Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong (2 page)

It was strange to sit among the rows of journalists in Sestriere. Many of those who watched dispassionately had cheered and cried when Claudio Chiappucci achieved another spectacular victory on the same mountain seven years before. Chiappucci would later be suspected of using EPO and most of the journalists remembered how they had celebrated his success.

They also lauded Bjarne Riis in 1996, Jan Ullrich in 1997 and Marco Pantani last year, and all have since been implicated in drug controversies. So they look at this rider, whom they have always known to be a one-day rider, who is suddenly one of the great stage racers. They don't criticise, they don't accuse, they simply reserve their right not to applaud. Aware that Armstrong has lost 10 kilos in weight since his cancer and so is able to climb better, reminded that he has prepared thoroughly for this race, many remain unsure nonetheless.

Is this the death of professional sport or the birth of a more aggressive, less cheerleading sports journalism? One newspaper asked Vincenzo Santini, the Italian manager of the Cantina Tollo team, what he thought of Armstrong. "I don't know," he said. "One can certainly ask questions. Cycling has become big business. Should we applaud or not? Me, it is the sport that I love.

"I hope that the governments and the cycling authorities can find a way out of the mess that cycling is in. Until that happens we can forget the joy of the victory. And in cycling, that is the most beautiful thing."

Witnesses to Armstrong's extraordinary performances over the past two weeks understand Santini's lament.

Flawed fairytale

David Walsh

July 25, 1999

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For too long sportswriting has been unrestrained cheerleading, suspending legitimate doubts and settling for stories of sporting heroism

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They say the Tour de France has regained its eminence; that Lance Armstrong will be a great winner of a great race. They quote the number of riders drug-tested and remind us there have been no scandals this year. "The Tour," said its organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc, on Thursday, "has been saved." They can peddle any line they wish. What they cannot do is control our emotional response to the race.

This afternoon the yellow-jerseyed Armstrong and his fellow riders will speed down Rue de Rivoli, wheel left into the Place de la Concorde before turning right onto the Champs Elysees, and some of us will watch in sadness. This has been no renaissance Tour, rather a retreat into the old ways of the peloton, where doping is their business, not ours. Where the law of silence supersedes all others.

The sadness lies in how this damned race still enraptures us. The way a small town tends its chrysanthemums before the race's arrival, the reverence with which a fan reaches out to touch a rider on the mountainside. And the sheer majesty of the course. On Wednesday, we weave our way through dense low clouds as we drive towards the summit of the Tourmalet and then, magically, less than a mile from top, there is sparkling sunshine. To stand above the clouds on the Tourmalet and wait for the peloton to climb above the mist is no everyday experience.

Spiritually, the race remains in the shadow of its past. We stop near an old church on the Col de Menthe in the Pyrenees. Local people picnic on a low wall from which they can see for miles. In the valley, television helicopters hover, telling us the race will soon come. Word comes of 11 breakaways, including "trois Francais". Eyes scan the gaps between the pine trees, all seeking the first sight of the breakaways.

This is where the music dies. On this hill, in this tiny village. You see the leaders approach the first steep slopes on the Col de Menthe and, almost immediately, the three French riders are left behind by the other eight. There is no logic in why Jean Cyril Robin and Francois Simon should be outpaced, for they are at least as good as the eight who now distance them.

"I was riding alongside a Spaniard," said one of the French riders, who would not be named. "I was turning the pedals as fast as I could, out of breath and losing my place. He was chatting away, having no difficulty with the pace."

Robin finished sixth in last year's Tour de France. Simon is the French champion. But for three weeks the pattern has been the same. With the exception of the disgraced Richard Virenque, the other 39 French riders have been unable to keep up. They have tried to win just one of the race's 20 legs but failed - something that has not happened for 73 Tours.

"Have you seen how fat some of the French teams are?" asked Manolo Saix, the Spaniard who manages the Once team.

Tempting as it is for those who want to dismiss the latest line of losers, his view makes no sense. French riders are not less dedicated than their rivals and their obliteration in this Tour can only be explained by doping. French cyclists are riding this race with fewer drugs than their rivals. This has little to do with their virtue or morality, but follows the intervention of the police last year and the bi-monthly blood-testing by the French federation. For such testing does help. It has, however, created a Tour racing to two speeds.

"If by this expression you mean there are clean riders and others who are not (clean), then the answer is yes: this is cycling at two speeds," said Dr Armand Megret, head of the French federation's medical commission. "Doping has not been eradicated."

French riders hinted at the beginning of the race that if they believed their rivals were using drugs, they would not suffer silently. Then they watched the alienation of Christophe Bassons and thought again. Bassons dared to speak about doping in the peloton and because of that he became an outcast. His crimes were honesty and innocence. Within the peloton they ridiculed him. Cynicism without frontiers.

Before the mob turned the screw on Bassons, he offered glimpses of the reality: it was extremely difficult for a clean rider to win anything in the Tour; a number of rivals found it hard to believe Armstrong's performances - and a much greater number resented Bassons's openness. "For a clean Tour, you must have Bassons," said one banner on the road to Saint Flour, but by then Monsieur Propre had been cracked and sent on his way.

As journalists, we do not care for losers. The former cyclist Paul Kimmage tells a story of sharing rooms with Stephen Roche during Roche's run of success in 1987: "At night the journalists came to the room and completely ignored my presence before sitting on my bed, half-crushing my foot."

Gilles Delion was 23 when he rode his first Tour de France in 1990 and did outstandingly well to finish 15th. Delion, like Kimmage and Bassons, wouldn't take drugs, and before it had truly begun, a promising career meandered downwards. Who cared? Asked what he thought of the Tour of Redemption, Delion smiled. "That makes me laugh. The redemption affects just one part of the peloton," he said.

