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

by Reed Albergotti

  The public did, however. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world logged on to read USADA’s reasoned decision, and the hundreds of pages of additional testimony, in the hours after it was released. Cycling bloggers and journalists, including us, dug through it, and used Twitter accounts to share bits of the new information with one another. “Dave Z affidavit is disturbing. Avoided drugs as they had killed his adict [sic] father. . . . Pushed by Johan until he broke,” tweeted Race Radio, a cycling blogger. “Hey triathlon, @lancearmstrong continued to use Ferrari to prepare for tri’s. page 86. Sure you still want him?” wrote nyvelocity. “OH but wait!!! @johanbruyneel gets in on the act. He has Lance’s money! How does Michele want it? Oh my,” tweeted another blogger, who included a link to a November 4, 2009, e-mail from Bruyneel to Ferrari, in which Bruyneel wrote that “our boy has some cash for you,” asking Ferrari whether he preferred cash or a wire transfer.

  Not all of the Twitter and blogosphere reaction was negative, however. There were those who stood up for Armstrong. Some persisted in seeing Lance as one of the greatest athletes of all time; others noted that Lance’s description in his first book of his fight to recover from cancer and his wife’s ordeal of going through IVF treatments had helped them during difficult times in their own lives.

  Amazingly, most of Lance’s sponsors stuck by him at first. RadioShack and Anheuser-Busch, among others, said they would keep on backing him, prompting Bill Stapleton to proclaim that the authenticity of Lance’s achievements shouldn’t even be questioned. “Lance’s primary sponsors have been incredibly supportive and have remained supportive throughout,” Stapleton told the Financial Times. “Brands are looking for an authentic endorser and at the end of the day they depend on the authenticity of the athlete,” he added.

  Lance himself, who was back in Austin, holed up in his Spanish-style mansion, pronounced himself to be “unaffected,” saying in a Tweet after the documents were released that he was currently spending time with his family and getting ready for the upcoming celebrations of the fifteenth anniversary of his foundation—an evening gala, a bike ride, and a University of Texas football game against Baylor University, to be cosponsored by Nike.

  His relationship with Nike in the days leading up to the USADA report’s release was as close as ever. He spent October 2, the sixteenth anniversary of his cancer diagnosis, at Nike’s Beaverton, Oregon, headquarters, delivering a speech to hundreds of Nike employees, who hung on his words and seemed to adore him. While he was there, Nike executives sought Lance’s views on new Livestrong merchandise, as well as on the 17,000 black, yellow, and orange Livestrong T-shirts it had agreed to provide free to those attending the University of Texas “cancer awareness” football game. Before he left, he also had the opportunity to pop in at the Lance Armstrong Fitness Center, on Nike’s campus, to admire the plaque Nike had put up for him, praising his “fearlessness and confidence.”

  It seemed that none of this enthusiasm was diminished by the USADA decision. In fact, on the day the decision was made public, Nike rushed to rerelease the same exact statement it had first issued in August. “Nike plans to continue to support Lance and the Lance Armstrong Foundation,” it said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  NOT A SNITCH

  For one brief moment in time, Armstrong may actually have believed he was “unaffected,” but his protective cocoon would disintegrate within days.

  After the USADA decision, as Nike and other sponsors continued to stand behind Lance, Paul Willerton began waking up in the middle of the night, thinking he just couldn’t take it anymore. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, Willerton called his two friends at Nike in mid-October and told them that he was planning to show up at headquarters, alone, to stand in front of its entrance gate and demand the company drop Lance. He got out his black Sharpie pen and made several posters. FOR CLEAN SPORT, NO DRUGS, NO BULLIES and DO THE RIGHT THING: SACK LANCE. Then, he called local radio stations and TV news outlets, inviting them to come interview him.

  The next morning, October 16, Willerton drove 172 miles from his home in Bend, Oregon, and arrived at Nike’s Beaverton campus at 6:00 A.M. The weather was miserable, cold and rainy. A handful of other cyclists showed up to join him, and the city of Beaverton sent a squad of police cars to monitor them. Willerton stood in the wet weather with his cell phone in his ear, granting interviews to radio stations around Oregon.

