Lance on TIME’S 100

May 01, 2008 by Katherine McLane (LIVESTRONG Staff)

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Hey folks! ‘Proud day for the LAF as our founder and chairman was named one of TIME’s 100, their list of the world’s most influential people. Lance is quick to deflect credit to the hard-working folks here at the LAF, though, and points out that the “real work” is usually performed behind the scenes, long after hours, by people who completely share his devotion to the cause. (Having joined the team less than a year ago, I’m afraid I can’t take any credit but am sincerely grateful to be a part of it!)

If you have a sec, please take a little time to read the essay below by Elizabeth Edwards, who writes beautifully about her friend and chronicles the Foundation’s history with simple grace. Elizabeth has been a great supporter and inspiration to the LAF and survivors everywhere. She embodies the LIVESTRONG philosophy and we’re grateful for her kind words. Enjoy!

Lance Armstrong
By Elizabeth Edwards
Friday, Apr. 25, 2008

There is no one else quite like him. And there probably never will be. The best cyclist ever, Lance Armstrong won the sport’s premier event, the Tour de France, an almost incomprehensible seven times from 1999 to 2005. But before he could do that, in 1996 he had to beat back a cancer that was supposed to take his life. Testicular cancer had spread to his abdomen, lungs and brain. Grim-faced doctors told him he had no chance. But no chance were not words that had meaning for Lance.

He spearheaded the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which made a yellow plastic loop a statement of resistance and strength across the entire planet. Like Lance himself, his foundation looks for the next horizon. It advocates for those living with cancer, funds research, inspires the cancer community to support each other and is collectively stronger than any one of us could be alone. Maybe team cycling taught him this, or maybe Lance, 36, is what you see.

Lance took a minor sport in America and turned it into a great national passion and a great national pride. And he did it by struggling for years, alone on a bike often in unforgiving weather, over terrain that most of us would view as hostile, when no one was watching, no one was cheering.

He inspired all of us who face a cancer diagnosis to search out the doctors who believe that we can live, to hold on to those friends and family who stand beside our bed and then to fight to prove the faith of those friends and the beliefs of those doctors well founded. After Lance, no one of us could ever again say it was too hard, the odds stacked against us were too high, the fight already lost. The fight I fight is for me and my family, but the power to fight belongs in good measure to Lance.

Edwards is mother to four, wife of John Edwards and an author living with cancer

TIME Article