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

by Reed Albergotti

  “There was a lot of macho that day,” recalled one of the riders, Kenneth Barnett, chief executive of a Michigan marketing firm. “These fairly accomplished people were like little boys with big toys.”

  San Francisco ad executive Rich Silverstein, who donated to US cycling through the Champions Club but didn’t invest in the Postal team, looked back on those early days with pleasure. “You don’t go to spring training of baseball and throw the ball around with the guys,” he said. “We got into the spring training of cycling and were able to ride with the guys. Being on the inside of the sport like that was seductive.”

  Most of the investors in Weisel’s team were wealthy dabblers who viewed the investment as something of a down payment on a lifestyle. But Tiger Williams, who bought a 1.55 percent stake in December 2002, for about $100,000, was different in an important regard: He was a salesman and entrepreneur who viewed his investment not just as a lifestyle thing—though it certainly was that, and he didn’t hesitate to capitalize on the glamour of being associated with the team—but as a potential moneymaker as well as a marketing vehicle for Williams Trading, the firm he founded in 1997.

  A former ice hockey standout at Yale University, Williams had been a star trader at Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management before starting his own company. Though headquartered in a nondescript office complex in Stamford, Connecticut, Williams Trading’s clients have included Cascade Investment, which managed Microsoft founder Bill Gates’s fortune, as well as many major hedge funds including Blue Ridge Capital. By the time Weisel approached Williams to invest in Tailwind Sports, Williams was making more than $20 million a year. On weekends, he flew by private helicopter to a beach home he owned in Montauk, on the Long Island shore.

  In their pitch to Williams, Weisel and Gorski said that Tailwind had found a way to produce a return. The idea centered around creating a sort of fan club that would leverage Armstrong’s popularity into subscription revenues and merchandise sales. When he invested in the team, Williams agreed to pay extra to secure the right to put a logo for his firm, Williams Trading LLC, on the Postal Service team jerseys. In addition, Williams pledged $100,000 a year to the Lance Armstrong Foundation—and he later also helped the foundation raise money by hosting fund-raisers.

  During the course of his ever-growing involvement with the team, Williams also struck up close friendships with several of its cyclists, including George Hincapie, Dave Zabriskie, and Floyd Landis.

  While all the investors reveled in the team’s success, for Weisel, an ultracompetitive alpha male, the team’s Tour de France victories were the most exciting ROI he’d ever seen. He proudly displayed Armstrong’s yellow jerseys above his desk at his offices in San Francisco’s Financial District. So he stuck with the team despite its losses, which ran between about $200,000 and $1.2 million a year through 2003.

  Beyond his involvement in his own team, Weisel was also interested in becoming a player in the international world of cycling. He fantasized about ousting the European bureaucrats from the top of the sport’s power structure, the UCI. He felt the UCI was old-fashioned, stodgy, and slow. It governed hundreds of individually owned races, mostly in Europe, and each race negotiated with TV broadcasters and sponsors on its own behalf. Unlike baseball and football, cycling lacked a nerve center, with which potential advertisers, corporate partners, and broadcasters could negotiate lucrative deals. The head of the UCI, Hein Verbruggen, had been attempting to change things in cycling, but progress was slow. The bureaucracy was too firmly entrenched. So Weisel set his sights closer to home, on the American branch of the International Olympic Committee.

  USA Cycling, which changed its name from the United States Cycling Federation in 1995, enjoyed a congressionally mandated monopoly as the sole governing body for Olympic cycling in the United States. But it was struggling financially after years of what Weisel called mismanagement. “It was in disarray. There was no planning, no funding, no budgets. Nothing,” he said.

  Weisel set up a separate organization in the summer of 2000 called the USA Cycling Development Foundation, to help raise money for the sport. It was then that Weisel created the Champions Club, modeled after the charitable foundation that supported the US Ski Team.

