A new perspective

It's not about the Bike: Lance Armstrong, with Sally Jenkins. Yellow Jersey Press 2000. 275 pages hardback, £17.00. ISBN 9 780224 060868.

'Cycling is a sport that rewards mature champions': thus Armstrong on page 5. In 1996, after ten years hard graft, world road champion at 22, winner of classics and Tour stages, he felt he was coming into his prime. The world knows what happened then. Diagnosed with spreading cancer at 25 and written off by the cycling world, he suffered through months of agonising chemotherapy and convalescence. It may be very American, but Armstrong holds back nothing. Chemo hurts worse than the disease, and you're never certain it's going to work anyway.

Though this is in no way any kind of textbook, it is a book that contains much that's invaluable for a coach to know. Poor at ball games, the young Lance was clearly a born athlete. The unqualified support he received from his mother was a major factor in his success, building the confidence in himself that enabled him to grow up independent, an autonomous human being. He started in triathlons at 12, and by 16 was able to earn his own living from prize money. He benefited then and later from other support, notably from Jim Ochowicz and other Americans. The young Armstrong was a pretty cocky kid, often hard to like, and his mentors must have been men of considerable patience and generosity of spirit. The response of an elite athlete to illness and recuperation makes instructive reading too, but he makes it clear that he didn't do it alone.

All this is instructive, and supports the notion that the committed coach can't just stop at training the body to perform a range of activities at various levels - you're taking on a whole person, and if you hope to do the best by him/her, it's a big responsibility.

'Generous' is not the word for the way his new team, Cofidis behaved. 'Despicable' – that's the word. After publicly pledging to stand by the patient, in private they stuck like glue to the letter of their contract ('We're letting you go'), sending Alain Bondue (nice job!) to announce the bad news to the bedridden cyclist. Some individuals failed as human beings too: a colleague of his fiancée told her, 'You're marrying half a man'. After his recovery he was shunned, finally accepting a (relatively) low-paid contract with US Postal. It's nice to think how frequently all the other pro teams who might have signed him are kicking themselves now. Nike, Oakley and Giro, however, supported him throughout.

The return to big-time racing is only lightly sketched in, with nothing about Armstrong's 4th places in the 1998 World's and Vuelta; but there's a good section on his remarkable triumph in the 1999 Tour. This bit is about the bike.

Armstrong is one of sport's real hard men, physically robust and mentally very strong, but he evinces none of the fake sentimentality that often replaces genuine compassion for others in American success stories. 'Inspiring' is not a word that a sceptic like me likes to use very often (if at all) but for once I'm tempted – what the hell, let's go for it: this is an inspiring book.

Cancer is a hell of a way to be made a better person, but that's what it seems to have done for Lance. It has opened his eyes and his mind to a world that he might never have thought existed, and radically altered his perspectives. 'Too many athletes live as though the problems of the world don't concern them', he concludes. Ain't it the truth, though.

Ramin Minovi