„Niemand motiviert mich so wie Jan“
über Jan Ullrich, nach der Tour de France 2003, welt.de http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article249216/Niemand_motiviert_mich_so_wie_Jan.html
Geburtstag: 18. September 1971
Andere Namen: لانس آرمسترانق
Lance Edward Armstrong ist ein ehemaliger US-amerikanischer Radrennfahrer und Triathlet.
Er gewann im Alter von 21 Jahren die Profi-Straßenweltmeisterschaft 1993 in Oslo und ist damit der bisher jüngste Profi-Straßenweltmeister. Er erkrankte 1996 an Hodenkrebs, kehrte nach seiner Heilung 1998 in den Profiradsport zurück und gewann in den Jahren 1999 bis 2005 sieben Mal die Tour de France. Diese Siege wurden ihm später wegen Dopings wieder aberkannt. Nach seinem siebten Tour-de-France-Sieg erklärte er seinen Rücktritt vom Radsport, nahm seine Karriere jedoch im Jahr 2009 wieder auf, ohne an seine alten Erfolge anknüpfen zu können. Seine Radsportlaufbahn endete im Jahr 2011 endgültig. Er beteiligte sich anschließend bis in das Jahr 2012 erfolgreich an Triathlon-Wettbewerben. Zeitweise war der prominente Sportler und Volksheld in den USA auch für eine politische Karriere im Gespräch. Seine Biographie und seine sportlichen Erfolge verwertete er auch erfolgreich in einer Stiftung und politischen Initiativen, so für ein zentrales Krebsforschungszentrum in seinem Heimatstaat Texas.
Seine Karriere war stets von Dopinggerüchten begleitet, die zunahmen, nachdem mehrere seiner ehemaligen Teamkollegen Doping zugaben und mit den Behörden kooperierten. Ermittlungen der US-Staatsanwaltschaft gegen Armstrong wurden zwar Anfang 2012 eingestellt, mündeten aber in einem sportrechtlichen Verfahren der US-Antidopingagentur, die Armstrong letztlich mit Wirkung ab dem 1. August 1998 lebenslang sperrte. Diese Sperre wurde durch den Weltradsportverband UCI in seiner Entscheidung vom 22. Oktober 2012 übernommen, so dass Armstrong alle nach dem 1. August 1998 gewonnenen Titel, darunter die Gesamtsiege bei der Tour de France, verlor. Armstrong, der bis dahin Doping stets abgestritten hatte, gestand am 13. Januar 2013 in der US-amerikanischen Talkshow Oprah’s Next Chapter den Dopingmissbrauch als Radsportler. Wikipedia
„Niemand motiviert mich so wie Jan“
über Jan Ullrich, nach der Tour de France 2003, welt.de http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article249216/Niemand_motiviert_mich_so_wie_Jan.html
„A life spent defensively, worried, is a life wasted.“
— Lance Armstrong, buch Every Second Counts
Quelle: Every Second Counts (2003), p. 21
Kontext: A life spent defensively, worried, is a life wasted.
You know when I need to die? When I'm done living. When I can't walk, can't eat, can't see, when I'm a crotchety old bastard, mad at the world. Then I can die.
„Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.“
— Lance Armstrong, buch Every Second Counts
Quelle: Every Second Counts
— Lance Armstrong, buch Every Second Counts
Quelle: Every Second Counts (2003), p. 157
Kontext: The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts.
Farewell speech at the Champs-Élysées podium, after winning his seventh Tour de France, quoted in "Paris salutes its American hero" by Caroline Wyatt in BBC News (24 July 2005) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/4713283.stm
Kontext: Finally, the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics: I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race. This is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe it. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets — this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it. So Vive le Tour forever!
— Lance Armstrong, buch It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Quelle: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 1
Kontext: I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour. I want to cross one last finish line as my wife and my ten children applaud, and then I want to lie down in a field of those famous French sunflowers and gracefully expire, the perfect contradiction to my once anticipated poignant early demise.
— Lance Armstrong, buch It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Quelle: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 113
Kontext: I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsiblity to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."
— Lance Armstrong, buch It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Quelle: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 113
Kontext: I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsiblity to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."
As quoted in Forbes Magazine (3 December 2001)
Kontext: Without cancer, I never would have won a single Tour de France. Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things — whether health or a car or an old sense of self — has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.
Press conference (8 October 1996)
Kontext: I want to finish by saying that I intend to be an avid spokesperson for testicular cancer once I have beaten the disease... I want this to be a positive experience and I want to take this opportunity to help others who might someday suffer from the same circumstance I face today.
Farewell speech at the Champs-Élysées podium, after winning his seventh Tour de France, quoted in "Paris salutes its American hero" by Caroline Wyatt in BBC News (24 July 2005) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/4713283.stm
Kontext: Finally, the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics: I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race. This is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe it. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets — this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it. So Vive le Tour forever!
„No one trains like me. No one rides like me. This jersey's mine.“
On the team bus, after winning his fifth Tour de France in 2003, as quoted in "On your marks, get set … go!" in The Guardian by William Fotheringham in The Guardian (30 June 2007) http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jun/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview7
Kontext: No one trains like me. No one rides like me. This jersey's mine. I live for this jersey. It's my life. No one's taking it away from me. This fucking jersey's mine.
As quoted in "10 questions for Lance Armstrong" by Bill Saporito in TIME magazine (28 September 2003) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1005777,00.html
Kontext: I'm not happy if I'm not doing some physical suffering, like going out on a bike ride or running. First, it's good for you. No. 2, it sort of clears my mind on a daily basis. And it's a job. My job is to suffer. I make the suffering in training hard so that the races are not full of suffering.
„Without cancer, I never would have won a single Tour de France.“
As quoted in Forbes Magazine (3 December 2001)
Kontext: Without cancer, I never would have won a single Tour de France. Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things — whether health or a car or an old sense of self — has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.
— Lance Armstrong, buch It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Quelle: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 267
Kontext: Anything is possible. You can be told you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight. By fight I mean arm yourself with all the available information, get second opinions, third opinions, and fourth opinions. Understand what has invaded your body, and what the possible cures are. It's another fact of cancer that the more informed and empowered patient has a better chance of long-term survival. What if I had lost? What if I relapsed and the cancer came back? I still believe I would have gained something in the struggle, because in what time I had left I would have been a more complete, compassionate, and intelligent man, and therefore more alive.
— Lance Armstrong, buch It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Quelle: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 267
Kontext: Anything is possible. You can be told you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight. By fight I mean arm yourself with all the available information, get second opinions, third opinions, and fourth opinions. Understand what has invaded your body, and what the possible cures are. It's another fact of cancer that the more informed and empowered patient has a better chance of long-term survival. What if I had lost? What if I relapsed and the cancer came back? I still believe I would have gained something in the struggle, because in what time I had left I would have been a more complete, compassionate, and intelligent man, and therefore more alive.
As quoted in "King of the Hill" by Kelli Anderson in Sports Illustrated (5 August 2002) http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2002/sportsman/flashbacks/lance/king_of_the_hill
— Lance Armstrong, buch It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Quelle: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life