Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong (4 page)

Life was hard at first but wherever she worked, Linda got on. Lance was a tough kid, a natural athlete with tremendous endurance. By the time he was 15, he was looking to make money in triathlons and within a year, he was doing that. As soon as he realised he could make it as a professional, cycling became his sport. Wherever Lance went, he travelled with his eyes wide open.

He rode the Tour de France in 1993 and fulfilled an ambition when winning one leg of the three-week race. His victory on the 114-mile leg to Verdun was staggeringly assertive and, at 21, he became the youngest ever winner of a Tour stage. As well as raw strength and endurance, Armstrong was plucky. He didn't wait for his chance to come on the sharp hill before the descent to Verdun that day, he created it.

The kid genuinely had something. Later that year he won the world championships at Oslo, going again where no 21-year-old had gone before. The extraordinary promise of that first year was not fully realised over the following three seasons. Armstrong rode well in the one-day classics and established himself as one of the best in that metier but he did not win as often, nor as big, as was expected.

In September 1996, Armstrong discovered he had cancer. Testicular cancer, lung cancer, lesions on his brain that required surgery and doctors who lied that he had more than a 50/50 chance of surviving. Armstrong's reaction to the diagnosis, his decisions on the treatment that best suited him and his fight against the illness are magnificently told.

He tells of the conversation which followed the news that he would need brain surgery: "I was tired, and in a state of disbelief. It made me blunt. 'You'll have to convince me you know what you're doing', I said to Scott Shapiro, the surgeon.

"'Look, I've done a large number of these', Shapiro said. 'I've never had anyone die, and I've never made anyone worse'.

"'Yeah, but why should you be the person who operates on my head?'"

"'Because as good as you are at cycling, I'm a lot better at brain surgery'."

The clarity of the insight enriches the book. Informed of his illness, Armstrong buys all the cancer books, reads them and begins to fully understand the mental and physical condition that he is going through. The exploration of his fear, his defiance and his occasional despair is an absorbing journey.

Always, there is the feeling of Armstrong's senses being sharpened by the fear of death. Worried he wouldn't survive himself, Armstrong's concern for other cancer sufferers grew and would lead to him setting up the Lance Armstrong Foundation which in a short time has achieved much in the fight against cancer. Armstrong's successful fight against his illness is inspirational. The cancer community has a brave and extremely tenacious advocate.

There is, however, one bit I don't get. Where was the intelligent and the sympathetic Armstrong during last year's Tour de France? Armstrong's victory in the race came 12 months after the Tour was exposed as a drug-riddled circus. The dullest rider in the race knew there would be lots of suspicion and endless questioning. As race leader for most of the Tour, many of the questions were directed at Armstrong. Most of his answers would have made the dullest guy look clever.

He resented the questions and offered thoughtless and overly defensive answers to honest questions. Many of his answers made you wonder what he stood for. Armstrong talked ludicrously of cycling's problems being in the past and was brutally dismissive of fellow rider Christophe Bassons' opinion that doping remained a problem. Bassons may have been slightly naive in the way he expressed his views but in a sport poisoned by doping, two things were clear: he was clean and he was utterly opposed to doping. The Armstrong of It's Not About The Bike would not have ridiculed Bassons.

But he seemed a different man during that Tour. At one press conference, Armstrong said he believed his most dangerous rival in the race, Alex Zulle, was clean. Almost a year before, Zulle had admitted using EPO. So then, a journalist asked Armstrong, did he not think Zulle should speak out against doping and was he not perfectly positioned to do so? Armstrong sidestepped by saying he hadn't spoken to Zulle and, ultimately, it was up to the Swiss rider. Damn it, Lance, why couldn't Zulle say: "I took it last year, I was wrong and I am riding better without it this year?"

Alas, the yellow-jerseyed Lance was not the stricken and admirable cancer patient.

Pharmacy on wheels becomes a sick joke

David Walsh

August 13, 2000

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Is it not astonishing that around 50% of the Tour's peloton should need prescription drugs to compete?

