Lance Armstrong's New Challenge Could Be His Greatest

Sept. 27 -- FRIDAY, Sept. 26 (HealthDay News) -- "Myself, my bicycle and my cause."

With those words, Lance Armstrong, the greatest cyclist of his generation, announced on Wednesday that he's planning a comeback to competitive bike racing. But the cancer survivor has a greater goal than winning races -- he hopes to use the Livestrong Global Cancer Initiative he's launching to help meet the needs of cancer patients around the world.

The campaign, arising from the Lance Armstrong Foundation, will work with local partners, organizations and world leaders to achieve three major goals, according to the campaign's Web site:

• To end the stigma of cancer and turn cancer victims into cancer survivors.
• To build an international grassroots movement that will take cancer from isolation to collaboration.
• To work with world leaders to transform cancer from obscurity to priority.

"We have the information, technology and medicine to save lives, and it is a moral and ethical failure not to do so," said Armstrong, who announced his plans at a press conference at the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York City.

To meet those goals, Armstrong said the campaign would focus on bike races in countries where work is needed to better the health of people with cancer, and whose governments and organizations are committed to improvements in health initiatives for cancer patients.

"My being on the bike and competing professionally increases the pressure and the likelihood that we'll make progress in those countries," he said.

Armstrong retired from competitive cycling three years ago after winning an unprecedented seventh consecutive Tour de France title. He will compete in races that will include the Tour Down Under in Australia in January and the Tour de France, set to begin July 4, 2009. After that race, Livestrong will hold a Global Cancer Summit in Paris, Armstrong said.

Armstrong successfully battled testicular cancer in the 1990s, and set a powerful example of how to live fully as a cancer survivor.