Lance

He's got my vote. And I don't mean for Athlete of the Year. Lance Armstrong is the greatest athlete of all time. Winning 7 straight Tours--assuming no last stage disasters this weekend--was unthinkable until Lance came along. The greatest of all cycling stage races is simply too grueling, too treacherous and too competitive for any one rider to dominate it flawlessly for the greater part of a decade. But Lance, astonishingly, has done it.

It's often hard to appreciate fully the significance of contemporary events or achievements. Maybe proximity throws off our perspective. To help avoid this mistake and to savor Armstrong's final Tour, I've been concurrently reading his book, It's Not About the Bike. As a small tribute, I'd like to quote what was for me one of the more meaningful comments I gleaned from the book, insights gained from the depths of his battle against cancer, and just perhaps a clue to understanding his greatness:

"To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery....I didn't fully see until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday."

Well said, Lance. And well done.