by David Walsh
Armstrong raced up Alpe d'Huez in 38min 1sec. Only Marco Pantani ever rode the Alpe faster and on the day of the Italian's spectacular performance in 1998, the route was not nearly so tough. Since his performance in 1998, Pantani has been convicted of sporting fraud (doping) by an Italian court and given a three-month suspended jail sentence.
Fifteen years ago, Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault memorably climbed Alpe d'Huez side-by-side, well clear of their rivals. Between them, LeMond and Hinault won eight Tours. They climbed Alpe d'Huez 10 minutes slower than Armstrong.
Most riders are diminished by comparison with Armstrong. His 2001 ride was 4min 15sec faster than Laurent Fignon in 1989, 1min 45sec faster than Miguel Indurain in 1991. There are other comparisons: on last year's Tour, Armstrong climbed Courcevel 4min 20sec faster than Richard Virenque when he won the stage in 1997. At that time, Virenque was part of Festina's doping programme.
Equally interesting is the improvement in time-trial performances. In the 1998 Giro d'Italia, Alex Zulle rode the fastest ever time trial when achieving an average speed of 53.771kph. Zulle was then co-leader of Festina and a willing participant in the team's doping programme. On last year's Tour de France, on a course slightly more difficult than Zulle's, Armstrong went even faster, recording an average speed of 53.986kph. In explaining how he is able to beat the times of talented and doped rivals, much is made of his natural talent. During his first four Tours, he was a moderate performer against the clock and there was little indication he would compete in the future.
Much, too, is made of improvements in the design and make of the bike. Vayer claims this is a myth. Because they allowed a more aerodynamic position on the bike, triathlon handlebars made a significant difference, but in 1998 they were banned. Since their disappearance, time-trials have got faster.
Neither is there much to be gained from reducing the weight of the bike. A bike weighing one kilo less gains 21 metres during an hour-long ride at 50kph. At the same speed for the same duration, a rider can gain 864 metres through one ampoule of still-undetectable growth hormone.
It wasn't just Armstrong who produced the extraordinary on this year's Tour. Roberto Laiseka from Spain won the stage to Luz Ardiden and made a murderously steep climb in record time, his 37min 20sec beating Luc Leblanc's 37min 40sec. Leblanc set his mark in 1994, the early years of the EPO era and he, too, was part of the Festina programme.
The questions posed by the figures are straightforward: could clean riders, as Armstrong claims, produce performances superior to the best of the EPO generation? Or has the blood-boosting game moved on to a higher level? You can interpret the times quoted by Vayer any way you chose. But if you're interested in truth, what you cannot do is ignore them.
Chorus of boos sounds like lost innocence
David Walsh
July 28, 2002
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How the champion of this generation conducts himself on the doping question is a matter of enormous significance. Armstrong has been a disappointing ambassador
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At the world athletics championships in Edmonton last year, Russian athlete Olga Yegorova ran a magnificent race to beat the Olympic champion, Gabriele Szabo, in the 5,000m final. It was the peak of Yegorova's career, but as she took control of the race rounding the final bend, there was the faint sound of booing from the packed arena.
Into the straight, Yegorova accelerated impressively. But the booing got louder. By the time she reached the finish line, she was fully aware of her unpopularity with the Canadian crowd.
Yegorova was booed because the fans believed she had doped. After a positive drug test for EPO at a meeting in Paris shortly before the world championships, Yegorova was cleared because the French authorities had not complied with the testing procedures of the IAAF, athletics’ world governing body.
Paula Radcliffe made known her opposition to Yegorova's presence at the world championships, and given Radcliffe's integrity, the public was always going to listen. It was nevertheless the championship's saddest moment, because Yegorova's win meant nothing. What is victory without glory, what is a gold medal without value?
A week ago, another champion on his way to victory was booed. Because Lance Armstrong was climbing the lunar-like landscape of Mont Ventoux and finding a passage through a crowd estimated at 300,000, not many knew of the extent of the derision. It was Armstrong who explained afterwards what he had heard.
