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

I could
    even limp around in Dutch if I had to. I window-shopped through Milan, where I learned what a really handsome suit looked like. One afternoon I walked into the Duomo, and in that instant all
    of my ideas about art changed forever. I was overwhelmed by the color and proportion of it, by the gray stillness in the archways, the warm parchment glow of the candles and the soaring
    stained glass, the eloquence of the sculptures.
    As the summer approached, I was growing up. On the bike, things began to come together and my riding steadied. “It’s all happening,” Och said. And it was. An American race sponsor, Thrift
    Drugs, put up a $1 million bonus for anyone who could win the Triple Crown of Cycling, a sweep of three prestigious races in the U.S. I fixated on it. Each race was different: to get the
    bonus you’d have to win a tough one-day race in Pittsburgh, then a six-day stage race in West Virginia, and finally the U.S. Pro Championships, which was a one-day road race covering 156
    miles through Philadelphia. It was a long shot, the promoters knew. Only a complete rider could win it: you’d have to be a sprinter, a climber, and a stage racer rolled into one, and most
    important, you’d have to be thoroughly consistent–something I hadn’t yet been.
    All the riders talked about winning the bonus, and in the next breath we’d talk about how impossible it was. But one night when I was on the phone with my mother she asked me, “What
    are the odds of winning that thing?”
    I said, “Good.”
    By June I had won the first two legs, and the press was going crazy and the promoters were reeling. All that remained was the U.S. Pro Championships in Philly–but I would have 119 other
    cyclists trying to stop me. The anticipation was huge; an estimated half a million people would line the route.
    The day before the race I called my mother and asked her to fly up to Philadelphia. On such short notice, she’d have to pay almost $1,000 round-trip, but she decided it was like buying a
    lottery ticket–if she didn’t come, and I won, she’d always regret not being there.
    I was resolved to ride a smart race, no irrational headfirst charges. Think the race through, I told myself.
    For most of the day, that’s what I did. Then, with about 20 miles left, I went. I attacked on the most notoriously steep part of the course–Manayunk–and as I did, I was almost in a rage. I don’t
    know what happened–all I know is that I leaped out of the seat and hammered down on the pedals, and as I did so I screamed for five full seconds. I opened up a huge gap on the field.
    By the second-to-last lap, I had enough of a lead to blow my mother a kiss. I crossed the finish line with the biggest winning margin in race history. I dismounted in a swarm of reporters, but I
    broke away from them and went straight to my mom, and we put our faces in each other’s shoulder and cried.
    That was the start of a dreamlike summer season. Next, I won a surprise victory in a stage of the Tour de France with another late charge: at the end of a 114-mile ride from Chalons-sur-Marne
    to Verdun, I nearly crashed into the race barriers as I sprinted away from the pack over the last 50 yards to the finish. A Tour stage was considered an extremely valuable victory in its own
    right, and at 21,1 was the youngest man ever to win one.
    But to show you just how experienced you have to be to compete in the Tour, I had to pull out of the race a couple of days later, incapable of continuing. I abandoned after the 12th stage, in
    97th place and shivering. The Alps got me; they were “too long and too cold,” I told reporters afterward. I fell so far behind that when I got to the finish line, the team car had already left for
    the hotel. I had to walk back to our rooms, pushing my bike up a gravel trail. “As if the stage wasn’t enough, we have to climb this thing,” I told the press. I wasn’t physically mature enough
    yet to ride the arduous mountain