Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong (3 page)

For much of the time that Conconi blood-doped athletes, the practice did not break sport's rules. But the manipulation of an athlete's blood to articificially create greater oxygen-carrying capacity has always been considered unethical, unsafe and unfair.

Over the 18 years of blood-doping, the cheating involved athletes from many Olympic sports. Officials knew it was happening and in some cases encouraged athletes to become part of it. This was East Germany revisited except that in the way of capitalism, the government was not involved and the rewards were greater. The ghost of systematic doping had returned to haunt sport.

When that van pulled up outside the offices of the Italian Olympic Association in Rome, the prosecutor was offering Coni the opportunity to launch its own inquiry. Few inside would have relished the prospect.

IN MAY, 1996, Italian police became aware of a pharmacy in Tuscany selling large quantities of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) to professional cyclists. Later that month the Tour of Italy began in Greece and spent three days there before crossing the Adriatic and restarting from the Italian port of Brindisi. Secretly, the Carabinieri planned to be in Brindisi and expected their swoop to turn up large quantities of banned drugs. They telephoned Coni, checked the arrival time of the ferry into Brindisi and then began the long trek south. Two investigators travelled in one car; the driver and a colleague who read La Gazzetta dello Sport in the passenger's seat.

"Here we were," recalled the second investigator last week, "going to the south to make a raid on the Giro d'Italia. I am reading La Gazzetta and I come across a tiny story. It says 'the police are planning a surprise visit to the race in Brindisi where they will check the team cars for drugs'. I struck the dashboard with my fist. I was angry, angry, angry. How did they know? Why was it printed in the newspaper? It made us more determined. We swore that from then on we would never let go. We would be like a dog that has its enemy by the ankle."

Informed that the Carabinieri would be in Brindisi, cycling teams took evasive action. Some team officials opted to return to Italy by road, driving from Greece, through Albania, Montenegro and Croatia, before returning to the race via northern Italy.

Others dumped their stock of drugs during the ferry crossing to Brindisi. Vanquished, the Carabinieri returned to their bases and over the following weeks colleagues ribbed them about reports of enormously big fish, with limitless stamina, swimming the Adriatic sea.

The trawl for the big fish of the doping world had only just begun. After the Brindisi humiliation, the Carabinieri decided all professional cycling teams were suspect. They looked closely at the teams and the riders and discovered many used doctors who had been trained and had their base at the University of Ferrara, run by the most famous sports doctor of all, Conconi. In a short time they had enough information to investigate the professor. Other probes would follow.

Professor Conconi first revealed his interest in blood-doping in 1981, although he preferred to call it "blood transfusion". Conconi had seen the blood-doped Lasse Viren win the 5,000m and 10,000m gold medals at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and again at Montreal in 1976. He believed he could improve upon the methods of Finnish doctors. Even though it was widely known Viren had cheated, the IOC did not ban blood-doping until 1986.

Its refusal to act was an invitation to Conconi. He met with officials of Coni and convinced them blood-doping would be good for the country's athletes. Coni agreed not only to go with the blood-doping programme but to fund it. Coni also used its influence with the various sports federations to encourage co-operation with Conconi.

The proposal was presented in the guise of science: each athlete would undertake the so-called "Conconi test" to determine his or her potential and would then take part in a programme of blood transfusions. Conconi talked confidently of the benefits of his methods; a 10,000m runner, he claimed, would improve by 30-40 seconds, a 5,000m runner by 15-20 seconds, a 1500m runner by three to five seconds. Many Italian and international athletes worked with Conconi: cyclists and runners, skiers and canoeists, basketball players and biathletes.

Not all surrendered to the promise of improved performance. Stefano Mao, the outstanding long-distance runner of the late Eighties, consistently refused to work with Conconi. So, too, did the miler Claudio Patrignani, who visited the professor in early 1984. "He invited me to the University of Ferrara and when we met he proposed blood transfusion. I said no, I was the son of very simple people, my father was a refuse collector. I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror."

