by David Walsh
We had a hard story.
So it came to pass that on the first day of the 2001 Tour de France, we in the Sunday Times revealed that Lance Armstrong, winner of the first two Tours in the period of renewal, was working with a doctor about to stand trial for doping. And Armstrong had never mentioned this once. Never mentioned a connection to the man who had once said ‘it doesn’t scandalise me’, when asked if he would mind if his riders went to Switzerland to buy EPO over the counter.
When I look back at that article, it was one of the worst I’ve written: too much information too poorly organised. So much good was spoiled by the end product. And I was so naive in my dealings with the Armstrong camp. Having discovered that Lance was going to Ferrari through my Italian police sources, I had trip-wired the alarms in LanceWorld.
I was in Australia at the time, working on the British and Irish Lions rugby tour, as we prepared the article for press. Wanting to give Lance the opportunity to respond to the Ferrari link, I called Bill Stapleton on the Thursday, three days before publication.
‘Bill, some questions to ask you.’
‘Would you mind sending us what information you’ve got, and we will respond then.’
I banged off an email telling everything that I knew. I may have thought about adding the word checkmate at the end:
‘My information is that Lance was with Ferrari and that these are the dates. These are the names of the hotels. These are the dates on which he was there. This indicates that he has a very serious relationship with Michele Ferrari. Can you or Lance get back to me with a response?’
A reply.
‘David, I’ll put these to Lance and get back.’
Next, I hear nothing. I call again. Bill says that he’s in France for the Tour and having trouble with his email. I feel like I’m getting the run-around, a boy trying to play with bigger boys. So I call again, leave another message. Nothing. Bill Stapleton goes underground, takes his mobile phone with him. I hear nothing more from Bill. Shoot off more emails. Make more calls. No response. Of course Armstrong, combative and spiky as ever, had decided to beat me to my own exclusive.
The next day, Pier Bergonzi, the respected cycling correspondent at La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy, arrived by invitation at the US Postal team hotel to interview Lance Armstrong. Pier had been promised some time with Lance on the Tour, but an interview right before le grand depart was a surprise. Bergonzi had been covering cycling for many years and he and Armstrong were comfortable with each other. The interview wasn’t confrontational and ran along the predictable lines of an eve-of-race preview.
At the end of the interview, Lance said to Pier, ‘You haven’t asked me about Michele Ferrari.’
And Pier said, ‘Why would I ask you about Ferrari?’
Ta da!
Have I got news for you, Pier! Lance had news!
‘He and I are now working together, because we’re going to make an attack on the world hour record.’
So that was the front-page story on the following day’s La Gazzetta dello Sport. It was Lance and Stapleton’s way of taking the sting out of what would come on Sunday. By Sunday the Ferrari connection would already have been dealt with, even if the explanation was a blatant lie. Lance succeeded in ensuring the word ‘exclusive’ could not be used with our Sunday Times story, ‘Saddled with Suspicion’. The great cancer survivor, expected to win his third Tour de France, was then going for the world hour record.
Nobody expected the world hour record attempt to happen. And of course it never did.
It might have been worse. Pretty much every journalist who wrote about the Ferrari connection saw that the Gazzetta story was a pre-emptive strike by the Lance camp to lessen the impact of the Sunday Times investigation. For once I wasn’t waterboarded or even shunned. It was as if with his cynical manipulation of the media, Lance had gone too far.
On the afternoon of the first stage the press centre in Boulogne had a healthy air of enquiry about it. When the stage finished, a pumped posse of reporters descended on the US Postal team hotel. Bill Stapleton smoothly fielded the enquiries. Hush everybody. A statement is being prepared and will be ready in five minutes. There was some grumbling. A statement. What about Lance? Give us Lance.
Sadly Lance was too exhausted to deal with questions.
Eventually the statement emerged. One issue only. Michele Ferrari.
Chris [Carmichael] and I met Michele Ferrari during a training camp in San Diego, California, in 1995. His primary role has always been limited. Since Chris cannot be in Europe on an ongoing basis, Michele does my physiological testing and provides Chris with that data on a regular basis.
Chris has grown to trust Michele’s opinion regarding my testing and my form on the bike. And lately we have been specifically working on a run at the hour record. I do not know exactly when I will do that, only that I will in the near future. He has also consulted with Chris and me on dieting, altitude preparation, hypoxic training and the use of altitude tents, which are all natural methods of improvement.30
In the past, I have never denied my relationship with Michele Ferrari. On the other hand, I have never gone out of my way to publicise it. The reason for that is that he has had a questionable public reputation due to the irresponsible comments he made in 1994 regarding EPO. I want to make it clear that I do not associate myself with those remarks or, for that matter, with anyone who utilises unethical sporting procedures.
However, in my personal experience, I have never had occasion to question the ethics or standard of care of Michele. Specifically, he has never discussed EPO with me and I have never used it.
And for the time being, that was it. If the rest of the world thought Michele Ferrari had a thriving business as a doping doctor, the truth, according to Lance, was that Ferrari earned his money purely for diet tips and the rental of an oxygen tent.
Somebody, somewhere, was getting suckered.
