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

by Reed Albergotti

  In January, Armstrong flew back to Austin to speak to his older children, ex-wife, family, and friends in advance of the interview. When he met with Luke, he told him that there had been a lot of questions about him over the years, about whether he doped or not. And he explained that he had always denied that. But the rumors were true, he now told Luke. He told him, “Don’t defend me anymore. Don’t.”

  Luke told Lance that he loved him. “You’re my dad. This won’t change that.”

  On the day of the interview, January 14, as he was on his way to the taping at a local hotel, Lance paid a visit to what was now called the Livestrong Foundation, where the staff of seventy-five crowded into the boardroom for a hastily convened meeting with their founder. Without acknowledging he had lied, he apologized to the staff for the damage the scandals had done to their morale. Several people wept. Lance himself choked up a bit. Some of the staff told him they were grateful to him for starting the foundation, even if he had been lying to them all along.

  The interview with Oprah went on for nearly two and a half hours. Armstrong’s legal team, including Tim Herman and Mark Fabiani, waited in the green room and watched the filming live. There was so much material that Oprah’s producers decided to spread it over two nights. The first segment would run on Thursday night, for an hour and a half. The second segment would be broadcast the next night for an hour. Because Oprah was so determined to keep the content top secret, she carried the videotapes of the footage in her handbag on the plane instead of transmitting them by satellite as she would ordinarily have done.

  With Oprah and Lance seated side by side, their chairs angled toward each other, the interview began on a dramatic note. She instructed Armstrong to answer yes or no to the following questions: Had he ever used performance-enhancing drugs? “Yes,” he replied. And then, as Oprah ticked them off, one by one, had he ever used EPO, human growth hormone, testosterone, corticosteroids, blood transfusions? Yes to every one. Oprah wanted to get that out of the way. The rest of the show, she said, would be about the details.

  It was in the details part of the interview that Armstrong failed miserably. He showed very little contrition, blaming his use of performance-enhancing drugs not on himself but on the sport of cycling. He downplayed his own doping, saying that drug use among cyclists was so prevalent, it was “like saying we have to have air in our tires or water in our bottles. It was part of the job.” He also claimed that his elaborate doping scheme hadn’t given him an unfair advantage: “I looked up the definition of cheating and the definition is ‘to gain an advantage on a rival or foe.’ I did not view it that way.” He said he viewed it as leveling the playing field.

  Lance specifically denied doping after his comeback in 2009 and 2010, saying that his ex-wife, Kristin, a “spiritual person,” had supported him in his quest to return to cycling only on the condition that he do it clean.

  He refused to give details or implicate others, and he refused to validate Betsy Andreu’s account of the 1996 hospital scene. When Oprah asked him about the attacks he had made on Betsy over the years, he ventured an extremely ill-advised attempt at humor. Smirking at the camera, he told Oprah that when he’d called Betsy to apologize, he said he was sorry for calling her a crazy bitch, but he’d never called her fat. Oprah was visibly not amused.

  As for Kristin, Lance didn’t provide many specifics other than to say that she knew about the doping. He said simply that she “wasn’t curious,” adding “perhaps she didn’t want to know.”

  Most people came away from the first interview appalled by Armstrong’s lack of contrition. The word sociopath was used by more than one media observer to describe what many viewed as a personality disorder.

  Oprah’s Thursday night interview drew 3.2 million viewers, the second-biggest audience for her then two-year-old OWN cable channel. But many people didn’t bother tuning in for the next evening’s installment, which drew just 1.8 million viewers. The only people who seemed to benefit from the show, aside from Oprah herself, whose floundering cable network’s ratings had skyrocketed, were late-night comedians.

  By the time the show aired, Lance was back in Hawaii, somewhat disconnected from the fallout. On the night the second interview aired, Armstrong sent an e-mail to a friend. He wasn’t feeling relieved and he wasn’t contrite. What he was was angry, he said, and his wrath was directed at USADA. “At some point they will have to admit (like I just did) that they lied, bullied, and embellished,” Lance wrote. Although Lance had hoped his appearance would help restore his public image, it did quite the opposite.

