The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

by Daniel Coyle

  Lance had information on me, too. One day while we were riding in the hills above Nice, he mentioned that Postal’s budget was being stretched because of the expensive new signings of Heras and the Armada. Then he mentioned something he should not have known: the $100,000 contractual bonus I’d just earned for being part of the Tour-winning team.

  I was unnerved—my personal contract with Postal was nobody’s business, especially not Lance’s. Then I was more unnerved, because Lance asked if I would forgo my $25,000 Tour bonus from him and give it to the team, to ease the budget strain. He floated it like it was a cool, innovative idea; and with the implication that, if I was a team player, I’d agree.

  In retrospect, his idea looks wrong on a bunch of levels—a violation of my privacy, not to mention of common sense: Lance could easily afford to pay me the money I was due; he earned four times that for a one-hour speech. But at the time, I didn’t see much choice other than to say, Yes, sure, boss, I’ll chip in. I’d seen what happened with Kevin and Frankie. I knew fighting with Lance was a no-win proposition.

  In early 2001, a few of us on the A team held an early season training camp in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. It was one of Lance’s MacGyver deals—a phone call, a private-jet ride, a sense of secrecy, even from the rest of the team—it was just going to be Lance, myself, the three new Spanish guys, Johan, Ferrari, and a couple of soigneurs.

  To call Tenerife remote is putting it nicely—the islands are dusty red rocks, the place they used to film movies like Journey to the Center of the Earth. We stayed in a big empty hotel on the top of a volcano; I roomed with Roberto Heras, and for almost two weeks we did nothing but ride, sleep, and eat. Ferrari brought his daughter along, a skinny, dark-haired teenager who looked like a mini Michele. I remember sitting at the dinner table, with two Ferraris eyeballing us, watching everything we ate.

  Lance was watching too. He tended to treat us like we were extensions of his body, especially when it came to eating. Guys on the team still told the story about the time a couple of years earlier in Belgium when Lance had indulged himself by eating a piece of chocolate cake during a training camp. It must’ve been pretty good cake, because then Lance ate another piece. Then, unthinkably, he ate a third. The other Postal riders watched him eat with a sinking feeling: they knew what was going to happen. The next day in training was supposed to be an easy day. But the cake changed that. Instead, Lance had the team do a brutal five-hour ride, to burn off the cake only he had eaten. When he sinned, the whole team had to pay the price.

  The Armada turned out to be nice guys: Chechu Rubiera was a true gentleman and a former law student; Victor Hugo Peña was a strapping Colombian with a shark tattoo on his left shoulder and an iron work ethic; Roberto Heras was a quiet, boyish guy who barely said three words. One night on Tenerife Roberto finally spoke a complete sentence.

  He asked, “How does a cyclist put sugar in his coffee?”

  We shook our heads. Roberto picked up the sugar packet and flicked it with his finger, like he was flicking a syringe. Everybody cracked up.

  We rode for five to seven hours each day through this red moonscape. Each night we returned to the empty hotel (it was the tourist off-season). It felt like being in The Shining. We ate in the empty dining room. We wandered the halls. Roberto would try to say, “I am so fucking bored.” But since his English wasn’t great, he would say, “I am so fucking boring.” That became our motto for the trip. I am so fucking boring.

  But it wasn’t all boring. Michele was topping us up with microdoses of EPO every couple of days, usually in the evenings. This meant we had to be on our toes, in case a tester decided to show up (we knew this was highly unlikely, given the distance and expense, but still). One afternoon, Lance spotted an unfamiliar man in the hotel lobby and the guy didn’t look like a tourist. He was asking questions, looking around. Lance sprinted for the hotel’s back door. It turned out the man was a reporter from a Tenerife newspaper who’d heard we were staying there and was merely hoping for an interview.