  Soon, USA Cycling grew dependent on the development foundation. In exchange for the cash infusions, which bailed it out of its financial troubles, the organization agreed to change its bylaws, giving the development foundation voting power on the board. Then, in the nonprofit equivalent of audacious corporate shareholder activism, Weisel engineered the ouster of the organization’s top leadership.

  Weisel’s old masters cycling teammate and friend, Steve Johnson, left his job as an associate sports science professor at the University of Utah to become the chief operating officer of the federation. A few years later, Weisel helped to install Jim Ochowicz as president, and hired him as a broker at his investment banking firm, Thomas Weisel Partners.

  When Ochowicz, who’d been working as a broker in the years after Motorola folded, began working for Weisel, he took with him a significant client in the cycling world: Verbruggen. In 1999, while Ochowicz was working for Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee, he had opened a brokerage account for Verbruggen. By then, Ochowicz had become a very close friend of Armstrong’s, and that year he also became the godfather of Armstrong’s son, Luke.

  Through his control of the sport in the United States, and his ability to use his investment bank’s resources in the cycling world, Weisel also gained some influence over the UCI, which controlled the business and, significantly, all drug testing during the Tour de France. Ochowicz, in his role as head of the US governing body, made trips to Aigle, Switzerland, to meet with UCI president Hein Verbruggen. Ostensibly, he made the visits for the purpose of coordinating promotion of the sport and for reviewing details of upcoming Olympic events. But Ochowicz had another reason to visit: He often discussed financial transactions in Verbruggen’s brokerage account. Weisel, the hottest investment banker in Silicon Valley at the time, didn’t accept investments from just anybody. USADA and others believe the financial relationship represented a massive conflict of interest for Verbruggen. Armstrong was the sport’s biggest star, and Verbruggen, as head of the governing body, was his head disciplinarian. Had the USPS team wanted to transfer funds to Verbruggen, it would have been easy for Thomas Weisel Partners to let Verbruggen in on a hot IPO, which could have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, depending on the amount of Verbruggen’s investment. Weisel had helped other high-profile people in the cycling industry—including LeMond—in this way.

  Verbruggen now had several disincentives to police Armstrong’s doping, and Armstrong would be thankful for them at various times throughout the remaining years of his career.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HEMATOCRITS AND HYPOCRITES

  With Thom Weisel firmly in control of the sport in their home country, and their finances vastly improved, the mood on the US Postal team was more relaxed. The new infusions of money meant that there were more staffers on the team, more mechanics, and extra bikes and other state-of-the-art equipment, much of it custom-made to the riders’ specifications. No longer struggling so hard to hold on to its dominance, the Postal team could focus on its strengths: winning bike races. The 1999 Tour de France had proved to the world what Armstrong and his teammates were capable of, and now they had to show the world that it hadn’t been an anomaly.

  For 2000, the team had set high goals, including a strong showing in the spring classics and, of course, a defense of the yellow jersey by Lance. The team hired five new riders to back their superhuman superstar, including Viatcheslav “Eki” Ekimov, who had left the team in 1998 for a richer offer but would return to become a fixture in all of Armstrong’s remaining Tour de France runs.

  Before the 2000 Tour de France began, there were rumors in the peloton that a new prototype test for EPO had been discovered and would be used during the race. This was the test that the Internationa
l Olympic Committee had commissioned Francesco Conconi, the so-called fox in the henhouse, to develop. Concerned about being found out, cyclists were even more afraid of using EPO than they had been in 1999. But that didn’t deter the US Postal Service team.

  Armstrong bragged to friends that he had inside knowledge of how to get around the test, thanks to the fact that Conconi had been the mentor to his longtime doping doctor, Michele Ferrari. From Ferrari, the US Postal Service team learned that if the riders injected EPO directly into their veins instead of just below the skin—which was the typical method—the drug would leave their system in around twelve hours instead of a few days. Armstrong also knew that the EPO test, still in its infancy, was far from exact. Even if a rider were to be tested a few hours after an EPO injection, the test would likely be inconclusive.

