What is Lance Armstrong really like?

Lance Armstrong was one of the key factors in helping us raise €420,000 in 2007 as part of the 7000km Ride for the Cure across Canada and Ireland. The question I am most often asked is “what is Lance Armstrong really like?”, everywhere I go people who have read Screaming at the Sky as this question. So I decided to answer what my opinion is.

In this excerpt from my book Screaming at the Sky you will get an insight in to the man. I have also added a section that did not make it in to the final published copy of Screaming at the Sky. Enjoy.

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It was now time to for a ride. He (Lance) looked at our bikes.

‘Where did you get those pieces of crap?’. ‘This is all we have I said. ‘Trek won’t return our calls’. He turned to his agent Bart Knaggs again. ‘Remind me to talk to Trek.’

Bruce looked at me and and flashed a smile. The wheels were moving, and later that week two new Treks were on their way to Halifax, one for the rode and one to act as backup should I crash. Their combined cost was $15,000.

We went and biked one of his regular loops around the city and chatted for an hour or so. I was captivated by his calves-big, hulking, pulsing chunks of muscle, as big as my things. During the ride, seemingly at the last second, Lance called the shots on what direction we went,. Left, right, straight on. At times it was difficult to keep up, and once we had warmed up we clipped along at a steady pace.

When we arrived back at his home we expected to leave almost straight away, but Armstrong invited us in with a ‘Come on in’. On the pathway to his door is a 150-year-old oak tree. One of its branches loops in such a way that you have to walk beneath it to the door.

‘Cool tree’, I said. He told me he had moved into his house recently from just up the street and brought the tree with him, had it dug up from his old home and replanted here, ‘I love that tree’, he said.

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Unpublished: This did not make it in to Screaming at the Sky – You see that is Lance. Nothing was impossible. The same standards do not apply. On the flight home, I asked myself the question, ‘What was Lance like?’. Words like confident, assured and focused came to mind. The more we cycled the more he seemed to open up and as he did a relaxed, witty, almost goofy guy came to the surface. He was incredibly supportive of our cycle. He got our bikes, sent us videos of support, emails of well wishing, invited us back to Texas to visit him and then when asked, and without hesitation, wrote the foreword for Screaming at the Sky.

Many times I am asked, well did he dope?. The answer is I don’t know. But I know the man, the friend that supported us in every way he could. The man that gave our dreams oxygen. I believe in the person. I take him at his word.

Tags: Alberto Contador, Dreams, Inspirational people, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong's personality, screaming at the sky, Tony Griffin, Tony Griffin meets Lance Armstrong, Tour de France