9
‘It’s purifying to me that I’ve been honest.’
Lance Armstrong, 13 July 2001
Like a cat pawing at a nest of mice, Lance Armstrong saw us journalists as part of a game. There were those, the majority, who were happy to scurry along hailing him as the champion cat. And there were those who said, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ This species were known as trolls. I lived and worked among the trolls and it’s fair to say that, some of the time at least, Lance viewed me as the mayor of Troll City.
Trolls aren’t especially dangerous. They’re not venomous. Still, Lance felt it was best to keep the numbers under control. He knew that an infestation of trolls could hurt him and it irritated him that he couldn’t always know what they were up to. So he paid attention. Pest control. When he came across an article online that he didn’t like, he noted the name of the troll and mentally filed it with the others. He never forgot a name.
Every July we’d come out from under the woodwork in the barn, appearing in front of him right before the start of the Tour. We had to be dealt with. Spray some pesticide, Johan. Beat them away with that sweeping brush, Bill. Lance was good at this, partly because he liked verbal sparring and felt confident with a microphone in his hand. But also, since his cancer, he had done a lot of public speaking and he knew how to hold an audience. He could work a room as well as any entertainer.
Before the oratory came the strategy. The trolls were a small minority and the plan was always to isolate them, make them feel out of step with everyone else. So Lance and his people noted who sat beside who at the press conferences, who travelled with them on the road; and when he figured out the associations, the message went out. Troll fellow-travellers, beware. Big Brother is watching you.
Once we were travelling on a long flat stage; my two old companions John Wilcockson and Rupert Guinness, the American reporter Andy Hood and me, when Guinness got a message from Jogi Muller, an ex-rider who did PR duties with the Postal team. ‘Hi, Rupert, you guys like to break for coffee?’ Nothing will stop a journalists’ car quicker than an invita
tion from someone inside a team, especially the team of Lance. Also we thought the coffee might be free. We left skid marks on the road.
So there we were: a round of espressos in our paws and shooting the breeze with a guy who might well have spoken to Lance that morning. He had at least inhaled the same air. We talked inconsequentially for a while. Muller had the good grace to pretend that he enjoyed our company and we may have let him think that the feeling was mutual.
Later he would reveal to Rupert that the only reason for the coffee-stop business was low-level espionage. For the price of a few espressos he could report back on who was travelling with Walsh and what they were saying. Had the others been infected yet?
Through these years Rupert’s access to the team depended on whether or not he was seen with me. ‘You must choose your friends wisely,’ Muller once told him, crooking his finger like a goofy Swiss Yoda. Rupert couldn’t be friends with me and expect to get near the US Postal team. Why, it just wouldn’t be proper. If this seems childish, it was the game Lance liked to play.
He needed to know the enemy, and the enemy’s companions.
When the news of his relationship with Ferrari broke on that first Sunday of the 2001 Tour, Lance had refused to speak with the journalists who came to his hotel that evening. Too tired. Bless. Five days later selected journalists, mostly American and all considered sympathetic, were invited to his hotel for an audience.
It is normal for racers at the Tour de France to bestow favours on journalists from their own country: Jan Ullrich to the Germans, David Millar to the British, Lance to the Americans. But as Lance was Lance, twenty minutes of his company was the next day’s big story.
The invitees weren’t entirely timid or in Lance’s pocket but they knew there was a line and the next invitation was dependent upon you not crossing that line. This didn’t mean they couldn’t ask about Ferrari. That would have been ridiculous and they wouldn’t have accepted it. So Lance was asked about his controversial doctor.
‘From what I’ve seen, I don’t think he’s guilty. And when you say “questionable reputation”, this is cycling. Who’s not in question? Who’s not being investigated? But please, let’s look at the facts. Let’s get the evidence on the table.’
He rapped his hand hard on the coffee table.
‘And then let’s decide if somebody is a sinner or a saint. What you have in cycling is a lot of people who want to get caught up in innuendo, relations, rumours: “He’s on this, he’s on that, there’s something new, he’s not clean, it’s fake. He’s no hero, what a disappointment.” ’
He raps a second time on the table. ‘Let’s get to the facts. No, I never denied my involvement, my relationship [with Ferrari], and, number two, having talked about it, I feel better.’
Therein lay the power of the yellow jersey and, of course, the seductive power of Lance Armstrong. His style is slick, persuasive: cycling’s problem is innuendo, rumours, the kind of nasty stuff that reputable journalists like you guys wouldn’t engage in and, of course, the reputable hear what Lance is saying and think, ‘Yeah, now that you put it like that.’
Facts are what matter; Lance likes facts. Evidence also. Let’s get it all on the table. I never denied my involvement with Ferrari.
Hold on, Lance. Aren’t you channelling Bill Clinton here?
No one knew about Ferrari.
So nobody asked about Ferrari.
So you never had to lie about Ferrari.
This isn’t exactly a profile in moral courage that you are painting.
Six years into working with Ferrari, the relationship is uncovered. Now Lance looks around the table, looks into the eyes of men whom he knows will understand, and says, ‘Having talked about it, I feel better.’
Phew. That is good news for everybody.
