Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour De France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever

by Reed Albergotti

  Loren Smith went into action once the deal was done, featuring the team in an ad campaign for the Postal Service’s Priority Mail service. When Smith heard that the team was planning to compete in the 1995 Tour of China, he arranged for the cyclists to wear white jerseys with red-and-blue shoulders, the name of the team, and a huge picture of the $10.75 space launch stamp, since sales of commemorative stamps were exploding in China at the time. By the time the next race came around, the team had changed its uniform and begun wearing the Postal Service’s eagle head logo.

  Unlike the Motorola team, which spent the bulk of its racing time in Europe, the US Postal Service wanted to have a team in the United States as well as a team in Europe. The best riders would race in Europe, and the farm team would race on the American circuit. By 1996, the team had two main goals: to pick up “points” from the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) that might help it get into the Tour de France, and to develop the team’s core group of young riders. The Postal team’s performance that year was lackluster, however. It didn’t even rank among the world’s twenty best. Its biggest achievement of the season was when one of its riders, twenty-eight-year-old Eddy Gragus, won the USPRO Championship in Philadelphia—the same race Armstrong had won when he was twenty-one. For Armstrong, it was a stepping-stone. For Gragus, it was a career capper.

  In the fall of 1996, the US Postal team got wind that Lance Armstrong’s Motorola team was folding. For them this was good news. For the first time in nearly a decade, there would be no American team in the Tour de France, which would pose a problem for Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the French parent company of the Tour de France. If the money it got from television contracts were to keep increasing, the ASO needed a sizable audience of American viewers to tune in; but without an American team competing, interest in the Tour in the United States was sure to wane. This essentially meant there was an “open” slot for an American team in the race.

  Every January, somewhere between fifteen to eighteen teams automatically qualify for the Tour de France, based on world team rankings and performances in the previous year’s three Grand Tours. The remaining teams—sometimes as many as seven—are allowed in as “wild cards,” selected by the Société du Tour de France on the basis of performance. The wild card entries give the Tour discretion to invite up-and-coming French teams, preserving the “Frenchness” of the national treasure. But it also enables the organizers to bring in teams from other countries if, for one reason or another, there is a compelling rationale for doing so.

  The Tour de France organizers gave the nod to Gorski, indicating that if USPS had a good season in 1997, the squad would likely be allowed into the Tour as a wild card. Now the team had to bring in some better riders.

  Lance Armstrong had just had the season of his life. He had shown his skills fully for the first time since he had turned pro, and was starting to look like a serious threat. He’d left Motorola as soon as it became obvious that the team was about to lose its sponsorship, and he signed with a French team, Cofidis, as did Frankie Andreu, who’d proven to be one of the most consistent American riders for a decade. Armstrong was given a two-year contract through 1998, valued at just over $1 million per year.

  Weisel hadn’t been planning on signing Armstrong to the US Postal Service team. He had heard from Jim Ochowicz that Armstrong, with his string of successes, was now even harder to handle than he had been when he was on the Subaru-Montgomery team. After speaking with Ochowicz, Weisel worried that Armstrong would become a divisive force on the USPS team bus, the cycling equivalent of the locker room. Although Weisel and Och were former competitors, there was such a tangled web of relationships in this small, incestuous world that they were friendly and willing to share intel with each other. From what Och told him, Weisel didn’t think a new team just attempting to establish itself could handle that kind of rider.

  While Weisel and his investment bank, Montgomery Securities, were shepherding Yahoo! Inc.’s public offering, Gorski, representing Montgomery Sports, set out to find his own Lance. He flew to France in July, during the first week of the 1996 Tour de France. With money, it wouldn’t be hard to sign new riders, several of whom had already expressed interest. Eddie B, then fifty-seven, was left behind to focus on developing the young farm team riders competing on the US circuit. Gorski was beginning to marginalize Borysewicz, his old Olympic coach; he thought Borysewicz’s knowledge of cycling was outdated and too narrowly focused on track racing. Tension was brewing between the two men.

