Monday, July 24, 2000
Two Yanks take Europe by storm
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
AP National Writer
The sports stars shined in a rare alignment on one historic day.
On one side of the English Channel, Lance Armstrong so far outpaced
the pack over a 2,250-mile course that his victory was conceded
days ahead of time. On the other, Tiger Woods brought something
new to St. Andrews' Old Course — a triumph so complete that
he was playing against history, not the field.
Their mastery of the Tour de France and the British Open left
adversaries and fans of these American stars reaching for superlatives.
“It's not really human what he does,” said Corbett Wood,
a mountain bicyclist in Armstrong's hometown of Austin, Texas.
Armstrong won his second consecutive Tour, beating second-place
finisher Jan Ullrich by 6 minutes, 2 seconds.
“He is the chosen one. He's the best player who has played
the game right now,” golfer Mark Calcavecchia said after
Woods became the youngest golfer ever to win golf's career grand
slam, and only the fifth in history.
“Supernatural,” five-time Open winner Tom Watson added
of Wood's victory.
Woods finished at 19-under 269, eight shots ahead of his nearest
competitor. That's the best score against par in major championship
history, and the largest margin of victory in the British Open
since 1913.
Just last month, he made a mockery of the U.S. Open, winning by
15 strokes.
But Sunday's victory was special. Woods — the untraditional
golfer, son of a black man and a Thai woman — has a deep
appreciation of golf's traditions.
“This is the home of golf,” he said. “This is where
you always want to win. To have a chance to complete the slam
at St. Andrews is pretty special. I was able to bring it home.”
Of course, Americans have won the British Open before. Twenty
Americans have won it 33 times in the 127 years the event has
been played. The first, Walter Hagen, won it four times in the
1920s.
The '20s are often called the golden age of sports, the time of
Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden and Red Grange. Bobby
Jones was the golfer of that age. In 1930, he won all four events
of what was then the grand slam — the U.S. and British Opens,
the U.S. and British Amateurs — and then retired.
But a case could be made that we are in another golden age. We
have seen Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods and ...
well, Lance Armstrong.
His sport is not considered a sport at all in his home country,
but a way to get to the grocery store. No American even placed
in the world's greatest bicycling event, the Tour de France, until
1984, when Greg LeMond took third. LeMond won the Tour in 1986,
1989 and 1990.
A giant? No, says Armstrong. “I'm not a superstar, I'm a
regular guy.”
A regular guy who overcame testicular cancer that had spread to
his lungs and brain, and then battled to win the 1999 Tour de
France.
“It's still my biggest ambition, the fight against cancer,”
Armstrong said Sunday. “It's nice to win the Tour de France,
and to win it a second time, but this is something that will be
going on when I'm 50.”
There were naysayers who pointed out that the 1997 champion, Ullrich,
and the 1998 champion, Marco Pantani, did not compete in 1999.
This year, they did. And he beat them.
“Armstrong is a worthy champion. He was the strongest man,
and he met our every attack. He earned his victory,” Ullrich
said Sunday.
Armstrong and Woods have met — they're both under contract
to Nike.
“Of all the ... sporting superstars that I've met,”
Armstrong said, “I can honestly say that he was the most
excited to meet Lance Armstrong. It was strange. I mean I met
all of them, and he was genuinely excited, and that surprised
me.”
Because Armstrong doesn't think of himself as an immortal, not
like Woods. “Perhaps it's his sport but he's much more consistent
than I have been or that a cyclist can possibly be,” he said
Saturday.
“But clearly he's the best golfer in the world. Nobody would
argue that. And I don't know that by winning the Tour de France
you can say that you're the best cyclist in the world.”
He will have an opportunity to prove just that in September, at
the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Woods is just 24, with a long career ahead. Perhaps he will contest
Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 victories in major events. Or perhaps
he will be the first to win all four modern grand slam events
— the two Opens, the Masters and the PGA Championship —
in a single year.
But chances are, he and Armstrong will never again share the spotlight,
as they did on two sides of the English Channel on a historic
July day.
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