Armstrong's Next Stage Will Be Toughest
By Kirk Bohls
American-Statesman Staff

Two weeks ago, you tell your agent you're not feeling well and not sure you're up to a trip to Bend, Ore., for a meeting with your Nike sponsors. But you go anyway.

The day after you return to your posh Austin home, your condition hasn't improved. One of your testicles is swollen, bigger than the other. Has been for years. But now there's some soreness, some pain. The fact that you cough up a little blood heightens your concern.

You know you should go see a doctor, but you feel about doctors like you do icy mountain slopes and bitter, piercing head winds. They're an unavoidable part of life, almost a necessary evil, something you have to deal with.

"He hates going to the doctor," your agent, Bill Stapleton, says. "Getting him to go for a physical is like pulling teeth. He's Superman. They all think they are."

"They" are athletes, but not just any athletes. World-class, top-of-their-sport, one-of-a-kind athletes. But now an athlete who needs help.

So you finally relent and go see your doctor. He initially calms your fears and says it might be a common infection. But as a precaution, you are sent to radiology for an ultrasound where curiously you have other parts of your body X-rayed as well. That's odd, you think. The pain is only in your testicle.

Then, you are told the doctor needs to see you. Privately. After closing hours. Hmmm. Doctors don't stick around after closing hours to give you good news. And it wasn't.

Cancer never is.

This insidious, cowardly disease doesn't fight fair, doesn't acknowledge fair. It can devour the body from the inside sometimes without even disturbing you. It can paralyze the will, kill the spirit and wring every last ounce of energy and faith from one's soul.

Usually, it's what the other guy gets, the guy down the street, the fellow across the desk from you, someone's aunt, but never you. Never someone who's 25 years old, in the best physical shape of his life, who has a $1 million home and a French villa, who has a smart and gorgeous blond girlfriend who's a chemical engineering major, and who's such an enormous celebrity in Europe he can't walk down a Parisian avenue without getting swarmed.

And never if your name is Lance Armstrong.

The Lance Armstrongs don't even get sick. They don't have time to be sick.

The Lance Armstrongs are the strapping stud with the short-cropped hair in the dapper gray suit with the blue shirt who was cracking jokes Tuesday. They're the guy who should spend this afternoon by his pool at his Mediterranean-style home with girlfriend Lisa Shiels, not the guy who will be lying in a recliner at the Southwest Regional Cancer Center with an IV full of chemotherapy drugs infiltrating his bloodstream from 2 to 6 this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon and the afternoon after that. They're the guy who said just four months ago that he'd never been happier in his life, not the guy who's searching for the perpetrator of this cruel hoax.

The Lance Armstrongs are supposed to live forever, and he plans to and let's hope and pray he does.

But last Wednesday the Lance Armstrongs were the same poor guy who gets told he has testicular cancer, who has to hear this cruddy disease has spread to his abdomen, the same guy who will have to spend the next 12 weeks in that recliner, the same guy who likely will lose his hair and throw up and be as petrified and scared as the guy in the next recliner.

However, he's also the guy who discovered life's real essence if he hadn't already known it before.

"The doctors tell me I can ride a bike as soon as I feel comfortable," the cyclist said. "I just want to be on my bike, outside, with my friends. Doing what I love doing.''

This Lance Armstrong won consecutive Tour DuPonts, but he's a bigger hero to cancer victims who might not know a peloton from a pelican. Forget the cycling. Sure, he's among the best in the world in his sport, easily one of its richest and maybe the best this country has ever produced. But on Tuesday, this champion on two wheels became a well-grounded champion.

He didn't wallow in self-pity. Wallow? He never even came within a city block of it. He was all about what-now, not why-me. He avowed his pledge to wage a bitter fight with cancer. He named himself a spokesperson for cancer awareness and gave his first public-service announcement. Get checked now. Don't wait. He spoke with as much conviction as he did courage.

He fully plans to ride again. He plans to race again, maybe as soon as 1997. And he plans to live a whole lot more.

Kirk Bohls writes sports commentary five days per week and appears Monday through Friday, 6:08 p.m to 8 p.m., on KLBJ-AM's Sports Talk with co-host Ed Clements.