by David Walsh
Because of Betsy, few in cycling wanted Frankie and, financially, things weren't good. "Just tell them we're divorced," she said at a particularly low point, one of the few times she'd seen him get really angry. He said he'd never say that, never. As time passed Frankie edged more towards Betsy's position. She never budged, just waited for him.
It bugged her that Armstrong would be interviewed but not questioned. Journalists wanted him in their newspapers, chat show hosts were worse, and when he dismissed people who were "jealous and bitter" she knew he was referring to her. She rolled up her sleeves a little more. There hasn't been one day in the past 10 years that she hasn't thought of how to get the truth out there and few when she didn't do something about it.
Emma O'Reilly had no idea of the lengths to which Armstrong would go to impugn her character. A few days after the publication of LA Confidentiel, he was asked at a press conference in Washington about O'Reilly's allegations. He alluded to issues that led to her leaving the team; alcohol, inappropriate relationships. The insinuations were so scurrilous that the invited journalists didn't have the stomach to report them widely but still they didn't challenge him.
Then the subpoenas began to arrive, so frequently that the local police officer serving them would ring Emma's home and tell Mike to put the kettle on because "he had another". Keith Schilling, a lawyer representing Armstrong, asked to see her and her French lawyer, Thibault di Montbrial, told her to speak to him. Mike said he wanted to be in the room when Schilling came.
She told Schilling that everything she said in The Sunday Times and in LA Confidentiel was the truth. But, at this time, she was in something way over her head. She will never forget what Schilling said during their conversation. "I'm surprised the paparazzi aren't already outside your house." It stayed with her because she and Mike didn't feel he said it out of concern for her wellbeing.
The effect on Mike was what hurt Emma the most. He suffered from multiple sclerosis and they knew stress would worsen his condition. He became agitated by what Armstrong was allowed to do to his girlfriend, causing a noticeable deterioration in his MS. Emma felt responsible. She wasn't pleased with me, feeling I should have known how things would play out.
Sometimes on the phone or in an email I got one barrel, other times I got both. She asked me to contact her former husband Simon Lillistone, who had been in the car with her on that journey to Spain to pick up drugs for Armstrong. "He can verify that story." I called Lillistone, who at first tried to say he didn't know but then admitted he did. On a follow-up phone call he cried and said he didn't want his name used, that it would damage his career to speak out. He now works for British Cycling.
Seeing the effect on Mike broke Emma's heart but she never changed her story and never wanted to back away from it.
Now? "If I had to sum it up I'd say it really made me feel exposed and guilty, too. I'm sad that I put people through so much and sad that it was all right for Lance to try to take everything from me; finances, reputation, self-esteem, because when someone calls you an alcoholic whore it makes you question the impression you give out."
In the end the UK's libel laws quietened Emma. She did an interview with Sports Illustrated and they said it would be fine in the US but if Armstrong sued her in Britain, it would be a problem. "This country's libel laws stopped me from telling the truth."
Nothing could quieten Betsy. I went to stay at her house, went to her church, had coffee at her favourite diner, went with big Frankie to watch little Frankie play ice hockey and marvelled that she couldn't read an unchallenging interview with Armstrong without asking if I had a contact number for another dishonest journalist. She lectured us on the need to pursue the truth.
We laughed, too, and had fun seeing each other as Armstrong saw us. I called her "the crazed bitch" and she called me "the little f****** troll". On those days when I was sick of the story, she would call and ask if I'd heard the latest. She didn't do Armstrong fatigue. There was pain, too. "I'm pleased Frankie began his career clean and ended it clean," she says.
"He doped for a time in the middle and was then sacked because he wouldn't keep doing it. When he admitted his doping in The New York Times in 2006, the journalist Juliet Macur called many of my old cycling friends to see if they would vouch for me. Not one of them would, not even to say I was a good mom or a decent human being, they were that afraid of him."
