by David Walsh
“Have I been tested by him, gone there and consulted on certain things? Perhaps,” he said.
Two months later an Italian police source would provide chapter and verse on Armstrong’s visits to Ferrari: two days in March, 1999; three days in May, 2000; two days in August, 2000; one day in September, 2000; three days in April, 2001. More than “perhaps”.
Every sense I had of Armstrong being dishonest was confirmed by the interview. In June 2001, The Sunday Times published my investigation into Armstrong and headlined it “Saddled with suspicion”. That investigation included evidence from Stephen Swart, a New Zealand rider and former team-mate, who said that in the Motorola team of 1995-96, Armstrong was the strongest advocate for the team getting on a doping programme.
But leaving Hotel La Fauvelaie on that April afternoon in 2001, it was clear to me that Armstrong would not be caught easily. Already, he had worked out that the world wanted to believe his story of hope and, where possible, they would protect the story. Before the end, my questions had begun to irritate him.
“There will always be sceptics, cynics and zealots,” he said, wanting me to know that, in the end, this sound-bite would be enough. “Saddled with suspicion” ran on the eve of the 2001 Tour, and the last line reflected how I felt about his story: “Those who expect him to falter, either on the murderous road to Alpe d’Huez or under the weight of public scepticism, may be in for a long, long wait.”
The good thing about investigating Armstrong was that there weren’t many rivals trying to beat you to the story. More than that, journalist friends would hear things, but rather than run with them, they passed them on. James Startt, an American photojournalist in cycling who worked out of Paris, knew Betsy Andreu, the wife of Armstrong’s long-time team-mate, Frankie. Startt sensed there wasn’t an appetite in his own country for the story that Betsy wanted told. He gave me her number.
Then a cycling journalist working for a London-based newspaper told me that Emma O’Reilly, Armstrong’s former masseuse, was ready to talk. These two women would be the two most important witnesses in the case against Armstrong, because they and Swart were the first to offer direct evidence. Betsy Andreu heard Armstrong say in Indiana University Hospital that he used performance-enhancing drugs before his testicular cancer. She said her husband, Frankie, and her then friend Stephanie McIlvain were two of the six people in the room at the time, the others being Armstrong’s coach Chris Carmichael and his then fiancée, Paige, and Bill Stapleton. Frankie Andreu and McIlvain confirmed Betsy’s account of the hospital room incident.
O’Reilly told about doping in the US Postal team, and especially about Armstrong’s involvement. We spoke for seven hours and the transcript came to almost 50,000 words. It was packed with evidence of Armstrong’s doping. Around this time, the French journalist Pierre Ballester and I agreed to co-author a book about Armstrong. It would be called L.A. Confidentiel: les Secrets de Lance Armstrong. No publisher in the UK would take it, because of Britain’s libel laws.
Once the book came out, Armstrong issued writs against The Sunday Times for a piece written by deputy sports editor Alan English about allegations made in L.A. Confidentiel. His London lawyers, Schillings, then put the frighteners on every British newspaper and broadcaster, warning that anyone repeating the allegations contained in L.A. Confidentiel would be sued.
That was just the stuff he left to his lawyers. Armstrong would also deal personally with those who had crossed him. At a news conference at Silver Spring in Maryland on June 15, 2004, to announce a new sponsorship deal with the Discovery Channel, he was asked about O’Reilly’s allegations: “I know that Emma left the team for other reasons. And even as evil as this thing has come out to be, it’s not going to be my style to attack her. I know there were a lot of issues within the team, within the management, within the other riders that were inappropriate, and she was let go.”
O’Reilly was a physical therapist and he knew what he was doing when speaking of issues with riders that were “inappropriate”. It was untrue and scurrilous allegation, and he could say it without being asked to substantiate it.
About Swart’s recollection of the use of EPO — a hormone used as a performance-enhancing drug that boosts a rider’s red-blood-cell count — he didn’t address the charge but spoke vaguely about Swart’s family background and some issues there. That was his style.
In an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, he spoke about me — and, for once, forsook innuendo. “Walsh is the worst journalist I know. There are journalists who are willing to lie, to threaten people and to steal in order to catch me out. All this for a sensational story. Ethics, standards, values, accuracy — these are of no interest to people like Walsh.”
Two days later, a letter from Schillings was couriered to The Sunday Times, reminding the newspaper that Armstrong had never taken performance-enhancing drugs and if we dared suggest he did, we would be sued. We didn’t back down and we were sued. Two years of endless meetings, preparing statements, lining up witnesses, getting subpoenas — it was hell.
