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

by Reed Albergotti

  Mark Gorski, meanwhile, was floating a carefully concocted story in interviews with the press. He admitted the team carried Actovegin but said it was used for two completely legitimate purposes: to treat skin abrasions and to treat the diabetes of Julien de Vriese, the team mechanic. He called the accusations that it was used for performance-enhancing purposes a “preposterous rumor.”

  Jonathan Vaughters hadn’t realized that Actovegin was derived from calf’s blood. He immediately began to worry that he may have exposed himself to mad cow disease, which was going around Europe. In a panic, he called Gorski, who assured Vaughters he had nothing to worry about. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” Gorski said.

  When LeMond read the reports about the Actovegin, he was stunned. He knew nothing about this oddly named drug, but he believed Gorski was lying. During the 2000 Tour de France, LeMond had dinner with de Vriese, who had also served as the team mechanic on the Z team. It was the ten-year anniversary of LeMond’s first victory on the team, and everyone met in France for an informal reunion.

  At dinner, surrounded by a handful of old riders as well as Greg and Kathy LeMond, de Vriese began to talk about the doping on the USPS team. De Vriese said he had been at training camp with the team in the Pyrenees and witnessed the use of doping products. It went beyond the occasional pill or injection, de Vriese said. The team bus was like a hospital. “This isn’t cycling anymore,” de Vriese told LeMond.

  De Vriese also told Kathy he had learned that Armstrong arranged for $500,000 to be wired to the UCI after his positive corticosteroid test in 1999. The money, he believed, came from either Thom Weisel or Nike.

  De Vriese said he was so disgusted by the doping that he’d resigned. But soon after his resignation, Armstrong called him personally and asked him to stay, offering him a hefty raise. De Vriese accepted the offer—mainly because he needed the money—on one condition: He didn’t have to work on the main Tour de France squad. De Vriese knew the doping program was amplified during the Tour, and he didn’t want to be around it.

  So when LeMond read that Gorski was using de Vriese as the smoke screen, he knew it was bullshit. De Vriese’s diabetes couldn’t account for several trash bags full of Actovegin packaging, and it couldn’t explain why the team doctor and head masseuse had driven fifty miles away from the race just to dump the trash bags at a random rest stop.

  LeMond was beginning to feel convinced that the team was running a sophisticated doping program, and that Armstrong was a cheat. He’d heard the story of Armstrong’s hospital room admission about using drugs, but he’d written it off as rumor. But now, he believed it wholeheartedly.

  • • •

  Despite his threats to skip the Tour in the wake of the Actovegin investigation, Armstrong never seriously considered missing it. To prepare for the race, he spent the early part of the 2001 season at a number of smaller races in Spain and, despite the ongoing investigation by French prosecutors, he even raced in the French stage race Circuit de la Sarthe in April.

  In June, however, Armstrong skipped the Dauphiné Libéré, the weeklong French stage race that many riders use as a tune-up. Instead, he competed in the Tour de Suisse, which he won. But if Armstrong had avoided the Dauphiné in order to evade French law enforcement, he was out of luck. Testers working for the UCI collected urine samples from many of the riders at the Tour de Suisse, including Armstrong. The samples were sent directly to an anti-doping lab in Lausanne. One of the samples showed signs of synthetic EPO.

  The EPO test used was the one developed by Conconi. It involved dropping a small amount of urine onto a gel that separated synthetic EPO from the natural version of the hormone produced by the body. Testers had to determine if there was enough synthetic EPO present to constitute a positive result, but because the test was so new, testers tended to err on the side of caution and give riders the benefit of the doubt. This test, though, was right on the edge.

  The samples were identified only by rider numbers, not names, so the lab had no idea whose test they were looking at. But they notified the UCI of the suspicious test and provided the rider number.

  Since the UCI had the records to match names to numbers, it soon knew that the urine test was Lance Armstrong’s. It would have been the UCI’s responsibility as to whether or not to sanction Armstrong. By this time, UCI President Verbruggen must have been feeling embattled by all the doping problems, and the European press and the French authorities seemed obsessed with it. To Verbruggen, every news story about doping, every police raid on a cyclist’s hotel, probably felt like an attack on the sport, and on his livelihood as well.