  The Tour de France, the biggest racing event of the season, also doubles as the biggest signing period of the season. With all the best cyclists in one place, professional cyclists often renew their contracts for the following season, or quietly agree to join new teams. Gorski was especially interested in the man who had been the youngest up-and-comer on the Motorola team, George Hincapie, who still hadn’t signed onto a team for 1997. The six-foot-three-inch, wiry twenty-four-year-old native New Yorker had distinguished himself as a powerful rider who excelled in the classics.

  Gorski and Weisel also had their eye on Viatcheslav Ekimov. Ekimov, nicknamed Eki, was the definition of the Soviet-era Russian athlete. He was stoic and tough. He could suffer a horrible crash and keep on going, finishing the race covered in blood and wrapped in bandages. Though he could climb, his body type didn’t lend itself to the discipline of steeply ascending mountain roads. But if there was one word to describe Ekimov, it was solid. Gorski wanted to lure Eki away from Rabobank, a Dutch squad.

  Gorski succeeded in hiring both Hincapie and Ekimov, as well as a slew of European ringers from France, Poland, Denmark, and Italy. It had become an “American” team in name only. But with Hincapie and two other promising American riders, Tyler Hamilton and Marty Jemison, the team was just “American enough” to retain its character and keep the US Postal Service sponsor happy.

  • • •

  Despite Armstrong’s illness at the Tour de France, and his poor performance at the Atlanta Olympics, it wasn’t obvious to anyone—including him—that he had been slowing down in the summer of 1996. Back in Austin, he was settling into his new home. In the garage: a racing ski boat, a Porsche, a Harley, and a truck. He also began spending time with another new girlfriend, Lisa Shiels, a chemical engineering major at the University of Texas he had met earlier that year.

  But that fall, he began suffering pounding headaches, dizziness, and blurred vision. One night, he coughed up blood into his bathroom sink, but figured it was no big deal. Perhaps it was a sinus infection, he thought. He had also noticed some swelling in a testicle, but since one testicle had been larger than the other for three years, the size difference didn’t immediately concern him. But now there was some pain there, too. When he was out riding with his buddy John Korioth, Armstrong mentioned the pain in his testicle. John told him it was probably from having too much sex.

  Although he was feeling tired, Lance traveled with Lisa to Beaverton, Oregon, in late September to ride bikes with executives at the headquarters of his biggest sponsor, Nike. The company was making a broader push into the $2 billion cycling market that year. Nike founder and chief executive Phil Knight had been in Paris that June to watch the French Open tennis tournament, and while there, he had signed a sponsorship deal with the organizers of the Tour, calling for Nike to become the supplier of the coveted yellow jersey.

  Lance was a key part of Nike’s plan to buy legitimacy in a sport its executives knew almost nothing about. Cycling traditionalists scorned Nike as a newcomer because it had replaced the Italian brand Giordana—a name that had lots of heritage and authenticity with cyclists that Nike lacked. As a result of the deal, the yellow jersey, as well as the green jersey worn by the points leader and the polka-dot jersey awarded to the best hill climber, displayed a large black swoosh. Nike even featured Lance on its new website. On Lance’s end, he hoped to be able to work with Nike to create his own signature line of pro racing shoes. So despite feeling exhausted, he went to the weekend
event.

  By the time he got back to Austin, the pain in his testicle had gotten so bad that he could no longer sit on his bike seat to go for a casual ride.