  Nike wasn’t going to be swayed by a handful of disillusioned cyclists, but soon executives on Nike’s campus up the hill were confronted with a serious problem. It had taken a few days, but reporters had finally dug deep enough into the thousands of pages of documents and discovered the testimony Kathy LeMond had provided, accusing Nike of a payoff to former UCI president Hein Verbruggen to cover up Lance’s positive test for corticosteroids in the 1999 Tour.

  Although these allegations had been known by some journalists, including us, for years before the release of USADA’s report, most people were unaware. But suddenly, journalists at several news outlets, including the New York Daily News and Cycling News, decided to run stories pegged to Kathy’s allegations. LIVEWRONG? the Daily News headline asked. NIKE MAY HAVE LEFT FOOTPRINT ON LANCE SCANDAL. Some stories quoted Paul Willerton saying that Nike should cease condoning Lance’s behavior. Sure, Nike had a history of publicly supporting embattled athletes. That wasn’t news. What was news, the journalists noted, was that in this case, there were allegations that Nike itself was an active participant in the doping program. And perhaps that was the real reason Nike was so reluctant to sever its ties with Lance. That night, when the stories appeared online, Nike executives felt they had no choice but to respond. They issued a statement saying: “Nike vehemently denies that it paid former UCI president Hein Verbruggen $500,000 to cover up a positive drug test. Nike does not condone the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs.”

  John Slusher, Nike’s executive vice president of global sports marketing, placed a call to Stapleton, who was in Austin. Slusher needed to ask Stapleton an important question, he said. Slusher then asked Stapleton to personally assure him that nothing in the USADA report was true. Stapleton said he could not do that, so Slusher then requested that Stapleton put Lance on the phone. Stapleton said no, explaining that he wouldn’t put Lance in that position. Slusher hung up the phone. An hour later, he called Stapleton back to tell him that Nike would be dropping Lance.

  Meanwhile, members of the board of the Lance Armstrong Foundation (which had a partnership arrangement with Nike under which it benefited from the sale of Livestrong paraphernalia) were also becoming alarmed. The foundation had been inundated with phone calls, e-mails, and letters, including some from people who had been active fund-raisers on the foundation’s behalf, who now felt cheated and resentful.

  The volume of criticism was so overwhelming that members of the foundation’s board asked Lance to step down, and they prepared a statement for release on the foundation’s website the following morning. On October 17, at 8:00 A.M., central time, Lance’s statement went online: “I have had the great honor of serving as this foundation’s chairman for the last five years, and its mission and success are my top priorities,” it read. “Today, therefore, to spare the foundation any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding my cycling career, I will conclude my chairmanship.” Nike issued its own statement only minutes later, without so much as a personal heads-up text or phone call to Lance from Phil Knight or any other executive. Nike condemned Armstrong, saying that he had misled them for decades and that it was now ending its long association with him but would keep the Livestrong merchandise partnership that generated millions for Lance’s foundation.

  The fallout from Nike’s move to ditch Lance was stunning, concussive. Over the course of a few hours, Anheuser-Busch dropped him, followed by Nissan, RadioShack, as well as the firms that made Armstrong’s helmets, his energy bars, and his recovery drinks. Lance lost $75 million in endorsements by the end of that sing
le day.

  Lance’s ex-wife, Kristin, had her own issues to deal with that day. She quickly called off her plans to travel to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a running festival sponsored by Rodale Press, publisher of Runner’s World magazine, for which she was a contributing editor. She didn’t want to risk the chance of running into reporters who might ask her about Lance’s downfall or, worse yet, about the foil-wrapped cortisone tablets. As part of her $15 million divorce settlement with Lance, Kristin had signed a nondisclosure agreement, and she wasn’t about to violate it. On October 18, in part to explain her absence from the Runner’s World event, she wrote a blog post about morality. “I know what truth is. I know my past. Not telling or selling my tales to the press is my choice—one that I made primarily for my children,” she said. “There are many things that I am not free to discuss because I am constrained by legal principles like marital privilege, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.” She added: “To the world, Lance may be a source of admiration or suspicion, but to me he is simply my wasband and the father of my children. His choices were, and are, his. And mine are mine. And they haven’t always been pretty.” And in a line that seemed slightly condescending, given the circumstances, Kristin told her fans: “I am sorry if this is disappointing to you.”

