Lance Armstrong: Living Strong or Merely Holding On?

He sat on the side of a small goat path of a road,  with his left shoulder slumping, grimacing in pain. 

It was only the first day of the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon, a five-stage road race in northern Spain. 

Near the end of the first stage, Lance Armstrong got caught in a funnel of riders jockeying for position, hit a rider in front of him and went flying over the handlebars.

As he sat there, he later told the Associated Press via a teleconference from Austin, Texas, “You're laying there, and you sort of ask yourself, 'What the hell am I doing here?'" 

Indeed, after three years of the bike, coming back to the sport he once dominated was proving to be a tougher task than he originally thought. 

At 37 years old, the body just doesn’t perform the same as it did in years prior.  Or at least that’s the way it should be.  Armstrong looked like his out-of-retirement comeback after a three year hiatus from the sport was on the right track. 

After joining former manager Johan Bruyneel with the Astana cycling team, Armstrong had respectable 29th-place finish in his first race back, the Tour Down Under in Australia.  He then followed that up with a seventh-place finish in the Tour of California.

But it was on that little, rugged goat path that Armstrong’s comeback attempt got that much harder.  Using the Spanish-based race as a precursor to the two races highlighted on his comeback schedule, the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, a crash wasn’t supposed to be in the mix.

Just a few days removed from collarbone surgery in which 12 screws and a five-inch metal plate were placed over the uneven breaks in the bone, Armstrong will continue his comeback, first on the stationary bike and then by racing (hopefully in time for the Giro d’Italia).  He’ll be in plenty of pain for quite sometime as cycling requires riders to place somewhat of a force on the collarbone area while riding, but Lance is used to the pain. 

Let’s not forget, Lance won seven Tour de France titles after overcoming testicular cancer.  He stayed active during retirement, running in marathons and riding his mountain bike quite a bit, but can Lance really pull off this comeback?

No one really expects him to win this year’s tour, in the same way we didn’t expect Michael Jordan’s Wizards to win the NBA Finals when he returned to the sport in 2001 and 2002.  Why should we?  It seems that when an athlete retires, they’re not exactly the same player when they return.  Maybe they lose a bit of the competitive edge or maybe it’s the fact that those rounds on the golf course are now much more enticing than placing ravaging physical demands on the body. 

Lance said when he came back to the sport in September 2008, “After talking with my children, my family and my closest friends, I have decided to return to professional cycling in order to raise awareness of the global cancer burden.”  He will continue to raise awareness for cancer research as the world follows his comeback.  His website (Livestrong.org) and his Twitter feed keep the Lance-fanatics up-to-date on his every move, but will Lance’s return ultimately be disappointing in the end?

No one really wants to see this guy lose.  Except maybe the French.  Not Lance at least.  He’s the face of raising funding for cancer research and awareness and he’s probably the best athlete of his generation.  Physically, he’s a specimen.  His heart is 30 percent larger than the average person and his resting heart rate is 32 to 34 beats per minute.  Most of us never get below 55 to 60 bpm.

If there’s anyone who can pull this comeback attempt off, it’s Lance.  He’s beaten the odds before many times, whether it be cancer or an attack late in the Tour de France.  Just as Armstrong looked back at his opponents before he smoked them up Sestriere climb during the Tour de France in 1999, one has to wonder if Armstrong still has it in him?

Will a splintered collarbone set him too far back or will he break the odds once again?  More importantly, how will his image change?  Will he continue to LiveStrong or will his comeback attempt tarnish our previous memories of him dominating the sport for seven straight years?

As Americans, most of root for Lance.  The rest of the world watches in anticipation.  But quietly, we wonder: Will he compete and win another Tour de France title come July?