"If I got a dollar for every time someone shouted dope, I would be a rich man. The trouble is, if 10 people cheer and one boos, it is the boo that you hear."
Armstrong was shaken by the reaction of those who booed. He reckoned many of them were drunk and most had no class. But he was stunned and hurt. This was not some zealot in the press room; these were ordinary people unsure of what they were watching, and damning in their judgment.
It was easy to see why Armstrong felt it unfair. He has never failed a drug test. And it seemed absurd that Richard Virenque, on his way to winning that race to the summit of the Ventoux last week, should have been cheered all the way.
In his book Breaking The Chain, Virenque's former soigneur, Willi Voet, detailed the extent of Virenque's doping. Even then, the rider lied for two years when it was known he had been part of Festina's doping programme. Last week he was heralded on the Ventoux, Armstrong hassled.
Part of the explanation is that Virenque is French, and in the battle between partisanship and morality, the silver medal will invariably be claimed by morality. But there is more to it than that.
Some believe Armstrong represents a brighter and cleaner future; others are not so sure and fear nothing has changed. How the champion of this generation conducts himself on the doping question is a matter of enormous significance. Armstrong has been a disappointing ambassador. His decision to continue to work with Michele Ferrari while the doctor was being investigated, arrested, charged and now tried on charges that he doped cyclists is incomprehensible.
"The only reason you visit Michele Ferrari," said one US sportswriter, "should be to tell him to get the hell out of your sport."
I would have been slow to boo Armstrong on the Ventoux and Yegorova at Edmonton. Whatever the reservations about their conduct, whatever the suspicions about how they prepare, they were not found guilty by their sports' authorities, and should be entitled to the same treatment as other athletes. The booing could be justifiably directed at those who govern sport.
At those, for example, who run professional baseball and ice hockey in the US but refuse to carry out drug-testing. We should be equally scathing of those who run the women's tennis tour and say they haven't enough money to conduct unannounced random testing. And Jennifer Capriati says she doesn't see why she should open her door to a drug-tester. Yet when she plays, people cheer.
Armstrong and Yegorova can see themselves as victims and decide that when the rabble are roused, fairness is not always part of the response. It was the rabble that clamoured for Pilate to free Barabbas and not Jesus.
Armstrong said the episode would not bother him for long: "When I am on a beach with my family in three or four years, this will not exist."
Yet, that too was a bleak conclusion. The memory of a Tour-winning ride on Mont Ventoux should be savoured, not banished, and it should enrich easy days on the beach. When they jeered Armstrong last week, they cruelly took from him something that should have been precious.
But it is sport itself that has destroyed the innocence of the fans. Too many champions have turned out to be phoney, too many winners have cheated. Nobody is now sure of what they are seeing. All that the fans have been left with is the right to their own emotional reaction to what is happening before them. The administrators, the sponsors, the media and the athletes can take from the fans everything but that.
As hard as it was for them to bear, it was that emotional reaction that Yegorova and Armstrong heard.
Beautiful and the damned
David Walsh
June 29, 2003
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The old drugs helped a rider to maximise his own potential. The new drugs transformed the rider
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In the final paragraph of his fine book on the 1978 race, Robin Magowan wrote: "The Tour de France may not be to all tastes. Some may well prefer their heroics more intimate; with Calypso in the cave, or the witch Circe, than before the walls of Troy. But in a world where faces are no longer launching their thousand ships and knights aren't charging across cloths of gold, one can be grateful to our press overlords for having provided us with a bona fide 20th-century epic."
Magowan's book was written to commemorate a race that was then celebrating its 75th anniversary. He offered us a picture of the Tour as we wish to see it; noble, heroic and epic: an event that transcends the ordinary and shows the human spirit in its boundless potential. Countless times over the last 25 years, the Tour has seemed the greatest race.
