Armstrong legacy reaches beyond cycling

To have gone where nobody had gone before by winning seven Tours de France is in itself an unprecedented contribution to the sport of cycling. Lance Armstrong's legacy reaches even further.
The American's human story, his victory over cancer that led to the much more prosaic victories over the hardships of the Tour, is his greatest achievement.
That Armstrong became the most successful tour rider in history after a near-fatal illness gave hope to millions and the yellow wristband worn by cycling fans around the world to help Armstrong's cancer foundation bears testimony to his leading role in that respect.
His mission as a spokesman for the millions affected by cancer worldwide will become even more time consuming now he has retired from the sport.
Armstrong's entry in the history books should not, however, be reduced to his successful battle against cancer.
He is simply one of the greatest bike riders and one of the greatest champions of all time.
The Tour's 102-year history is filled with drama, human tragedies and heroics and it was almost inevitable that such a larger-than-life figure as Armstrong should play a big part.
To win seven Tours requires 150 days on the bike, riding some 200 km each day, in rain and in intense heat, up the highest mountains in Europe and down into windswept valleys at more than 50 kph.
It involves 200 other riders out to beat you, months and kilometres of exhausting training in the cold of winter and in spring, far from home.
This was Armstrong's life for the past seven years, a life of sacrifice and self-inflicted suffering.
It took a tough man to dedicate seven years of his life to the single task of winning the Tour, to lose weight, change his pedalling frequency, improve his climbing skills.
Any little thing could have stopped Armstrong's plan: crashes, illness, bad luck.
Armstrong armed himself against such eventualities by turning Tour riding almost into a science, taking every little detail into account.
"He has changed things in cycling over the last seven years," said Armstrong's team manager Johan Bruyneel, his main partner in his successful quest for unprecedented Tour glory.
"A lot of riders came and wenst in the team and brought some of our methods with them. Now all the big teams are preparing a little bit in the same way and focusing on the biggest race, that is the Tour de France," he said.
"He's one of the first guys who started preparing specifically for the Tour de France and previewing the stages. He brought a new level of professionalism and attention to detail.
"Cycling was quite behind other high-level sports in that respect. Cycling was a sport of traditions and habits and people would do things just because it had always been done in the past. That has changed a lot over the last years."
It is undeniable that Armstrong has inspired others to become more focused and more specialised than they were in the time of the rider who is still considered the greatest in history, Eddy Merckx.
The Belgian, who turned 60 this year, won every single race on the cycling calendar and some of Armstrong's critics have denounced his exclusive focus on the tour even though he was world champion at 21 and won other great races such as the Tour of Switzerland, the Dauphine Libere or the Fleche Wallonne.
Times have changed and Bruyneel made it clear that, after Armstrong, it will probably be impossible to win the Tour without specific preparation.
"In the past, the Tour was ridden with 12 teams of 10 riders, all the races were like that," he said.
"Cycling has become a world sport with riders from the east and South America. The more global the sport gets, the more focused you need to be on certain races.
"It's also good for the sport. Do you expect to see different actors or always the same guy?" the Belgian said.
"There are too many different, good athletes and too many different interests. No matter how good you are, you cannot win them all any more," he added.
Armstrong's compatriot Bobby Julich, third in the Tour in 1998, shares the view that the Texan helped cycling to change eras.
"Lance Armstrong is the most dedicated rider I ever met. His legacy will be the attention to every single detail, his professionalism and focus on one race. He's changed cycling in the sense that now you are forced to concentrate fully on one single event."
Armstrong's professionalism, as much as his mental strength turned the brash, young Texan who shook cycling by becoming world champion in 1993 into the most respected rider in the world.
"When we started, I saw Lance mainly as a rival. Now I'm one of his biggest fans," said Julich, echoing the general view of the peloton.- Reuters