Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong

by David Walsh

  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."

  On Friday, Vayer returned to the witness stand and to the same theme. He spoke of a rider tackling the steep 13km climb to the Pyrenean ski station at Hautacam in this year's Tour: "He's goes quick at the beginning, then faster, and faster again all the way to the top. It is just not possible to do it like that." It was Armstrong who dominated the Hautacam ascent this year, and his power amazed seasoned Tour observers.

  Judge Delegove asked a medical expert if Vayer's analysis made sense. The doctor said it made complete sense. Then Vayer detailed the health risks involved in the abuse of banned substances, making the point that many of today's riders would suffer in the future. And so when Vayer left the court on Friday evening he felt that finally he was getting his message through. Before setting out for home he asked if he could be excused from attending this week's continuation of the trial, as he had no wish to hear cycling officials defend what he sees as indefensible. The judge agreed.

  Outside the courtroom, Virenque spoke to reporters, and Vayer slowed down to hear what he was saying. "I am a bit afraid," the rider said, referring to the testimony of Vayer and the doctor on the likelihood of health problems for those who took drugs. "I don't want to think about the bike now, I just want to go home and see my family. Most of all I want to see them grow up."

  Richard Virenque, the incomparable mountain climber and untouchable drug cheat, was no more. Torn from his pedestal, he was more to be pitied than laughed at. This was Virenque diminished...and yet somehow redeemed. Vayer felt that at last they were almost on the same side. WITH so much evidence of doping in professional cycling, it is natural to wonder why the latest revelations are important. But it does matter that the last of the Festina cheats admitted their wrongdoing publicly and are disgraced in the eyes of those who love sport.

  The significance of what happened in Lille, however, goes beyond the shaming of Virenque and his friends. By their testimonies, Virenque, Herve, Brochard, Davy and Erwin Mentheor implicated most riders in the peloton, especially those who compete at the highest level.

  "Even though I doped, I did not have an advantage over my rivals," said Virenque in a deliberate reference to the ways of the peloton.

  Just as important was the courage shown by Vayer. Many coaches and trainers look at achievements in their sport and privately say that they could not be achieved without doping.

  There is much whispering about the staggering number of exceptional men's marathon times over the past two years, but nobody publicly questions them. Vayer has now drawn a line and insisted that as a sports scientist he doesn't accept that a clean cyclist can do 54kph in a Tour de France time trial, as the dual Olympian Armstrong did.

  The 29-year-old American refuses to respond to the accusation, but he cannot miss its implications. We may not be convinced that he dopes, but as the champion professional cyclist, we cannot be sure that he doesn't.

  WHILE Delegove was extracting the truth from cyclists in France, the wheels of justice were turning against dopers in Italy. After an investigation that has lasted more than two years, prosecutor Pierguido Soprani delivered his report on systematic, state-funded doping. His report, which runs to more than 20,000 pages, recommends that Professor Francesco Conconi and seven others be sent for trial.

  Conconi, a former member ofthe International Olympic Committee's (IOC) medical commission, is accused of criminal association, sporting fraud, administration of medicines in a dangerous way and professional malpractice. This case will be bigger than the Lille trial, and will implicate the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) and the IOC in blood doping.

  In his report to the Italian chief magistrate, Soprani has written about two past presidents of CONI, Franco Carraro and Arigo Gattai. "There is evidence," he wrote, "of a special contract between Professor Conconi and CONI." The prosecutor alleges that the agreement was to provide blood doping for Italian athletes.

  Soprani also accuses Carraro and Gattai of indifference to the health of athletes during their terms of office with CONI: "Under Italian law I cannot ask for Carraro and Gattai to be prosecuted, but it is clear they did some bad things." The two officials escape prosecution because they had to be charged within five years of committing the alleged offences.

  Carraro is now president of the Italian Football Association and is on the IOC executive committee.

  Soprani's case will deal in detail with Conconi's work at the University of Ferrara and the blood-doping programme that he ran. Its significance lies in the fact that while doping athletes, Conconi was funded by CONI and the IOC.

