It's official: Lance Armstrong is unretiring, and several sportswriters have been on top of the story in the last 24 hours. From the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins (author of two Armstrong books) writes that she thinks the legendary cyclist can make a significant impact in defeating cancer. Ms. Jenkins writes that “the fact is that cancer and improbable odds are the keys to his fierce personality, they’re what propelled him over 2,300 miles and up mountainsides in the first place. ‘Watch, I’m gonna win it again,’ he said, after the first one. ‘Know why? ‘Cause everyone says I can’t.’ ”
Most recently, Armstrong finished 2nd this summer in an arduous ultra-mountain bike race in Colorado. He has said in the media reports on his unretirement that he aims to use his comeback to raise cancer awareness. He also wants to become the oldest winner of the Tour de France. At 37, he’d be a year older than Belgium's Firmin Lambot was when he finished first in 1922.
In the Vanity Fair article that broke the story, Douglas Brinkley wrote: “A 2,000-mile, 23-day race, much of it uphill? By next July? I asked him, rather ungraciously, if he wasn’t too old to get back into shape that quickly. He laughed. And he was off and running.”
Armstrong said in Brinkley's interview for Vanity Fair that his body aches more in his mid-thirties than it did when he was winning his first seven Tours de France. “But when I’m going, when I’m on the bike — I feel just as good as I did before,” he said.
And veteran Olympic sports correspondent Philip Hersh wrote in the Chicago Tribune that the biggest challenge may be mental, according to experts in the sport who spoke to Hersh for his article. “The hardest part will be to go back to the mental discipline of training, eating and sleeping with 110 percent commitment," cycling analyst and coach Robbie Ventura says. "Snapping your brain back into a mode of being perfect all the time is difficult.”