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Lance Armstrong > 
Armstrong won the prestigious Tour de France an unprecedented seven straight times, from 1999-2005. Armstrong's string broke the previous Tour de France record of five victories, held by Miguel Indurain (1991-95) and three others. Armstrong is equally famous for surviving cancer. He was a top amateur cyclist until after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when he began a successful pro career. In 1996 Armstrong discovered that he had testicular cancer, which had spread to his brain and lungs. After surgery and heavy chemotherapy, Armstrong returned to cycling in 1997. Two years later he won his first Tour de France, as the lead rider of the U.S. Postal Service team, and then repeated the victory the next five years in a row. In 2005 he announced that he would retire from competitive racing after the Tour de France, then won the Tour for a seventh and final time. Armstrong is the author of the memoirs It's Not About the Bike (2000) and Every Second Counts (2003).
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