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

by Reed Albergotti

  Coincidentally, around the same time Lance had received his cancer diagnosis, J.T. had been diagnosed with myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells. Both men underwent chemo treatments simultaneously, during which time they shared their feelings of fear and dread. As J.T. later told his friends, they truly bonded. One of Lance’s most cherished belongings at the time was a photo of himself together with J.T.—both men pale and bald from the chemo.

  But whatever Lance’s thoughts about insurance money and mortality, by mid-January, the same month he was declared cancer-free, Lance began riding again. In all, he had missed about two and a half months of training. Soon, he was following a training regimen that was roughly on par with what he would have done in November if he hadn’t gotten sick.

  That same eventful January, Armstrong also went to Europe to meet with his cycling team, Team Cofidis, to test the waters. He was very pale and had absolutely no hair on his head and no eyebrows. He felt the Europeans were looking at him as if he were a sick person about to die, and certainly they had hedged their bets: After his diagnosis, Cofidis had restructured Lance’s contract to include an “opt-out clause” after 1997. If Armstrong didn’t race in 1997, the team would have the option of terminating their deal with him. He spent a couple of days working out with the team, and hoped he would be able to come back that spring. However, he resented the fact that Cofidis had added the opt-out clause, and Bill Stapleton began searching for a new team. He did not find any takers.

  Stapleton was exploring other options for his client, too. He thought an account of Lance’s illness and recovery would make a great comeback story—one that would heighten Lance’s commercial appeal. He put Lance together with Tom Clynes, a thirty-six-year-old writer then living in Chicago, who had approached him about writing Lance’s autobiography. Clynes himself had been treated for testicular cancer, albeit a milder form diagnosed at an earlier stage, and during the course of doing research on it, he had heard about Lance’s diagnosis and struggle. Feeling he had a special understanding of what Armstrong was going through, he had his agent reach out to Stapleton with the idea for the book. Stapleton responded that Clynes’s timing was good, because Stapleton had imminent plans to travel to New York to meet with publishers about Lance’s story. Lance needed a writer to collaborate on the project, and a literary agent to sell it.

  Clynes and Lance got together in Indiana while Lance was still getting treatments. Lance was clear from the get-go: his autobiography—the story of a 1993 world cycling champion and 1995 Tour de France stage winner—had to sell for at least $150,000, with Lance taking two-thirds of the sum.

  Clynes put together a proposal, and his agent, Peter Sawyer at the Fifi Oscard Agency, began showing it to publishers. Lance’s major comment on the proposal, according to Clynes, is that he didn’t want to be quoted using “swear words”—the shits and fucks that are a common feature of Lance’s vocabulary were to be weeded out. While some publishers were blown away by the inspiring story of Lance’s comeback from cancer, they balked at Lance’s asking price, which they considered too high for the autobiography of someone who at the time was not well-known outside of the cycling world. By then, Clynes was beginning to feel ambivalent about Lance’s character. Having spent several weekends in Austin with Lance, he had come to think that he was kind of a jerk to many of the people around him, from his girlfriend, Lisa, to the guy who washed his car. Lisa was at Lance’s bedside for much of his treatment, and moved into his Austin mansion when he was weak and unsure he would live. But once, after she left the room, Lance made a crude gesture about her. He also revealed that they had had sex a week after his testicle was removed, and Lance had called his friends to brag about it. At one point, when Clynes asked Lance about doping, Lance replied that “everybody does it”—a response that left Clynes with the sense that Lance probably had used performance-enhancing drugs but wasn’t about to admit it. Clynes had begun to wonder whether going forward with the book, which was meant to portray Lance in a heroic light, might require him to be patently dishonest about who Lance really was.

  In the end, the project never panned out because no one was willing to pay Lance’s asking price. Clynes, however, recalls Lance blaming him for the failure, telling him that the proposal didn’t properly convey his status as a superstar who had already arrived.

