French Renaissance

by Jeremy Whittle

  Armstrong and Bruyneel liked the hotel, overlooking a fountain in the Place l’Esplan. They liked the wine list too, the interconnecting rooms and the proximity to the A7, the Autoroute du Soleil, linking the Rhône valley to the Mediterranean coastline and the Spanish and Italian borders. Later, when they were dating, Sheryl Crow also joined Armstrong at the l’Esplan.

  Doping, Hamilton concedes, took some of the fear of the Ventoux away. ‘Because of its length and its difficulty – yes, it did. I think you felt the advantages more there. There’s probably a scientist who’d say that’s not the case, but it felt that way.’

  US Postal’s doping programme, he says, took away a lot of the fear of the Giant. ‘If you’re facing the Ventoux, but you know you’ve prepared well, on and off the bike, then you go into that stage with a lot more confidence.’

  Hamilton’s team-mate George Hincapie, another to confess to doping, bragged of riding with ‘no chain’; Hamilton, meanwhile, recalls climbing the Ventoux and thinking, ‘Where’s the steep part?’

  ‘I do remember thinking that as I was going up on the day when I won that stage. The steep parts I’d really suffered on before, I wasn’t suffering that time. I was covering attacks pretty easily.

  ‘But in that Dauphiné I also suffered a lot. So, yeah – I was “prepared” when I won on the Ventoux, but I was also on a good day.’

  Hamilton, open and receptive to any questions – ‘You can ask me anything,’ he says more than once – seems to accept that doping taints his record. He understands people’s cynicism. ‘It used to bother me,’ he says. ‘But you could delete my whole career if you want. I wouldn’t mind. I have to be OK with it, because it is the truth.

  ‘Would I have won without doping? Absolutely not. No way. Without doping none of us would have won. None of us,’ he states unequivocally.

  ‘But at the same time, I took my job very seriously. I trained super-hard,’ he insists. ‘I’m pretty confident when I say that there weren’t many guys who trained harder. We lived like monks for eight to nine months of the year. The shame is that all that gets forgotten.

  ‘I still feel proud of my career, but I look at it differently now. It was a part of my life, when I did some things that I was not happy about. But at the time, I felt that it was the only real option.

  ‘I could have said no and gone home. Nobody put a gun to my head. But if you didn’t dope, then you weren’t being professional.’

  There’s a sigh. ‘It would have been nice to have done it all clean, to have won on the Ventoux, clean,’ he says, ‘but it would have been a struggle. And I’m not sure I would have survived.’

  After the 2000 Tour, contrary to what he’d expected, Lance Armstrong only got one more realistic shot at victory on the Ventoux. It came in 2002, but it was a day when tactics nullified the race and, instead, a breakaway led by reluctant repentant doper, Virenque, made it to the summit first.

  Virenque, shamed in 1998 by the Festina scandal, took a celebrated victory in front of forgiving and adoring crowds. When, two and a half minutes later, Armstrong passed the crowds, the mood was different. Booed and sworn at, his experience mirrored that of Chris Froome in the 2015 Tour, when the British rider was spat at and jeered.

  After the stage, Armstrong was indignant. ‘If I had a dollar for every time somebody yelled “Dopé, dopé!” I’d be a rich man,’ he said. ‘It’s disappointing, to be honest with you. The people are not very sportsmanlike.’ As it turned out, however, the people were very perceptive.

  Unsurprisingly, Armstrong didn’t see it that way. ‘I think it’s an indication of their intelligence. But I’m not here to be friends with a bunch of people who stand on the side of the road, who’ve had too much to drink and want to yell “Dopé!” Don’t come to the bike race in order to stand around and yell at cyclists. Stay at home.’

  Yet again, the Ventoux had maintained its hex on him, but this time it had also demeaned him. And all the time, it was Tyler and Jonathan, equally doped, who had learned to master the mountain. Armstrong doesn’t particularly recall being ‘bummed’ after Hamilton won the 2000 Dauphiné’s Ventoux stage. ‘I have good memories of the 2000 Dauphiné,’ he insists, in contrast to Hamilton’s recollection. ‘But by 2001, the riders on the team, and the staff too, began to realise that Tyler cared about Tyler – that became the wedge between us. It’s cycling, so it is every man for himself, but you can’t be so selfish.’

