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

by Reed Albergotti

  Ashenden pointed out that Armstrong’s body weight was about the same before and after cancer. “Something that I’d always read about Armstrong is his explanation for this improvement in performance is that during the cancer, he remodeled his body,” Ashenden said. “I was given a pretty brief opportunity to review his medical records,” he said. “I can’t see where he lost his body weight and when, and none of the data that I’ve seen would make me think any different. He’s virtually the same weight.” Ashenden said Coyle’s slide showing Armstrong to be a one-in-a-billion human being was “baseless. There was no scientific rationale for the conclusions that he reached.”

  Powerful as its case might have seemed, SCA’s legal position was flawed. Even if the evidence against Armstrong showed overwhelmingly that he had doped, he had not been stripped of his titles. Unless the UCI, the sport’s official governing body, concluded that Armstrong doped, SCA was unlikely to win its case, regardless of the evidence.

  Making things more problematic for SCA was a ruling by the arbitration panel that said the company should be treated as a traditional insurance company. Under Texas law, that meant that if SCA lost the case, it would be liable for triple damages. Facing the possibility of financial catastrophe, in February 2006, Bob Hamman decided to drop the case, despite the fact that he still believed in its validity. Opting to settle, SCA was required to pay $7 million, the amount of the contested bonus plus legal expenses—the most Armstrong and Tailwind could’ve gotten from SCA without bankrupting it.

  Lance had won, leaving Hamman furious.

  The SCA case was but one of many lawsuits Tim Herman and other members of Armstrong’s legal team were handling on his behalf, and it wasn’t the only one in which they were successful. For example, the suit they had filed against The Sunday Times for an article based on David Walsh and Pierre Ballester’s book, L.A. Confidentiel, resulted in the paper making a £300,000 settlement offer after the High Court ruled that the article had wrongly left readers with the impression that Lance was a fraud, a cheat, and a liar.

  Lance’s lawsuit didn’t stop Walsh from working on a new book incorporating additional evidence of Lance’s doping, including the material about his positive EPO tests during the 1999 Tour de France. But it seemed as though Lance was going to get away with that, too, thanks to UCI president Hein Verbruggen. Within weeks of the appearance of Damien Ressiot’s story about the EPO tests, UCI announced it was hiring an independent inspector—the lawyer Emile Vrijman, who happened to be a friend of Verbruggen’s—to look into the accusations in L’Équipe. When Vrijman’s report finally came out in June 2006, it ignored the overwhelming evidence of doping by Armstrong and instead focused mainly on how the lab hadn’t followed the rules when it retested old samples. It did not actually refute the claims by the French journalist. It merely said the samples couldn’t be used for an “official” positive.

  Most newspapers reported that Armstrong had been exonerated. “Report clears Armstrong of doping in 1999 Tour de France,” the Associated Press said. Lance “got a boost yesterday toward clearing his name of doping allegations connected with his triumph in the 1999 Tour de France,” reported The New York Times. “Vrijman stated that there was no proof that Armstrong had used EPO,” the article said, citing the independent report. Armstrong’s chief mythologists must have been breathing huge sighs of relief.

  Despite all the serious allegations being leveled at Armstrong, nothing was having an effect on his marketability or on his reputation. Lance was on top of the world, at the height of his fame, and the money was rolling in. He still had hugely lucrative endorsement deals with Nike and Oakley and many others. He continued to serve on the White House cancer panel. He was jet-setting around the globe, meeting with world leaders to talk about cancer awareness.

  In cycling circles, Armstrong’s name was beginning to be sullied. On cycling message boards, anonymous posters debated the possibility that Lance had raced clean. But the debate was confined largely to those forums. The mainstream press had moved on.

  Lance meanwhile had embarked on a new Casanova phase of his life. In February 2006, he and Sheryl Crow called off their engagement. She had put her career on hold for a while to support his bid for global cycling supremacy, joining him on the podium after his seventh Tour victory, and once he retired and she went back to singing, he had joined her at her concerts and TV appearances. But Lance said he didn’t want more children; she did (and adopted a baby boy about fifteen months later).

