Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong (12 page)

Bonds, cranky and condescending, may be the most disliked of athletes. As a cyclist, Armstrong never threatened any records held dear by Americans."

Armstrong himself is aware of the damage caused by L'Equipe's story and how it will affect how he is perceived. "It's always going to be a case of did he or didn't he?" he said.

"But it has always been a case of did he or didn't he? I mean, this is not the first time somebody's come along and said, 'Ah, he's doped. Ah, he rode too fast. Ah, his story's too miraculous -no way, he's doped'. This has been going on for seven years. And I suspect it will continue."

What they said...

In Europe

'For the first time these are no longer rumours or insinuations, these are proven scientific facts. L'Equipe have shown that I was fooled, we were all fooled' - Jean-Marie Leblanc, director of the Tour de France, inset.

'Lance Armstrong has fallen. He is not the person he pretended to be ... The American can no longer be considered as a sporting legend' - Le Monde

'Armstrong has betrayed us ... today the king is naked a the American should be stripped of his titles, at least the victory in the 1999 Tour' - Le Figaro

In America

'They [the French] don't mind us when we're buying their wine or storming German pillboxes, but they have never been able to accept their jewel being dominated by an American' - Mike Lopresti, USA Today

'France cannot accept that Armstrong has dominated their national sporting event for the past seven years. It's tempting to wonder why, since the French are rather experienced at accepting defeat. It must have something to do with Armstrong being an American - and a Texan' - editorial in the Austin American-Statesman, Armstrong's home-town newspaper

'A firm denial has lost its credibility when every culprit claims innocence, when the sprinter Kelli White denies and then confesses, when Rafael Palmeiro [the Baltimore Orioles baseball star] shakes a finger at Congress to underscore his goody-goody stance on a steroid-free body, but his positive test is revealed a few months later' u Selena Roberts, The New York Times

'It's too bad that athletes are now considered by the public to be guilty until proven innocent. But their forebears have lied so often in the same situations that they can't be trusted solely on their word any more. That's the unfortunate world Armstrong now lives in' - David Steele, Chicago Tribune.

The clean machine

Paul Kimmage

June 29, 2008

"

Here I am, on this team that is really trying to stick by the books and this guy is making fun of us for playing by the rules

"

Jonathan Vaughters is telling me a story about the pivotal moment of his life as a professional cyclist. It happened on a sunny Tuesday morning in the city of Pau, as he prepared for the start of the 14th stage of the 2001 Tour de France. Spirits were high in the peloton that morning; the last of the high mountain peaks had been crossed two days before and there were just six stages to race before the chequered flag in Paris.

Vaughters had never made it to Paris. In 1999, his Tour debut, he had been brought down in a spectacular pile-up on the second stage. A year later, he crashed out again, overshooting a corner at speed on a descent in the Pyrenees. His third appearance in the race had been the best to date. He had experienced the thrill of winning (his team, Credit Agricole, had the team time trial), survived the Alps and Pyrenees, and was nailed-on to make his first Tour finish.

And then, incredibly, the curse had struck again.

The previous afternoon, while out on a leisurely ride with his teammates during the rest day in Pau, a wasp had become entrapped in his sunglasses and stung him in the eye. Vaughters was allergic to wasp stings and by the time he had returned to the team hotel, his eye was the size of a golf ball. The pain was only beginning.

"The only thing that's going to reduce that swelling is a cortisone injection which, as you know, is proscribed," the team doctor announced. "Take it and you'll test positive."

Vaughters was distraught. "But that's ridiculous...I can't see! I can't ride my bike! How will I finish the race?"

"I'm sorry Jonathan," the doctor replied. "I can give you the injection but you will have to abandon the race. There are no exemptions for allergies. We have to do this by the book."

"I understand," Vaughters conceded, "but I'm not going to abandon. We'll see how it is in the morning."