  After Hamilton left US Postal the pair became bitter rivals. Publicly, on camera, they smiled and patted each other amicably on the back. Privately, their resentments fermented. Despite that, Hamilton calls US Postal’s pioneering seasons in Europe, spent learning the ropes, being the odd ones out, the underdogs, as ‘the fun years’. Those were the ‘thousand days’ he has often referred to, the days of relative innocence before obligation overwhelmed ethics. Over the years, so many European professionals have trodden the same path.

  Until he left US Postal, Hamilton could live in Armstrong’s shadow. ‘Once you become a team leader, it’s a different kind of pressure. Once I went to CSC, I was expected to get results.’ And once he went to CSC, he became Armstrong’s rival.

  Hamilton, for all his grit, was perhaps never likely to oust Armstrong. Both had their doping doctors in Spain and Italy, Eufemiano Fuentes and Michele Ferrari, respectively, and both had their doping directeurs sportifs, Bjarne Riis and Johan Bruyneel. But Tyler didn’t have the cancer-avenging backstory Lance had, nor did he have the muthafucka charisma, the ‘No Fucks Given’ attitude that informed so much of Armstrong’s dubious behaviour over the best part of a decade.

  Tyler’s persona, in contrast to the badass Texan, was folksy and wholesome. He remembered everybody’s name and was polite, well-mannered and eloquent. He was never looking for, or needing, a fight. He travelled around Europe with his golden retriever, Tugboat, and when ‘Tugs’ died in July 2004, mid-Tour de France, Hamilton wrote a lachrymose blog for Velonews website. ‘Tugboat was like my kid,’ he said.

  But it took yet another showdown on the Ventoux, a few weeks earlier, in June 2004, and once again in the Dauphiné, to reveal just how badly his relationship with Armstrong had disintegrated. This time there were no ‘Americans together’, no hugs and back-slaps for the camera; instead, there remained just a residue of bitterness and suspicion.

  Again Armstrong struggled on the mountain, finishing almost a minute and a half behind Hamilton, fighting for air in the heat. He was two minutes slower than Iban Mayo’s record-breaking time, too. Hamilton was the only rider to finish within a minute of the Spaniard’s time. Harder to take for Armstrong was that he’d ridden the Ventoux faster than he’d ever done before and that he’d been beaten by his ex-team-mate – again.

  In The Secret Race, written with Daniel Coyle, Hamilton’s unflinching account of his descent into doping, he claims that – after he finished second to Mayo on the Ventoux that June – a vengeful Armstrong called him out to the sports governing body, the UCI. ‘Lance had called the UCI on June 10, the day I’d beaten him on the Ventoux, the same date they’d called me to come in [and see them], the same date of the warning letter against possible doping they’d sent to Girona. Lance called Hein, and Hein called me.’

  In Hamilton’s account, he confronts Armstrong and is met with furious denials. More than a decade later, I asked Armstrong again if Hamilton’s version of events was true. This time, he declined to respond.

  A decade and a half after Tyler Hamilton first left Lance Armstrong trailing on the Ventoux, the pair met again, as they gave evidence in the ongoing legal dispute between the Texan and the United States government. ‘We deposed him, May 2015,’ Armstrong says. ‘Tyler’s all about Tyler, and I’d say that to his face. We always had a good relationship, but then he wrote his book.’

  That book, The Secret Race, not to mention Hamilton’s confessional interview on 60 Minutes, which, along with Floyd Landis’s testimony, blew the doors off Armstrong’s years of denial, still rankles.
‘If I was going to write a book about a friend or a former team-mate,’ Lance says, ‘then I’d call up and say, “FYI – I’m gonna write this book”, and just have the courtesy to tell me.’

  After The Secret Race was published, and following an ugly confrontation with Armstrong in an Aspen restaurant, Hamilton left Colorado and moved to Montana. ‘Boulder’s a great place, a cycling haven, but I just needed a change of pace,’ he said. ‘Boulder’s a bit of a bubble – it was good to take a step away.

  ‘Colorado is so beautiful, but it’s so busy now. You know – the secret’s out. Missoula is still undiscovered, relatively. It’s a little bit harder to get to, but it’s worth it.’

