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Athletes have never seemed like heroes to me. The elevation of athletes to hero status is one of the aspects of ancient Greek culture that seemed mysterious, even frivolous. Admiration of physical courage and grace was pretty much spoiled for me by the horrible football pep rallies and sno Lance Armstrong’s book, It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, goes a long way toward changing my attitude and explaining the heroic aspects of sports. It is not about the bike but it is about the man who rides the bike, why that means so much and what it meant to be flung off a hard-won track to success into a fight, not for championship status but for life itself, and what those struggles had in common. Lance Armstrong was young, incredibly strong, physically beautiful, wealthy, a champion, one of those athletes the Greeks would have idolize in odes and recorded in graceful marble statues, famous all over the world for his speed, persistence, toughness and athletic prowess. I had never heard of him before reading this book. It is amazing how a little determination can ensure ignorance. So I knew nothing when I started reading. I did not know about the devastating testicular cancer which had spread to lungs and brain and required horrendous surgeries and poisonous chemical treatments. I learned a lot about the hellish world of modern medicine and a lot about the strength needed to endure it. And I learned a lot about the man, his charm, intelligence, and grace. His co-author, Sally Jenkins, is probably responsible for the sharp, witty, and extremely clear writing. In a memoir with a co-author, it is sometimes hard to tell how much of the impact of the book is due to the personality of the subject or to the skills of the co-author. In this case, I didn’t care. The book is impossible to stop reading once started. The events described, the awful moment when Armstrong’s life is taken over by cancer and its treatment, the slow recovery, the victory at the Tour de France, the struggles to regain his life, are so vivid that the book itself can be considered one of remarkable achievement. It is about suffering but it is also about the love between a single mother and her son. It is about painful physical catastrophe. It is about being human, vulnerable, and fighting back. And it is a highly readable book, with a strong, oddly unassuming voice, as if the author were sitting at the kitchen table with a good friend, trying to explain what happened: "One minute you’re pedaling along a highway, and the next minute, boom, you’re face-down in the dirt. A blast of hot air hits you, you taste the acrid, oily exhaust in the roof of your mouth, and all you can do is wave a fist at the disappearing taillights. Cancer was like that..." He has both been hit by a truck (more than once) and had cancer so he has the right to make the comparison. He is also the kind of guy who can tell his wife not to be a skirt and get away with it. And talk about how much he loves his mother without sounding sentimental. All those small, clumsy, harassed sons being tormented about sports ought to read this book. It will give them hope. We aren’t all wealthy, strong, beautiful, graceful or young; we aren’t all built to be champions, we don’t all win the races or even the fight to survive deadly illness but Lance Armstrong somehow radiates the hope that we can all be terrific human beings and that’s what really counts. |
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oty behavior of cheerleaders and quarterbacks in high school. Later on the lethal harassment of small, clumsy boys by sports-mad daddies and the adoration given by television to coarse, dull lunkheads in helmets, well, I thought that was just crazy. The Wide World of Sports is NOT my world!