  Once Nike dumped Lance, and the other sponsors fled, Lance’s agent, Bill Stapleton, had to downsize his Austin agency, laying off half of the staff.

  Still more piled on: On Monday, October 23, the UCI ratified USADA’s sanctions against Armstrong, officially revoking his titles, in what must have been a great surprise to him and what was left of his camp. “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,” UCI president Pat McQuaid said at a press conference in Geneva. McQuaid went on to say that the UCI had nothing to hide over the Armstrong donations, and he denied that they were connected to any cover-up of a positive test.

  The Amaury Sport Organisation, owner of the Tour de France, erased Armstrong’s name from its record books. Tufts University rescinded his honorary degree. Six gyms that had been named after him, including four in Austin, one in Denver, and one in Tigard, Oregon, removed his name. Sports Illustrated, which had placed him on its cover no fewer than eleven times, pronounced him the “Anti-Sportsman” of the Year.

  As the sponsors deserted in droves, Lance’s lawyers began calculating his possible financial exposure. Aside from the loss of any future sponsorship income, there was a question of whether any of the sponsors could sue him to reclaim money paid to him in the past. The lawyers figured that none had a legal claim against Armstrong, however, because they had all gotten their money’s worth from the huge exposure their brands received during the Tours. In fact, during happier times, some of Lance’s sponsors had made a point of telling him, his agent, and executives of Tailwind Sports that they felt they had gotten a great deal because their companies had benefited so much from the worldwide media coverage. In September 2004, just before the Postal Service finally ended its $31.4 million sponsorship of the team, for instance, the advertising agency Campbell Ewald studied the value of the media exposure it had received through the sponsorship. The ad people tallied up all the coverage from July 1 through August 31 and used a “valuation process” that showed that the 17,400 articles about Lance containing mentions of the US Postal Service cycling team were worth $18.2 million in print advertising; TV news coverage of Lance and the team was worth $13 million; and the coverage of the Tour de France, on OLN, the Outdoor Life Network, as well as CBS, was worth $3.3 million. The Postal Service marketing executives had provided Bill Stapleton with a copy of the thirteen-page report, which concluded, in summary, that the $34.6 million in media exposure for those two months in 2004 was 11 percent higher than during the same period in 2003, because of excitement over Lance’s victories, as well as his relationship with his then girlfriend, celebrity rock star Sheryl Crow.

  Trek’s president, John Burke, Lance’s longtime supporter, had credited Lance with bringing men into the sport who might otherwise have taken up, say, golf. Trek roughly tripled its revenues during the time it sponsored Lance, rising from roughly $300 million in the mid-1990s to an estimated $900 million by 2012. At Discovery Channel, which spent $31 million on a four-year sponsorship of Lance and the team, one top executive tallied up the value of the media exposure for the Discovery brand as being more than $100 million in the deal’s first year, 2005. Every single day for the month of July during that year, Lance Armstrong had been on the covers of newspapers all over Europe and in sports pages in the United States.

  All in all, the lawyers concluded that they didn’t have much to fear from Lance’s past sponsors. Much more worrisome was a claim made by the Dallas firm SCA Promotions, which had insured Lance’s Tour de France victories and settled a lawsuit with him several years earlier. Shortly after USADA released its evidence, SCA lawyer Jeff Tillotson jumped into action and sent a letter to Armstrong, saying that it was clear he had lied under oath about doping during the arbitration case, and informing Armstrong that SCA now wanted him to repay not just the millions he had collected—but legal fees and interest, too. A sum of $12 million was mentioned, and it was a sum they seem to have arrived at with some care. After struggling to identify all of Lance’s assets, Tillotson calculated that by the fall of 2012, Lance’s net worth was at the very least somewhere between $15 million and $20 million. But after deducting those assets that are protected by law from collection (like one’s home, which in Lance’s case was valued at more than $3 million), Lance’s collectible assets totaled only $10 million to $12 million. Tillotson appeared determined to get all of it.