From 1981-86, Conconi blood-doped with the co-operation of Coni and the tacit approval of the IOC, who did not ban the unethical and dangerous practice. Conconi was, in fact, very much part of the sporting establishment, a member of the medical committee of Coni and also on a medical research committee of the IOC.

In 1986 the Italian government made it unlawful to blood-dope and soon afterwards the IOC added the practice to its list of banned products. Three years later EPO made its way onto sport's illicit drug market and was quickly banned. The game, as we had known it, would never be the same. EPO achieved the same results as the old-fashioned blood-doping but was easier, quicker and more powerful.

Conconi and his team of doctors at the University of Ferrara remained in the front line of elite sport. As well as Conconi himself, Michele Ferrari, Ilario Casoni, Luigi Cecchini and Giovanni Grazzi were lauded for their abilities as sports trainers. They were key players, the men who got their athletes going faster and then kept them going. All five doctors are now official suspects in the Ferrara investigation.

Remarkably, Conconi stayed above suspicion for almost 15 years. But then he was wonderfully connected. On his training rides, he was accompanied by the current president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. Asked what he spent his time doing at the University of Ferrara, Conconi said he was in the process of finding a test that would rid sport of the EPO scourge. In 1994 he applied to Coni for funding to continue his search for an EPO test and, when turned down, he sought and received financial backing from the IOC. Dr Patrick Schamasch, the head of the IOC's medical commission, has said Conconi was given $60,000 in 1996 and the same amount last year.

That search for a test to detect EPO is an important element in the case against Conconi. At the 1993 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, he gave a talk to the IOC which detailed his attempts to find ways of identifying EPO use. In the same year Conconi and his team at Ferrara had a paper on the same subject published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine.

Both the talk and paper were based on an experiment that, according to Conconi, was carried out on 23 amateur athletes who, with their written consent, had been treated with EPO. Conconi's conclusion was that although he was making progress, he had not come up with a definitive test for EPO. Four years later Bologna police raided the University of Ferrara and, as part of their investigation, seized Conconi files.

By matching the results quoted in Conconi's 1993 study with results found in the files taken from his computer, the authorities discovered the 23 amateurs did not exist. They were in fact 23 professional athletes who were competing at the highest level of their sport while their blood tests were used in Conconi's experiment. Conconi's 23 included six cyclists from the Carrera team, one of whom was the former world champion and Tour de France winner Stephen Roche. The Irishman stressed he worked with his team doctor, Grazzi, and only once met Conconi. Roche also insists he was not aware of being involved in any experiment and says he merely did blood tests which Grazzi passed onto the University of Ferrara for analysis.

On one page of the Conconi file the 23 are listed, with the Carrera riders each being given a number of fictitious names. A source close to the investigation claims that the false names were probably created to disguise the frequency with which the Carrera riders were being blood-tested. This source also claimed he had seen haematocrit readings (percentage of red cells to volume of blood) of 49.6 and 50.2 for Roche in the Conconi files. Readings of 50 or greater are deemed to indicate but not prove EPO use. Roche claims his haematocrit never exceeded 46-47%.

Documents in the possession of The Sunday Times show that in Conconi's files there are a number of listings for Roche in a column indicating he was being treated with EPO.

Conconi's test sought to highlight the rate of erythropoiesis, which is stimulated by EPO, in the blood. The results are indicated by what he describes as a transferrin receptor concentration. According to the Conconi study, an untreated athlete (one without EPO) could not have a concentration higher than 3.1. The report concludes that "the increased concentration of transferrin receptor could be employed as an indirect indicator of EPO misuse in Sports".

The results he and his doctors keyed into their secret files after analysis of blood tests on Roche and other athletes are damning. They show Roche with the fifth highest concentration of the 23 who were tested. Tests carried out on June 3 and June 14 of 1993 (and revealed in the files under the bogus names of "Rocchi" and "Roncati" respectively) both show readings of 5.5. The highest level is the 6.5 recorded under the name of a cyclists called "Chiari" and "Chierici", in reality Claudio Chiappucci and Mario Chiesa. Both are former teammates of Roche in the Carrera squad and have denied involvement in the Conconi experiment.

