he finished 12th in the road race at the last Games in Atlanta, and it is not his priority event in Sydney although no one would dare rule him out yet.

Instead, he says he is prepared to ride for his American team-mates in the 240km road race on Wednesday, and concentrate on Saturday week's time trial, where he finished sixth in Atlanta.

Armstrong went on the attack against Italian Pantani this week, saying the 1998 Tour de France winner had no chance of Olympic gold.

It continued a war of words between the two.

Armstrong claimed in Sydney that Pantani was no longer good enough to make the Italian squad and that the 240km course in eastern Sydney would not suit him.

Pantani, nicknamed "The Pirate" and a highly controversial figure in road cycling, will ride with the shadow of drug allegations over him.

He has tested over the 50 per cent limit for a banned substance three times, the first when he was in hospital after a car crash a year ago.

His health records say his normal levels of hematacrit are 45 per cent. He has tested at 60 per cent twice and at 53 per cent.

There will be sighs of relief if Armstrong's prediction that the Italian is finished proves to be true.

Armstrong has no such image problems.

He is an inspiration to those with cancer, works for young sufferers, and prefers the title of Cancer Beater to that of cyclist.

Whatever he wants to be known as, the rest of us can only sit back and marvel.