Our case was destroyed by a ruling that said we would have to prove Armstrong doped, as opposed to showing we had the right to ask questions. Emma O’Reilly spoke with journalists from the US, France and the UK. “Britain, the country where I am a citizen, is the only one where I feel I can’t tell the truth. Well, I could, but I would be sued and I’d lose. So I stopped telling the truth here; just didn’t say anything.”
Britain was the only country where Armstrong allowed a libel case to proceed beyond the initial, sabre-rattling writ. Our managing editor at the time, Richard Caseby, negotiated the settlement with Armstrong’s attorney, Tim Herman, who was on his way to Scotland to play golf.
“Richard,” Herman said, “we were never going to let this go the whole way. Lance is going to go into politics.”
In early 2004 an American writer, Daniel Coyle, began researching a book that would be published in 2005. Lance Armstrong’s War was the story of Coyle’s year inside the US Postal cycling team, and though the book would become a bestseller in America and Britain, the author wasn’t allowed inside the team’s doping sanctum.
He understood that, and this was perhaps one of the reasons he ended up at my door. He would call the chapter The Crusader, and it was a flattering account of my attempt to expose Armstrong as a fraud. During the interview, he asked about our son John. “People say you love all your children equally, but I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “You love them all, but differently. And this kid, I loved more than any person I’ve ever known.”
I’ve never been good at understatement when it comes to John. We have six other children, and John’s sister Emily says I would be the same about each of them if they had been the one to suffer John’s fate.
Towards the end of his book, Coyle describes the moment he brought Armstrong a draft of the manuscript:
“OK,” Armstrong says. “What’s in there that’s going to piss me off?”
Before I can answer, he leans forward.
“The Walsh stuff is not going to piss me off if it’s factual,” he says. “Don’t call him the award-winning world-renowned respected guy.”
I outline what’s in the book, mentioning that Walsh seems motivated, at least in part, by the memory of his dead son, who he said was his favourite.
Armstrong’s eyes narrow. He cracks his knuckles, one by one.
“How could he have a favourite son? That guy’s a scumbag. I’m a father of three… to say ‘my favourite son,’ that’s f*****. I’m sorry. I just hate the guy. He’s a little troll.”
His voice rises. I try to change the subject but it’s too late. He’s going.
“F****** Walsh,” he says. “F****** little troll.”
I’m sitting on the couch watching, but it’s as if I’m not there. His voice echoes off the stone walls — “troll, casting his spell on people, liar” — and the words blur together into a single sound, and I find myself wishing he would sto
p…
A bird-like trill slices the air; Armstrong’s eyes dart to his phone. The spell is broken.
“Listen, here’s where I go,” Armstrong says after putting down the phone. “I’ve won six tours. I’ve done everything I ever could do to prove my innocence.
I have done, outside of cycling, way more than anyone in the sport. To be somebody who’s spread himself out over a lot of areas, to hopefully be somebody who people in this city, this state, this country, this world can look up to as an example.
And you know what? They don’t even know who David Walsh is. And they never will. And in 20 years nobody is going to remember him. Nobody.”
After reading that section of the book, I rang Coyle and said it had deeply upset me to read Armstrong mouthing off about my relationship with my son. Coyle said Armstrong had said far worse things that he hadn’t included.
“You shouldn’t have included any of the stuff about John,” I said. He apologised and it was clear he meant it.
And now on this day, as I sit in this Starbucks, Armstrong has finally gone down. October 22, John’s birthday. I ring Betsy Andreu, in whose slipstream I have travelled in pursuit of the truth. I tell her it’s John’s birthday and though she’s far away in Michigan, I can feel her sadness.
“It’s his birthday,” she says in a whisper. “This is his little gift to you.”
It’s a nice thought.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Foreword
Riding out the storm in yellow
Flawed fairytale
Poison in the heart of sport
Puzzling silence of an inspirational fighter
Pharmacy on wheels becomes a sick joke
When the lying had to stop
Saddled with suspicion
Paradise lost on Tour
Stopwatch brings uncertain time for Tour
Chorus of boos sounds like lost innocence
Beautiful and the damned
LA confidential
The battle and the war
Armstrong the iron ruler
Champ or cheat?
The clean machine
Blood, sweat and fears
The loneliness of the long-distance cyclist
A cycle of deceit
It’s not about the bike, it’s about the drugs
Riding into a storm
Off yer bike!
Broken on the wheel of truth
'I hope Lance can tell the truth. We were part of a screwed-up world'
The women who stood up to the bully
Lance, the lies and me