It was a Saturday afternoon in July 1992. The race to Sestriere was over four Alpine passes and was fought under a scorching sun. Soon after the start, a number of riders accelerated away from the pack. Claudio Chiappucci was the strongest of the breakaways and his boyish enthusiasm galvanised those around him. That was until they hit the mountains.
Then, on the steeply rising roads, Chiappucci's infernal pace hurt his comrades and, fearful they would slow him down, he burnt them off. It enlivened the normally quiet hours before lunch but with another 150km kilometres to race before the finish, Chiappucci could have simply ridden his bike over the edge of a cliff and got it over quickly. His was evidently a suicide mission.
Halfway through the stage, the Banesto teammates of race leader Miguel Indurain coalesced near the head of the peloton and organised themselves into a posse. They took turns at the front while Indurain sheltered behind, saving his energy for when it was needed. Each Banesto rider gave what he had until, lemming-like, each one dropped away.
By the time the last one surrendered, Indurain had been towed to within striking distance of the lone leader. On the final slopes of the climb to Sestriere, the big Spaniard could have called out and commended his rival on his courage.
Indurain didn't need to speak, Chiappucci could feel his wretched presence and the overwhelming sense of futility. Six and a half hours only for it to end like this.
Then the most extraordinary thing happened. On that final climb, the tifosi screamed and chanted. "Chiappa! Chiappa!" and "Forza! Forza!" Chiappucci had always played to the gallery and for one last time he would do so again. His spirit soared, he found energy where there was none and he accelerated. He felt no pain, only the thrill of glory. Cooked, Indurain watched him go.
As the gap widened, there was a burst of sustained applause from the 500 or so journalists who had followed Chiappucci's every pedal-turn on the big screen in the salle de presse. At the end there were tears in the eyes of wrinkled men who thought they would never again cry at a sporting event. At that moment you were part of a bona fide epic.
It is why the game is worth the candle. When the first of the 198 competitors in this year's race shoots down the starting ramp close to the Eiffel Tower on Saturday, it will be an important event in the year's sporting calendar. The Tour is 100 years old and this year's race is as much a celebration of history as a battle between today's best.
Lost sometimes in the natural preoccupation with the race's brutality is the intelligence that informs the strategies of those than can win. For this is at once bloody combat and chess on wheels.
When Pedro Delgado broke away from Stephen Roche on the climb to La Plagne in 1987, the key question in Roche's mind was when to react. Go immediately and risk losing everything, or wait until the last moment and fly on the rush of adrenalin? Roche did not move until a little after the last moment. There was just 4km to go when he countered. So near to the finish, he rode furiously until the line then dropped into unconsciousness. Oxygen and the scent of a famous victory revived him.
Jacques Goddet, the head of the Tour, wrote of Roche's exploit in L'Equipe: "It was the day when he showed he had the heart and character of a true champion: one who succeeds in going beyond himself and so reaches the zenith of sporting performance."
The Tour has always demanded as much from a man's mind as his spirit. In 1986, what made the race riveting was the callous way Bernard Hinault played with Greg LeMond's mind. They were teammates, and Hinault had promised he would support the American, but as soon as the race began, the Frenchman's competitive streak annihilated whatever loyalty he felt towards LeMond.
It was then that the story-line twisted and turned in unimaginable directions.
Hinault dominated the race through the first 10 days, and after the first mountainous stage, he led by four and a half minutes. The race was over because Hinault knew how to defend an advantage and would be protected by his natural caution. But the very next day, the Breton attacked recklessly and before the final climb to Superbagneres in the Pyrenees, his lead was almost nine minutes.
He realised there was nothing left; nothing except the helplessness of exhaustion.
And how he paid for the madness. LeMond and others passed him on the climb to the finish and he lost almost his entire lead. On the next mountain stage LeMond overtook his teammate and that should have been it: one champion had gone, another had taken his place. Instead, the race then took on a different character.