  People who knew Lance personally were mixed in their responses to the interview. Triathlon star Chrissie Wellington, with whom he had become friendly, said she was angry that Lance had made his doping sound so banal during his Oprah interview. She also expressed regret that she’d asked him to write the foreword for the North American edition of her autobiography. “Please, if you have the North American edition, rip out the foreword,” she was quoted as saying in one interview about her book.

  The Oprah interview infuriated Travis Tygart and Bill Bock, mostly because of Lance’s denials about doping during his comeback in 2009 and 2010, despite what USADA considered to be strong evidence to the contrary: blood samples showing markers consistent with doping, as well as a series of e-mails between Lance and Michele Ferrari’s son, Stefano. The e-mails to Stefano—obtained by USADA from Italian prosecutors investigating Ferrari—showed that Lance had sought Ferrari’s guidance not only for his comeback to cycling but also during his transition to the triathlon. Tygart was also incensed that Lance had explicitly denied trying to bribe USADA in 2004.

  In many ways, the interview raised more questions than it answered. Lance didn’t say anything about the others who had backed him—such as Bruyneel, Weisel, Stapleton, or Ochowicz. Nor did he address his power to pull strings at the UCI, even though his influence over the sport’s governing body had been a key factor in his ability to avoid the consequences of positive drug tests for fifteen years.

  Picking up right where they’d left off before Oprah, Bill Bock sent a letter to Lance giving him until early February to cooperate fully in an effort to “clean up cycling.” He asked Lance to sit down with USADA, with the inducement of perhaps reducing his lifetime ban from competition to an eight-year suspension, as they had offered him before. But Lance’s lawyer, Tim Herman, told them Lance wouldn’t be able to meet their time frame and would prefer to speak to the World Anti-Doping Agency instead.

  In the weeks following Oprah, Lance spent time at home, texting and calling a range of friends and associates for their reactions. When he reached Jonathan Vaughters, with whom he hadn’t spoken in eight years, Vaughters told him that he should talk to Tygart. Again, Lance refused.

  Armstrong did agree to answer a series of questions from the Cycling News online. Asked if he felt like the fall guy for the entire sport, Lance responded: “Actually, yes I do. But I understand why. We all make the beds we sleep in.” He also said that full amnesty for himself and other cyclists was the best way of getting the full truth.

  Back in Austin, Lance went into hermit mode. Although he continued running, he often did so in areas where he could avoid crowds, such as on the Barton Creek greenbelt trail rather than in Austin’s popular public parks. He seemed to have lost his taste for gestures of public defiance. During the Livestrong Austin Marathon in mid-February, a race that drew thousands of participants, his friend Adam Wilk suggested Lance make a surprise appearance by showing up at a water station, handing out cups to runners. But instead, Lance skipped the run and stayed in his house during the race.

  Just days later, the government finally joined Floyd Landis’s whistle-blower lawsuit—a move that significantly increased Floyd’s chances of winning. Floyd had been keeping a low profile for more than two years. Now he was figuring out how to get his life back on track. Floyd had left California and was living in Tiger Williams’s guesthouse in Norwalk, Connecticut. At a party over the h
olidays, he had met Alexandra Merle-Huet, an officer in the special investments management group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Although she wasn’t a cycling fan, Floyd spent their first few dates talking almost nonstop about his past. Alex, the mother of a young son, listened and was supportive, though she worried that Floyd wasn’t yet ready to let go of the past.

  A few weeks after they met, the two watched Lance’s Oprah interview at Alex’s Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan. In the interview, Oprah mentioned Floyd, describing him as Lance’s protégé and remarking that many people thought the real “tipping point” for Lance had been Landis’s decision to come forward and confess. Lance actually agreed, but said that his 2009 comeback was tough on Floyd. He went on to say Floyd had been sending him text messages claiming “I’ve recorded everything” and threatening to out him on YouTube. But instead of YouTube, Lance said, Floyd had gone to The Wall Street Journal with the story.

