Free It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong

infuriated me. He didn’t know my name. He thought I was Andy Bishop, another member of the American team. I thought, This guy doesn’t know my name?
    “Fuck you, Chiapucci!” I said, calling him by the name of one of his teammates.
    Argentin did a double take, incredulous. He was the capo, the boss, and to him I was a faceless young American who had yet to win anything, yet here I was cussing him out. But I’d had a
    number of promising results, and in my own mind, he should have known who I was.
    “Hey, Chiapucci,” I said. “My name’s Lance Armstrong, and by the end of this race you’ll know it.”
    For the rest of the race, my sole aim was to throw Argentin off his pedestal headfirst. But in the end, I faded. It was a five-day stage race, and I couldn’t keep up–I was too inexperienced.
    Afterward, Argentin came to our team compound, screaming. He ranted at my teammates about my behavior. That was part of the etiquette too; if a young rider was becoming a problem, it was
    up to the older riders to get him in line. Roughly translated, what Argentin was saying was, “You need to teach him some manners.”
    A few days later, I entered a race in Italy, this one the Trophee Laigueglia, a one-day classic.
    The Trophee was considered an automatic win for Argentin, and I knew it. The favorites in any race in Italy were, of course, the Italians, and especially their leader Argentin. One thing you
    didn’t do to a veteran cyclist was disrespect him in his home country, in front of his fans and sponsors. But I went after him again. I challenged him when nobody else would, and this time
    the result was different. In the Trophee Laigueglia, I won the duel.
    At the end of the race, it was a breakaway of four riders, and at the front were Argentin, Chiapucci, a Venezuelan named Sierra–and me. I hurled myself through the final sprint, and
    took the lead. Argentin couldn’t believe he was going to lose to me, the loudmouth American.
    He then did something that has always stayed with me. Five yards from the finish line, he braked. He locked up his wheels–intentionally. He took fourth, out of the medals. I won the
    race.
    There are three places on a podium, and Argentin didn’t want to stand beside me. In an odd way, it made more of an impression on me than any lecture or fistfight could have. What he was
    saying was that he didn’t respect me. It was a curiously elegant form of insult, and an effective one.
    In the years since then, I’ve grown up and learned to admire things Italian: their exquisite manners, art, food, and articulacy, not to mention their great rider, Moreno Argentin. In fact,
    Argentin and I have become good friends. I have a great deal of affection for him, and when we see each other these days, we embrace, Italian style, and laugh.
    MY RESULTS CONTINUED TO VEER UP AND DOWN, AS
    crazily as I wove through a peloton. I’d attack anytime. I’d just go. Someone would surge, and I’d counter, not out of any sense of real strategy, but as if to say, “Is that all you got?”
    I had my share of results because I was a strong kid, and I rode on the tactics and coattails of others, but much of the time I was too aggressive, repeating the same critical mistake I’d made
    riding for Chris Carmichael back in Japan: I’d charge to the front and ride all by myself, and then falter. Sometimes I didn’t even finish in the top 20. Afterward one of my teammates would ask,
    “What the hell were you doing?”
    “I felt good,” I’d say, lamely.
    But I was fortunate to ride for two very smart, sensitive coaches: I continued to train with Chris as part of the national team, while Och and his team director, Henny Kuiper, managed my daily
    racing for Motorola. They spent a lot of time on the phone comparing notes, and they recognized and agreed on something important: my strength was the sort you couldn’t teach or
    train. You can teach someone how to control their strength, but you can’t teach them to be