Betsy never publicly questioned how other wives dealt with their husbands' doping but she noticed from a Spanish investigation, Operation Puerto, that Haven Hamilton played an active role in Tyler's doping and from last week's report from the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) she realised Kristin Armstrong distributed banned drugs to US Postal riders. When the divorces happened, Haven and Kristin got good settlements.
Usada vindicated everything Betsy and Emma said for years and many people paid tribute to their courage and honesty. In the end it was the evidence of 11 former teammates that did for Armstrong. They spoke out mostly because US federal officers were asking the questions and talking of jail time for those who perjured themselves.
Later, they would volunteer the same information to Usada. Betsy and Emma spoke out without anybody encouraging them to do so, when all the pressure was to respect Omerta and say nothing.
I spoke with Emma on Friday, the day Bruyneel was kicked off the Radio Shack team and authorities at the US Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs had one of their workmen paint over a quote from Armstrong on a wall of the dining hall.
She recalled a story from her days on US Postal. "In one conversation with Julian [de Vriese] he twirled round the front wheel of a bike he was working on. 'See Emma-tje', he said. He liked to call me the effective version of my name in Dutch because we were great friends. 'Look at the valve there, when I spin the wheel it goes round but the valve always comes round too. Remember this, Emma-tje, what goes around comes around'."
Lance, the lies and me
David Walsh
November 4, 2012
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‘One letter touched a nerve. “Cancer of the spirit.” That expression haunted me’
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It is 3.30 on a grey Monday afternoon, at a Starbucks off the M25 and I look at a phone that is going to ring. It hasn’t stopped. It won’t stop. “About Lance Armstrong and today’s news, are you available to do an interview?” Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, the US, Ireland, Holland, Belgium and so many closer to home. No, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no.
Seven requests are from the BBC: Radio 4, Radio 5 live, Radio 2, BBC Radio Foyle, BBC Belfast, Newsnight, World Service. There was a time when the Armstrong Story had black circles on its body from the BBC touching it with a 40ft barge pole. But this is the day, October 22, 2012, that he has been officially declared an outcast, banished from the sport by his own people — cycling’s governing body, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). Its president, Pat McQuaid, said the former seven-time Tour de France winner “has no place in cycling”.
Armstrong himself is to change the profile on his Twitter page, removing the five words “7-time Tour de France winner”. He’s history now, another ageing story of cheating and lying and doping and bullying and sport that wasn’t sport. An icon until the mask was taken away. “The greatest heist sport has ever seen,” says Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
For 13 years, this story has been a central part of my life — from the moment on the road to Saint-Flour in the Auvergne during the 1999 Tour de France that it became clear Armstrong was a fraud.
That morning, the 25-year-old French rider Christophe Bassons, nicknamed “Monsieur Propre” for his anti-doping stance, left the Tour — although it is more true to say the Tour abandoned him. They were dirty, he was clean, but he was the problem. They ground him down, ran him out of town.
At the head of the lynch mob, lacking only a white hood and length of rope, was Armstrong. He enjoyed his enforcer role, chasi
ng Bassons down the day after the finish to Sestriere: “He spoke to me in English,” said Bassons, “but I understood. ‘That’s enough. You are bad for cycling. It would be better if you went home. Give up the sport. You are a small rider, you know. F*** you.’”
In this fight, I knew the side to be on.
On the day Armstrong won his first Tour de France, I wrote a piece for The Sunday Times suggesting the achievement of the cancer survivor should not be applauded: “There are times when it is right to celebrate, but there are other occasions when it is equally correct to keep your hands by your sides and wonder… [and in this case] the need for inquiry is overwhelming.”
Many readers were unimpressed. “I was disappointed by your coverage of the Tour de France… I am mystified why you chose to feed readers a mixture of rumour, suspicion and innuendo,” wrote Ed Tarwinski of Edinburgh. Not one appreciated our sceptical reaction to Armstrong’s victory.