  The UCI notified Armstrong of the suspicious EPO result but informed him that he would not be punished because the test was too close to call. Armstrong’s inside information on the EPO test had been right on the money. Had he taken his EPO injections just under the skin, as he had in 1999, instead of directly into his veins, he would surely have registered a more conclusively positive test.

  Having gotten away with little more than a slap on the wrist, Armstrong did not hesitate to launch self-righteous attacks on all those other cyclists he said were bringing down his sport. After winning the Tour de Suisse, he chastised those cheaters who “bring shame” on cycling, referring to several riders by name. “These guys must be thrown out of the sport without a backward glance,” Armstrong told reporters. “They don’t respect the sport, the champions of the past, or the fans.”

  Just weeks later, Armstrong entered the 2001 Tour de France, seeking his third straight win, a feat only four other cyclists had ever managed. Armstrong’s main competition was, again, Jan Ullrich of Germany, who’d won gold and silver medals in the 2000 Olympics. The first day in the mountains came on the tenth day of the race—a 130-mile stage that finished atop the famed Alpe d’Huez. Armstrong blasted up the steep switchbacks to claim his first stage victory of the race. The next day, he won the twenty-mile individual time trial. On stage 13, which finished atop another famous climb, the Pla d’Adet, Armstrong won his third stage and the overall race lead. After the individual time trial on stage 18, Armstrong was ahead of Ullrich by over 6 minutes. It was another decisive victory. Armstrong coasted the rest of the way to Paris in the yellow jersey. That ceremonial victory lap around the cobblestones of the Champs-Élysées was turning into an annual ritual.

  After winning the race, Armstrong was called into a meeting with UCI doctors in Aigle, who, in their thick Swiss accents, informed him that they would watch him more carefully now. If the meeting was meant as a warning, Armstrong didn’t see it that way. The very fact that he was being let off with only a warning seemed to be evidence to him that he was indeed invincible. His brand was too strong, too valuable, to be ruined with a positive test result.

  Whatever Armstrong may have felt about his invincibility even while he was tackling those precipitous alpine climbs, the suspicions about his doping were being voiced in the press once again—reawakened by the scrutiny now being directed at cycling, and specifically at Michele Ferrari. At the time of the 2001 Tour, Ferrari was facing criminal charges in Italy for allegedly administering performance-enhancing drugs. The charges against him stemmed from an investigation that went back at least to 1998, when his name was found on prescriptions for performance-enhancing drugs discovered in the possession of professional athletes. Prosecutors in Bologna had opened an inquiry, and Ferrari’s home had been raided several times by investigators. Testimony from cyclists who were questioned during the probe led to Ferrari being charged in 2001. Ferrari was eventually convicted by an Italian court of malpractice and sporting fraud for advising riders on the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Two years later, an appeals court threw out the verdit, acquitting him of malpractice and ruling that the statute of limitations had expired on the sporting-fraud conviction.

  Once the European press linked the two men, Armstrong was forced to admit that he’d worked with Ferrari in the past. The admission came after persistent inquiries from Sunday Times repo
rter David Walsh, who was covering the Tour. Armstrong defended his work with the doctor as legitimate, explaining that Ferrari had been training him to break the one-hour record on the track—a measure of how far a cyclist can travel in exactly sixty minutes. Armstrong denied ever using EPO and, as usual, lashed out at those in the press who expressed suspicion of him.

  When LeMond read about Armstrong’s links to Ferrari, he no longer had any doubt that Armstrong was doping. In the early 1990s, when LeMond was struggling with health problems and getting weaker on the bike, sports doctors had suggested that he see Ferrari, but he had refused. LeMond knew he’d competed against doped riders. He had no desire to become one.

  LeMond sent an e-mail to Walsh. “Great work, David. You’re on the right track,” he wrote. Soon after the e-mail, Walsh called LeMond and asked for a quote on Ferrari, but LeMond had no desire to get in the middle of the controversy. He didn’t want to directly accuse Armstrong, so he settled on what he thought was a less controversial approach. He gave an interview to Walsh, in which he was quoted as saying, “When I heard he was working with Michele Ferrari, I was devastated. . . . If Lance is clean, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sports. If he isn’t, it would be the greatest fraud.”

