Book Review

It's Not About the Bike

Lance Armstrong

Published by: Rupa & Co.
Pages: 294
Price: Rs. 250

LANCE Armstrong has conquered two mountains, each almost insurmountable.
Usually, a person is considered extraordinary if he survives cancer. He's had his duel with death, and won. Similarly, winning the Tour de France puts a human being in a rare league, rare even among professional sportsmen. For the Tour is considered the most gruelling sports event in the world; three weeks of punishing the body and pushing it through extreme weather on treacherous terrain.

Someone who can survive cancer and win the Tour is a freak; one in a billion. To that category, only one man belongs -- Lance Armstrong. It's Not About the Bike is his account of conquering cancer and cycling's most exacting event.

We learn of the humble circumstances of his birth to a single mother, growing up under an unkind foster father, and his mother's gritty fight through the daily grind of bringing him up single-handedly. We learn of the early lessons he picks up from his mother ("You never quit, son"), and a strange anger that he fosters against institutions, religion, and the world. It will be this anger that he channels into the sport later on, when he realises that cycling is his passport out of his dreary surroundings. As he writes: "Athletes don't have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because introspection doesn't get you anywhere in a race… You need a dumb focus. But that said, it's all stoked in there, fuel for the fire. Nothing goes to waste, you put is all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy."

We also see the beginnings of a robust self-confidence - which would later be interpreted as arrogance - in his dismissive attitude of the status-quo. For instance, when upper-class classmates make snide remarks about his unconventional clothes, he returns the compliment with barely-disguised contempt: "There was an unwritten dress code; the socially acceptable people all wore uniforms with Polo labels on them. They might not have known it, but that's what they were: uniforms. Same pants, same boots, same belts, same wallets, same caps. It was total conformity, and everything I was against."

The beginning of his cycling career was rather chequered. Some brilliant starts would be frittered away by exhausting his energy too early. He was impetous, arrogant and foolhardy. Luckily, two US cycling officials noticed his talent and groomed him, leading to some spectacular results, particularly the 1993 World Championships in Oslo.

Even then, Armstrong was never comfortable with the Tour de France. He was able only to finish portions of the race.

Cancer struck when everything was looking up. His fight against the dreaded disease now dominates the book… and from a heady feeling of achievement, he descends into gloom.

In retrospect, it becomes obvious that Armstrong feels compelled to describe this ordeal in detail, more than his cycling exploits. Perhaps it's because of his identification with what he calls "the cancer community" - he believes the enormous battles that people wage so silently are not well known; and he takes it upon himself to narrate what a typical patient might go through.

And this does not make easy reading. It makes you squirm with fear, with horror, as he describes the various stages of his treatment, what the drugs do to him, how time becomes inconsequential as the months become one long stretch of nausea and physical breakdown. Through it all, Armstrong battles it the way he approaches cycling - with dogged determination that refuses to accept defeat.

Armstrong's problems weren't over once the cancer was cured. He was in remission, a psychological wreck, when one is haunted by insecurities. For another person, the issue would have been to resume one's career, but for Armstrong, going back to professional cycling was unthinkable.

He describes this phase extensively. He becomes a "bum", puts off decisions, and wastes his time. But at length, with the encouragement of his family and friends, he goes into an intensive regimen that will finally see him become not just as good as he was - but better. In just over a year after being treated, Armstrong would win the race that is the ultimate in cycling - the Tour de France.

Lance Armstrong's autobiography is not just the account of his disease and racing career. It has inspired thousands around the globe, for it holds out promise that cancer need not mean permanent debility. If an athlete can conquer the toughest of sporting frontiers after cancer, Armstrong says, what prevents others from fighting likewise?

For the sports enthusiast, the book offers an insight into the mind of an all-time great, and the dynamics of the sport. Comparisons between his fight against cancer and his fight for the Tour de France are inevitable, and Armstrong explains how his cycling career helped him through the tumultous years of the disease. "The more I thought about it, the more cancer began to seem like a race to me. Only the destination had changed. They shared gruelling physical aspects, as well as a dependence on time, and progress reports every interval, with checkpoints and a slavish reliance on numbers and blood tests. The only difference was that I had to focus better and harder than I ever did on the bike."

Credit should go to co-writer Sally Jenkins for the taut narrative, and freshness in the detail of every event. The intricacies of cycling, the intrigues that form part of the sport, the dangers that lurk at every bend in the road, and the hard reality of rain and sun - the book dwells on all this. There is also a less talked-about spiritual side to the sport: "I had learned what it means to ride the Tour de France. It's a metaphor for life, not only the longest race in the world but also the most exalting and heartbreaking and potentially tragic… The Tour is not just a bike race, not at all. It is a test."

Armstrong has taken care not to take all the credit; he constantly praises team mates, officials, and family. Perhaps the story could have included more of life on the road -- in the hotel rooms and on the racing circuit. All things considered, the book gives us a good idea of the heart and mind of a great champion.

(Dev S Sukumar)