Beijing Olympic Games

Golden ride leaves Armstrong swamped with praise

By TIM REYNOLDS, AP Sports Writer

BEIJING (AP)—Only a few minutes after winning Olympic cycling gold, Kristin Armstrong picked up her phone and was stunned to see more than 60 new messages.

Over the next few hours, hundreds more arrived.

Such is life for an Olympic champion.

From Boise to Beijing, and just about everywhere in between, people sent congratulations. NBC quickly offered her a chance to appear before its cameras, current and former teammates kept jamming up the line in an effort to share their glee and even something called the National Peanut Board released a statement commending Armstrong’s feat.

“You know, your life is going to change now,” Armstrong’s husband, Joe Savola, told her soon after the golden ride to the Great Wall.

It took her a moment to realize it, but soon, Armstrong understood Savola was right.

The 35-year-old American already had three world championship medals in her collection and the sort of respect among peers that comes with consistently being one of the strongest riders on the road. But now, with Olympic gold in her hands—won Wednesday in the time trial, ending in the shadow of the Great Wall — she knows many things will seem even better.

“I’m not going to change,” said Armstrong, who became just the second U.S. woman to win Olympic cycling gold, joining Connie Carpenter-Phinney, the 1984 road race champion at the Los Angeles Games and whose son Taylor will compete in the individual pursuit on the velodrome in Beijing starting Friday. “But I think this is starting to sink in.”

In a sport that struggles to get noticed in the United States, outside of Lance Armstrong winning Tour de Frances or any doping scandal, Kristin Armstrong was finally a star.

No, she won’t bump Michael Phelps and Kobe Bryant and Brett Favre off the U.S. sports landscape, but for at least one day, she got to feel like someone at home was noticing her work, too.

“The sport of cycling in America isn’t huge,” Kristin Armstrong said. “The audience is every four years for the Olympics or when Lance Armstrong was winning the tours. That’s American cycling. So I hope that winning a gold medal will bring the fans out for more than just one day every four years.”

She gets The Lance Question all the time and still finds it somewhat humorous; even Wednesday, shortly after the time trial, one of the volunteers at the Great Wall asked why she kept the last name after divorcing Lance.

(Once and for all, she’s not that Kristin Armstrong. Never been married to Lance. They’re not related. Move on.)

But this gold medal-winning Armstrong sees plenty of parallels between herself and that yellow jersey-collecting Armstrong.

“We both come from a triathlon background. We both have the same mentality,” she said. “And what Lance has done for the sport, he’s done wonderful things and he’s also done wonderful things for the cancer foundation and I hope to follow in his footsteps and be that sort of role model for our country and up and coming riders.”

Armstrong joins a strong list of Idahoans to bring Olympic gold back to the small state, including Dick Fosbury, Bill Johnson, Picabo Street, Dan O’Brien and Stacy Dragila, among others.

And a hero’s welcome surely awaits when she arrives back in Boise on Friday.

She’ll remain the same simple sort of person that she’s always been. She’ll still pop into her favorite haunt in Boise for those gargantuan pumpkin chai muffins that she adores—eight were smuggled into China for her by Savola before the time trial, and she wolfed down the tops. She’ll still do her training rides alongside amateurs who try to keep up with one of the world’s best.

And she’ll wear the belt another friend made to commemorate her 35th birthday, with the inscription “You have arrived.”

On a Wednesday in Beijing, half a world from home, those words had the perfect meaning for Kristin Armstrong.

“If you don’t enjoy the journey,” she said, “then it’s just not worth it.”