{"id":45,"date":"2008-07-27T07:05:08","date_gmt":"2008-07-27T15:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostlynf.wordpress.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2008-07-27T07:05:08","modified_gmt":"2008-07-27T15:05:08","slug":"images-of-a-champion-lance-armstrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Images of a Champion (Lance Armstrong)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>QUICK TAKE:  As I write this, I&#8217;m watching the final stage of the Tour de France, a grueling three-week cycling competition that&#8217;s had a rough couple of years.  <a title=\"lance6297 by scampion, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scampion\/2683235797\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3188\/2683235797_cf47280e6f_m.jpg\" alt=\"lance6297\" width=\"240\" height=\"177\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a>Not only has it struggled to rid itself of blood-doping riders, but it has had to find its way following the retirement of seven-time champ Lance Armstrong.  I relived some of the Armstrong years between stages of this year&#8217;s Tour by paging through <em><strong>Images of a Champion<\/strong><\/em> [<a title=\"Images of a Champion\" href=\"http:\/\/www.librarything.com\/work\/107078\/\">LibraryThing<\/a> \/ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/oclc\/54034884\">WorldCat<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Armstrong wrote the opening page of each chapter and invited family, friends, rivals, coaches, and teammates to pen the closing pages.  Together they tell the story of a fierce competitor unwilling to quit or finish second.  The full-page photography of Graham Watson carries the book, however.  His large, full-page photos capture some of the drama and color of the race, as well as the scenes of the French countryside so familiar to Tour watchers.<\/p>\n<p>A couple years ago I read Armstrong&#8217;s <em><strong>It&#8217;s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life<\/strong><\/em> [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.librarything.com\/work\/23081\">LibraryThing<\/a> \/ <a title=\"It's Not About the Bike\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/isbn\/0425179613\">WorldCat<\/a>]. It&#8217;s a much more thorough autobiography and covers his cancer battle well.  <em>Images of a Champion<\/em> makes a nice illustrated companion to that book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>QUICK TAKE: As I write this, I&#8217;m watching the final stage of the Tour de France, a grueling three-week cycling competition that&#8217;s had a rough couple of years. Not only has it struggled to rid itself of blood-doping riders, but &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/?p=45\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22],"tags":[96,139,266,268],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-sports","tag-cycling","tag-lance-armstrong","tag-photography","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}