  As Lance spoke his name, Floyd felt himself growing nervous. What if Lance apologized to him on the air? If that happened, he thought, then under the principles of his Mennonite upbringing, he would have to forgive him. He didn’t feel ready for that. He needn’t have worried.

  Floyd was moving on with his own life. At the suggestion of one of his friends, Floyd had begun making plans to seek admission to a special program at Yale University for nontraditional students whose education had been interrupted for five or more years. Floyd agreed to appear on a panel at Yale Law School with Travis Tygart and Jonathan Vaughters, on the culture of doping in sport. However, during the hour-long panel, held February 28, Floyd was tight-lipped. Because of the pending whistle-blower lawsuit, Floyd’s lawyers, one of whom was seated in the audience, told him to avoid going into too many specifics. Tygart was the rock star at the event. When he said he had used the truth from Landis to “dismantle” the doping system, the audience of two hundred broke into applause. He defended the light penalties on the riders who came forward, explaining that he saw them as victims of the doping culture. When the first audience member stepped up to the mic, she said: “Travis, you’re my hero.”

  EPILOGUE

  Lance Armstrong’s fourteen-year-long deception was an elaborate, many-tentacled enterprise requiring complicated logistics, scores of people to execute them, and an iron-willed determination to keep it going. Lance relied on his teammates, doctors, lawyers, financial backers, sponsors, assistants, and associates to help him cheat—or at the very least to ignore the evidence that he was doing so—and on the complacent, hero-worshipping media to celebrate his victories without looking into how he achieved them. The few who did raise questions were publicly attacked, sued for large sums of money, and generally vilified by Lance and his well-trained army of supporters.

  Some of the people in his network of allies directly aided and abetted him in his doping. And everyone from his ex-wife to his friends, sponsors, and former girlfriends turned a blind eye to it—until almost the end. Of course, once the USADA decision was released, the defections were virtually unanimous—the proverbial rats fleeing the sinking ship.

  During the glory years, agencies like UCI, which is specifically charged with keeping the sport clean, and USA Cycling, which promotes the sport, were co-opted to Lance’s ends. And ironically, the drug testers themselves turned out to be one of Lance’s most persuasive defenses against his accusers. Lance figured out, shrewdly, that most Americans put a lot of stock in the effectiveness of drug testing, so all he had to do was cite the hundreds of times he had been tested, and people would believe he was clean. Indeed Lance was tested hundreds of times—if not as many times as he claimed. Though he told us on many occasions that he had passed more than 500 doping tests in his career, USADA’s records indicate he was tested no more than 250 times. John Burke, the president of Trek bikes, once said publicly that Lance had passed more than 800 tests. These figures became a key pillar supporting Lance’s big lie. Of course the number of times he was tested is irrelevant if, as has proved to be the case, he and his doctors knew how to manipulate some of the test results, and he and his handlers were able to suppress other results that revealed truths he couldn’t manipulate.

  The question is why so many people would have participated in this elaborate scheme for so long. And the answers are not hard to find. For many of his teammates and coaches, it was all about glory—and money, too, of course. They did what it took to win and, in some cases, just to stay on the team, because if they refused to dope, they risked Lance’s disapproval and the possibility of being fired from the team.

  For Lance’s financial backers and sponsors, it was all about money—and the glory of it, too, of course. Lance Inc. was big business. Sponsors such as Nike, Oakley, Trek, and others actively advanced Lance’s career, fame, and wealth, capitalizing on what they stood to gain from his successes. When Lance’s critics accused him of cheating to win—and over the years, there were many such allegations—the sponsors asked no questions. Instead, acting as enablers, they offered Lance their unwavering support and continued to feature him in their marketing efforts, making him ever more visible in the public eye. In the weeks after Lance’s Oprah confession, some of Lance’s sponsors and supporters, including John Burke of Trek and Doug Ulman, CEO of the Livestrong Foundation, conceded that they had never once asked Lance directly if he had doped. Only when the anti-doping officials of USADA released their mountain of evidence against Lance, tainting his public image irrevocably, did his sponsors finally dump him.