  Thanks to its growing budget, the team could also afford to begin to implement a more complicated but less detectable method of doping: blood transfusions. Doctors carried out a blood doping program for all three of its climbers: Lance; Tyler Hamilton, a blue-eyed twenty-nine-year-old prep school graduate who had attended the University of Colorado at Boulder; and Kevin Livingston, a twenty-seven-year-old originally from St. Louis, who was known for his near perfect pedal stroke. About a month before the 2000 Tour, as Johan Bruyneel explained, 500 cc of blood—the equivalent of two cups—would be withdrawn from each of them, then reinfused a few weeks later during the Tour. Since there was no reliable test for blood transfusions, there would be no way for the riders to be caught unless someone witnessed the reinfusion firsthand, or caught them with the blood bags in their possession.

  In mid-June, Armstrong, Hamilton, and Livingston stepped aboard a private jet in Nice to fly to Valencia. There, they were driven to a hotel for the extraction. The whole process took about an hour and then the three men went for a training ride down the coast. Fatigued from the loss of blood, they struggled during the training ride to make it up some small hills. But they knew that after the blood was reinfused, they would be able to power up the Tour’s climbs.

  During that year’s Tour, Armstrong was neck and neck with the bald thirty-year-old Italian Marco Pantani, a fan favorite in the late 1990s for his aggressive style, and brown-haired former Tour de France winner and race favorite, twenty-seven-year-old Jan Ullrich of Germany, until the tenth stage—a 127-mile mountain expedition from Dax to Lourdes Hautacam. On the morning before the stage, rain was pouring down and it was cold. These were conditions most cyclists hate, but Armstrong had grown to love them because they brought out the best in him. The course included three major climbs: the Col de Marie-Blanque, the Col d’Aubisque, and the agonizing 8.3-mile Hautacam. Armstrong, Ullrich, and Pantani stayed together until the base of the Hautacam. As the climb began, Pantani jumped up and took off on an attack, opening up a small gap between him and the riders behind him. Armstrong took off after him and, within seconds, caught and passed him. Ullrich was left far behind. By the time he reached the top of the Hautacam, Armstrong had moved into the race lead, with Ullrich in second place, 4 minutes and 14 seconds behind. With such a large lead, Armstrong’s second straight victory in the Tour was all but sealed.

  Yet the team was taking no chances. On the night of July 11, following the eleventh stage, Lance, Kevin, and Tyler gathered in a Provence hotel room where their blood bags were suspended on picture hooks on the walls. Lying faceup on the bed, the riders were reinfused with their own blood. The next day was a rest day before the twelfth stage, which finished with a climb up Mont Ventoux, where Armstrong’s performance would make him a cycling legend.

  Ventoux has long been fetishized by cycling fans. Its thirteen-mile road is steep, with grades of up to 10 percent, and it is also extremely windy, making it even more challenging. During the 1967 Tour, British cyclist Tommy Simpson died on Ventoux, pushing himself beyond his limits in a drug-induced daze. But in cycling lore, it wasn’t so much the drugs that killed Simpson—it was Ventoux. He’s memorialized by a sculpture placed at the very spot where he collapsed—a symbol of the sport’s romantic fatalism and the Tour’s unparalleled suffering.