  Lance responded by telling reporters he was “surprised” and “upset” by LeMond’s comments, and then called LeMond, who recalls that Lance threatened to use his clout to ruin his reputation. He reiterated this threat to friends as well. A few weeks after the Tour, Armstrong was having dinner with Frankie and Betsy Andreu and a few other friends when he vowed to take revenge against LeMond. “I’m going to take him down,” he said. By making one call to the owner of Trek bicycles, he said, he could “shut him up.” He even began to lean on Trek to talk to LeMond.

  LeMond also began getting phone calls from Armstrong’s supporters. One of the first was from Weisel. “You know, what you’re saying about Lance isn’t good for you. You better be careful.”

  John Burke, the president of Trek bikes, got caught in the middle. Burke contacted LeMond and tried to get him to agree to issue a statement retracting his comments. After more than a week of negotiations, an apologetic press release was sent by Trek to USA Today. It had been written by Bill Stapleton. Without even calling LeMond for comment, USA Today printed the article on August 15. LeMond regretted going along with the idea of a press release. He was furious and clearly in no mood to issue an apology.

  In an effort to keep Eddy Merckx from getting roped into the Ferrari scandal, Armstrong concocted a story that he and his coach, Chris Carmichael, had met Ferrari during a training camp in San Diego, California, in 1995 and that Ferrari’s role had always been “limited.” Ferrari, Lance said, uses only “natural methods of improvement,” including altitude tents and diet. “I feel he’s honest and innocent,” Lance added. For those who might have wondered why Lance would need to work with Ferrari, given that Carmichael was his coach, Lance explained that since Carmichael couldn’t be in Europe on an ongoing basis, Ferrari played an important role by doing Lance’s physiological tests there, and sending Carmichael his data.

  Within days of Lance’s defense of Ferrari, the Italian edition of GQ magazine printed statements the Italian rider Filippo Simeoni had given to Italian police. Simeoni said Ferrari—nicknamed Il Mito, or “the myth,” by Italian cyclists—advised him to use EPO, testosterone, and human growth hormone to improve his performance. Diaries kept by Simeoni recorded the substances he took between 1992 and 1999, the year he was questioned by Italian police, and recounted the advice Ferrari had given him about how to pass the hematocrit blood test used by the UCI. “Dr. Ferrari advised me to use two alternatives: Hemagel [a blood thinning agent] on the morning of the control, albumin [an element contained in white blood cells] on the evening before a possible control.”

  Responding to the quotes in the GQ article, Lance said: “It’s a story that is three years old. Anyone can print old articles.”

  Lance conceded, however, that his association with Ferrari might look suspicious. “People are not stupid,” he told reporters at a press conference during the Tour. “They will look at the facts. They will say: ‘Here’s Lance Armstrong. Here’s a relationship. Is it questionable? Perhaps.’ But people are smart. They will say: ‘Has Lance Armstrong ever tested positive? No. Has Lance Armstrong ever been tested? A lot.’ I have a questionable reputation because I’m a cyclist. People love to single out cycling. . . . The [drug] problems are not exclusive to cycling or the Tour de France or Lance Armstrong. I think this is a clean Tour.” Armstrong didn’t know that LeMond had also told Walsh about the Indiana hospital room. Walsh was now on the hunt to confirm it.

  • • •

  As Armstrong battled his critics in the press, the Lance Armstrong Foundation was getting a new president: Steve Whisnant, a well-respected fund-raiser in the nonprofit world. There was one complicating factor. Whisnant was good friends with Greg LeMond. A recent cancer survivor, Whisnant was inspired by Armstrong’s story. He had accepted the job just a couple of months before LeMond’s controversial comments about Armstrong.

  Whisnant wasn’t completely blindsided by the allegations. Before he accepted the job, Whisnant had called people close to the foundation and Armstrong, including John Bucksbaum, and asked them pointed questions.

