lance armstrong

Cyclist. Born September 18, 1971, in Plano, Texas. Raised by his mother Linda in the the suburbs of Dallas, Armstrong was athletic from an early age. He began running and swimming at 10 years old and took up competitive cycling and triathlons (which combine a 1,000 meter swim, 15-mile bike ride, and three-mile run) at 13. At 16, Armstrong became a professional triathlete — he was the national sprint-course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990.
Soon, Armstrong chose to focus on cycling, his strongest event as well as his favorite. During his senior year in high school, the U.S. Olympic development team invited him to train with them in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He left high school temporarily to do so, but later took private classes and received his high school diploma in 1989. The following summer, he qualified for the 1990 junior world team and placed 11th in the World Championship Road Race, with the best time of any American since 1976. That same year, he became the U.S. national amateur champion and beat out many professional cyclists to win two major races, the First Union Grand Prix and the Thrift Drug Classic.
In 1991, Armstrong competed in his first Tour DuPont, a long and difficult 12-stage race, covering 1,085 miles over 11 days. Though he finished in the middle of the pack, his performance announced a promising newcomer to the world of international cycling. He went on to win another stage race, the Settimana Bergamasca race, in Italy later that summer.
After finishing second in the U.S. Olympic time trials in 1992, Armstrong was favored to win the road race in Barcelona, Spain. With a surprisingly sluggish performance, however, he came in only 14th. Undeterred, Armstrong turned professional immediately after the Olympics, joining the Motorola cycling team for a respectable yearly salary. Though he came in dead last in his first professional event, the day-long San Sebastian Classic in Spain, he rebounded in two weeks and finished second in a World Cup race in Zurich, Switzerland.
Armstrong had a strong year in 1993, winning cycling's "Triple Crown" — the Thrift Drug Classic, the Kmart West Virginia Classic, and the CoreStates Race (the U.S. Professional Championship). That same year, he came in second at the Tour DuPont. He started off well in his first-ever Tour de France, a 21-stage race that is widely considered cycling's most prestigious event. Though he won the eighth stage of the race, he later fell to 62nd place and eventually pulled out.
In August 1993, the 21-year-old Armstrong won his most important race yet: the World Road Race Championship in Oslo, Norway, a one-day event covering 161 miles. As the leader of the Motorola team, he overcame difficult conditions — pouring rain made the roads slick and caused him to crash twice during the race — to become the youngest person and only the second American ever to win that contest.
The following year, he was again the runner-up at the Tour DuPont. Frustrated by his near miss, he trained with a vengeance for the next year's event, which he won, finishing two minutes ahead of his closest rival, Viatcheslav Ekimov of Russia, who had defeated him in 1994. He repeated at the Tour DuPont in 1996, setting several event records, including largest margin of victory (three minutes, 15 seconds) and fastest average speed in a time trial (32.9 miles per hour).