Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong

by David Walsh

  "The one time my dad would be passionate was in front of a jury," he says. "Sometimes we wouldn't have a babysitter and he would take me with him and I'd sit there, listening as he set out his case in a very nonchalant way: 'Well, if you could explain that to me please because I don't understand'. It was never confrontational, but you could see him leading the witness down this path where they had no other option but to answer truthfully.

  "Every fourth of July, he would sit me down and force me into reading the constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. That quote from Thomas Jefferson - 'It's better to have five guilty men go free than one innocent man in jail' - was ground into me. He believed, although imperfect, that the legal system of the United States was one of the milestones of mankind."

  The thing that really set Jim Vaughters apart was his clients.

  "He never wanted to work for a big law firm," Jonathan says. "His clients were working-class folk who got themselves in financial trouble or were going through a divorce and we would sometimes get paid in hamburgers or firewood. That was often a source of tension with my parents but dad never backed down. He only ever took cases he believed in."

  Vaughters never envisaged a career in sport. He was hopelessly uncoordinated with any shape of ball but developed a talent for wheels in his teens - go karts first, and then bicycles. The strategy of racing fascinated him.

  He had been blessed with great lungs and a mountain climber's frame and was soon making a name for himself.

  In 1993, he finished second in the Tour of Venezuela with the US amateur team and was offered a professional contract with Santa Clara, a small Spanish team run by Jose-Louis Nunes, a devout Roman Catholic and member of Opus Dei. His parents were horrified. "What about your education?" they asked. But Jonathan was sold. "I thought, 'Sure, it's a pretty big risk but I'm not going to get to see the world any other way." He was 20 years old.

  In the spring of 1994, he caught a flight to Valencia and began his apprenticeship as a professional cyclist. One of the earliest team talks was a sermon on the evil of doping - a message delivered regularly by Nunes over the next three years. "The team was essentially funded by Opus Dei. We had a director who had taken a vow of celibacy and went to church three times a day. 'We're going to change cycling', he said. 'Doping is immoral and unethical'. He was out to conquer doping ... Well, I don't think '96 was a really great time to do that.

  "My teammates thought it was absolutely ludicrous that we didn't dope on this team. We would go to races and all eight of us would be out the back. We got made fun of, quite frankly, by some of the other riders. Mentally, the saving grace for me was that I still had nothing better to do with my life. I was the infinite optimist. 'I'm going to improve. Things will get better. They will soon develop a test for EPO'. But boy did we suck."

  By 1997, even Nunes had lost faith; Santa Clara went to the wall; Vaughters secured a contract with a small team in the US and rediscovered the joy of winning. "The racing domestically was just a thousand times easier. I won everything that year...the national time trial championship...the national racing calendar points series...I was the star rider of the domestic racing scene."

  A year later, he spent the first of two seasons with the US Postal team. He raced solidly in the first season and brilliantly in the second, delivering a stand-out performance to win the Mont Ventoux of the Dauphine race, a month before the Tour de France.

  "That was a massive performance," I suggest.

  "Yes," he replies.

  "Did it feel massive? Did you feel happy?"

  "I felt okay. I wasn't ecstatic."

  "That doesn't make sense?"

  "Well, for sure, it was the best form of my life as a bike rider, but I wasn't...I was just sort of...I will leave it at this; I wasn't overly pleased with that victory. It was interesting to me. It answered a lot of questions. But it wasn't the most ecstatic moment of my life by any means."

  In 2000, he left the US Postal service team for the French team, Credit Agricole. For the first time in six years, Vaughters had found his natural home. He liked the manager, Roger Legeay, and his way of doing business. The 18 months that followed were the happiest of his career...until the sting in the tale at Pau.

  He returned home to Denver and was out walking with Charlie in the park one afternoon when he happened upon a small junior race near Denver Zoo. "I remember standing there, watching these kids have fun racing their bikes and I don't know, it just reminded me of why I loved the sport."