Roche also continues to deny any involvement in doping. He said yesterday that he had not known about the assumed names until recently, and he had telephoned his former team doctor, Giovanni Grazzi, for an explanation.

"Grazzi has told me it wasn't that unusual for cod-names to be used for high profile athletes. I am learning about this situation from journalists. I don't where it is all going but I wonder if I should be talking to my solictors and trying to find out exactly what is happening. I can't understand why this is in the files. I would love to be able to get Conconi to stand up and say that I took EPO because I know I didn't. I was never part of any study, I gave no consent for anything like that."

Roche says he underestimated the amount of doping that was in the sport. "I look back on it now and I think I must have a great rider, to have beaten so many guys who were using stuff. Maybe if I had taken the stuff, I would have won five Tours de France."

The IOC, meanwhile, is still expecting Conconi to report to them on his progress next month. "We have heard nothing for five months, which is normal," said Schamasch. "We will pay him on receipt of the report."

AS THE investigators burrow deep into the sub-culture of doping, Professor Sandro Donati is satisfied that at last sport's sickness is being seriously treated in his country. He works for the Italian Olympic Association and for much of the last 18 years his has been a lone voice of opposition against blood-doping. At the time Conconi first proposed his blood transfusions, Donati was coach to Italy's 800m and 1500m runners. He advised his athletes to stay away from the University of Ferrara and most of them did. "There are not bad athletes and good athletes," he says, "there are doctors and officials and coaches who influence athletes to go one way or another."

Donati reminded his athletes about Kaarlo Maaninka, the Finnish distance runner who won the bronze in the 5000m at the Moscow Olympics. After returning home Maaninka admitted he had blood-doped and felt shame about the medal he had won. He offered to return his medal but as there was no IOC law forbidding blood-doping, the offer was not taken up.

Because of his opposition to his country's systematic blood-doping, Donati was marginalised within his own organisation. Although he had proven himself as both a good and an ethical coach at the highest levels, he was moved to children's coaching in the late 1980s and from there onto the underfunded scientific research department of Coni. But Donati refused to give up. In 1994 he moved quietly through the world of professional cycling. He interviewed doctors, riders and team managers and by guaranteeing them anonymity, persuaded them to speak honestly about doping within their sport. Donati's report was a shocking account of the extent of doping in cycling.

"What should I do with this?" asked the then president of Coni, Mario Pescante, when Donati presented him with his report. "Bring it to the magistrate," replied Donati. Pescante now says he read the report but thought it too general and put it on a shelf. The report that later would become known as the "Donati dossier" lay on Coni shelves for over two years. In the list of 13 suspects into the Conconi investigation, Mario Pescante's name appears first.

Donati hopes the investigators and the magistrates will do a good job for Italian sport but insists the problems of his country are the problems of international sport. "Ultimately," he says, "things cannot change just because of police investigations in Italy. They will only change because sports people want them to change."

Puzzling silence of an inspirational fighter

David Walsh

June 11, 2000

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The exploration of his fear, his defiance and his occasional despair is an absorbing journey

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Occasionally you come across something that gets your attention and locks it in a vice-grip. Lance Armstrong's recently published book, It's Not About The Bike - My Journey Back to Life, does it. It is an extraordinary story of a cancer survivor and, as the title suggests, it hasn't that much to do with Armstrong's prowess as a cyclist. The final third of the book deals with the Texan's win in last year's Tour de France but the climax of the story came long before that.

The life and times of Lance Armstrong are the stuff of heroism. Linda Mooneyham was 17 when she gave birth to Lance, but soon split from her husband. Linda and Lance grew up in a Dallas suburb, as much soul-mates as mother and son. Linda was a worker and a fighter, qualities she passed on to her son.