  We returned from Tenerife exhausted but ready for the season. My spring races went well. Then, in April, I had a small disaster: I crashed at Liège–Bastogne–Liège and broke my elbow. I wish it had been something dramatic, but it was a typical stupid crash: the guy in front of me went down, and I plowed into him. One second, I was on track for a good spring; the next, I was in a splint. I decided to return to Marblehead for a few weeks to recuperate; the plan was, I’d return in mid-May for Tour training camps and for my big opportunity of the season, the Tour of Switzerland. I was psyched for Switzerland, because Johan had told me that I would be the team leader for that race—a huge opportunity, and a big responsibility. I brought a few vials of Edgar in my luggage. In Marblehead, I trained as if I were alongside Lance; I ate as if Ferrari were watching me. I used plenty of Edgar (I didn’t have a spinner, so I was operating by feel). I saw my mom and dad and brother and sister, but not as often as I would have liked. I concentrated on my training. I was aiming at the Tour of Switzerland like a laser beam, determined not to let this injury set me back.

  When I returned to Europe in May, I was in good shape. Very good shape, in fact. I went straight to Dr. Ferrari at his home in Ferrara. He did his usual assessments—body fat, hematocrit, weight—and he smiled. Then we did a fitness test on the Monzuno climb, which was one of Ferrari’s favorites: a four-kilometer climb that rises 1,250 feet at a 9 percent grade through farms and olive trees. Lots of great riders had tested themselves there; in fact, Lance held the Monzuno record. At least until that day. When I got to the top, Ferrari was smiling like I’d never seen him smile. I’d broken Lance’s record. Smashed it, in fact.

  That was a good feeling.

  The feeling multiplied when Ferrari ran my numbers. My watts-per-kilogram for that test was 6.8—higher than I’d ever scored before; higher than Ferrari’s magic 6.7 Tour-winning number. I don’t mean to imply that it meant I could win the Tour (it was a short test), but it was a good sign. I was in the best shape of my life.

  Tests on Monzuno, like the ones on Col de la Madone, were a huge deal in our little world, equivalent to race results, maybe even more important. Some people liked to brag about their test climbs, but I told Haven and no one else. Unfortunately, Ferrari wasn’t quite as discreet. When I greeted Lance at the team training camp a few days later, he responded by giving me a funny look.

  “Monzuno, huh? Guess you’re the big man, now, Tyler.”

  It got worse the next morning. We’d had our blood drawn and spun to test hematocrit. Mine had come back at 49.7. Normally, that number is kept private, between the rider and the doctor. Not in this case.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mister Forty-Fucking-Nine-Point-Seven,” Lance said. “I think you’ll be pulling all day today.”

  Meaning I would ride at the front of the group, the toughest spot, to exhaust me and push my hematocrit down.

  That evening, Johan gave me a short, condescending lecture about being careful. I should not be so close to 50. It became the theme of camp. Lance’s wife, Kristin, even made a comment in passing: I hear you’ve got some big numbers there, Tyler.

  I was dumbstruck. I knew I’d played by the rules. Yes, my hematocrit was a bit high, but no higher than Lance’s often was—and now I was getting scolded by Johan, by Kristin? My Monzuno test wasn’t some fluke—it was improvement, hard work, being professional. I’d earned it. And I wasn’t being reckless: if a tester had shown up, I would not have tested positive; I wasn’t a loose cannon. But I knew deep down that this wasn’t really about the hematocrit or the record. It was about Lance feeling threatened.

  My breaking Lance’s record on the Monzuno—not normal.

  He would say it with absolute certainty, but he was ignoring the biggest fact of all: that Lance’s performance in the Tour was never normal. It’s not normal to ride away from people and not even realize it, as he did on Sestrière in the 1999 Tour. It’s not normal to crush Pantani on Vent
oux in the 2000 Tour. Nothing was normal in our world. But in Lance’s mind, “normal” meant himself winning.

  I once heard Tony Rominger, a top professional who was also one of Ferrari’s clients, talk about the difficulties of competing during the EPO era. Rominger said the problem was this: “Now everybody thinks they are a champion.”

  I think this statement is deeply true, and Lance is Exhibit A. Because of his character, because of his comeback from cancer, Lance believed in his bones that, if he worked hard, he was entitled to win every single race. Now, Lance is one hell of a bike racer, Edgar or no Edgar. But here he was wrong, because sports don’t work that way. The reason we love them—the reason I got involved in the first place—is that they’re unpredictable, surprising, human. To me, that turned out to be Lance’s problem: he couldn’t let go of this idea that he was destined to be a champion, and he couldn’t let go of the power that allowed him to control his performance so precisely. It’s the oldest paradox: Lance could withstand just about anything, but he couldn’t withstand the possibility of losing. And that, in my opinion, is not normal.§

  Though if Lance is Exhibit A, I might be Exhibit B. I saw my numbers. I saw the look in Ferrari’s eyes. I remembered what Pedro had told me years before. And quietly, though like the others I was standing on a foundation that was anything but solid, I started to believe: maybe I was destined to be a champion, too.

