An athlete’s rise to the top is never a stand-alone effort. Achieving impossible feats needs more than just dogged determination and hard work. The support system an athlete has, and the people they can rely on, can make or break their career. Lance Armstrong had that firm support in the form of his mother.

Linda Armstrong Kelly gave everything she had to support her son’s passion. She has always been at the top of her game in pushing her son to great heights. Even if he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, his mother’s upbringing helped him overcome his battle with cancer.

The inspiring story of Linda Armstrong

Linda Armstrong Kelly was the eldest of three children, raised by an alcoholic father. She supported her family from a young age, taking up babysitting jobs at the tender age of ten. She dreamt of a perfect home while watching the Donna Reed Show. But when Kelly got pregnant as a junior at W.H. Adamson High School, her mother forced her out of the house.

Her boyfriend, the football team captain, turned abusive, and she had to find ways to support little Lance Armstrong. The young mother, pregnant at 16 and divorced at 19, took on clerical and receptionist work and got married again when her son was only three. But her choice of husbands remained poor, leading to what she calls the “trifecta of failed marriages.” 

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Despite marrying a philanderer and an alcoholic and an abusive father of her son, Kelly never let it come in the way of Armstrong’s dreams. According to women for hire magazine, “she pushed Lance to set goals and to pursue his dreams. ‘Follow your heart,’ she told him, adding, ‘I’ll do the rest.’ She’s always believed that part of parenting is to ‘find the one thing that children are passionate about, and support it.’”

Lance Armstrong and his long battle with cancer

On October 2, 1996, at the age of 25, doctors diagnosed Lance Armstrong with stage three (advanced) testicular cancer (embryonal carcinoma). It had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs, brain, and abdomen. 

On finding out about her son’s diagnosis, Linda Armstrong Kelly commented, “All my life, my number-one fear had been losing my job. But suddenly my most important job was being his caregiver.” It is hard for any mother to deal with her child’s life-threatening illness.

But it is a testament to how Kelly raised her son, for when asked if she thinks Armstrong would rather be remembered as a champion than a cancer survivor, her response was, “Absolutely not. Lance will tell you cancer is the best thing that ever happened to him.”

After healing from the damage of her three failed relationships, Linda married Ed Kelly in 2002.