  Lance, still convinced that he was the victim of a massive injustice, could only see this as evidence that SCA was colluding with USADA. He assumed that SCA’s founder, Bob Hamman, had called Travis Tygart to propose that USADA strip Lance of his titles. That way, SCA would get its money back, and then pay USADA a kickback.

  SCA wasn’t the only organization that went into action against Lance. The Sunday Times of London, which had paid Lance the equivalent of about £300,000 in 2006 to settle its libel case over the Walsh book, sent a letter to Tim Herman, stating that Lance now owed the paper more than £1 million, including reimbursement of legal fees. “It’s clear that the proceedings were baseless and fraudulent” and that his representations that he never doped were “deliberately false,” the letter said.

  • • •

  Three days after Lance’s resignation as chairman of his foundation, its fifteenth anniversary gala took place at the Austin Convention Center. As Lance took the stage to give a speech, the audience, made up of fund-raisers, patrons of the foundation who had spent $1,000 a head on tickets, most of them cancer survivors, looked on grimly. Surrounded on stage by ninety members of the foundation’s staff, Lance began: “It’s been a difficult couple of weeks, for me, for my family, for my friends, for this foundation. . . . I get asked a lot, ‘Man, how are you doing?’ And I say this every time, and I mean it: I’ve been better but I’ve also been worse.” Over the course of the five minutes, Lance spoke about the genesis of the foundation, mentioning that he got the idea to start it in October 1996 while out for TexMex food at Z’Tejas with a group of five friends, who discussed planning a bike ride they hoped would raise $1,000 to give to an existing cancer nonprofit. “This movement” that started in Z’Tejas “touched the lives of two and a half million cancer survivors around the world,” he said, adding that the foundation had raised half a billion to “fight this disease around the world.” He continued, saying that fifteen years ago, he never thought he’d still be “standing here talking about this global epidemic that takes one American every minute.” He concluded by telling the crowd that the foundation’s work for cancer survivors must continue. And then he left the stage to the star performers of the night, who included Norah Jones, Stephen Marley, the son of reggae legend Bob Marley, as well as Sean Penn and Ben Stiller—all of whom were performing without pay, and at Lance’s personal request. Robin W
illiams, Lance Armstrong’s longtime close friend, provided comedic relief by jumping in to help out during the silent auction. But Robin had asked the organizers to agree not to film him during that event.

  Within weeks, the foundation would cut all ties with Lance. It had already filed paperwork with the Texas secretary of state for a name change, effective October 30, renaming itself the Livestrong Foundation. And on November 12, the divorce was made official. Foundation staffers took down the seven yellow jerseys that had adorned the walls of its headquarters, and put them in storage. But the fallout from Lance’s disgrace was hard to staunch. Perhaps the most serious hit occurred when a pro soccer club pulled out from a lucrative multiyear deal it had made with the foundation in 2011. Sporting Kansas City, an American soccer club based in Kansas, had promised to donate $7.5 million from ticket, concessions, and souvenir revenue over six years, in exchange for the right to name its new $200 million soccer-only sports facility the Livestrong Stadium. It still owed $750,000 of the $1 million the foundation believed it had promised for that year. But Sporting Kansas City wanted out. The soccer team removed the Livestrong name from the stadium sign and renamed itself Sporting Park.

  • • •

  The day after the gala, Lance huddled with friends and advisers at his home in Austin and told them he was considering coming clean about doping. One person who was there said he laid out several options, which ranged from granting a newspaper interview to incorporating a confession into a Lance Armstrong documentary. He was also thinking about writing a new book, in preparation for which he had begun reading his friend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs—a man who had had to make a comeback of his own, after having been ousted from the company he founded. Lance seemed confident that over time he could reemerge and rebuild his popularity. He saw his situation as comparable to that not just of Steve Jobs but even of President Bill Clinton, who, in 1998, denied allegations of a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky with the infamous lie: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” If Clinton could weather that scandal and go on to become one of the most popular people on the planet, then surely Lance could redeem himself, too. The question was: How?