July 5, 2005

By CHIP BROWN / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN – When Linda Armstrong Kelly sat down to write a book about being the mother of Lance Armstrong, she thought it would be a chronicle of how to raise a six-time Tour de France champion.

Instead, it became a personal, sometimes painful recollection of battling her own demons. In No Mountain High Enough: Raising Lance, Raising Me , Kelly writes about being raised in a poor household in Dallas, giving birth to Lance – her only child – at age 17 and suffering through three failed marriages.

"There are a lot of things about my mom I didn't know until I read the book, which is really weird," Lance said recently in Austin. "I've never really met my biological father, and I never really asked her what kind of guy he was or what he was into.

"It took me reading the book to learn those things. I was in Cabo San Lucas [Mexico] all alone when I read that book. All I took down there was my swimming shorts and that book. I read it cover to cover, and it rocked my world."

There is plenty of compelling detail about Lance's rise from rambunctious child to the greatest cyclist in Tour de France history.

Stories range from weekend mom-and-son road trips as Lance turned pro in triathlon at age 16 to his fight against testicular cancer beginning with his diagnosis on Oct. 2, 1996. There are also tales from Lance's restless teenage years, including the day Mom found a "stash of condoms" in her son's bedroom.

But Kelly realized her personal history of family dysfunction – a controlling mother, an alcoholic father, the failed marriages and her teen pregnancy – would have to be a big part of the book, too.

"I didn't w