Sleep did not come easily that night to the 29-year-old American. Here he was, trying to compete clean against rocket machines, juiced on (undetectable) EPO, growth hormone and testosterone and he was the guy at risk of being exposed as a cheat! The irony was sickening.

The morning brought no respite. He ate breakfast with his teammates, changed into his racing kit and stepped off the team coach in Pau looking like the Elephant Man. His Tour was effectively over but as a gesture to highlight the absurdity of the doping laws he had decided to sign-on as normal, line-up for the start, and climb off his bike as soon as the flag dropped.

As he made his way to the start line, aching with disappointment, he crossed the path of a chap he describes as "a famous rider". Most of the other racers had greeted him with sympathy that morning but this particular rider didn't do sympathy. No, his speciality was contempt.

"Poor Jonathan and his stupid little team," he spat. "What the f*** are you like? If you were on my team this would have been taken care of, but now you are not going to finish the Tour de France because of a wasp sting."

Vaughters was gutted.

"I thought, 'F***! Here I am, on this team that is really trying to stick by the books and this guy is making fun of us for playing by the rules'," he says. "My heart just left me after that. It just made me sad, just irrevocably sad. I raced (the following year) in 2002 but that was the moment that effectively ended my career. Phew! (sighs) I was done. I didn't want to race any more. It just didn't seem to matter to me after that."

He returned to his native Colorado with his wife, Alisa, and son Charlie and applied his considerable intellect to the business of selling real estate. He wrote wine columns and antique furniture reviews for specialist magazines and dabbled in stocks and shares. The transition to normal life was seamless. Almost everything he touched turned to gold. And then he did something that completely defied logic. He began floating the notion of an anti-doping cycling team that would compete in the Tour de France.

The cynics went to town on him: "What was Jonathan on?" But he wouldn't be denied and next Saturday, when the Tour begins in Brest, "Team Clean" (aka Team Garmin-Chipotle) will join the circus on the grid. Why has he returned? What does he hope to achieve? This is the story of the revenge of Jonathan Vaughters.

It is often said that before you judge a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. I have walked that mile with Jonathan Vaughters; I have spent four days in his shoes but don't ask me to judge him. And I definitely can't explain him. We have returned to the pivotal moment of his career - the exchange with the famous rider in 2001 - and I've been wrestling with the word he used to describe how he felt.

"You used the word 'sad'," I observe.

"Yeah," he replies.

"Not anger?"

"No."

"There was no element of anger at all?"

"I'm not saying there was no element of anger but it was definitely more sad...yeah, I will stick to that."

"No resentment?" I press.

He sighs.

"...At the injustice of it all?"

"There was some, of course," he replies, dispassionately. "The wasp sting really brought to a head a lot of the conflict I had going on inside of me. It really brought home the fact that, 'Okay, maybe there just isn't justice'."

He crosses his legs and awaits the next question. The chime of a carriage clock fills the void. His calm is unnerving. What does it take, I wonder, to get Jonathan Vaughters mad?

I'm trying my best. The interview has entered its fifth hour and the discussion has turned to his experiences of doping.

"Did you have any first-hand experience of doping in the States?" I ask.

"No, not in the US," he replies.

"Not at all?"

"No, racing in the States is much less...I mean half the guys you are racing against have full-time jobs. You know? It is much, much less demanding."

"What about when you joined the US Postal Service team in 1998?"

"In '98? Why do you need to know that?" he laughs.

"I need to know when you witnessed it first-hand," I explain. "I'm asking whether it was in '98 that you witnessed it first-hand."

"I know," he laughs. "And I am asking you: Why do you need to know that?"

"I would have thought it was a logical extension of what we have been talking about."

"Well, no," he disagrees. "Essentially, you are leading me down a path where I end up having to answer questions that I can't back out of."

"I'm not leading you down any path," I counter. "I'm trying to explain how you founded Team Clean. I am asking you about your experiences of doping in cycling."

"No, that's totally understandable," he concedes.

"I'm not asking you anything I didn't ask Greg LeMond."

