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| Some months ago we announced on the "Leadership
Medica" his recover, pre-announcing his pressing ambition of getting back
to the top. Lance Armstrong kept his word. The day when the unknown
Switzerland Camenzind is crowned road race world champion, the very unlucky
azzurro Bartoli paying for that , it's the American champion placing
to give strong emotions and a very big hope message too. Two years exactly
has passed since it begun his cancer illness calvary. His athlete life
breaks suddenly when at the S. David hospital of Austin in Texas
it is diagnosed a testicles cancer. Lance undergoes a removal intervention
and he does not suspect even for a moment that the operation would have
an appendix in the brain, to remove two metastasis, spread about in the
stomach and lungs too. It begins then his most important race, the one
it is not possible to make any plan of managing the advantage over rivals.
His enemy is not behind him but inside him and if you don't try to outstrip
it , you may say good bye to life .
Beside the operation, chemotherapy aids him to reduce the cancer masses. But his unbelievable pressing over his illness makes him reaching lightening progress. For the man Armstrong it would be enough to live; for the athlete it is important to compete to feel still alive. So after six radiation cycles and some open-air cycle rides the world champion, at Oslo in 1993 , is ready to repel the challenge of an incurable illness. Officially back to competition at the end of 1997 it is since present year he can be defined a regained athlete. An athlete able to run again an on road world championship after knocking out cancer. When you make notice him the significance of his undertaking, Lance shrugs declaring himself a born agonist, both when crossing the finish line and entering first the McDonald's for the loved not to be missed chips portion. Maybe media has not understood at all and properly underlined what Armstrong has succeeding in doing nearby Valkenburg. His fourth place is extraordinary in order to the fact he has reached it behind three athletes who were instead in their best form and mainly before many other colleagues not sick. The fact of being a man bringing, thanks to the bicycle, a message of hope for all must not us forget who is really the American champion; that is a cancer patient under treatment, as he underlines, for whom the situation is quite clear. For the moment it is all rosy, but it could dark suddenly if physicians would impose him to stop in order to hold at bay a rival against which it is not possible to drop one's guard. Armstrong knows he is in hover between the athlete and the patient, but he knows too that his fourth place at the Holland championship is the most beautiful sporting story it could be narrated in this two wheels autumn. We were talking about the few attention maybe media has dedicated to his agonistic recovery; there is also who did not allow it slip away and had drawn the starting point for a little report with great words. That's for Gianni Mura too, "Repubblica"' first sporting name, according to whom Armstrong is the real winner of the world cycling event. He sprinted once, important only for his pride even if neglected by the golden register. His mud mask had neither a script to attend nor any rule to contravene. It must only bring him to the finish line, it wasn't important when and how. Mura's considerations concerning this fact guess right. "In a moment when it is talked about healthy athletes who fill their blood to run faster, who invoke a law safeguarding their privacy to hid a simple sprain, felt as a little personal drama, there's also another way of make sport, the one interpreted by who is brave, who knows sufferings and makes public one's own problems ". Indisputable words, that maybe would make the last time several football second-rate actors' flesh creep, maybe too much busy with their brawls to understand there's a reality light years far from their softened world . |
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