  Despite everything that happened, the bitter aftermath of his confession, and the wrangling with Armstrong, Hamilton has fond memories of racing on the Ventoux. ‘It’s always awesome,’ he says. ‘The fans, the signs, the people running around in chicken suits. People pulling down their pants. It’s hilarious.’

  Armstrong refers to the 2009 Ventoux stage, his final race on the mountain, as ‘magical’. At the time, he and Bradley Wiggins, then riding for Vaughters’ Garmin team, were on friendly terms. ‘Our relationship was good at the time,’ the American admitted. That changed, however, after Armstrong’s confession to doping, when Wiggins described him as a ‘lying bastard’.

  These days, Armstrong is dismissive of the 2012 Tour winner. ‘If you were a prominent British cyclist at the time, you had no choice but to act critical and as if you were shocked and self-righteous,’ he says pointedly.

  Armstrong still insists that in 2009 and 2010 he was clean. ‘I did nothing. I have said that under oath. If there is a test that absolutely works and they say, “Lance, give us your samples”, then one hundred per cent I’d be in favour. I’m not sure all the others would want that. But they don’t want to do that because if I’m clean in 2009 and 2010 it works against their narrative.’

  Despite all the bad memories, both Armstrong and Hamilton still wax lyrical when they recall their years of suffering on the Giant. ‘That was a special day,’ Armstrong says of the 2009 stage. ‘I’ve never seen that many people. It was unbelievable.’

  Hamilton’s affection even extends to the much-neglected north side of the mountain. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘I never climbed it, either in a race or in training. But it looked brutal. We usually drove down that way, after the summit finishes, and I’d always count my blessings that we hadn’t come up that way. The upper part looked tougher than the upper part coming from Bédoin. It’s too bad they don’t come up that way,’ Tyler says.

  ‘I still love Ventoux,’ Armstrong says. ‘I’d love to ride it again, if I was in the area.. The wine’s good, the weather’s good, the food’s good, the people are humble and sweet. I’d love to go back there.’

  After lunch, Armstrong and I walk back the way we came, past the grand houses, set back from the avenue, to his place. As we walk, I quiz him some more. He tells me he goes to therapy ‘on average, about once a week’. Sometimes, he says, the whole family goes. ‘People have coaches for everything, life coach, business coach, yoga coach, dietician, so I don’t understand why people are afraid or embarrassed to have somebody coach that part of their life.

  ‘I’ve done one session with all the kids – which was interesting.’

  How did that pan out? I ask.

  ‘I’m not going to talk to you about this – it’s private.’

  But it’s interesting, I say – people would never have associated you, Le Boss, Mister Stop-at-Nothing, with therapy.

  ‘I’ve told you, I’m not talking about it – it will all be in my book!’ he says. ‘At the deposition the lawyer says to me: “Are you writing a book?” I said, “Yes, but right now I’m just gathering content. This, mister lawyer, is all content.”

  ‘The lawyer just said, “Huh, can’t wait to read that chapter . . .” ’

  When we get back to the house, he takes a call and directs me through the hall to the snug. The shelves are crowded with pictures of his kids. There are books too, including one on Jean-Paul Sartre, one on Willie Nelson, and another on new artists from Austin’s East Side. On the table are two yellow jerseys, and on the opposite wall six, not seven, Tour de France trophies, standing in lit alcoves.

  He hands me a business card: No Fucks Given, it says, in bold. He likes being provocative, the word games, the little statements, the alter egos – Juan Pelota, Mellow Johnny – none of whom, it would seem, give a fuck. But they all sound pretty angry to me.

  By now I have started to think he’s protesting just that little too much. Right on cue, when I ask him about hanging on to the trophies, he says defiantly, for the umpteenth time: ‘I don’t care.’ Deep down, though, beneath all the denials and dismissiveness, the bravado and the bitterness, I am sure that he really, really does.

  I’m about to leave when Max Armstrong bursts through the front door in his pyjamas. ‘Pyjama-day at school,’ Lance mutters by way of explanation.

  ‘Hey, Max! Come and say hello,’ calls his dad from the snug. ‘This is my old friend Jeremy.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Max,’ I say, offering to shake hands. Max looks bemused.

  ‘Doesn’t he talk funny?’ laughs his father, always the wise guy, as we say goodbye and I head to the airport.

