Outside of Cycling
In 1997, Armstrong founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which supports people affected by cancer. The foundation raises awareness of cancer and has raised more than $325 million from the sale of yellow Livestrong bracelets. During his first retirement beginning after the 2005 season, he also maintained other interests. He was the pace car driver of the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 for the 2006 Indianapolis 500.
In 2007, Armstrong with Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Warrick Dunn, Jeff Gordon, Mia Hamm, Tony Hawk, Andrea Jaeger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning, and Cal Ripken, Jr. founded Athletes for Hope, a charity that helps professional athletes become involved in charitable causes and aims to inspire non-athletes to volunteer and support the community.
In August 2009, Armstrong headlined the inaugural charity ride "Pelotonia" in Columbus, Ohio, riding over 100 miles on Saturday with the large group of cyclists. He addressed the riders the Friday evening before the two-day ride and helped the ride raise millions for cancer research.
Read more about this topic: Lance Armstrong
Famous quotes containing the word cycling:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)