  Soon after his recovery, Lance also followed through with his idea of creating a charity for cancer survivors. In early 1997, Lance reached out to a computer specialist in San Antonio, Air Force sergeant Chris Brewer, who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer and had set up an informational website. After Lance suggested they coordinate their efforts, the two men met to plan fund-raisers. Their first event was piggybacked onto a long-standing Austin tradition called the Ride for the Roses, in which Lance had participated in the past. Originally held around Valentine’s Day, the bike ride’s nickname derived from the practice of awarding a bouquet of roses to the winner, who could bring them home to his significant other.

  In January 1997, at a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin to announce the Ride for the Roses benefit, Armstrong met Kristin Richard, a slender twenty-five-year-old blonde with green eyes, who worked for a public relations and advertising firm in Austin. She had sold the idea of sponsoring the race to a client, and after that, she had started volunteering for his foundation. Armstrong was still bald from the effects of four courses of chemo, but Kristin thought he was cute, and he seemed to enjoy spending time with her during the benefit and at later foundation meetings at his home and elsewhere. Soon he dumped Lisa and began dating Kristin.

  Lance had lined up a stellar list of guests for the benefit, which kicked off on March 23. Eric Heiden, now an orthopedic surgeon, showed up, clad in his old Motorola team kit, and rode in the race along with Lance. Heiden signed autographs as Chris Brewer and Lance handed out informational brochures about testicular cancer. Four bands provided entertainment, including the headliner, the Wallflowers, whose bald-headed guitarist Michael Ward was a passionate cyclist and new friend of Lance’s. The Sunday race raised about $20,000.

  By the fall of 1997, the foundation had a nest egg of about $300,000, $20,000 of it from Armstrong, another $20,000 from Jeff Garvey, a general partner in a venture-capital firm who became chairman of the foundation that September. Two of Lance’s doctors from Indiana, including his oncologist, Craig Nichols, also joined the board. John Korioth quit his job as bar manager to help his friend get the foundation off the ground. Operating on a very small overhead, the foundation was run out of Korioth’s 700-square-foot condo in Austin. Its focus was to be on fund-raisers with the potential to generate between $200,000 and $400,000—money that would go to scientists researching better screening methods for testicular and prostate cancer, and to efforts to address lifestyle issues for survivors.

  • • •

  For Thom Weisel’s team, 1997 was shaping up to be a major leap forward. Mark Gorski had signed enough new riders to get the team invited to the top races in Europe.

  Gorski wanted to be recognized for his work, and Weisel obliged. He named him team manager, promoting him over Borysewicz. Eddie B remained on the team, but he was relegated to coaching the B-level riders—the young cyclists on the Postal Service farm team who weren’t yet strong enough to compete in Europe. It was a bitter moment for Borysewicz, who had been a loyal employee of Weisel’s for ten years. Borysewicz had coached Weisel when he was shooting for a national masters championship, and he had coached Gorski to his Olympic gold medal in 1984. Now Gorski ranked above him not just on the business side of the team but on the sports side, too—despite the fact that Gorski knew little about the intricate racing tactics of the European circuit.

  Borysewicz also felt Gorski was moving the team forward too quickly in the interest of securing big sponsorship dollars and pursuing the glitz and glamour of top-level European racing without really knowing what he was getting himself, or Weisel, into. Eddie B enjoyed the sport of cycling for the in
tellectual challenge of developing young riders, but he never made any real money doing it, and didn’t mind. Though he hated the communist system—after all, the Soviets had sent his father to a prison camp in Siberia—he wasn’t a pure capitalist, either. There were things he valued more than money. He thought communism was actually a “nice idea” that could never work. He was beginning to feel his worldview was diametrically opposed to both Gorski’s and Weisel’s.

  With the new riders on the team came a new level of sophistication—and doping. Gorski hired Pedro Celaya, a physician who was well-known in the European professional cycling circuit for his mastery of performance-enhancing drugs. Celaya brought the Postal Service team up to speed with the Europeans by creating individualized training plans and doping schedules for the top riders on the team. Not everyone was on board with the program, however.