  “But what about the drugs in the sport?” Whisnant had asked Bucksbaum. “There have been allegations about Armstrong and I don’t want this to blow up in my face.”

  “I know about the allegations,” Bucksbaum said. “Lance has the potential to do so much good. You just have to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Despite his concerns, Whisnant decided to take the job. He repeated Bucksbaum’s advice in his head. “Give him the benefit of the doubt,” he told himself.

  Just before the Tour de France in 2001, Whisnant called up LeMond and told him he had accepted the job. LeMond was upset.

  “Steve, you can’t take this job,” he said.

  “Why?” Whisnant said. “I know there have been questions about drugs.”

  LeMond was cryptic. He didn’t want to tell Whisnant everything he knew. He felt they were, at least at this point, just allegations and he didn’t want to repeat them to Whisnant. “Listen, you just have to trust me, Steve. This is a bad idea.”

  “Look, I’ve already taken the job, Greg. This thing has so much potential. I have to do this.”

  “Steve, I understand. But I don’t think you’re going to last six months there. This guy, he’s not someone you want to get involved with.”

  Before starting in his new job, Whisnant traveled with Lance, Kristin, and Luke to Nike headquarters in Oregon, where the company was naming its fitness center after Lance. The night before the ceremony, Armstrong and Whisnant sat down alone together and had a beer. Whisnant decided it was the right time to ask a tough question.

  Looking Armstrong in the eyes, he said, “Lance, I am going to ask you a question, and I need you to look me in the eyes and answer honestly. Is there anything I need to know about that could come out? Anything at all that might embarrass you, me, or harm the mission of the foundation?”

  Armstrong knew exactly what Whisnant was getting at.

  “No. Absolutely not,” Armstrong said, looking straight into Whisnant’s eyes. Whisnant replayed Bucksbaum’s advice in his head. Give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Once in Austin, Whisnant went out to lunch with Jeff Garvey at a Chinese restaurant. He casually asked Garvey, “Jeff, do you think Lance was doping before cancer?”

  Garvey paused. And then he answered, “Yeah, I think he probably was.”

  Whisnant left the restaurant shell-shocked. He thought that if Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing drugs, it might have led to his cancer, making the idea behind the foundation a big lie.

  Even before LeMond made his public comments about the link between Armstrong and Ferrari at the Tour de France, Whisnant had heard murmurs at the foundation about bad blood between Lan
ce and Greg. At a meeting in early July with top employees of the charity, including Garvey and Doug Ulman, the new director of survivorship, the discussion turned away from cancer and became focused on LeMond. Some staffers began to recite what seemed to Whisnant to be talking points meant to discredit Greg. He was an “alcoholic,” they said. He was “emotionally disturbed” and was out to get Armstrong due to some deranged feeling of jealousy.

  Finally, Whisnant spoke up. “That’s just not true!” he said, defending his friend. Everyone at the meeting turned and looked at him as if were a traitor. Whisnant was confused and had a sinking feeling in his stomach that he might have made a big mistake taking this job. But he stuck with it in the hopes that he could make it work.

  After LeMond’s comments about Ferrari broke in the press in late July, things became outright hostile at the foundation because of his relationship with LeMond. Whisnant checked his voice mail to discover a message from Lance. “I’m not sure this is going to work out,” Lance said.

  Soon after, Jeff Garvey burst into Whisnant’s office, fuming mad.

  You need to make a decision. It’s either Lance Armstrong or Greg LeMond,” Garvey said.

  Garvey stormed out of the office. Whisnant was distraught and worried he had made a huge, career-altering blunder by taking the job. He immediately called Bill Stapleton, who was, to Whisnant’s surprise, calm and reassuring. “Listen, it’s okay,” he said. “We really need you in this job. Jeff was out of control and he owes you an apology,” Stapleton said.

  The apology took place at Garvey’s house in Austin, where Stapleton and Garvey attempted to convince Whisnant to stay. “Sorry that happened,’’ Garvey said. “That isn’t what the foundation is about. We want you to stay and Lance is completely behind you,” he said.