Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story

ETEMADONLINE| Lance Armstrong was one of the domineering personalities in professional cycling, winning the Tour de France for a record-breaking seven consecutive occasions between 1999 and 2006. His story is all the more remarkable for his well-documented recovery from life-threatening cancer.

After the 1996 Tour de France Armstrong fell ill, and in October his physicians diagnosed testicular cancer, which had by that time also spread to his lungs and brain.

He underwent chemotherapy and surgery, which were considered his best chances for survival. Months of treatments followed before he could attempt his comeback in a sport so demanding that some doctors questioned whether he could bear the strains of a three-week race like the Tour de France.

In June 1998 he won his first important race since his cancer was diagnosed, the Tour of Luxembourg. Previously Armstrong had been a specialist in one-day races, but late in 1998, after a fourth-place finish in the three-week Tour of Spain, he was persuaded to change his training regime and compete in the next Tour de France.

On July 25, 1999, Armstrong became the second American to win the Tour de France, the sport's most prestigious race, and the first to win for an American team.

In April 2010 Floyd Landis sent an e-mail to a USA Cycling official, admitting that he and other former teammates, most notably Armstrong, were guilty of doping.

However, despite repeated denials and lawsuits, Armstrong finally admitted in 2013, that during his career he took a wide range of performance enhancing drugs from EPO to blood testing. He was stripped of all his Tour titles in 2012, by USADA. He confessed to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013.

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