Achieving the Impossible: The Leukemia Survivor Who Conquered the Tour de France
Roy Loewenberg did the impossible: he conquered the Tour de France.
But just before reaching the finish line in Paris, he was on the brink of breaking down. “I told myself: ‘I beat Leukemia, so it’s okay if the Tour de France beats me’,” he says.
As evening fell, the sun finally returned to Paris after a full day of pouring rain. And at last, Roy Loewenberg could capture the victory photo he had dreamed of ever since he set out on the impossible mission of his life: to complete every single meter of the Tour de France route, exactly one year after Leukemia nearly took his life.
With his children beside him, he raised high the bike he had ridden for 3,338 kilometers across France — through climbs and descents, in heavy rain and blistering heat. But only he knows how close he came to not making it.
He adds: “I thought it was over. That I was done. That I couldn’t go on. That I had reached my limit.”
As unbelievable as that may sound to those who know this so-called rock man — “The Lion from Tel Aviv,” as he was nicknamed by members of the Tour 21 team who took on the challenge to raise funds for Cure Leukaemia — his breaking point came just before Paris. It was stage 20, the day before the sweet finale awaited him at the finish line in the French capital.
And this came after he’d already endured the hardest days: the peaks of the Pyrenees, 5,000-meter climbing days, eight hours in the saddle — at nearly racing pace. So why give up right on the verge of victory?
But his body was shutting down. Torrential rain and freezing cold hit him on a long descent after nearly three hours of riding.
“I was descending and couldn’t feel my hands,” he says. “I looked at them — they felt like foreign objects. I couldn’t brake, let alone shift gears. Everything was frozen. I was shaking. I was close to hypothermia. We stopped at the bottom of the climb, with 90 kilometers still to go.
“I was finished. Destroyed. Exhausted. Drained. Shivering. Frozen. I told myself it wouldn’t be so bad to quit now, not to make it to Paris. I even prepared my excuse: ‘Roy, you beat Leukemia — so it’s okay if the Tour de France beats you.’”
But of course — there’s a “but.” Anyone who knows Loewenberg knows there must be a “but.”
As his teammates tried to warm him up and urged him to change out of his wet clothes and not give in — a spark reignited inside him.
“I remembered that just yesterday, I promised my father there was no way I’d quit,” he adds. “And there’s no chance my kids, who were waiting for me at the finish line in Paris, would think their dad gave up.”
This story, which began when Leukemia struck a 46-year-old hi-tech professional and amateur cyclist, continued with a bone marrow transplant that saved his life, and led him — still thin and fragile — to the training camp of Israel – Premier Tech as a special guest, ends with a nearly unbelievable happy ending.
“To be honest? Even I didn’t think I had a chance,” Loewenberg admits. “When I decided to take this on, I gave myself maybe a 10% chance. But everything changed when Israel – Premier Tech decided to help me — with training, professional support, and equipment. In the toughest moments, I told myself: if they believe I can do it — then maybe I have a reason to believe in myself too.”
You don’t go through a journey of suffering like this — from the depths to the summit — without discovering who you really are.
Loewenberg says: “During this journey I learned that anything is possible. It’s not a cliché. I learned that the spirit, the mind, has a strength the body doesn’t. That the brain can carry the body to unimaginable places. And by the end of this journey — I realized I had changed. I’m no longer the same person who started. I thought I was strong — but now I know that nothing can stop me.”
So what now? What does a man do after reaching his Everest?
“Now I’m setting out on a mission — to plant hope in people who have gone through what I have, or even worse,” he says. “To show them it can be overcome. Life isn’t all rosy now — it will take a few more years until the risk of relapse drops. I’m still on heavy medication. But my path is clear: to dedicate my life to giving.”
In the meantime? He’s trying to find time to respond to the hundreds of messages pouring in. Many people wrote to say they didn’t believe he would actually do it.
“Lots of people doubted me,” he laughs. “And to be honest? They had good reason. Even I doubted myself…”