But right now, in this Starbucks, I feel no joy. Today would be the 30th birthday of our son John who was killed on his bicycle 17 years before, on June 25, 1995, just an hour before I reached home after five weeks at the Rugby World Cup in South Africa. He was 12. The day before, he’d watched the Springboks beat the All Blacks in the World Cup final, taped the game for me on a VHS cassette and filed it away with all the others he knew I’d want to watch on my return.
Liverpool was his football team, and he’d lost his life cycling home after playing a Gaelic football match that morning. He should have stayed for soft drinks and sandwiches, but his team lost and he wouldn’t have wanted to hang around. Since then his birthday has always meant more than the anniversary of the day he died, though it is intensely sad to wonder what your 12-year-old would have been like at 30. For 17 years flowers have arrived at our home from a dear friend who understands.
John was a particular kid; bright, hard, questioning, truthful, stubborn. When he was seven, his teacher, Mrs Twomey, read the story of the Nativity to the class. “And when Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus went back to Nazareth, they lived a simple life, because Joseph was just a carpenter and they had very little.”
Our son couldn’t let that pass. “Miss,” he asked, “you said Mary and Joseph were very poor, but what did they do with the gold they got from the three kings?” The poor teacher had read this story for more than 30 years and nobody had ever asked about the gold. “To be honest, John,” she said,
“I don’t know.”
That story stayed with me; funny, comforting, reassuring even. Something didn’t add up and John asked the question. Though I feel the sadness that always comes on this day and the phone won’t stop ringing, I remember that old story and know I’ve been inspired by it. That the legend of Lance Armstrong should have been officially cremated on this day seems to me anything but coincidental.
The thing about the Armstrong scandal was that, even in 1999, the year of his first victory, you didn’t need to be Woodward or Bernstein to get it. On the afternoon the American delivered his first great performance in the Alps, the stage to Sestriere, many journalists in the salle de presse laughed at the ease with which Armstrong ascended. He climbed with the nonchalance of the well-doped.
I walked through the hedgerows of journalists, stopping to speak with Philippe Bouvet, chief cycling writer of the sports daily L’Equipe, whose father, Albert, had been a pro. “Doping,” said Bouvet, “is an old story in cycling. Over the last few years the manipulation of riders’ blood has changed the nature of competition. What we are getting now is a caricature of sport. It is killing cycling.”
Benoît Hopquin, a journalist with the French newspaper Le Monde, was tipped off that Armstrong had tested positive for cortisone, and that it had been covered up. Cortisone is a banned drug, but can be used by riders with a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE). Le Monde had been shown Armstrong’s doping control form, and he didn’t have a TUE.
They ran with the story. UCI denied there had been a positive test, and said Armstrong had a TUE because of a saddle sore. At a news conference Hopquin tried to pin down Armstrong on whether he had this exemption and when it had been issued: perfectly reasonable questions, but dismissed with disdain by Armstrong.
“Mr Le Monde,” he said to Hopquin, referring to him by the name of his newspaper, “are you calling me a liar or a doper?” The truth was he was both, but at that moment he wore the maillot jaune, the famed yellow jersey — and Hopquin was intimidated. He didn’t reply.
Not one person in a room full of journalists had a follow-up question; instead there were smiles and appreciation for the authority with which Armstrong had shot down the journalist.
The bullying of Bassons and Hopquin spoke of arrogance: Armstrong needed to be aggressive because, a year before, French customs and police had targeted the Tour and found stashes of banned drugs almost everywhere they looked. Shamed, Tour de France organisers said the 1999 race would be “The Tour of Renewal”, echoing pledges that the sport has always been too quick to give.
On the eve of the Tour, the organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc, said the scandal of the drug-addled ’98 race would inspire a better future. With less doping, speeds would be reduced and we would again be able to believe in the Tour de France. Long before Armstrong would ride down the Champs-Elysées in the yellow jersey, it was certain the ’99 race would be the fastest in history.
