For a complete change of pace, Lance Armstrong is on with Stephen. Everyone knows him, right? Seven-time Tour de France winner, 10 year cancer survivor (recent anniversary woohoo!), occasional visitor to gossip columns... that's him. He's also run the New York Marathon, been the subject of a variety of cartoons, at least one Onion feature, and an upcoming movie. Also, he's a daddy. But his private life is staying private now, even re:valentine's day fluff features (I can only assume...)
It looks like he's got two ongoing projects right now. On the biking front, he's leading a doping-free team (with Floyd Landis) -- there'll be regular blood tests. There have been a few headlines along those lines in the past few days, as the
I.O.C. officially scolded Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, for comments that might have damaged Armstrong’s reputation.
But I suspect he'd rather talk about his anti-cancer advocacy. He's
concerned that President Bush has proposed cutting funding to the National Cancer Institute for the second year in a row. The cuts would reduce the cancer institute's budget to just over $4.7 billion, a reduction of $36 million, or 0.8%, NCI spokeswoman Aleea Farrakh says. She noted that Congress has not yet set the NCI's final budget.
"The people who want to be president in 2008 should talk about something that kills 600,000 Americans a year," says Armstrong, 35.
As one headline to a commentary by him put it,"Lance Armstrong: Patience running thin with D.C."
This year is the tenth anniversary of the Lance Armstrong Foundation (a.k.a. LiveSTRONG), and Armstrong is currently the chair of its board of directors. I took a look around the website and got all verklempt, maybe especially because my mother is both a cancer survivor and a big Lance fan. But to bring it back to politics, his blog revealed that John Edwards stopped by the Foundation's staff meeting not long ago to chat. So, even though it seems he was on O'Reilly recently, and we all remember the biking trip with Bush, I don't think we should hold that against him. Too much.
|