By PETER KERASOTIS
Florida Today

He will ride into Paris Sunday, through the Champs Elysees, victorious. Yes, victory will be Lance Armstrong's. Again.

That will be the focus, of course. In the 101 years of running the Tour de France, only one man will have won the famed bicycle race six times.

Lance Armstrong.

It will have taken this kind of extraordinary feat for Lance Armstrong to really reach the American public. Through one Tour de France victory, then two, then three, then four, and then even five, most of his native countrymen and women were still hard-pressed to recognize him even if he was standing next to them in a grocery store line. Even now, some are more aware of him because he is Sheryl Crow's boyfriend.

That's amazing, really, especially when you consider that right now Lance Armstrong is America's greatest athlete.

But when was the last time you saw a kid wearing a Lance Armstrong jersey? In fact, when was the first time?

Don't get me wrong. I'm definitely not one to say that athletes and entertainers should be emulated. But I'm also not naive enough to think that they aren't. I've watched dumfounded, and maybe you have too, as entire generations have made fashion and lifestyle choices influenced by the likes of people like Madonna. Let's get real here.

That Lance Armstrong was linked with Sheryl Crow even while he was married with three children should serve as a reminder to the dangers of idolizing someone because of their athletic ability.

But with every mountain he conquered during various stages of the Tour de France - whether it was La Mongie, Plateau de Beille or L'Alpe d'Huez - we were also metaphorically reminded of the greatest mountain Lance Armstrong ever conquered.

Cancer.

Most of us have never known the pain of trying to ride a bicycle up miles of mountain. Most of us probably don't know of anyone else who has done that, either.

But cancer, we know. A friend, a family member, ourselves. Cancer's hateful hand has touched us all.

When Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, the news was barely a blip on our radar screen, a mere footnote in most sports sections. Sure he was a top American cyclist at the time. But that was like being known as one of the tallest midgets, as much respect and ink the sport received in the mainstream sports press at the time.

Besides, and here's the most amazing thing, Armstrong had never so much as won even one Tour de France before he had cancer. That's right. All six of these grueling, historical Tour de France victories came after he survived cancer.

Every time it is mentioned that Lance Armstrong is a cancer survivor, it is done so with a certain passing reference that belies what he actually went through. He had testicular cancer, which most people now know. But cancerous lesions also spread to his brain, significantly lessening his chances for survival.

When he had brain surgery, holes were drilled into his head in order to get at the tumors. It was major surgery, and it was no sure thing that he would live through it.

"The night before brain surgery, I thought about death," Armstrong wrote in his autobiography It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.

"I searched out my larger values, and asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in a peaceful manner?"

It is a chilling read. Also inspirational.

Lance Armstrong's mountain was not just cancer, as if that wasn't bad enough. His racing team dropped him, as did almost every one of his sponsors. Everywhere he looked, a back was turning on him. He was broke and had no health insurance, at least not until Oakley, the manufacturer of performance sunglasses, stepped in and helped.

It would've been easy to give up, give in, or give out.

But Lance Armstrong did none of the above. He fought his disease. With a mixture of ferocity and fear, he fought it.

And won.

After he survived cancer, Armstrong asked his doctors a question he didn't want to know the answer to while he was fighting for his life. What really were his chances for survival? His doctor told him it was three percent.

"Anything is possible," Armstrong wrote in his book. "You can be told you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight. ... The one thing the illness convinced me of beyond all doubt - more than any experience I've had as an athlete - is that we are much better than we know. We have unrealized capacities that sometimes only emerge in crisis."

So when he rides into Paris Sunday, and across the finish line at the Champs Elysees, Lance Armstrong will win the Tour de France for an unprecedented sixth time. It will be one of history's greatest athletic victories.

But the greater victory, the one we can all gain inspiration from, is the victory of the human spirit.