  He decided to race for one last season with a small domestic team that included Danny Pate, the former under-23 world time trial champion. One night, they shared a room together and got chatting about the season Pate had spent in Italy and why he was never going back. "It was the usual stuff," Vaughters says. "He didn't feel comfortable...the team weren't helpful...but the biggest thing he said was, 'It just became apparent to me that a lot of guys were doping'.

  "I tried to argue it with him a bit. 'You know, Danny, I think you could still ride really well over there'.

  But he totally disagreed with everything I said. 'No', he said, 'it's the same thing as cutting the course [taking a shortcut] or stealing from a supermarket, so what's the point? I don't want to be racing with a bunch of guys like that'.

  "This was a world champion, the hottest property of that generation; they had waved all kinds of money in his face but he had stuck by his ideals. He didn't flinch. He wasn't cutting the course. It wasn't even a torturous decision! How could I argue with that?"

  Vaughters didn't ... but it did set him thinking. In Pate he had seen the reflection of his father; a defender of morals and values; a man you could not compromise.

  But what had been the kid's reward? His career was going nowhere. His ambition had been shelved. What was the sport doing to its talent? What could Vaughters do to change it? He would invest some of his savings in a small development team.

  "It was just a hobby at first," he says. "Our big international trip that year (2004) was to Quebec and we did some races in the US."

  The second season was more ambitious. In March 2005, Vaughters travelled to the Tour of Normandy with Doug Ellis, a cycling-mad philanthropist from New York who had expressed an interest in the team. Ellis was smitten. "What do we need to make this bigger?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Vaughters replied. "What did you have in mind?"

  "I want an American team, with American riders, developed from a very young age and moulded into professionals. An American Pro-Tour team."

  "I'd prefer to stick with the kids," Vaughters said.

  "Why?" Ellis asked. "What's your hesitation?"

  Vaughters explained the culture of doping in the sport and the methods that he would employ to change it. They would subject their riders to the most stringent testing regime the sport had ever seen. "Doug, at the end of the day it may not work," Vaughters insisted. "And I don't want to blast through 15 or 20 million dollars, so I'm warning you, right now."

  Ellis decided to press ahead. "This may not be a terribly fun journey but it is going to be a challenge" he smiled.

  The challenge has been easier than they imagined. And a lot more fun as well. On Saturday, Danny Pate, a clean professional cyclist racing for the cleanest professional team in cycling, will start his first Tour de France.

  Take a bow, Jonathan Vaughters, your revenge is complete.

  Blood, sweat and fears

  David Walsh

  May 23, 2010

  "

  The question is which version is to be believed? Is a man more credible when his story is told for profit or, in this case, for no material gain

  "

  Lying in a tent at Gorak Shep, 5,170m above sea level in the heart of Nepal, you don't expect Lance Armstrong to disturb the Himalayan peace. But a text message from a friend had done just that: "Landis, sensational confession, dynamite, implicated Armstrong and others."

  On the six-hour trek down through Lobuche and Dughla to a cyber sha
ck at Pheriche, one question recurred: why had Landis done it? Winner of the 2006 Tour de France, then disqualified after a positive drug test; he had spent two years and $2m in an unsuccessful attempt to clear his name. He returned to the sport after a two-year ban still preaching his innocence.

  What now made him tell what he had for so long denied? D'Angelo Barksdale, a character in David Simon's iconic TV series The Wire, came to mind. "The past is always with us," D'Angelo told his fellow prison inmates. "Where we came from, what we go through, how we go through it, all this shit matters ... What came first is who we really are and what happened before is what really happened."

  There are two Floyd Landises. There is the kid who wanted to escape the strict Mennonite shackles of his rural Pennsylvania background, who defied his parents by sneaking out in darkness to train on the quiet roads around Farmersville. That boy would become a professional, earn a lot of money, take a lot of drugs, tell a lot of lies and live in California.

  California wasn't where Landis came from. He was Floyd, son of Paul and Arlene, devout members of the Mennonite community.