  He and Belgium's Prince Alexandre de Merode, chairman of the IOC medical commission, have long been friends, and despite the two-year-long investigation into Conconi, the IOC refuses to denounce him.

  The case against Conconi will also embarrass some of Europe's top sportsmen and women of the Nineties. Many of the great cyclists worked with Conconi or his team of doctors, and one particular file will allegedly involve riders such as Gianni Bugno, Claudio Chiappucci, Stephen Roche and many others.

  Canoeist Beniamino Bonomi, who won an Olympic gold medal in Sydney, is another name believed to be on the Conconi files, and Soprani's case will seek to prove that many others availed themselves of the professor's expertise.

  If there is a bottom line from the judicial investigations in France and Italy, it is that sport's governing bodies have been guilty of the great doping conspiracy. In some cases they have funded the cheating and abetted the cheater. But it is not just the athletes, organisers and administrators; journalists too have turned a blind eye, or even worse, to a problem they know about.

  Yesterday's Corriere della Sera newspaper in Italy carried a story which claimed that Soprani knew who tipped off the cycling fraternity about a policeraid on the Giro d'Italia in 1996. According to the prosecutor, it was the Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta della Sport.

  Saddled with suspicion

  David Walsh

  July 8, 2001

  "

  I have come to discuss one subject: doping

  "

  He earns $8m a year. Endorsements run to another $5m. He once held a press conference in New York and the billionaire Donald Trump turned up to hear him speak. Nowadays, he charges twice as much as former president Bill Clinton for speaking engagements and when not recounting history, he is creating it. Lance Armstrong is his name. He is the world's best cyclist.

  Yesterday, he launched his bike from a ramp in Dunkirk and set out on the Tour de France. He is favourite to win for the third consecutive time and become only the fifth cyclist to do so. It is not solely success that draws us to Armstrong but also what his achievements symbolise. Less than five years ago he was stricken with testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain.

  Surgeons suggested he might not live but they didn't know their patient. Armstrong has been to hell and back. First to good health, then to the famed yellow jersey. His spirit and good drugs enabled him to make the first part of the journey. But for two years there has been endless speculation about Armstrong, his remarkable recovery and his relationship with drugs, not just those taken to kill the cancer but also those taken by cyclists to help them compete.

  Doping is a way of life in professional cycling. It is as old as the sport itself. Police raids on the 1998 Tour de France and on this year's Tour of Italy exposed the enormity of the deception that is widespread. In this game, Mr Clean competes against the majority and against the odds. Can a clean rider beat those on drugs?

  The search for an answer began in Indianapolis six months ago. It is a Sunday afternoon and the Starbucks cafe is almost empty. Greg Strock, five months before graduating from medical school, tells of his short career as an elite cyclist. H
e was 17-going-on-18; the coaching staff at USA Cycling told him that not since the great Greg LeMond had anybody performed better in physiological tests. But it ended before it began. Strock claims he was told injections were necessary. Within a year, he became ill and though he would return to competition, he never regained his former strength.

  Ten years have passed. The memory angers him. It takes time, he says, to appreciate fully what has happened. Strock is suing USA Cycling and his former coach, Rene Wenzel. Erich Kaiter, his teammate on the US junior team in 1990, corroborates Strock's story of systematic doping. He, too, is suing USA Cycling. In the national programme, Strock and Kaiter were one year behind Armstrong.

  From a coffee shop in Indianapolis to a San Francisco restaurant where Dr Prentice Steffen tells his story. He had been team doctor with the US Postal team in 1996; the year before Armstrong joined. Towards the end of that season, US Postal informed Steffen they would no longer need him. Steffen believes it was because he refused to help with any kind of drugs.

  From a doctor in San Francisco to a former professional on another continent. This is a man who rode with Armstrong for four years at Motorola. The team, Armstrong believes, was "white as snow". That is not what his one-time teammate says. This rider tells of a decision by certain members of the Motorola squad to use the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) during the 1995 season: "The contract with our main sponsor was up for renewal and we needed results. It was as simple as that."