  What will happen to Lance in the years to come is impossible to say. It’s true that, F. Scott Fitzgerald to the contrary, there are second acts to American lives, but it’s hard to imagine Lance making a comeback to the world of sports, given the legal obstacles he still faces—not least of them the lifetime ban against elite competition. In responding to some of those suits, he may end up doing even greater damage to his reputation—whether by admitting to what he has so long denied, by outing others, or by stonewalling. None of these options look good for him. By early 2013, Lance’s lawyers were negotiating with the US Department of Justice lawyers about the possibility of his providing evidence against some of the people in his inner circle, including Johan Bruyneel and his former partners at Tailwind Sports. But those talks fell apart, and by late April, the government joined the whistle-blower suit, filing claims seeking $30 million. Its complaint accused Lance and Bruyneel of “unjust enrichment,” and their former Tailwind partners of breach of contract for failing to take action against riders who used prohibited substances. Much of the government’s case, which alleges that the Postal Service was defrauded of $40 million, is based on Floyd’s testimony.

  Floyd’s claims against Tailwind had put scrutiny on Thom Weisel. But Weisel’s lawyers maintained that he didn’t know about the doping, and pointed out that he had, in fact, lost millions of dollars over the years while he bankrolled Tailwind and the Postal team. If the Justice Department case goes to trial, then it’s possible the government may call Lance to give testimony under oath. Lance may also be subpoenaed as a witness in a case that Tygart is currently planning to bring against Bruyneel.

  But it could be many years—if ever—before Lance provides full and specific details to the general public about what he did, and who helped him do it. Lance has long had a psychological aversion to examining his past mistakes, a trait he has said he inherited from his mother, who didn’t like to talk about her teenage pregnancy and other difficulties. Justifying his reluctance to come clean, Lance has told many people that he prides himself on being loyal to his friends—including Michele Ferrari, whom he continues to regard as a genius. In the weeks following his confessional interview with Oprah, Lance proudly proclaimed to Adam Wilk that, despite all he had been through in recent months, he had never “ratted anybody out.” Some of Lance’s supporters cite his stated revulsion against betrayal as evidence that Lance has a moral co
re. Yet that runs counter to Lance’s private actions over the years, when Lance dropped many people who loved him and who dedicated themselves, sometimes without compensation, to helping him succeed.

  The whistle-blower suit isn’t the only legal battle he’s facing. Within just a couple of months of the sit-down with Oprah, just as his lawyers feared would happen, he was hit with two more lawsuits. One alleges that Lance and FRS, a nutritional drink maker for which Lance served as a spokesman, had engaged in false advertising by linking his Tour victories to FRS drinks. The second was filed by another prize insurance company, Acceptance Insurance, which is suing him for $3 million for bonuses paid to him after he won the Tour de France races from 1999, 2000, and 2001.

  Lance’s financial future is also a big question, given the millions he has already spent on legal bills, the claims on what remains of his fortune, and the loss of sources of income from both sponsors and competitions. His friends say that he has told them he has enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life, though his mother, Linda, has worried about his financial future. In mid-April, he sold his Spanish-style villa, valued at $3 million, and within weeks purchased a 1924 Mediterranean-style home in Austin’s Old West neighborhood. The home is on county tax rolls for $2.7 million.

  What role, if any, Lance can play in public life is another issue still to be resolved—though Lance himself seems optimistic. In early 2013, he told friends that he would like to become involved in his cancer foundation again. Because of the foundation’s work on behalf of cancer survivors, many people viewed him as a humanitarian, and many still do. And Lance clearly sees himself that way, too.