  Normally, we skipped the Tour of Switzerland, because of its timing. It was usually scheduled two weeks from the start of the Tour de France, which was a problem, because it limited our use of Edgar before the Tour. The 2001 edition, however, contained a unique feature: an uphill time trial that closely resembled a key stage of the upcoming Tour. So Lance and Johan decided we would ride the race; early in the season, Johan had told me that I would be the team leader.

  So I prepared in the usual fashion, training hard and using Edgar to make sure my levels were good. A couple days before the race, I stopped using Edgar altogether. Despite Ferrari’s assurances, I wasn’t in the mood to take chances. I wasn’t about to risk carrying EPO during a race, particularly now that the authorities were using the new EPO test.

  What I didn’t know, however, was that Lance had no intention of racing the Tour of Switzerland at anything less than his top form. It turned out Lance and Ferrari had worked out their own plan; Ferrari advised Lance to sleep in an altitude tent and to microdose Edgar in the vein, 800 units a night. This would keep his hematocrit high and also beat the new EPO test, which worked by comparing ratios of natural and synthetic EPO. The altitude tent would create more natural EPO, helping to balance out any synthetic EPO that might linger. It was a classic Ferrari move—simple, elegant, and not offered to anybody on the team except Lance.

  In the prologue, Lance and I were pretty close—he beat me by five seconds. But as the race went on, Lance stayed strong and I faded. By the time we got to the uphill time trial on stage 8, Lance was well positioned in third place; I was in 22nd place, six minutes back, and no longer in a position to lead the team. Lance crushed the time trial. I finished third, 1:25 back. I was disappointed. For Lance, though, it was a great result—his plan with Ferrari had worked out perfectly.

  That is, until Lance tested positive.

  Yes, Lance Armstrong tested positive for EPO at the Tour of Switzerland. I know because he told me. We were standing near the bus the following morning, the morning of stage 9. Lance had a strange smile on his face. He was kind of chuckling, like someone had told him a good joke.

  “You won’t fucking believe this,” he said. “I got popped for EPO.”

  It took a second to absorb. My stomach hit the floor. If that was true, Lance was done. The team was done. I was done. He laughed that dry laugh again.

  “No worries, dude. We’re gonna have a meeting with them. It’s all taken care of.”

  It was weird. Lance wasn’t embarrassed; he wasn’t horrified or worried. It was like he wanted to show me how little he was bothered by this, how in control he was. Questions leapt to my mind—What the hell had happened? Was there a new EPO test? Who was he going to meet with?—but judging by his expression I didn’t feel like I could ask them. After our brief conversation, Lance never mentioned the subject to me again.‖

  Sometime after that, I remember Lance phoning Hein Verbruggen from the team bus. I can’t recall what they talked about, but what struck me was the casual tone of the conversation. Lance was talking to the president of UCI, the leader of the sport. But he may as well have been talking to a business partner, a friend.

  After the 2001 Tour of Switzerland ended, it became clear that I was no longer in Lance’s inner circle. I’d suspected it had been happening since Lance’s angry reaction to my Monzuno test. But now it became reality. Lance became even more distant than usual; we rode together less and less. I wasn’t asked to do a pre–Tour de France transfusion, as I had been in 2000. Now, Chechu and Roberto would lead Lance up the climbs. And if there was any doubt, Lance and Johan made sure I understood just before the Tour began, when they called me on the carpet for something I’d said in VeloNews.

  It happened on the morning we were to fly to the Tour in Lance’s private jet. I was at home, packing my bags, when I got a call from Johan. His voice was low, worried. He said he and Lance had just read an interview I’d given in a VeloNews Tour preview issue. And now we had a problem. A big problem.

  “Your quote, Tyler,” Johan said. “You have to be careful what you say.”

  —What?

  “You need to apologize to Lance. He’s read it, and he’s very upset.”