  A crowd of 300,000 fans lined the cold, blustery road up. The pack of 161 cyclists dwindled to seven of the best climbers, including Armstrong, Pantani, and Ullrich. The crowd roared as they passed. Then, with about three miles to go, Pantani attacked. He was ten minutes down in the GC (the general classification) and was only going for the stage win, so none of the lead riders chased him—except Armstrong. He got up out of the saddle and chased after Pantani, leaving Ullrich behind. In a show of incredible strength, he caught Pantani in seconds. Now Armstrong and Pantani were dueling up the mountain, looking at each other and trading massive accelerations up the slope. Armstrong was happy because Ullrich was far behind, losing more time. As the two men approached the finish line, Armstrong slowed down, and Pantani, exhausted, was able to nudge his bike forward and cross the finish line first. It was clear to anyone that Armstrong—by far the stronger rider—let Pantani win. Armstrong didn’t need the stage victory. Pantani had helped him put time into Ullrich, and Armstrong felt he deserved the win that day. Armstrong’s gift to Pantani became a topic of debate among cycling fans. Had Armstrong done the gentlemanly thing by letting Pantani win? Or had he disrespected the Tour by not attempting the stage win? Pantani was furious. He didn’t want or need gifts. Weisel was also angry that Armstrong had given up a win. For fans, the controversy added delicious drama to the cinematic display of athletic talent. The day would live on forever in the collective imagination of cycling fans. Pantani got one more stage win before dropping out of the race. Armstrong’s lead was secure and insurmountable by any of his opponents. He held the yellow jersey all the way to Paris.

  Armstrong had done the unthinkable: won a second consecutive Tour de France. This second win also set off discussions about his legacy—whether he had eased past three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond to become the top cyclist in US history, and whether he could go on to win the Tour de France three times, or even five times, to equal the records of Miguel Indurain of Spain, Bernard Hinault of France, and Eddy Merckx of Belgium, the men regarded as the world’s greatest riders, the crème de la crème of cycling.

  In September, Lance went to compete in the 2000 Olympics, which were being held in Sydney. Lance’s presence there was a very big story, and he expected—and received—all kinds of deluxe treatment in accordance with his superstar status. He asked USA Cycling for extra bikes, extra mechanics, and special accommodations.

  He had hoped for a gold medal in the time trial, but he finished third, taking bronze behind his Postal teammate, Eki, who took the gold, and Ullrich, who took silver (as well as winning a gold medal in the cycling road race).

  For Armstrong to have done even as well as he did was impressive, given that he had been racing injured. A few weeks before the Olympics, while on a training ride on a remote, narrow road in the hills above Nice, he had taken a blind left-hand curve and piled into an oncoming car. He was lucky to be alive, but he had fractured one of the vertebrae of his spine, the link between his back and his neck, and the injury hadn’t entirely healed by the time he got to Sydney.

  Trouble soon followed, however. During the Tour, investigative reporters working for the TV station France 3 had trailed the US Postal’s team doctors and filmed them secretly dumping medical waste at a highway rest stop miles from their hotel. The packaging contained bloody bandages, used syringes, and packaging for a drug known as Actovegin, the blood doping drug made from calf’s blood. Actovegin had been developed in both an injectable form and a cream for use by stroke patients and diabetics, and it and similar products have been used in the treatment of acne, rashes, burns, ulcers, eye problems, tendinitis, circulatory disorders, and senility. Among cyclists, the common belief was that the injectable form of Actovegin could help speed oxygen to the muscles and improve the metabolism of glucose, enhancing both energy and recovery.

  As the French TV station investigated, debating
whether the contents of the trash bags were newsworthy, someone sent an anonymous letter to the prosecutor’s office in Paris about what the crew had found. The letter convinced the prosecutor’s office to conduct an inquiry, and word of the investigation leaked to the press in late fall, with a story airing on television in France as well.

  There was some disagreement among the various sporting agencies about whether Actovegin was actually a banned substance. It was not specifically named on anyone’s list of forbidden substances, but similar products were banned. A couple of months after news of the investigation surfaced, the International Olympic Committee officially banned it. The UCI, however, did not. To the contrary: Hein Verbruggen and the UCI fully backed Armstrong, saying that the product was not a banned substance.

  Though cleared by the UCI, members of the Postal team could still face criminal charges in France if they were found to have used performance-enhancing drugs to cheat, and the French prosecutor’s investigation continued.

  Armstrong, indignant over what he considered to be harassment, categorically denied that the US Postal team had ever used Actovegin for performance-enhancing purposes, and made an elaborate show of not even knowing how to spell it. “Activ-o-something,” he wrote on his website in December 2000. He said he would skip the 2001 Tour de France if the investigation continued.