  Nothing is so simple for the carabinieri of the Florence-based NAS team who enforce Italy's food and drug laws. Here in the basement of their old police quarters in the city, the cardboard boxes are stacked 10-feet high, each packed with files seized from doctors alleged to have been doping their athlete-patients. The files seized from Michele Ferrari, one of the doctors being investigated, show that Kevin Livingston was one of those treated by Ferrari. During the Tour de France of 1999 and 2000, Livingston was Armstrong's most able equipier, a man he described as his closest friend. Ferrari also kept an Armstrong file, one that indicated a role in the rider's training. Asked whether he had ever visited Ferrari, Armstrong replied: "Perhaps."

  From one doping investigation in Italy to another in Paris where Hugues Huet, a journalist with the state-run television organisation France 3, tells of how, during last year's Tour de France, he tailed an unmarked US Postal car and eventually filmed the driver and his companion disposing of five plastic bags in a bin many miles from their team hotel. The rubbish contained 160 syringe wrappers, bloodied compresses and discarded packaging that indicated use of the blood-boosting product, Actovegin. That led to a nine-month French investigation into the US Postal team, which will conclude later this month. So many questions.

  Then, out of the blue the phone rang. It was Armstrong. He had heard things, he wanted to talk. Any time, any place. The interview was arranged for two days later at Hotel La Fauvelaie, near the village of St Sylvain d'Anjou in eastern France.

  EIGHT years have passed since our last meeting. Back then, Armstrong was an ambitious 21-year-old setting out on his first Tour de France. The years have changed him. His body is harder now, the eyes more wary. There is a sense that come-what-may, he will overcome. He stretches out his hand, matter-of-factly. He is aware of your suspicions; he wants to restate his case.

  "Do you mind," he says, "if Bill sits in?" (Bill is Bill Stapleton, his agent and lawyer.)

  "I would prefer it to be one-to-one, but your choice."

  "Yeah, I'd like Bill present."

  "I have come to discuss one subject: doping."

  "Okay," he says.

  The first part of the interview is a gentle journey through his career. In late 1992, he joined Motorola and the professional peloton.

  You must have been aware by then that doping was part of the culture?

  "I don't know the answer to that because Motorola was white as snow and I was there all the way through to 1996."

  What of the Fleche Wallonne classic in 1994 when three members of the same Italian team Gewiss-Ballon broke away and finished first, second and third? He had been strong that day but couldn't live with the Italians. It was unusual for three riders from the same team to break clear in a classic and suspicions were aroused when, a few days later, the Gewiss team doctor, one Michele Ferrari, claimed EPO "was no more harmful than five litres of orange juice". Was Armstrong surprised by Ferrari's approval of EPO? He says he doesn't remember his reaction. Surely he wondered what EPO was? "EPO wasn't an issue for us. Jim Ochowitz (Motorola team manager) ran a clean programme."

  Armstrong's recovery from cancer came at a time when the sickness in his sport was, at last, properly diagnosed. On his way to the 1998 Tour de France, Willy Voet, a soigneur with the Festina team, was stopped by French customs officials. His car contained 234 doses of EPO and a cargo of other banned substances. Armstrong says he was astonished: "It was unbelievable, the contents of the car."

  When he returned to competition in 1998, it was with US Postal. Armstrong says Postal's programme was clean. He insists he won the Tour de France in 1999 and 2000 without doping. Others may have doped; he can't speak for them. Other teams may have used drugs; the authorities must police them. Armstrong speaks for himself. He has won without drugs. He is, and always has been, clean.