  In early 2006, SCA’s Jeff Tillotson and his wife went to a football game in Austin, where he saw Lance seated on the sidelines with a brunette beauty. Tillotson snapped a photo of Lance and his date and sent it over to Lance’s lawyer, Sean Breen. The two had developed a cordial relationship during the course of the hearings, despite their being on opposite sides of the case. Breen, who is Tim Herman’s partner, replied a day later by sending Tillotson a link to a Penthouse magazine centerfold photo of the woman in question. He also told Tillotson via e-mail that things were now “so over” between Lance and Sheryl.

  • • •

  With Armstrong out of professional cycling, the Tour de France was wide open for the taking. And Floyd Landis believed he had a shot, all but his last. He had been through three hip surgeries, and doctors were telling him that, at the end of the season, he would need to have a complete hip replacement. Landis could barely walk. The only physical activity he could do, actually, was ride a bike. Of course he’d been doing that with the help of doping, and he would need to keep doping if he were to have a chance of winning the Tour. But doping had become increasingly problematic for him, as the Phonak team had no organized system for it. This meant he had had to make his own arrangements, and they hadn’t always worked out so well. Midway through the stages of the 2005 Tour, for example, he’d had a near fatal catastrophe involving a transfusion. After an elaborately choreographed top secret delivery of blood, Landis connected the bag to a coat hanger in his hotel room, and inserted a needle. The next day, a rest day, Landis began to feel strange. He had trouble breathing, felt dizzy, and his entire body was in intense pain. Landis was secretly rushed to the hospital, where he was treated for serious complications stemming from the transfusion. Nobody ever found out about his brush with death, and he was back in time for the beginning of the next stage. Landis never found out what happened. Did he get someone else’s blood? Was the blood tainted in some way? Landis felt he was lucky just to be alive.

  Understandably concerned about avoiding such incidents in the future, Landis met with the owner of Phonak, Andy Rihs, prior to the 2006 season, to talk about his Tour de France aspirations—and what he felt he needed in order to fulfill them. Rihs is a boisterous, overweight business mogul and one of the richest men in Switzerland. In the meeting, Landis told Rihs that he believed he could win the Tour de France. But to help him do it, he wanted the team to operate more like the US Postal team—by which he meant that it should have an organized doping program. During the previous season, Landis had arranged for all of his own doping, but it was too stressful, too time consuming, and too expensive. He couldn’t keep doing it alone, and he couldn’t afford it. He asked Rihs if he would fund a doping program for Phonak. Rihs agreed. By asking Rihs to bring the doping in-house, Landis may have dodged a bullet. He had been thinking about hiring Eufemiano Fuentes, who operated a blood-doping clinic in Madrid. That June, Fuentes became the center of the biggest doping scandal since the Festina affair. His clinic, which he ran out of an apartment in an upscale residential building, was raided by Spanish police in what became known as Operación Puerto. Dr. Fuentes was caught with an apartment full of blood plasma belonging to half of the professional peloton in Europe. Many of the cyclists had used code names on their blood bags, but they weren’t exactly mastermind criminals, and the names they had come up with were often easy for the investigators to decipher—sometimes by simply reading their blogs. Other riders used the names of their pets. The probe nabbed two of the bi
ggest stars in professional cycling: Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso. Also discovered was a fax sent by Fuentes to Haven Parchinski, the maiden name of Tyler Hamilton’s wife, listing how much Hamilton had paid and still owed Fuentes for his treatments.

  Puerto’s aftermath, which brought a temporary halt to the careers of many of cycling’s greatest athletes, meant Landis’s chances of winning the Tour de France had improved significantly. Some cycling fans now considered him the overall favorite.

  To stateside fans, Floyd Landis was still relatively unknown. It wasn’t until late June 2006, just a few weeks before the Tour, that any of the American media began to pay much attention to him, when The New York Times Magazine ran a long piece, authored by Daniel Coyle, centered around his upcoming hip surgery. But even in a piece that was ostensibly about Landis, the underlying story was about whether another American would be able to fill Armstrong’s shoes. It described Landis as “one of America’s hopefuls in the race now that Lance Armstrong has retired from the sport.” The article made little mention of the news of the massive doping scandal—Operation Puerto—that had just broken in Europe.