  When Lance mentioned the symptoms to a doctor in Austin, the doctor figured he had either a testicular torsion or epididymitis, or some sort of infection, but requested an ultrasound to check for a tumor just to be safe. During the ultrasound, the radiologist confirmed a likely tumor, and the doctor phoned in a request for a chest X-ray. The X-ray revealed metastases to his lungs. Three hours later, Lance called J.T. with the news. Lance was so shaken that he had his neighbor, a plastic surgeon, call his mother at work. The neighbor, Rick Parker, reached Linda just before she left her office for the night. After he informed her, in a doctorly way, that Lance had been diagnosed with cancer, she was in shock. In her mind, Lance had been so invincible and strong. It was hard for her to imagine that he might now face a dramatic fight for his life.

  Lance’s treatment—surgery to remove the cancerous testicle—was scheduled for the very next day, and shortly after that, he began the first of four three-week chemo cycles. Lying in a recliner at the Southwest Regional Cancer Center in Austin, he received three intravenous chemotherapy drugs—bleomycin, etoposide, and Platinol—which slowly dripped into his bloodstream over four long hours.

  The first day of chemo treatment proved relatively uneventful. He had been given approval to ride up to fifty miles a day to stay in some sort of shape, and he went for a bike ride the following day. Within a week or so, however, there was more bad news: Oncologists at MD Anderson in Houston, brought in for a second opinion, had called Lance’s mother with an urgent message. Test results showed it was likely that the cancer had spread to Armstrong’s brain. After an MRI confirmed the presence of lesions in his brain, the doctors at Anderson told Linda he needed more aggressive treatment—radiation to the brain—or else he might not make it. His cancer was a particularly virulent form of the disease, with a poor prognosis, and they lowered Lance’s odds of survival to less than 50 percent.

  About a week after his diagnosis, Lance held a press conference, with Lisa clutching his hand, and his mother at his side. He named himself a spokesperson for cancer awareness and gave his first public service announcement about testicular cancer, urging young men to get checked immediately. The news of Lance’s cancer led to an outpouring of letters and e-mails from people around the world who wanted to express support for Lance and share their own experiences. One of the letters was from a doctor who directed Lance to a specialist at the Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis.

  The doctors in Indianapolis discussed the possibility of treating the brain lesions with surgery instead of radiation in order to preserve Lance’s coordination and balance. They also suggested eliminating the bleomycin from his chemo treatments, because it damages the patient’s lungs. Lance decided that the Indianapolis team would be the team to treat him.

  Lance had the brain surgery in Indiana between chemo cycles. The surgery revealed two half-inch cancerous lesions, but one promising sign was that they had been fried by the initial chemo treatment. His primary oncologist, Craig Nichols, informed Lance that this meant he was a “responder.”

  On October 27, Armstrong was recovering from brain surgery when a group of friends came to visit him. There were so many that Armstrong moved them out of his hospital room and into a room large enough to accommodate everyone. The visitors included Lisa, who had dropped out of college to help; Chris Carmichael and his girlfriend, Paige; Frankie Andreu and Betsy, who was now Frankie’s fiancée; and Stephanie McIlvain.

  As the friends chatted, two doctors entered the room, introduced themselves to Lance, and began asking questions. Betsy interrupted and suggested that Armstrong’s friends leave the room to give him privacy, but Armstrong insisted that they all stay. Among a series of routine questions, one of the doctors asked Armstrong if he had ever taken performance-enhancing drugs. Armstrong responded matter-of-factly, listing EPO, testosterone, growth hormone, cortisone, and steroids.

  Betsy was horrified. The thought of Armstrong doing all of those drugs sickened her. But the thought of her soon-to-be husband doing them made her downright angry. “I’m not fucking marrying you if you’re doing that shit; that’s how he got his cancer!” she later told Frankie. Frankie tried to calm her down with a lie. “I’m not doing that shit,” he said.

  Armstrong’s laundry list of drugs wasn’t so much an admission as it was an explicit confirmation of what it was to be a professional cyclist at the time. The drugs were in such common use throughout the peloton that riding without them made it much harder to be competitive, never mind win.

  There was no reaction from the doctors, who left the room.