  PART 3

  ‘The Ventoux is a riddle, an elusive summit whose obsessive power and whiff of tragedy addle the mind.’

  – PHILIPPE BRUNEL, L’Équipe

  VII

  Marseille, 13 July 1967

  It’s been baking hot the past few days, as we came down through the Alps, to the coast. I’ve struggled to cope with it, if I’m honest. My guts have been playing up again and I’ve had a rotten stomach. It always seems to get to me. It’s even worse this morning, here in Marseille – boiling hot and bloody smelly by the old port.

  I know some of the lads are worried about the heat today, up on the Ventoux. Now the press are all making it into a big thing. They keep asking me about it – ‘Can you handle it, Tom? How will you cope, Tom?’ – and that’s not great for the morale.

  They keep banging on about Malléjac in 1955. Apparently, he had a bit of a turn halfway up and got carted off in an ambulance. But I know what’s coming and I’m ready. I’ve taken care of myself. Most of us have. The Ventoux’s the last place you want to come up short, especially in this heat.

  It’s the same for everyone, though, isn’t it? I mean, everyone’s knackered and the heat just makes it worse. Nobody’s looking forward to it. It’s lucky Barry’s here, because I know I can lean on him. We try and have a laugh, mucking about for the snappers. We’ve been messing about on boats this morning. That’s where the bowler hat comes in! Keeps your mind off what’s ahead too.

  I’m still not quite right though so it’ll be tough, but if I get over Ventoux, then I will have ticked off the worst of what’s to come. I know I can still get higher up the classification. We’ve got the Puy de Dôme, just before the final weekend. It’s a steep finish, but that won’t be anything like as bad as today.

  Mind you, you should never take anything for granted. It was chaos this morning. We’d just got out of Marseille, through some little village, when a dog ran into the road and took half the lads down. Later on, I heard Gimondi lost Mugnaini from his team. You don’t want to see a lad quit like that, of course, but that’s good for my chances, even if it’s bad for his.

  By lunchtime, we were all burning up. There’s all those scrubby little hills and narrow roads through old villages, no air and hardly any shade – Lourmarin, Roussillon and then bombing down the Col de Murs – before you get back down to the plain. That’s when you can see the Ventoux, up close.

  Forty-two degrees, they told us, when we got through Carpentras. The lads were all grabbing what they could to drink along the way, from bars, fountains, hosepipes. Colin picked up what he could and passed it over. But in that heat, it was never enough.

  I knew Poulidor would
fancy it on the Ventoux. It’s a big day for him. I knew he’d have a go and then, when we got onto the climb, he took off with Jiménez. I held them for a while, but couldn’t stay with them.

  Now I have to stick with Pingeon and Janssen, just keep it ticking over to the top, and get down the backside of the bastard.

  It’s so bloody hot, though. My headache is getting worse. I must stay with the group, keep it going, but it is so dry that even at the bottom, as we started up through the forest, it was getting hard to breathe again, just like that time in the Pyrenees.

  If I don’t manage it, if I don’t keep pushing, then that’s probably it. If I lose time here then it’s over, I can kiss the Tour goodbye – again.

  And I can kiss a better contract goodbye as well . . .

  Gone in 60 Seconds

  There was always wind, always. But on 14 July 2013, there was barely a breeze when we got out of the car on the summit of Ventoux. As we drove towards the top of the mountain, through crowds brandishing banners celebrating the downfall of Lance Armstrong, we came across Dave Brailsford and Sunday Times journalist David Walsh, walking back from a stroll to the Simpson memorial.

  We paused to say hello, Brailsford as enthused as ever. ‘Better catch up with my new mate,’ he said, as Walsh walked on.

  Photographer and co-traveller Pete Goding hopped out and got a shot of the pair together. Given the constant sniping at Team Sky, it was soon pirated by others, touted by conspiracy theorists as evidence of Walsh’s supposedly cosy relationship with Sky.

  Walsh, seen as Witchfinder General after his pursuit of Armstrong, spent the 2013 Tour ‘embedded’ with Brailsford’s team. The outcome of this was his book, Inside Team Sky, in which he vouched for the team’s propriety. An earlier template for this was set by former professional, turned sports writer, Paul Kimmage. He had spent the 2008 Tour travelling with Jonathan Vaughters and the Garmin team.