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Lance Armstrong: the 33-year-old cyclist on surviving, winning, retiring, doping, Sheryl, and his future in politics ... maybe.

Article Excerpt
Let me ask you, first of all, what may not seem like an obvious question: How's your health? In terms of the cancer? As of the latest check, which was a few months ago, everything was perfect. When I give blood, they do a test that's very specific to the sickness that I have, which is called choriocarcinoma. The test measures human chorionic gonadotropin levels. A perfect result is a reading of less than two. When I was first diagnosed, it was over 100,000. If I had a flare-up, it's not as if it would go away. It's very aggressive. So if I ever come in with four ...

Yeah. Four turns to eight, eight turns to sixteen, and on it goes. And everybody would know, because I would quit everything I'm doing and go back into treatment.

Is it ever on your mind? Eight and a half years later, I'm reminded of it every day. Even something as small as looking at a yellow wristband reminds me of my history. But it's not a big fear of mine. I didn't feel great on the bike today, but when I'm pedaling along and I don't feel that good, I don't think, "I'm sick."

Are there any lasting physical effects? No. The skin marks are gone. And, obviously, you get your hair back, and the body regenerates well.

You mentioned the wristband. Could you have imagined in a million years what a phenomenon it would become? I thought two things when we first got into it: that Nike was incredibly generous and that they were a little crazy to make five million of them.

Generous in the sense that even if the wristbands didn't sell, Nike guaranteed $5 million to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They started off by giving us $1 million, so the guarantee was a total of $6 million. We could have been just shootin' them at each other! I was talking to [former Nike CEO] Phil Knight, and he said, "Lance, you know what? I thought the same exact thing. I thought we were crazy." And, you know, we've now sold more than 47 million.

Why do you think they caught on? Have you read The Tipping Point? Something happened along the way to tip it. I don't know what it was, although I will say that Sheryl [Crow, his rock star girlfriend] wore it and talked about it on the Today show last year. And then came the Tour. I suppose the Olympics could have been the tipping point: You had Justin Gatlin wearing one during the 100-meter dash, but you also had [Hicham] El Guerrouj in the 1,500 meters. He's arguably the greatest Muslim runner of all time, and he'd never won an Olympic gold. He crosses the finish line, and he kneels down to pray, and all you see is the yellow band on the guy. He was wearing two! It's...