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About this time last year, readers of The Sunday Times wrote passionately about our coverage of Lance Armstrong's sensational win in the Tour de France. As the one who had reported on the Tour, the letters were addressed to me. There were 45 letters. One was complimentary.

When Armstrong came down the Champs Elysees in 1999, I did not feel moved to applaud. That offended people. We had witnessed the fastest Tour in history and it had come 12 months after French police and Customs had shown the pervasive nature of doping in professional cycling. How could we believe that drugs were gone when everybody was riding faster?

Jean Marie Leblanc, the Tour organiser, had billed the 1999 race as the Tour of Renewal, but as the peloton whizzed from town to town in record time, he said it would be better to call the race the Tour of Transition. It wasn't just the record speed: it was clear the peloton raced at two speeds - the teams who had genuinely reformed could not keep up with those who hadn't.

It was obvious, too, that the mentality of the peloton hadn't changed. Christophe Bassons, an admirable young French rider, spoke honestly about the doping problem and enraged his fellow professionals. He found a horse's head in his bed and soon left the race. You could not watch all of this and pretend that the Tour had returned to health. Mine was, of course, a minority view.

I have kept the letters. They are my guardian angel, forever protecting me from arrogance. Every so often I flick through them and feel again the surge of humility. The favourite is one from Keith Miller. It was an eloquent testimony to his faith.

"I believe his [Armstrong's] victory was amazing, a triumph in sport and life.

"I believe he sets a good example for all of us.

"I believe in sport, in life, and in humanity."

But it was Keith's closing thought that remains most vivid:

"Sometimes we refuse to believe for whatever reason.

"Sometimes people get a cancer of the spirit.

"And maybe that says a lot about them."

I went back to France this year wondering whether anything had changed. Fundamentally, it hadn't. The riders gave the old equivocal and evasive answers when asked about doping; Jean Marie Leblanc tailored his replies to reassure sponsors; and when asked what the average haematocrit for the riders was, the Union Cycliste International (UCI) medical inspector, Martin Bruin, smiled and said: "I can't tell you that."

For the general reader, the average haematocrit is 43 to 45%; it should be lower for endurance athletes. High haematocrit levels indicate EPO use and cycling's authorities use a 50% cut-off point. Exceed that and you are out of the race. This gives riders a significant margin to play with. Because they now do blood tests, the UCI know from their haematocrit readings whether cyclists are using EPO. If they told us the average haematocrit for the peloton, we too would know.

Tired of the endless pursuit, most of the decent journalists on the Tour have stopped asking questions. And as the coast was clear, the UCI came sailing in to announce proudly that all 96 drug tests on this year's Tour were negative. The Tour of Renewal had become the Tour of Authenticity. On Tuesday last, the Council for the Prevention of Doping in France (CPLD) offered a different take on the same tests.

The council is funded by the French government and is independent of all sports organisations. It sent the same 96 urine samples to the national laboratory at Chatenay-Malabray and found 45% of the samples contained "doping products". Twenty-eight were positive for corticosteroids (also called corticoids), 10 were positive for the asthma drugs salbutamol and terbutaline and a further five were positive for both.

Within the sport, few were surprised. The UCI and the Tour organisation said the presence of banned substances did not necessarily mean doping. It turns out that all but two of the riders involved in the positive cases had medical certificates allowing them to use corticoids and/or asthma drugs. It is worth being precise about the figures: 43 positives from 96 samples provided by 71 riders. Lance Armstrong, as Tour leader, would have been tested 12 or 13 times and the American has said he does not have a medical certificate allowing him to use any drug.

So what we're left with is 43 positives from something like 83 or 84 samples, but in the vast majority of cases the riders have medical certs. L'Equipe called it "Doping On Prescription". France Soir called it "The Tour of the Hypochondriac".

And is it not astonishing that around 50% of the Tour's peloton should need prescription drugs to compete?