  WE NOW move on to discuss specific incidents in more detail. Armstrong rode for the US amateur cycling team in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Chris Carmichael was then a US coach and he soon became Armstrong's coach. Twelve years later, Carmichael remains the rider's coach. "He is my main advisor, I talk to him all the time." Carmichael has been implicated in the case taken by Strock against USA Cycling. In his formal submission, Strock describes being taken by his coach, Rene Wenzel, to see another US coach during a race at Spokane in Washington in 1990. Strock tells how this second coach gave him an injection, but does not name him. In a formal answer to the Strock suit, Wenzel recalls the same Spokane encounter and says the other coach was Carmichael.

  Asked why he did not name the coach at Spokane, Strock says he is not in a position to answer that question, and not in a position to say why he can't. It is believed Carmichael has agreed an out-of-court settlement with Strock's attorney. Carmichael says he cannot recollect the incident in Spokane and declined to comment when asked if he had settled out of court.

  Armstrong knows of the case and understands the implications. Has your coach Chris Carmichael made any settlement with Greg Strock?

  "Ask Greg or Chris," says Armstrong.

  Didn't Chris explain whether he did or didn't?

  "No."

  Didn't you ask him?

  "As far as I am concerned, it was a case between Greg and his coach, Rene Wenzel."

  What if Carmichael had made a settlement, would that not be a shock?

  "Would I be shocked? I haven't even thought about it."

  It wouldn't look good, would it?

  "Does it look good that Greg Strock just takes the money? Let's flip it around. Is this about money or is this about principle?" We talk about the professional teams for whom Armstrong has ridden, Motorola and US Postal. He insists neither doped: "There are programmes in this sport and there are athletes that are clean."

  A former professional rider who was a contemporary of Armstrong's at Motorola from 1992 to 1996 tells a different story. Now retired from the sport, this former professional agreed to speak on the basis that his name would not be used. Should it become necessary, though, he will come forward and stand up for his account of the Motorola years.

  "The team results in 1994 were not impressive and '95 started off the same. We had access to the same training as other teams, the same equipment; we ate the same food, slept the same number of hours but, in races, we were not as competitive. The picture was becoming clear for the upcoming Tour de France: we were going to have to give in and join the EPO race.

  "Lance was a key spokesperson when EPO was the topic. From the riders' point of view, we felt the mounting pressur
e not only from within the team but also from what was being said and written about us as a team. No one starts out wanting to dope but you become a victim of the sport." As well as believing Motorola was clean, Armstrong says he has proof that US Postal runs a clean programme. He points to the team's three weeks of drug-free urine at last year's Tour de France. To the suggestion that the Tour's tests find only detectable drugs, he replies that there will always be "cynics and sceptics and zealots".

  We talk about Prentice Steffen, team doctor for US Postal in 1996, the year before Armstrong joined the team. Steffen had been with the team since 1993, when it was Subaru-Montgomery, and continued as team doctor in the first year of US Postal's involvement. With Postal's backing came the ambition to compete against Europe's best. In 1996 they entered the Tour of Switzerland.

  "We were wiped out," said Steffen. "Two of my riders approached me saying they wanted to 'talk about the medical programme'. It was said that as a team, we weren't able to get to where we wanted to go with what I was doing for them. I said, 'Well, right now I am doing everything I can.' They might have come back with 'more could be done' and I said, 'Yeah, I understand, but I am not going to be involved in that'."

  Steffen is sure he was being asked to help two riders to dope. After that informal discussion, relations cooled between the doctor and his riders. Four months later, a message was left on Steffen's voicemail saying the team no longer needed him.

  In November 1996, Steffen received a letter from firm Keesal, Young and Logan, attorneys for the US Postal team. The letter said his suspicions about his departure were incorrect but he would be held responsible for his comments if he made them public. Until now, Steffen has not spoken out in public. Armstrong says he is surprised by the doctor's story. But is it not a serious accusation against the team? "If it's so serious and so sincere, I would think I would have heard that [before now]."

  OUR conversation turns to Kevin Livingston, Armstrong's first lieutenant and close friend on the US Postal team during the Tour de France victories. Livingston has been listed as one of 60 riders treated by Ferrari, the Italian doctor awaiting trial on doping charges.