  Landis’s Tour de France effort began disastrously. In the opening time trial, when it was his turn to go, he wasn’t there. The clock ticked down. Beep, beep, beeeeeeep! No Landis. Suddenly, he appeared, running frantically to the starting gate with his bike. He’d gotten a flat just as his turn was coming up, and he was still changing the tire when the clock chimed. Under the Tour de France rules, there are no exceptions during time trials. So Landis would be docked precious seconds from his total time.

  Landis was able to redeem himself on the second time trial of the race, where he finished second, and secured a spot near the top of the standings. On stage 11, the race finally hit the mountains, and Landis found himself at the front of a small pack of riders. Top climber Michael Rasmussen put in a hard attack on the final ascent in an attempt to help his Rabobank teammate, Denis Menchov. Landis clung to Rasmussen’s wheel. With him was Levi Leipheimer, the former Postal team member, now racing for the German-based Gerolsteiner team. By the time they were approaching the summit, it was only Landis, Menchov, and Leipheimer. Landis knew all he had to do was stick to Menchov’s wheel. He didn’t care about a stage win. Just time. But his performance was strong enough that he won the stage anyway.

  When Landis donned the yellow jersey at the top of the mountain pass, Armstrong was nearby, watching as a spectator and as part owner of the Discovery Channel team. Later that day, during the Phonak team dinner, one of the Phonak riders gave Landis some disturbing information. Armstrong had offered $20,000 to any rider who could ensure that Landis would not win the Tour de France. Landis didn’t know whether Armstrong had made the offer to intimidate him or mess with his head, or if he was actually taking out the cycling equivalent of a “hit” on him. He decided to keep the news within the small circle of riders at the dinner table, instead of reporting the incident to the UCI or going to the press.

  During the next few days, Landis went in and out of the lead, alternating with Spaniard Óscar Pereiro. On stage 13, Landis fell behind and missed the winning breakaway. He was now 1 minute, 29 seconds behind Pereiro. But on stage 15, Landis regained the lead and the yellow jersey. He looked as if he might maintain the lead all the way to Paris.

  Stage 16 was a grueling day in the mountains that included four climbs over a 113-mile course. With an average grade of 6 percent, the final climb of the day, La Toussuire, was not particularly steep, but at 11.43 miles, it was long. Landis began the climb well, keeping up with all the other top riders. But something wasn’t right with him. He felt flat. As the climb began, Pereiro and the other riders pulled out ahead. Spaniard Carlos Sastre attacked, getting out of the saddle and challenging the group to a mountain duel. Landis fell behind immediately. Landis looked like he was in pain, and was “cracking,” as they say in cycling. By the end of the day, his Tour de France hopes seemed to be over. Having lost a whopping 10 minutes of time, he was now 8 minutes behind race leader Pereiro.

  When Landis went back to the team hotel, his hip was killing him and he considered abandoning the race. Severely depressed over the day’s performance, he was sure his next surgery would dash any future hope of winning the biggest race on the planet. That night he did something few had done during the Tour de France since the 1930s, when alcohol was viewed as the best way to ease the pain of bike racing: He downed a couple of shots of whiskey and a beer. He felt he deserved it. Besides, what was the point of abstinence? Calmed by his “meds,” Landis decided to stay in the race. And he decided to try something crazy.

  Stage 17 went from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Morzine. It included five climbs over 123 miles. As always, it was assumed that the race leaders would stay together until the final climb, where they would race all-out to the summit finish. On the first climb, less than two hours into the five and a half hour day, Landis took off and attacked. The other riders in the pack looked at each other, perplexed. Landis had no teammates with him. He was all alone. It looked as if Landis, dejected from the previous day’s performance, was going out on a suicide mission—but giving up in style. As he pedaled in front of the pack, his lead grew. One minute, two minutes, five minutes.

  Then, he was more than 8 minutes ahead of the pack, which included Pereiro. This wasn’t necessarily good, because at some point the pack riders, who could hear in their radios how far up the road Landis was getting, were going to start organizing themselves to chase him down.

