Houston Chronicle
July 23, 2004
To Lance, hometown just a bad memory
Armstrong grew to detest Plano in high school years
By THOMAS KOROSEC
PLANO - New York City has had an official Lance Armstrong Day, and
Austin has had two.
But here in the town where the cycling star was raised, Armstrong's
name is as apt to invoke expressions of discomfort and regret as
celebration, even as he closed in this week on an unprecedented sixth
straight win in the Tour de France.
"If they held a Lance Armstrong Day, he'd probably boycott it," said
Jack English, principal of Bending Oaks High School in Dallas, from
which Armstrong graduated in 1989.
In fact, Plano officials invited Armstrong back on at least four
occasions in 1999 and 2000 to celebrate his own day and to name a
hike-and-bike trail in his honor. "We never received a response, so we
dropped the effort," said Don Wendell, director of parks and
recreation. "In his book, he wasn't very complimentary about us."
That's putting it mildly.
In his ghostwritten 2000 autobiography, It's Not About the Bike,
Armstrong calls this Dallas suburb of 240,000 residents
"soul-deadening" and conformist to a fault.
Born in Dallas, Armstrong moved with his family to an apartment in
suburban Richardson, then to a house in Plano, when he was young.
"It was the quintessential American suburb, with strip malls, perfect
grid streets and faux-antebellum country clubs in between empty brown
wasted fields," he writes. "It was populated by guys in golf shirts
and Sansabelt pants and women in bright fake gold jewelry, and
alienated teenagers."
If you were not upper middle class or a football player, he writes,
"you didn't exist."
As the son of a secretary, who raised him as a single parent, and as
an aspiring athlete with little hand-eye coordination and no skill at
moving laterally, he was neither.
"I felt shunned at times," he recalls in the book. "I was the guy who
did weird sports and who didn't wear the right labels." Kids in the
"social" group made fun of his Lycra shorts.
His adolescent resentments became fuel for his competitive fire, he
writes. "Back then I was just a kid with about four chips on his
shoulder, thinking, 'Maybe if I ride my bike on this road long enough
it will take me out of here.' "
Armstrong's most pointed criticism he saves for Plano East Senior High
School, "one of the largest and most football-crazed high schools in
the state."
In the second semester of his senior year, he was invited by the U.S.
Cycling Federation to train for the next season's Junior World
Championships, his first big international bike race.
School administrators objected to him missing six weeks of school, and
told him and his mother he would not graduate if he skipped school to
train. "I knew damned well that if I played football and wore Polo
shirts and had parents who belonged to the Los Rios Country Club,
things would be different," Armstrong recalled 11 years later.
His mother persuaded Bending Oaks High School, a tiny private school
located in a north Dallas office park, to give Armstrong credit for
his 3 1/2 years at Plano high schools, and after just a few months in
attendance he earned his diploma.
Within a year, he moved to Austin and has lived there since, when not
training in France, California or Spain, where Armstrong, now an
international celebrity with a rock-star girlfriend, also has a house.
"It's a disappointment," said Rick Gurney, owner of Plano Cycling and
Fitness bike shop. "We have someone who we should be able to claim as
our own but he's not willing to give us that. I think his book gives a
reasonable explanation about his feelings, though it's not one any of
us would like to hear."
Gurney's shop is plastered with posters of Armstrong and products he
endorses: bikes, helmets, sunglasses, clothing.
Even if it is unrequited, "we love Lance," said Chris Mathews,
president of the Plano Bicycle Association. "We have 200 members out
there every Saturday morning trying to be just like him."
At Richardson Bike Mart, in an adjacent suburb, manager Woody Smith
said he did not think people and cyclists in Plano and Richardson are
more interested in Armstrong's Tour de France bid than they are
elsewhere in the state. "I thought people would be doing more," he
said.
The store held a Tour-watching party last weekend and plans to hold
another this weekend, as the race ends.
Armstrong's family got a deal from the store's owner, Jim Hoyt, on his
first bike, a Schwinn, when he was 7 years old, and Hoyt has remained
an Armstrong friend. "We have a pretty big Lance shrine," said Smith.
In 1989 and 1990, Armstrong rode for the store's team in his first
professional stint.
On Wednesday, as Armstrong solidified his lead in the Tour by winning
a time trial up the mountain switchbacks of L'Alpe d'Huez,
administrators at Plano East were setting up their offices for the
start of another school year.
None wanted to talk about Armstrong, the most successful athlete the
school ever produced.
"Nobody has anything they want to share," said Debbie Weaver, the
office administrator. Around the school's main lobby there are track
and football trophies, and not a hint of Armstrong.
"I haven't read his book," said Weaver. "But I've heard a little about
what's in it."
Meanwhile, the Tour de France was front-and-center on TV in the small
reception room that makes up the main entry of Bending Oaks.
"We've been following it very closely all through July and it's
brought back a few alumni," said Doug McNamara, the school's
president. "Lance coming to this school is pretty much an untold
story. People are constantly telling us we should exploit it more."
He said he has resisted.
"We're a tiny school and we're so proud of him," McNamara said. "He
was trying to find himself at that age like so many kids. It was on a
bike that he did."
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