  In May 1997, during the Tour de Romandie, a bike race in Switzerland, Celaya called team member Scott Mercier into his hotel room. Celaya handed Mercier a calendar with training schedules that told the rider how long and how hard to ride on each day. Mercier noticed that some days on the calendar were marked with symbols, like stars and small dots, and he asked what they meant. Celaya explained that the stars signified the days on which Mercier was to take anabolic steroids, the dots indicated when he was to take testosterone. Then he handed Mercier a bag full of vials. He said the stuff inside the bag would make him “strong like bull.” The exchange caught Mercier off guard. “But I don’t even know how to inject myself,” he said.

  Celaya was shocked. “You are a professional cyclist and you really don’t know how to inject yourself?” he asked. “Go to a pharmacist or a doctor and get a lesson,” he instructed Mercier.

  Mercier never took the drugs. He decided to quit cycling and pursue another career immediately after the season ended.

  Ekimov was the brightest spot on the team in 1997. He won stages in several big European cycling events, including Paris–Nice and Setmana Catalana, and about a month before the Tour de France, he won the opening stage of the Dauphiné Libéré, a weeklong stage race organized by ASO that takes place on many of the same mountain roads included in the Tour de France. Unlike Mercier, Ekimov seemed to have no qualms with doping.

  The Postal team’s strategy of hiring these outstanding riders had paid off. It meant that the team delivered performances good enough to be able to meet the ASO’s challenge to Gorski, with the result that it received the official invitation to participate in the Tour de France—the lone American representative.

  Having gotten in, the Postal squad didn’t make much of an impact in 1997. But it did deliver a few respectable finishes on a handful of stages, and the riders got through the race without embarrassing the team. All nine were able to finish and cross the line in Paris. Hincapie finished fifth in the final sprint on the Champs-Élysées.

  The 1997 Tour de France had a surprise visitor: Lance Armstrong. He and his new girlfriend, Kristin, had been traveling through France, Monaco, and Spain and stopped by the Tour so Lance could take part in a ceremony honoring his Motorola teammate Fabio Casartelli, who had been killed in the 1995 Tour de France. Soon after, Cofidis announced they were dropping Armstrong. The team had again tried to renegotiate its deal with him for much less money, and he wasn’t having any of it. He wasn’t just disappointed—he was angry. He had a point to prove, and he fully intended to prove it.

  When Bill Stapleton called Thom Weisel to ask him if the US Postal team was interested in signing Lance, Weisel’s initial answer was a flat-out no. Still wary of Armstrong and his ability to be a team player, Weisel nonetheless decided it was worth having a conversation with Stapleton.

  In September, Weisel and Gorski sat down with Stapleton in San Francisco and they leveled with him about their concerns. Stapleton said that having had cancer, Armstrong was now a changed man—humble, more focused, with a new outlook on life. Stapleton also reassured them that Armstrong could come back from chemotherapy, that Armstrong’s doctors had been careful to use drugs that wouldn’t cause permanent damage to his lungs, his endurance capacity, or his sense of balance. There were many who thought otherwise, but Weisel believed Stapleton. Weisel and Gorski decided they would bring Armstrong back and build their team around him.

  Borysewicz, though, was adamantly against it. Bring him on as a sort of mascot? Fine. As a part-time rider to show up at races? Sure, why not? But as a full-time guy? A team leader like he was before? Borysewicz feared that if Lance got back to bike racing, his cancer might return. This was something he had seen in Europe. Cyclists got over cancer, and then, once they returned to the sport, the cancer came back. Borysewicz believed that training for professional cycling was so draining and debilitating that the body’s natural defenses were weakened and could no longer stand up to the disease. And it had crossed Borysewicz’s mind that Armstrong’s cancer might have been caused or worsened by the “medical program,” as he referred to it, on Armstrong’s old team. Eddie B tried not to think about what might have been included in that program. To build a team around Armstrong seemed wrong to him. But Borysewicz was outvoted. Weisel and Gorski had made up their minds. Borysewicz had received another offer to run a European cycling team. He already felt marginalized on the US Postal team. The disagreement over Armstrong was the last straw and he resigned.