  Since Pereiro was wearing the yellow jersey and had the most to lose, he was expected to organize the chase. But on this hot summer day, there was confusion in the peloton. Pereiro’s team was relatively weak, and wanted riders from other teams to aid in the chase. But they all refused. Their message: You don’t want to lead the chase? Fine, then don’t. But you’ll lose the yellow jersey.

  The in-fighting delayed the pursuit of Landis long enough that as the final climb approached, he was so far ahead that he actually had a chance to come back into the race lead. However, as he began to pedal up the Col de Joux Plane, his lead shrunk rapidly. It was 8 minutes, then 7 minutes and 30 seconds, then 7 at the top of the climb.

  Landis still had to descend from the top of the Joux Plane into the town of Morzine. He tucked himself into an aero position and took every risk possible on the downhill to regain as much time as he could. As he crossed the finish line, he pumped his fist in the air. And then he waited as the clock ticked down. By the time Pereiro crossed the line, his lead over Landis had diminished from over 8 minutes to 31 seconds. Landis was in third place, and by all calculations, he would be able to regain the lead during the final time trial.

  Two days later, Landis donned his skinsuit and aerodynamic bike for the final time trial. This time, he didn’t get a flat tire at the start, and beat Pereiro handily, taking the yellow jersey with a lead of 59 seconds.

  On the final day, on the ride into Paris, it was Landis’s turn to sip champagne and pose for the cameras—his turn to take a victory lap around the Champs-Élysées.

  As Landis stood on the winner’s podium, he was truly happy. Not so much because he wanted to be a hero, or famous, but because the win meant money. His bills, his mortgage, his cars, his Harley-Davidson, would all be paid off now. With the endorsement money that was sure to follow his victory, he could support his family in style and comfort. The glory of it all was secondary.

  The giddy feeling lasted only a few days. Floyd was in Holland to participate in a criterium race when he got the devastating call. His urine sample after the seventeenth stage of the Tour de France had registered abnormally high for testosterone. He was on the verge of being given a positive test and being stripped of his title.

  Landis discussed his predicament with the team owner, Andy Rihs, and with Jim Ochowicz, who was still consulting for Phonak. Before they even had time to come up with a plan, news of the test had already been leaked to the press. It was too late.

  A day after the ne
ws came out, Landis held a press conference in Spain. He showed up unprepared, not sure what he should say. When asked whether he had used banned substances, he hesitated and finally answered: “I’ll say no.”

  The answer was a red flag—a bombshell of an answer that almost counted as an admission. Fifteen minutes after the press conference, Landis’s phone rang. It was Armstrong calling with some advice. “Look . . . when people ask you . . . did you ever use performance-enhancing drugs, you need to say absolutely not.” Landis agreed. He would steadfastly deny doping from that point forward.

  Landis flew back to the United States and tried to figure out what to do next. He spoke with a number of confidants. For a while, he stayed in the Manhattan home of Doug Ellis, a wealthy and successful financial industry software engineer who was considering starting a cycling team. At Ellis’s suggestion, Floyd met with Jonathan Vaughters, who was now team director for a semipro cycling team. Vaughters saw no easy way out of it, though. He knew that the anti-doping machinery had become too powerful. Landis would never make it through. Floyd’s best option, Vaughters suggested, was to admit everything. To lay everything on the table, even if that meant blowing up the sport. If he did that, Vaughters said, the story would become about cycling, and not about Floyd. It would lift an enormous weight off of Floyd’s shoulders. If he fought, as Hamilton had, he would lose, and discredit and bankrupt himself.

  Vaughters of course had his own secrets, and knew all about the weight of carrying them. Having lied to his friends and family about doping for years, he was dying to disclose the truth about his own doping. But the closest he had come to doing so was to allow the New York Times reporter Juliet Macur to quote him anonymously in a story she had written about Frankie Andreu. In the story, she reported that both Andreu and an unnamed rider had admitted using EPO, but that neither had seen Armstrong do so. In fact, Vaughters had told Macur that he would not answer that particular question—which he thought was a clear way of saying, “Yes, I saw Armstrong dope. I’m not going to deny it, but I’m not going to confirm it, either.”