  I was confused. I hadn’t said anything particularly controversial in the article—in fact, here’s the quote:

  “Rather than just sitting up on Alpe d’Huez and losing a lot of time, which normally I’d do—I’ll do my job [setting tempo for Armstrong], and then sit up—it might be important to try not to lose too much time. And then in the Pyrenees, if I follow a break [when] somebody attacks, that takes pressure off our team. Maybe Telekom has to chase, and they have to put four or five riders at the front to bring back the breakaway because I’m in there.”

  This is standard bike-racing strategy: having two threats makes it better for Lance—as the article pointed out, this was the same strategy that had been used in the 1986 Tour. I said it because I knew that Lance would understand I was a loyal teammate, lieutenant, and friend, and that I would never, ever consider myself his rival as the leader of Postal.

  Unfortunately, by the sound of Johan’s voice, I had been wrong.

  “You have to call Lance immediately,” he said. “Apologize. Make this better.”

  I called Lance and apologized profusely. I said I’d been misquoted, that there was never any chance I’d have any ambitions of my own, that I was giving him 100 percent of my effort, no questions asked. Lance listened, and seemed satisfied, if a little grudgingly so.

  In the media, the 2001 race was known for The Look, when Lance stared down Jan Ullrich at the base of Alpe d’Huez, then rode off to win the race and secure his third Tour. But for me, The Look was happening the entire race, directed squarely at me. Watching me. Looking for signs that I was going to betray him.

  Which was a joke. I was zero threat to Lance in the Tour. I was riding paniagua. I had no secret bag of blood stashed away, no Motoman delivering Edgar, no Plan B to keep my hematocrit up, no chance. But Lance thought I might. That’s why he’d been so angered by the VeloNews quote. It was the old rule again: Whatever you do, those other fuckers are doing more. And now I was officially one of the Other Fuckers.

  Lance has a thing about friendships. They all follow the same pattern. He gets close to someone, then—click—something goes haywire, there’s a conflict, and the friendship ends. That’s what happened with Kevin and Frankie, Vaughters and Vande Velde and all the others. That it would happen with me isn’t surprising—it was inevitable.

  I remember once Lance was giving advice to a new Postal rider about ridin
g the Tour, and he said, “Remember, these guys are stone-cold killers.”

  Stone-cold killers. That’s how Lance saw the world. He believed everyone around him was 100 percent ruthless. And his way of thinking worked well. It delivered results. Lance didn’t agonize or hesitate over cutting Kevin and Frankie from Postal; he simply did it. He didn’t agonize over cutting me out, not for a second. Whatever it took to win.

  I wasn’t his only problem. On the day the Tour began, David Walsh of the London Sunday Times wrote a story linking Armstrong to Ferrari. Walsh had done his homework: he had hotel bills, dates of visits, quotes from anonymous ex-Motorola teammates talking about Lance’s role in the team’s decision to dope back in 1995. Plus, Ferrari was about to go on trial in Italy for doping charges.

  Lance handled it pretty well: first, he minimized Walsh’s Ferrari bombshell by doing an interview with an Italian paper where he mentioned he had been working with Ferrari to help him break the hour record for distance covered in sixty minutes on an indoor track, or velodrome. (When I read this with the rest of Postal, we couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Lance had never mentioned the hour record to us, or even ridden in a velodrome, as far as I know.) Chris Carmichael assured the world that he alone was Lance’s true coach, and other riders issued statements of support—the whole thing was flawless.a

  The rest of the Tour went smoothly. The controversy gradually dimmed and Lance dominated Ullrich, who was his only real threat. Lance won at Alpe d’Huez, finishing the climb in 38:01, a full 10 minutes faster than Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault had ridden it in 1986. Lance won the uphill time trial at Chamrousse in similar fashion. Heras and Rubiera did their jobs admirably, and the rest of the team rode strongly, with one notable exception: me. Riding paniagua, I went from Tour contender to a complete non-factor. I was 45th in the prologue. In the first mountain stage, I finished 40 minutes behind Lance; I’d go on to finish 94th, two and a half hours behind Lance, by far my worst Tour finish ever. I was supposed to be the Next Big Thing; now I could barely finish. The story in the press was that I was “ailing,” that I had a stomach virus. I played along; what else was there to do?