There is no grumbling or dissent from within the Lance Armstrong circle of trust. They don’t say, ‘But six years, Lance? You couldn’t remember his name? You kept making memos to yourself to mention it sometime?’
Nobody will be so rude, not after Lance has invited them here. If one person crosses the line he will affect everybody’s chances of getting invited into the circle again. In any case, this is good. He deals with Ferrari. So what. It sounds pretty plausible. Lance gives to the circle what he won’t give to the common or garden journalist. Just come a little closer and let me say this.
‘At the end of this bike race, if I’m lucky enough to win again, all the stuff that gets written – all the innuendo, all the speculation, all the critics, all the people who don’t want anything good for cycling – it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to my family, my friends or my team. It’s purifying to me that I’ve been honest.’
That’s it. That’s the money line. Purified.
Everyone else in the salle de presse has to wait until the rest day, six days before the end of the Tour, to hear from Lance. That’s how the game is played. By then Lance was assured of winning the race for the third consecutive time. Some carping comments from Jean-Marie Leblanc before the start of the Tour encouraged Lance to engage more with the public. He’d done that and, though he kept saying the Tour is not a popularity contest, the vibe was better this year. And if the vibe was good most of the mice were happy.
If it hadn’t been for the Michele Ferrari stuff, a name that nobody in America knew, let alone cared about, this would have been the best of the three Tours de Lance so far. But trouble never goes away, not permanently. Trouble is always in the hallway doing press-ups. So here Lance is in the Palais des Congrès at Pau, south-west France, once again facing down a general gathering of the trolls.
The Trial of Lance Armstrong is in its third year, but nowhere near a verdict.
There are more than a hundred journalists in a relatively small room, twenty or more television cameras in a line at the back. Lance will be ready because this is like the race itself: you tell yourself the enemy is stronger than he is because that helps you prepare better.
An example.
Through the winter Lance monitored every interview given by his biggest rival Jan Ullrich and his Telekom teammates. In every line Ullrich talked about focusing exclusively on the Tour de France. Because he studied his enemies, Lance knew this was a different approach from the German team to previous years. They will be stronger this time, he told himself, and this thought helped him to train harder.
Now, he was sitting before the journalists who would ask about Michele Ferrari, but he knew what he would tell them. He could handle this. He’d coped with this sort of shit two years ago in Saint-Gaudens.
‘Are you calling me a liar or a doper?’ he’d said to that French guy knowing that the French guy wouldn’t have the nuts to simply say, ‘Both.’ Sometimes you only had to act tough and these guys ran away.
I was in Australia when the race started. I arrived in France at the end of the first week’s racing but I’m here now, feeling entitled to ask the world’s cleanest cyclist why he works with the world’s dirtiest doctor. The crowd of journalists milling around is far bigger than normal. Anyone for the afternoon show? This way, this way!
Before it begins, I speak with a Danish journalist, Lars Werge, who works for the daily newspaper Ekstra Bladet. He believes Armstrong is doping and indicates he will ask some doping questions, which is useful, because it can get lonely, the troll’s life. Lars and I decide to sit far apart so Armstrong and his flunkies don’t think we’re some kind of double act.
Apart from his fireside chat with the American reporters, Lance hasn’t publicly addressed his relationship with Ferrari yet, even though the story broke at the start of the Tour. My hope is that at least four or five journalists will want to make an issue of his relationship with the Italian doctor.
As we walk into the press conference, I feel sorry for Rupert because it so happens he is alongside me and the poor man has to decide what to do. If he sits next to me, he gets marked down as a troll mindslave and can forget about access to the Postal team. On the other hand he
doesn’t want to leave me because he’s a decent bloke who doesn’t like to be bullied. So he says nothing, just follows and takes the chair alongside me.
I’m glad but I know his discomfort is made worse by what he is wearing. That morning Rupert had plucked the most festive of Hawaiian shirts from his suitcase of sunshine. The troll police really can’t miss him.
But everyone relax, this is a room teeming with sportswriters, and for most of them this is a good-news story.
Here goes.
Lance is asked about ‘the look’, that moment on the climb to Alpe d’Huez when he turned to scan his breakaway companions and seemed to allow his eyes to linger on the face of his principal rival, Jan Ullrich.
A German journalist snuggles up to Lance with, ‘That look is being called one of the greatest moments of the sporting year?’
Maybe in Bavaria. Ja?
But Lance likes this question. ‘I’ve heard about quote-unquote “the look” and of course everybody is guessing – what is the look? What was it? Was it bravado? Was it tactics? Was it a question? . . . [On the road] I had to examine the situation. It was not an arrogant thing. I did want to see his face, I wanted to see his mouth. I wanted to see the expression. But I also wanted to look back down the road and see who was there.’
There is an angle here. Lance and Jan, do-or-die rivals but also noble men who respect each other.
‘The handshake between yourself and Jan yesterday: “the look” and “the handshake” are being seen as two symbolic moments of the mountain stages?’
Isn’t this conversation more uplifting than prying about Lance and his Victor Frankenstein? Asked about ‘the handshake’, Lance looks smilingly at the questioner and says, ‘I bet money you were going to ask a lot about that.’