Armstrong Cycles Through Iowa for Cancer
July 30, 2006 — -- Lance Armstrong traded in the Tour de France for a tour of Iowa this summer and got a hero's welcome at every stop. When that news broke about Floyd Landis, Armstrong had a piece of advice for his successor.
Lance Armstrong: My suggestion to Floyd would be: If you're innocent, if you believe you're innocent, then you stand up and fight for it. … And if that means talking to the press, if that means suing somebody, if that means writing about it, thinking about it, talking about it, you have to do it.
Armstrong was in Iowa to fire up the nation's first presidential voters about his other passion, the fight against cancer.
Armstrong: Politically speaking, this is a very important state for our country, for the election in '08, the issues that will be raised, the questions that will be asked. And what a great opportunity to take whatever success I had on the bike, keep it on the bike, keep it with the people of Iowa.
I've been on a lot of bike rides in my day, but I've never seen a bike ride like this. … This ride is famous for the old ladies in the square baking pies. And so they always asked me what my favorite pie was. I said, "coconut cream pie." … Had a cold beer in the middle of the ride -- which years and years of the Tour de France, where you're drinking some sort of energy drink or water and now you're drinking a beer, a cold beer, in the middle of the bike ride. But that's what they do. These people, they ride all day long, they drink beer, they eat pork chops, eat pies and they keep riding. … It's a hell of a lot more fun than the Tour de France.
Our mission is to make cancer a national priority -- just like war would be, just like terror would be, just like immigration or education, abortion or gay marriage. All of the things that we know are political topics and hot buttons. And you know, to me, especially sitting here as a 10-year cancer survivor, an issue like this that's the number one killer in this country should be a priority. It should be discussed. It should be debated. … For me, my dream would just, well, we're going to watch, I think, three presidential debates in 2008, one vice presidential debate. Let's ask the question. Let's have a moderator and at least ask the question.
There's a lot of reasons I can't be the candidate in Iowa. And I don't want to be. I want to lead a movement right now. And I might be wrong. I might be wrong that the best way to do that is being out of office or being right down the middle. I could be wrong. I mean, perhaps change could be effected on a much greater level if I was in office or if I was a senator or a governor or whatever. But I don't think so right now. I think right now I need to be very neutral. I need to recognize and remind people that this is an apolitical issue. … But you know, if the time ever came and the nudge was there, you know you never say never.
But, you know, somewhere in there, there's a place for this disease to need to not only be funded, but to be put back in the hearts and minds of American people and know that the odds are startling. One of two men, one out of three women, 1,500 lives a day, 600,000 people a year, many of them never needed to die, never needed to go through the pain and suffering that they ultimately will. It's got to stop.