If you accept the notion of two pelotons and two speeds, there is an obvious question: can such a race be won by a clean rider? Quick, too quick, to celebrate winners, the 1,200 journalists on the Tour have been divided, and a significant minority have chosen simply to report Armstrong's victory. The French have been the most sceptical, and even though the American has been scathing in his criticism of the reaction, the French do understand the sport.

"The attitude of the French press has been despicable," said a Dutch journalist. "There is no evidence and in Holland everyone gives Armstrong credit." And what if the suspicions are well founded? "Everyone knows Tour de France riders are doped. If you don't accept that you shouldn't be covering the sport."

For too long sportswriting has been unrestrained cheerleading, suspending legitimate doubts and settling for stories of sporting heroism. Of course there are times when it is right to celebrate, but there are other occasions when it is equally correct to keep your hands by your side and wonder.

This not to suggest Armstrong has done anything wrong in his preparation for this triumph, but the need for an inquiry is overwhelming. He has always been an outstanding cyclist, something that was clear from his first year in the peloton. But for four years he was a one-day rider and it is highly unusual in this sport for such a rider to become a champion-stage racer.

That the change happened after his successful battle with life-threatening cancer three years ago does not make it any easier to understand. Part of Armstrong's difficulty is that the Tour itself is so tainted with drugs and the certainty that many are still doping. Before any other question, there is the issue of whether a clean rider can win the Tour. Neither have Armstrong nor his US Postal team manager, Johan Bruyneel, reassured us with their words. Asked last month about the problem of doping in the sport, Bruyneel said: "The situation is very simple. Cycling is a sport in a very bad light and the reason we got there is the fact that three years ago the riders accepted too easily the fact that the authorities could install blood controls. Having these controls would have been a very good thing if it had not been done only in cycling."

Reminded that it was the riders who proposed the blood controls, Bruyneel replied: "Yes, but who were those riders? They were riders near the end of their careers."

Asked about the exposure of Festina's systematic doping programme, Armstrong said he was "greatly surprised by it". Questioned about whether he discussed the problem of doping with other riders, Armstrong replied: "No, not at all." Listening to the race leader, one could be forgiven for concluding that his sport didn't have a problem.

Three of the top five in this year's Tour were part of Festina's intensive doping programme last season. Two of the three, Alex Zulle and Laurent Dufaux, served absurdly short six-month suspensions and the other, Virenque, has yet to be sanctioned.

As well as refusing to properly punish those who cheat, cycling has yet to implement random and out-of-competition drug testing. Given the extent of the sport's problem, this is depressing.

One journalist asked Armstrong for his definition of doping. "The use of banned performance-enhancing drugs," he replied. That narrow understanding of doping allows the use of drugs which are not banned but should be. Armstrong could have defined it as "the use of performance-enhancing drugs".

One evening during the Tour, Laurent Madouas reluctantly agreed to answer questions. Now a rider with Festina, Madouas rode with Armstrong when they were part of the Motorola team. We met late in the evening, after he had had a bad day in the mountains. "I rode hard yesterday, today I hadn't the legs." Madouas understood that the conversation would soon turn to Armstrong. "Lance Armstrong was always a natural leader."

What of his Tour de France performances? Were the suspicions about him unfair? Madouas didn't like the question and spent time considering his answer. "I think what Lance Armstrong has done, coming back from cancer, has been a fantastic thing. I would not have had the courage to get back on the bike after an illness like that. To come back and win the Tour is something else. Whatever way he has done it, it is a fantastic thing."

And that was as far as Madouas wished to go.

He is, of course, right. Armstrong's recovery from the most virulent form of testicular cancer has been inspirational. Without reservation, we can celebrate that.

Poison in the heart of sport

David Walsh and John Follain

January 9, 2000

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This was East Germany revisited except that in the way of capitalism, the government was not involved and the rewards were greater

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On a freezing morning late last month, a state security van pulled up outside the Bologna office of the prosecutor Giovanni Spinosa. Boxes of files were carried from inside, loaded into the waiting vehicle and soon the van was making its way south towards the Rome headquarters of the Italian Olympic Association (Coni). It was the beginning of a journey that will in time end at the heart of the negligence and corruption that has poisoned Italian and international sport.

Spinosa's investigation concerned doping in sport, the trafficking and administration of drugs dangerous to health. Sports doctor Michele Ferrari and pharmacist Massimo Guandalini are accused of having been involved in a criminal conspiracy and Spinosa has recommended that they be sent to trial.

While on one of his afternoon runs last week, Francesco Conconi would have thought about his former colleague Michele Ferrari. Ten years ago Conconi was a world leader in sports science, Ferrari was his protege. Now Ferrari faces criminal charges, and a separate investigation into Conconi will be concluded by June.

The investigations are two of seven doping-related probes taking place in Italy. Each seeks to discover the extent of the problem in Italian sport but the implications go beyond this country's boundaries. Athletes from different walks of international sport will track the inquiries because many of them are listed in the files of Conconi, Ferrari and other doctors under official scrutiny.

World-class footballers such as Didier Deschamps, Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro Del Piero will be interested to know the outcome of Raffaele Guarianello's probe in Turin, because part of his brief is to examine Juventus FC and the possibility that doping existed at the club. Last year's Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will have seen that his most able teammate, Kevin Livingston, was listed by the Bologna prosecutor as one of the athletes who dealt with Michele Ferrari.

It will become clear that doping in sport depends upon the incompetence and, in many cases, the complicity of sport's doctors, officials and organisations. Prosecutor Pierguido Soprani's investigation into Conconi will show that while the professor and his doctors were blood-doping from the university in Ferrara, they were being funded by Coni and by the International Olympic Committee. Many of those currently being investigated would, not so long ago, have been regarded as pillars of Italian sport.