Through the first two weeks of the race, virtually every French newspaper reflected the scepticism that was everywhere. Each day, L’Equipe found a new way of saying it didn’t believe in Armstrong. It referred to him as “The Extra-Terrestrial” — and not as a compliment. But L’Equipe is owned by ASO, the same company that owns the Tour de France, and after Armstrong had been subjected to a tough Pierre Ballester interview, Leblanc arranged a meeting with Jean-Michel Rouet, L’Equipe’s cycling editor.
Leblanc felt the Ballester interview read like a police interrogation, and made his feelings known to Rouet. From that moment, L’Equipe softened its attitude to Armstrong. Bouvet, Ballester and Rouet, however, wouldn’t change their view that he was doping.
Before the race reached Paris, Leblanc declared that Armstrong “had saved the Tour de France”. In the clamour to acclaim the cancer hero’s journey to victory, a tidal wave rolled over the dissenters. The positive cortisone test was forgotten, the record speed was mostly not mentioned; Christophe Bassons, too, forgotten. But if you listened carefully there were some truthful voices. Vincenzo Santoni, team director of the Italian Cantina Tollo team, shook his head sadly. “I hope we can find a way out of the mess that cycling is in,” he said during that ’99 Tour. “Until that happens, we can forget the joy of the victory.”
You could only believe in this story if you weren’t bothered what Mary and Joseph did with the gold.
Already, my relationship with Armstrong had become personal. Six years earlier, I had interviewed him in the first week of his debut Tour. In a book that I wanted to be a Canterbury Tales of the Tour de France, his story would be The Rookie’s Tale. We talked for three hours in a hotel garden outside Grenoble and got on well. He was a Texan in France, so uncool you warmed to him: if his American gaucheness didn’t win you over, his ambition did. Nothing was going to get in his way. I would follow his results in the next three Tours and it wasn’t hard to tell what kind of rider he was; strong on flat roads, decent on the shorter climbs, but average in solo races against the clock and physiologically unable to climb with the best in the high mountains. In four shots at the Tour — before being diagnosed with testicular cancer in late 1996 — his best finish was 36th.
I hoped he could recover and return to the sport. But when he came back, and rode much better in the mountains than he’d ever done before, I didn’t believe it. At The Sunday Times there was initial excitement at the cancer victim doing so well, but once I’d made the case for scepticism, the newspaper encouraged me in every way. On the day Armstrong won his first Tour de France the headline in this newspaper was “Flawed fairytale”. I was plea
sed, but not our readers. From the 45 letters received, one offered encouragement.
From the other 44, Keith Miller’s take touched a nerve: “I believe 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… Sometimes we refuse to believe, for whatever reason. Sometimes people get a cancer of the spirit. And maybe that says a lot about them.”
That expression haunted me — “Cancer of the spirit”.
By the time the 2000 Tour de France was ready to roll, the Armstrong camp had identified me as trouble. Bill Stapleton, Armstrong’s attorney, manager and friend, turned up in the press room at the end of the first stage.
“David,” he said, “could I have a word? I’m Bill Stapleton.”
“Yes, Bill?”
“Look, we know what you’ve been writing about Lance, and you’re getting this wrong. If you were to be fairer to Lance, that could work for you in terms of access. On the other hand, if you keep writing what you’re writing, we will take action.”
“Is that a threat, Bill?”
“It is,” he said.
Stapleton made me want to try harder, to prove what I knew to be true. The Sunday Times continued to encourage me: “Pharmacy on wheels becomes a sick joke,” was the headline about the 2000 Tour. Not discouraged by the salle de presse conversation in 2000, Stapleton called me in April the following year: “David, I want to offer you a one-on-one interview with Lance.” Armstrong was gold dust back then; a two-time Tour winner, author of the phenomenally successful autobiography It’s Not about the Bike, cancer icon and beacon of hope to so many.
“Where and when?” I asked.
“If you can get to France this week, it’s on,” he said.
We met at the Hotel La Fauvelaie near the village of St-Sylvain-d’Anjou in eastern France. He came with Stapleton. I asked if he’d ever visited Dr Michele Ferrari, who was due to go on trial for doping that summer.