  They were people who believed in modesty, honesty and the love of God, who didn't confuse their needs with their wants. For all that he would become, Floyd loved his parents, respected their way of life.

  "What came first is who we really are," said D'Angelo and over the past few weeks Landis hesitantly returned to where he came from. In his only interview since the story broke, he told Bonnie Ford of ESPN that he didn't want to go on "being part of the problem any more. I want to clear my conscience".

  The emails sent by Landis to cycling and anti-doping officials in Europe and the US were not an attack on his former teammate Lance Armstrong but an account of Landis' own doping. It is not uncommon for cyclists to admit their doping but generally they try to disconnect their actions from those around them, protecting teammates and team facilitators out of a sense of misguided loyalty.

  Landis has given us the context in which he doped. He tells of the support and the expertise he claims he received from those around him. He offers us plenty of names. For three years, 2002-04, he rode for US Postal, the team owned by Tailwind Sports, which was then 50% owned by Armstrong.

  According to Landis, joining US Postal was the catalyst for a serious commitment to doping. He implicates Armstrong, team manager Johan Bruyneel and various former teammates. The allegations have been denied. "It's just our word against theirs, and we like our word. We like where we stand," said Armstrong.

  Not for the first time, Armstrong turned his gun on the accuser. "I remind everyone that this is a man who wrote a book for profit and now has a completely different version."

  The question is which version is to be believed? Is a man more credible when his story is told for profit or, in this case, for no material gain? Those whose careers depend on the credibility of cycling have been quick to denounce Landis. "I feel sorry for the guy because I don't accept anything he says as true," said Pat McQuaid, the president of UCI. McQuaid insults our intelligence when he says he doesn't believe Landis' admission of doping. Why would any rider say he doped for five years if he didn't?

  It is the detail in the emails that is arresting. Landis recalls being instructed on how to use testosterone patches by Bruyneel during the 2002 Dauphine Libere race in the south of France. After that race Landis says he and Armstrong flew by helicopter from Grenoble to St Moritz, where he was given a box of testosterone patches by Armstrong. This exchange, according to Landis, was witnessed by Armstrong's former wife, Kristin.

  Early in 2003, Landis says he went to join his US Postal teammates for a training camp at Girona in northern Spain. While there, he had four units (two litres) of blood extracted, which would be transfused back into his body later in the season.

  The blood, he writes in his email, was taken at Armstrong's Girona apartment and stored alongside blood extracted from Armstrong and another Postal rider, George Hincapie, in a small refrigerator. Landis says that as Armstrong was going away for three weeks, he asked Landis to take care of the blood and be aware of the danger caused by a power cut. Later that season, according to Landis, he, Armstrong, Hincapie and Jose Luis "Chechu" Rubiera all had their transfusions in the same room and that he witnessed the other three being transfused.

  Most sinister of all, Landis recounts a story allegedly told to him by Armstrong about a failed drug test for the blood-booster EPO by Armstrong at the 2002 Tour de Suisse. According to Landis, the failed test was swept under the carpet after a visit by Armstrong and Bruyneel to Hein Verbruggen, UCI president at the time. In fact, Armstrong won the Tour de Suisse in 2001 and did not compete in 2002.

  As the rider disqualified after winning the 2006 Tour and one who now admits to years of doping, it is easy to dismiss the Landis emails as the lies of the one who had it all and then lost it. Especially as you suspect that if offered a million dollars to stay quiet, the other Floyd Landis, the one who felt entitled to something better than the Mennonite way of life, would have accepted.

  The key to assessing the worth of the Landis accusations is to remember they do not exist in a vacuum. What Landis has put before us is not circumstantial but direct evidence. He says he was there, he witnessed it. He is not the first to offer such evidence.

  Lying in that tent at Gorak Shep on Thursday evening, thoughts turned to some of the forerunners.