Though his legs were weary, Hinault's spirit was indestructible. He talked of fighting on, of testing his teammate's mettle in the final time trial and, by pressing him all the way to Paris, he would make sure LeMond was a worthy successor.
As a justification for betrayal, it was formidable, and Hinault became more popular in defeat than he had ever been in victory.
Unnerved by his rival's trickery, LeMond crashed in the time trial and just about made it to Paris. He was the first English speaker to win the Tour: for him it had been an unnerving, almost harrowing, experience. For us, it had been heroic.
Beaten by his own crazed ambition, the old champion still left an indelible mark on his final Tour. He retired soon afterwards. Second place was bearable, once.
And so this epic old race gripped us. Founded by Henri Desgrange in 1903 and interrupted only by two world wars, the vision for the race was crystallised in the founder's book La Tete et Les Jambes (The Head and The Legs).
You couldn't win the race, nor could you make it to Paris simply by brute strength alone. An old Belgian cycling journalist, Harry Van den Bremt, once told a story from the Tour of 1973 or '74.
They were on the Col du Tourmalet and Van den Bremt was driving Het Nieuwsblad's car, weaving his way past the stragglers towards the back of the peloton. Halfway up the climb, he was informed over the race radio that a rider had caught the aerial at the rear of the car and was being towed. Looking back, Van den Bremt saw that it was his compatriot, Eric Leman, who was one of the best one-day riders of his generation.
Van den Bremt accelerated to shake Leman off but still the rider clung on. The race referee screamed his disapproval at Van den Bremt over the race radio, and the journalist shouted at the rider to stop, but for five or six kilometres Leman held on. Then he had to let go. Van den Bremt waited by the finish, determined to let the rider have the sharp edge of his tongue.
"He arrived in the boot of the autobus, you know we call it 'the bus', the bunch of guys who are always behind," explained Van den Bremt. "I said, 'Look, you mustn't ever do that again'. He showed me his hand from the aerial. There was a deep wound across the palm, just like you had cut it with a knife. I saw that and I could not say anything more."
You may say Leman was cheating but it was understandable, almost admirable.
Unlike all that we have learnt over the past five years.
There were signposts along the way but no one fully knew what lay at the heart of the Tour de France until customs officials stopped Willy Voet's car near the Franco-Belgian border in early July 1998. Along with the courage and the endurance, there were the drugs
that lessened the pain and helped you recover.
What happened in the Nineties was that the drugs improved and became too damned good.
"The difference," said Voet, who had helped riders to dope for more than 25 years, "was that the old drugs helped a rider to maximise his own potential. The new drugs transformed the rider."
The era of blood-boosting drugs had arrived and all sport, not just cycling, suffers like it never has in the past.
The key to cycling's difficulty is the uncertainty about what we see and who we can trust. Riders have died in unexplained circumstances and there is a belief that many of the dopers will experience serious health problems in middle age. How heroic were the old exploits?
Chiappucci has not enjoyed good health since his retirement. Roche turned up in Professor Francesco Conconi's EPO file and Hinault admitted three years ago that he didn't find anything wrong with a rider correcting "a hormonal imbalance" caused by his exertions in a race as gruelling as the Tour. LeMond, a three time winner of the Tour, has become disillusioned with continental professional cycling.
Into this changed world came a new champion, Lance Armstrong. Here was a man who recovered from life-threatening cancer to win the world's toughest race. Not once but four consecutive times and now, on the Tour's 100th anniversary, Armstrong is expected to win for the fifth time and so join the race's most illustrious champions; Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain.
What better for the race than the American's restorative powers?
Except that the new champion has not convinced everyone that he represents a complete departure from the old world.
He continues to work with Dr Michele Ferrari, an Italian sports doctor who is currently defending himself against police charges that he has doped cyclists. As Armstrong comfortably saw off his rivals in last year's Tour, he was subjected to numerous taunts of "dope, dope" from fans on the mountainsides.