Cognitive - Content

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Being Lance

I was watching the updates on ESPN when the sports bar popped up on the bottom of my television and a message scrolled that Lance Armstrong was in 3rd position after 9 stages of the Tour de France '05. I have heard a lot about Lance and the struggles he had gone through in his life, but never had i read a book in which he has himself narrated how he felt about all that he had to go through. So i decided to get one of his books and start reading it.

The book i got was titled -"It's Not About the bike: My Journey Back to Life".


The first few chapters were very normal and i felt i was reading story of just another sports person who had to go thru so many struggles to reach a point where he was recognised.However the mid chapters were very pacy just like his race and as he starts describing about how he had to reckon with the fact that he was not only having a cancer, but was also out of insurance and had to pay for the medication himself.It does make you wonder how did he get through it. Being out of medical insurance in US can be compared to getting lost in the Amazon,it's just to difficult to recover from them.The medical expenses are just too high for a man to feel comfortable.So now you can empathize how he would have taken this double blow of not only knowing that he had a cancer, which means he wont be earning anything, but has to pay those bills by himself.

Lance was getting to the peak of his career when he was diagnosed with cancer. Before that he was a champion in making with potential to earn million dollar contracts. However once he fell ill, not only was he medically unfit to race, his major sponsors started to back up on him. This is a terrible feeling for someone who has always been on the limelight. Just imagine how you would have felt, If you topped your exams and then no college wanted to offer you an seat, because you were diagonised with some freaking disease.I can empathize with him, he should have gone through hell.

Cancer is really bad, If you had Testicular cancer then your chances of survival was less than 5%. Every time he describes the treatments he had to go through, i felt like i was sick.One thing to note is that even though he was close to being dead, at no stage through his medication did he give up, he always fought. No one believed he could race again until he actually did.Self belief is your biggest motivator, when that combies with a supportive family and helpful friends any one can perform wonders.

It does'nt surprise me that now lance has won 6 Consecutive Tourde france titles now, and is going strong for his 7th title. Every sponsor who shunned him before wants him back now.

All i could get from this book is, Big difficulties come to people with Big Heart. You just need some patience and self-belief before you become a champion in whatever you are doing.It doesnt matter how you fall, but it does matter what you do to stand back again.This book is not just for a sports person, It has lessons and a message for everyone.

1 comment:

Suresh said...

I thought he died of Aids.