LANCE ARMSTRONG, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS?
.
This is a fable that may also not have a happy ending as everybody expects. But the battle has already been won. Not on the ups and downs of the Tour de France, but on an even more treacherous terrain, where if one slips he does not simply hurt himself.
Lance Armstrong, less than three years after discovering of having a tumour, was a man who had a 50% chance of winning his most important battle. In the context of the classical French Tour, the fact of managing to wear the yellow jersey, even though maybe not until the end of the tour in Paris, already represents an extraordinary undertaking. The 3rd of July, the day when Lance wins the time trial, was undoubtedly the most beautiful day of his new life.
His first bicycle races after the chemotherapy had certainly a special taste, but coming back to victory and regaining a role as a protagonist in the most important competitions are the objectives for which the Texas-based cyclist has been fighting for two years now. Indeed, Armstrong has fought not only to come back to his normal life, but also to go back to eat up the miles with his bicycle and breast the tape again with his arms up. For Armstrong, managing to conquer cancer at testicles - with metastases as great as golf balls in his lungs - did not simply mean to embrace his wife again or start again a sort of life. For him, his great enemy had to be defeated with a deadly knock-out, once and for all. Up to that moment, life for him had meant taking a bicycle and go to compete around the world. And it had to be the same again.
If for many doctors this is a sort of miracle, for the American racing cyclist it is simply willpower. "His" particular 4th July is a day the American community living in France has dedicated to him with no hesitation. The Tour has been charmed by the Armstrong fable. His calvary and the message of hope ideally brought to all those who suffer from an incurable disease is not meant to be rhetorical. The signs of the operation and chemotherapy are gone. But inside himself Lance is more than alive, he is even more complete, after strengthening his spirit and letting loose his will to live from the day after he was told of his terrible disease.
Now people expect from him something that is maybe impossible to achieve at the first attempt after a long absence. But this new man no longer competes only for himself. He is also overjoyed for the birth of a son next October: from a life that seemed destined to come to an end to a new life. A group of rebel genes seemed to have upset his life. On the contrary, they have stirred up the reaction of Lance's hidden ego, who has shouted to the world "I want to live". And now with the birth of his first child the miracle is accomplished, no matter if Lance has not the yellow jersey in his showcase.
 

 

 Leadership Medica^® 
  Mensile di scienza  medica e attualita` 
 Copyright 1997© All Rights Reserved