AUSTIN, Tex. —
Barry Bonds.
Marion Jones.
Alex Rodriguez.
Roger Clemens. There is no shortage of athletes who have fallen from grace, their achievements on the playing field and their public stature compromised by accusations of cheating or revelations of criminal or otherwise repugnant behavior.
The case of
Lance Armstrong is far more complex. Having survived
testicular cancer that metastasized to his lungs and his brain, Mr. Armstrong — who went on to win a record seven
Tour de France titles — has become a powerful symbol of the possibilities of life after the disease. He has also become a world-class philanthropist, his Livestrong foundation doling out $31 million last year on behalf of
cancer patients.
But now that he and his former team are subjects of a federal investigation into doping activities, those in the interdependent circles of his world are concerned that the inquiry will tarnish or erode all he has built.
“There are just so many unknowns at this point,” Doug Ulman, the chief executive of Livestrong and a cancer survivor, said in an interview at the foundation’s airy new headquarters here. “That’s the most frustrating thing.”
To Dr. John R. Seffrin,
the chief executive of the
American Cancer Society, the investigation should be irrelevant. Whatever Mr. Armstrong’s transgressions as an athlete, he said, they pale in comparison with the good he has done.
“Lance Armstrong has done more to destigmatize cancer than anyone,” Dr. Seffrin said.
Few would dispute that Mr. Armstrong is a splendid athlete, gifted and dedicated, or that he is a magnificent publicist for his cause. Since 2004, when Livestrong and its corporate partner Nike gave the world the yellow bracelet to signify that the wearer had been touched by cancer, more than 70 million have been distributed.
But his competitive side is also compelling. A power-wielding, polarizing figure in cycling, Mr. Armstrong, who turns 39 next month, has a reputation for being a brutal competitor and an aggressive self-promoter. A day after spending three weeks as his teammate at the 2009 Tour, the winner,
Alberto Contador, who has supplanted Mr. Armstrong as the world’s best rider, said in Spanish: “He is a great rider and did a great Tour. Another thing is on a personal level, where I have never admired him and never will.”
Mr. Armstrong has long fended off suspicions that his Tour titles were tainted by performance-enhancers, and he has never officially tested positive for any illegal substances. (At the 1999 Tour, he failed a test for a corticosteroid but produced a doctor’s note for it.)
Through one of his lawyers, Mr. Armstrong declined to be interviewed for this article.
During the Tour de France in July, he issued perhaps
his most forceful statement on the issue: “As long as I live, I will deny it. There was absolutely no way I forced people, encouraged people, told people, helped people, facilitated. Absolutely not. One hundred percent.”
But Mr. Armstrong’s vehement claims of innocence amid the acknowledged widespread cheating in professional cycling strike many as far-fetched.
In cycling, he is also known as a control freak, an intense micromanager of his image and of the complicated apparatus that is a professional cycling team.
“He’s the most binary guy I’ve ever met,” said Bill Strickland, a cyclist and writer who has known Mr. Armstrong since 1994 and whose recent book “Tour de Lance” followed Mr. Armstrong as he prepared for the 2009 Tour after a three-year hiatus from the event. “He told me his motto is Win/lose, live/die. He equates winning with living and losing with dying. Every moment you’re around him, he wants to win. You can be in a conversation with him and he’ll try to get the upper hand. It never lets down.”
Cycling teams are built to focus on and nurture one star whom the other riders, known by the French word domestiques, support by blocking the wind, for instance, and ferrying water. And in his book, Mr. Strickland described a telling incident from the 2003 Tour.
Early in the race, Victor Hugo Peña, a domestique for Mr. Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team,
briefly moved ahead of Mr. Armstrong in the standings and wore the yellow jersey signifying the overall leader. But Mr. Armstrong insisted that Mr. Peña continue to perform the chores of a domestique, a flagrant usurpation of Tour tradition, an embarrassment to Mr. Peña and a purposeful reminder of cycling’s social order.
“That was so typical of who he is,” Mr. Strickland said. “To those of us who saw that, it was criminal. And so perfectly Lance.”
At races, Mr. Armstrong is a titillating presence, always at the center of a throng. Fans, some living with cancer, gather several deep around his team bus, hoping to glimpse or touch him. “It’s like being at Lourdes,” Mr. Strickland said.
The full article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/sports/cycling/22armstrong.html?pagewanted=1&ref=health
When your shooting over 1000 photo's a day it hard to see how you can be too discretionary. But then if you're shooting at 10 frames per second it wouldn't take long to notch up 1000 frames...less than two minutes I calculate. 