  Lance returned to Austin to finish his treatment, and occasionally went for casual rides around Austin with old friends. After one ride with Jim Woodman, the two men ended up in Armstrong’s kitchen on Lake Austin when Armstrong, still gaunt and pale from his chemo, pulled out a syringe filled with EPO. He explained that his doctors had prescribed it to boost his red blood cell count, which was depleted by chemotherapy. As Armstrong injected himself with the EPO, he and Woodman began to discuss doping in cycling.

  Armstrong told Woodman that he had used EPO and human growth hormone, or HGH, throughout his pro cycling career. Everyone in pro cycling was using these drugs, Armstrong told Woodman, and any pro rider who didn’t was at a significant disadvantage.

  Woodman was shocked and disappointed. He had watched Armstrong progress from a teenage triathlete to one of the best cyclists in the world. He still thought of him as a kid. Woodman could think of only one thing to ask. “Aren’t you afraid of the health effects?”

  Armstrong had a quick answer: He said he thought EPO was safe, but that the HGH might have some medical side effects. He also assured Woodman that everything he’d taken during his cycling days had been under the strict supervision of a doctor.

  Woodman’s mind began racing. Could HGH have contributed to Armstrong’s cancer, or made the cancer cells grow faster and larger? He didn’t share his thoughts because he didn’t want to upset his friend, but Woodman couldn’t help wondering whether Armstrong was thinking the same thing.

  Certainly others were thinking along those lines. The European press had already begun speculating that Armstrong’s cancer was connected to doping. Whether any of the performance enhancers could have caused Armstrong’s cancer is unclear. Overall, there is very little research assessing the cancer risk of these substances when they are taken for performance-enhancement purposes. Much of the research that has been carried out was conducted in Europe, and not on healthy athletes but often on patients who already had some type of disease and were taking testosterone or growth hormone for that condition.

  What is known about testicular cancer is that it strikes men most commonly in young adulthood, as with Lance, or in middle age. It usually begins in mutations of the cells that make sperm, known as germ cells. The mutant versions of the germ cells tend to originate during the fetal stage, after which they seem to lie dormant until something triggers the cells to start multiplying. Puberty, with the flood of hormones, often triggers the growth. Some doctors have wondered whether the use of anabolic steroids, a synthetic hormone similar to testosterone, may increase testicular cancer risk, since steroids have been linked with some other forms of cancer. But there is no firm evidence linking them to testicular cancer. In fact, the dominant research in the field indicates that an increase in estrogen causes mutant testicular cells to multiply, which implies that an increase in testosterone may even have a protective benefit.

  With respect to HGH, however, there’s a “reasonably plausible” possibility that it might increase the risk of cancer—though there isn’t any known link with testicular cancer—according to Anthony Swerdlow, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK. He and other scientists are currently running an eight-country European study looking at HGH and cancer risk, but the r
esults won’t be available until 2014 or later.

  As for EPO, biologically, it’s difficult to see how it could have an effect on testicular cancer, and in general it’s thought to pose few long-term dangers. Katherine McGlynn, deputy chief of the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch of the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, says cortisone, often used as an anti-inflammatory, also has no obvious mechanism that would link it to testicular cancer. Although Armstrong had directly admitted to using these drugs in front of a handful of friends and physicians, the admissions never got out publicly.

  In January 1997, Lance received a clean bill of health. He felt lucky to be alive. All of his ambitions, his cycling career, took a backseat to one very important fact. He wasn’t sure if he could ever be a professional cyclist again, or even whether he should try. Armstrong had a disability policy from Lloyd’s of London that was worth $20,000 a month for five years, or about $1.5 million tax-free. If he tried to race again, he would forfeit the policy. And he figured there were plenty of other things he could do. At twenty-five, he was confident that if his racing career was over, he could go to college and then get a good job—perhaps in sales, investment banking, or some other industry that favors drive and charisma over pure book smarts. For now he had no money worries. He had money saved up and the tech boom had treated his investments well.