"No, of course, and I wouldn't expect that. I guess I would just say that my time at US Postal Service was...I kind of almost have to leave that as a 'No comment'. And you can take that however you would like."

"Okay, fine. You are painting me a picture and I'm reading between the lines."

"And you're welcome to read between the lines," he says. "I'm completely okay with that."

"My perception is that you doped."

"You're an intelligent person," he smiles. "So your perception is ... (laughs)"

"I want a 'yes' or a 'no'."

"I know you want a 'yes' or a 'no'."

"I want to know: Did you dope? I want to know: Why did you dope? And I want to know how you felt about doping?"

"And what I will tell you is that people are free to make the judgments they want out of my cycling career," he insists.

"Jonathan, I don't understand what your problem is here," I reply, exasperated. "It's a valid question. I'm not going to walk away from it."

"I'm not asking you to walk away from it," he says. "I can see that you are trying to establish a background and that's fine but what I'm saying is that I'm just not going to talk about it and that's it. You can take that however you want."

I take it badly. He doesn't flinch. Later that evening, I'm venting my frustrations to his wife, Alisa, at dinner when she suddenly makes sense of him. "The thing you have to remember about Jonathan," she smiles, "is that he's the son of an attorney."

An only son, Jonathan Vaughters was born and raised in Denver, Colorado.

His father, Jim, was the attorney. His mother, Donna, was a speech pathology professor. A small, wiry, boy, it wasn't a conventional childhood. His bedtime stories were Thomas Jefferson quotes from the American Bill of Rights and his most vivid childhood memories were of watching his father in court.

"The one time my dad would be passionate was in front of a jury," he says. "Sometimes we wouldn't have a babysitter and he would take me with him and I'd sit there, listening as he set out his case in a very nonchalant way: 'Well, if you could explain that to me please because I don't understand'. It was never confrontational, but you could see him leading the witness down this path where they had no other option but to answer truthfully.

"Every fourth of July, he would sit me down and force me into reading the constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. That quote from Thomas Jefferson - 'It's better to have five guilty men go free than one innocent man in jail' - was ground into me. He believed, although imperfect, that the legal system of the United States was one of the milestones of mankind."

The thing that really set Jim Vaughters apart was his clients.

"He never wanted to work for a big law firm," Jonathan says. "His clients were working-class folk who got themselves in financial trouble or were going through a divorce and we would sometimes get paid in hamburgers or firewood. That was often a source of tension with my parents but dad never backed down. He only ever took cases he believed in."

Vaughters never envisaged a career in sport. He was hopelessly uncoordinated with any shape of ball but developed a talent for wheels in his teens - go karts first, and then bicycles. The strategy of racing fascinated him.

He had been blessed with great lungs and a mountain climber's frame and was soon making a name for himself.

In 1993, he finished second in the Tour of Venezuela with the US amateur team and was offered a professional contract with Santa Clara, a small Spanish team run by Jose-Louis Nunes, a devout Roman Catholic and member of Opus Dei. His parents were horrified. "What about your education?" they asked. But Jonathan was sold. "I thought, 'Sure, it's a pretty big risk but I'm not going to get to see the world any other way." He was 20 years old.

In the spring of 1994, he caught a flight to Valencia and began his apprenticeship as a professional cyclist. One of the earliest team talks was a sermon on the evil of doping - a message delivered regularly by Nunes over the next three years. "The team was essentially funded by Opus Dei. We had a director who had taken a vow of celibacy and went to church three times a day. 'We're going to change cycling', he said. 'Doping is immoral and unethical'. He was out to conquer doping ... Well, I don't think '96 was a really great time to do that.

"My teammates thought it was absolutely ludicrous that we didn't dope on this team. We would go to races and all eight of us would be out the back. We got made fun of, quite frankly, by some of the other riders. Mentally, the saving grace for me was that I still had nothing better to do with my life. I was the infinite optimist. 'I'm going to improve. Things will get better. They will soon develop a test for EPO'. But boy did we suck."