  A July afternoon in 2003 spent at the Liverpool home of the former head soigneur of the US Postal team Emma O'Reilly. She told of her five years with the team, especially the two when only she was allowed to give Armstrong his daily massages.

  Once she travelled from France to the team's headquarters in Spain to pick up what she believed was a doping product that she later handed to Armstrong in the car park of a McDonald's outside Nice.

  She told, too, of the time she disposed of Armstrong's used syringes, and of the time before the 1999 Tour de France when Armstrong asked her to get some make-up to hide the syringe marks on his arm. And in some detail, she described the evening on that 1999 Tour when Armstrong learnt he had tested positive for a corticoid and how with the help of two team officials, they came up with a plan to backdate a medical exemption for the offending substance. O'Reilly would later repeat all of these accusations under oath. Armstrong dismissed her as a disgruntled former employee.

  I thought, too, of an evening in October 2003 spent at the Auckland home of Stephen Swart, who rode with Armstrong for the Motorola team in 1993 and 1994. According to the New Zealander the Motorola team, frustrated by a lack of results, decided to dope to catch up with their superiors.

  Armstrong, he said, was the leading pro-doping voice in the team. Swart would later repeat these allegations under oath.

  Armstrong said Swart was a bitter former teammate.

  Then there was the afternoon in December 2003 at a hotel in Detroit when another former Motorola and US Postal teammate, Frankie Andreu, told of the seven years he had ridden with Armstrong. Once, in the early years, Armstrong had laid out on the bed of a hotel room all the pills he was taking. "Man," Andreu said to him at the time, "you're nuts."

  Andreu also told of being in a room at Indiana University Hospital in October 1996 when he heard Armstrong tell doctors he used banned substances prior to being diagnosed with testicular cancer. Andreu's wife, Betsy, who was also in the room, said she heard the same admission from Armstrong.

  Before the Andreus repeated these allegations under oath, Armstrong emailed Frankie and asked him to remember that his [Armstrong's] success in cycling benefited everybody.

  I thought, too, of Mike Anderson, the personal assistant employed by Armstrong for two years, 2003 and 2004. So central was Anderson to the lives of the family that Kristin Armstrong referred to him as H2, husband number two. I met Anderson in Austin, Texas, and he told of the day that changed his view of Armstrong.

  It was the spring of 2004, the Armstrongs had separated, Lance had hooked up with the singer Sheryl Crow and was taking her
to the Girona apartment for the first time. According to Anderson, who was in Girona ahead of his boss, Armstrong called and asked him to go through the apartment and "de-Kik" it [Armstrong referred to his former wife as Kik]. While doing that task, Anderson claimed he found a small bottle in a medical cabinet that had the label "Androstenin", and after looking up the list of banned products on his laptop, he was sure his boss was doping.

  Their relationship was never the same after that.

  When Anderson made public his discovery, Armstrong dismissed him as a bitter former employee.

  I stayed in touch with O'Reilly, Swart, the Andreus and Anderson long after the interviews ended. And one thing always puzzled me: why would good people make up vicious lies about Armstrong? The difference with the Landis emails is that he presented them as a challenge to cycling and anti-doping authorities: what are you going to do about this? Long ago, cycling's authorities decided it would not wash in public any linen belonging to Armstrong. The United States Anti-Doping Authority has taken a different line and appointed the federal investigator Jeff Novitzky to the case. Landis and Armstrong's former wife are understood to be cooperating.

  The choice of Novitzky is significant because if his work in the infamous Balco case proved anything, it was that lying to federal investigators is not a good idea.

  If Novitzky concludes that US Postal did run a doping programme, Armstrong and others could face charges. Through Tailwind Sports, the US Postal team was funded by taxpayers' money. The penalties for misusing such funds are draconian. The Landis emails may have been but the first chapter in a story destined to become far more interesting.

  The loneliness of the long-distance cyclist

  Paul Kimmage

  January 30, 2011

  "

  There was no scenario in my mind where I was ever going to get the chance to race the Tour de France and win clean. It was either cheat or get cheated