The conclusion doesn't change. Doping is destroying cycling and many other sports. It is pervasive and it is sanctioned by sports bodies and event organisers. Last week, the CPLD in France showed us what can be achieved when there is a will.

Is there anybody else out there who gives a damn? Who cares that today's champions are hypochondriacs and that tomorrow's will come directly from the laboratories, injected with alien but powerful genes?

When the lying had to stop

David Walsh

October 29, 2000

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We may not be convinced that Armstrong dopes, but as the champion professional cyclist, we cannot be sure that he doesn't

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On Friday, Antoine Vayer arrived at his home in northwest France. It had been a long day at the cycling doping trial in Lille and a tough drive home, but he felt not a hint of weariness. The day, in fact the whole week in court, had rejuvenated him. He now knew that the battle against doping wasn't as hopeless as everyone had presumed. "This trial," he said, "has been the best thing to have happened to cycling."

When Friday's court session ended, Vayer stood not far from Richard Virenque. Once a sporting icon in France, Virenque is now a disgraced drug cheat. For so long they had been on opposite sides of sport's battle line: Vayer, a coach and trainer, fought for clean sport; Virenque, a talented rider, felt compelled to cheat. They were once part of the same Festina team, but not on speaking terms.

That's what happens in the world of doping - those who cheat distrust those who don't. Virenque and most of his teammates ridiculed Vayer and his scientific training methods. A good doctor, they knew, would beat a nutty professor any day. Within the powerful Festina team Virenque was the star. Vayer was a nuisance.

But then Virenque, Festina and professional cycling got caught. Four hundred phials of drugs were found in a team car bound for the Tour de France. More than two years have passed since French Customs made the discovery, and in that time a number of Festina riders served short suspensions before quickly returning to competition. The Tour de France organisers spoke earnestly of the need for renewal, but, fundamentally, nothing changed.

Virenque swore that he had not knowingly used drugs, and for two years he lied shamelessly. At the 1999 Tour de France he was acclaimed wherever the race went; it was as though the purge of the previous year had been futile. Virenque, his fellow riders, the sport's governing bodies and its public would not address the truth. Vayer was considered a marginal figure, obsessed with doping.

Virenque turned up at the trial last week determined to stick to his story. On Monday he testified under oath that he had never knowingly used banned substances. Some time between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning Judge Daniel Delegove convinced him the lying could not go on. And on Tuesday morning Virenque agreed. As soon as he did, a dam broke and the truth poured through.

His friend Pascal Herve also admitted being part of Festina's systematic doping programme and said he would have admitted it earlier if it had not been for the fact that "just us nine idiots were caught". Other testimonies were similarly revealing. Laurent Brochard told how he had become cycling world champion in 1997 but had subsequently tested positive. According to Brochard, an official with the sport's world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, told his team manager that a forged medical certificate would get him off.

Frenchman Thomas Davy, who rode in the same team as five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain in the mid-Nineties, testified about his experiences in the sport.

"At Banesto there was systematic doping, under medical supervision," he said. "Did everyone in the team use drugs?" asked the judge, curious about Indurain's stance. "I don't know. I didn't go round all the rooms, but I think so," said Davy.

On Tuesday, Vayer testified for the first time. He made sure the trial would not pass without a consideration of the Tour's latest champion, American Lance Armstrong. "Armstrong rides at 54kph (33mph)," Vayer said. "I find it scandalous. It's nonsense. Indirectly it proves he is doping."

This was the key statement. Vayer had considered it carefully beforehand. His training is in physiology and he claims that scientific tests can accurately establish the capacity of the human body; that is, the capacity of a clean athlete. "What is being achieved in professional cycling these days is a joke. It is way beyond man's natural capacity," he added.

Paul Kimmage, who rode in the peloton from 1986-89 and wrote a definitive book on doping in professional cycling, shares Vayer's view: "The cycling that I watch now in the Tour de France bears no relation to the sport I competed in. The speed at which they now race up mountains makes a joke of the sport."