  Armstrong’s contract called for eighty “starts”—or races—in the 1998 season. He didn’t expect to be a contender for any victories, or a contender for participation in the 1998 Tour de France. But as long as he performed well in some of the minor races, he could rack up nearly as many UCI points as he would have accumulated in the major races. That meant he could still earn as much as $1 million in bonuses.

  For his winter training, he and Kristin rented an apartment in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the upscale peninsula on the Mediterranean coast, between Nice and Monaco, bringing their cat with them.

  Armstrong had already reconnected with Michele Ferrari, who was delighted to have his old client back. On December 2, Armstrong took a blood test in Spain, and Ferrari meticulously scribbled the results into a spreadsheet. Armstrong’s hematocrit, or red blood cell percentage, was 41.2. It needed to be much higher for major competitions—preferably in the high 50s. For that, Armstrong needed EPO, which is what Ferrari prescribed.

  On February 14, Armstrong took another blood test. This time, his hematocrit had risen to 46.7—perfect for the upcoming Ruta del Sol. The five-day stage race in Spain, held in February 1998, was to be Armstrong’s comeback race.

  Armstrong finished in fifteenth place, an encouraging result. Armstrong told himself that his comeback was not for him but for cancer survivors all over the world. He had told himself that he wanted to prove to them, and everyone, that you can not only survive cancer, you can come back and perform as well as you did before cancer. And now he thought he had proven that.

  Fifteenth place in the Ruta del Sol would show them all. Never mind that nobody outside of Western Europe knew what the race was. Never mind that Americans couldn’t even pronounce it. Armstrong, if only for a brief moment, thought he might have proven all he needed to prove. Like Superman giving up his powers, he would go back to Austin, live life as a civilian, walk down the aisle with Kristin. He loved her. They could live a comfortable life even if Lance couldn’t ride bikes for a living. Kristin’s father was wealthy enough to provide financial help.

  She would pop out some kids. He would mow the lawn. Happiness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SIT-INS AND SADDLE SORES

  Lance’s decision to settle down with Kristin Richard shocked some, primarily because he had previously lacked the mind-set of a traditional family man. Before he got sick, he seemed to think of little but sex. Even when he was a teenager and doing the triathlon circuit, there were times when his managers had to pull him off women at hotels. While cycling, he would often chase the “podium girls”—the women who give stage winners and jersey competition leaders awards each day in a mul
tiday race. Lance’s pals called him FedEx because the company’s slogan, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight,” seemed to describe his sex drive.

  Richard was the daughter of a kindergarten-teacher mother and a dad who had worked as an IBM executive for three decades. She had a down-home Midwestern accent and a broad smile. When she and Lance met, she was twenty-five, about his age, unlike the women in their thirties whom he had often chased in his late teens. She had a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, a successful career, and a convertible, and she had recently purchased her first home. She dreamed of becoming a writer.

  After dumping Lisa, who had been by Lance’s bedside throughout his cancer treatments, he and Kristin dated for only four months before getting engaged in October 1997. They planned a wedding in Santa Barbara, near her parents’ summer home, for May 1998.

  The woman-chasing Armstrong, the one with the rough edges and unchecked cockiness, seemed to have disappeared along with his cancer. The new Armstrong thought about adult things—family, long-term happiness, the meaning of life. He worked on his golf game, ate tacos, sat on the couch, strummed on his guitar, and played with his kitten, Chemo. He even spent a week on tour in North Carolina with Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers band. New York Times reporter Samuel Abt, who built a career as Armstrong’s unofficial post-cancer propagandist, described this period of his life as a soul-searching awakening that included every kind of trope of self-discovery except a pilgrimage to Tibet.

  After his fifteenth-place showing in the Ruta del Sol in February, he did consider retiring, but he felt obliged to fulfill his contract to ride for the Postal team. His next big competition was the eight-day stage race Paris–Nice in March. Two years earlier, before Armstrong had been diagnosed with cancer, he had finished second overall. So he knew the course, and was confident going in.