Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong (18 page)

Landis then wrote down the details of US Postal's doping programme and sent them in long emails to cycling and antidoping bodies. He was contacted by Jeff Novitzky, a federal officer with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They spoke and then, in May 2010, it was reported that the FDA was investigating Armstrong's team for multiple violations of America's drug laws. Novitzky's involvement would prove critical. He and fellow officers had the power to bring witnesses before a grand jury and warn them that if they lied they would be sent to prison, as the sprinter Marion Jones had been.

Asked if they got the riders to tell the truth, one investigator replied: "The problem hasn't been getting them to talk but stopping them crying so they could continue talking."

Although much incriminating evidence had been gathered against Armstrong and his team, the FDA case was dropped last February when the eyes of America were fixed on another sport — the Super Bowl. The anti-doping agency said it would carry out its own investigation. After telling the truth in the federal investigation, the former US Postal riders did not dare give a different account to the antidoping agency and it soon had sufficient evidence to charge Armstrong and five former associates with perhaps the most serious doping violations in the history of sport.

In its 15-page letter to the accused, the agency said 10 former teammates had testified to witnessing Armstrong's doping. He took his claim that the agency should have no jurisdiction over him to a court in Austin. It was dismissed and Armstrong ordered to pay the agency's costs.

Armstrong then had to choose between having his case considered by an independent panel or accepting the charges against him. On Thursday he accepted the charges. The next day the agency imposed the ban, saying worldwide doping guidelines allowed it to strip him of his Tour de France titles and every every other result he had achieved since 1998.

Explaining his refusal to have his case adjudicated by an independent panel, Armstrong hinted at a sense of resignation. "There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me, that time is now."

He has been brought to his knees by his own countrymen: Novitzky and his fellow investigators at the FDA, the antidoping agency's chief executive, Travis Tygart, and his colleagues at the agency.

In the past, Armstrong would point a finger at European accusers, especially the French, and say they were "anti-American". This time, he could only accuse Tygart of conducting "a witch-hunt".

The extent to which Armstrong was protected by his own sport may emerge as UCI, the world cycling body, has asked to see the detail behind the agency's decision. It will have this in two weeks and then decide if it wishes to fight Armstrong's corner at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Last night troubles mounted for Armstrong when a spokesman for a Dallas company, SCA Promotions, said it would be pursuing him for at least $11.5m in win bonuses and legal fees it had paid him for his Tour victories.

When I first interviewed Armstrong in 1993, two days into his first Tour de France, he was 21 and spoke about the role his single mother, Linda, had played in his life. "She taught that if you give up, you give in," he said. "I never give up."

Until last week.

Broken on the wheel of truth

David Walsh

August 26, 2012

"

When the book came out, Armstrong called me a prostitute and an alcoholic and would repeat the accusation about being a prostitute under privilege in a legal tribunal a couple of years later

"

June 2004 seemed a seminal month in the story. Microfilm of LA Confidentiel, les secrets de Lance Armstrong, a book I had written with fellow journalist Pierre Ballester, had been taken to a secret printing house in the French provinces and from there to a secret warehouse from where it would be distributed throughout France. The secrecy was because of the publisher's fear that an injunction sought by Armstrong could lead to the book not reaching the public.

Ballester decided not to go to the Tour de France, which would start a week later. He didn't feel the sport and the race were worth it any more. On the Friday before the start I walked into the press centre at Liege in Belgium and noticed the US Postal team director, Johan Bruyneel, chatting with journalist friends of his. He saw me arrive and from a distance of perhaps 30 yards, he began to leeringly shout: "Good job, Mr Walsh, good job, you've done a good job." His anger wasn't disguised.

He was there because Armstrong was due to give a press conference. For late arrivals, it was standing room only. I sat in the second row, not far from the stage where Armstrong sat. We knew each other by then; friendly during a 1993 interview when he was a 21-year-old riding his first Tour de France, but now at odds.

Our second interview had taken place at a hotel in southwest France in April 2001, when it became clear to him I didn't believe his victories were honestly achieved. That was our last one-to-one interview.

Early in the Liege press conference, he was asked about LA Confidentiel. "I'll say one thing about the book, especially since the esteemed author is here. In my view, I think extraordinary accusations must be followed up with extraordinary proof.

And Mr Walsh and Mr Ballester worked for years and they have not come up with extraordinary proof."

The soundbite pleased many of those in the room. They preferred to write of an exciting Tour rather than delve into the murkiness of drugs, and this was a good enough quote to dismiss the allegations of doping. The mood of the time was reflected in a rare expression of gratitude from Armstrong to his friends in the cycling media. "I have received many, many calls from journalists in this room who've read the book, people who've read the book and said to me, 'Okay, what's the big deal? There is nothing there'. And I appreciate the support.

“You all know who you are and I just want to say publicly to you, 'Thank you for reaching out to me at a time when I think there was a lot of expectation but there wasn't a lot of delivery'."

That Armstrong was the puppeteer with the ability to make journalists dance to his tune became obvious an hour or so later. That year I was due to travel on the race with three journalists; an English cycling writer, John Wilcockson, an American, Andy Hood, and an Australian, Rupert Guinness.

Wilcockson and I had travelled on the 1984 Tour, 20 years before and for a number of Tours after that. Guinness and I were friends and regular running partners on the Tour. An hour after the press conference one of them sought me out and said they were sorry but they couldn't take me in their car because Armstrong would find out and then not cooperate with them.

I asked with whom I could now travel? They shrugged their shoulders and said they were sorry but there was nothing they could do. They needed Armstrong. Guinness would later apologise for what he felt had been a very bad judgment call. It was a long weekend in Liege, taxis everywhere until reporters from the French newspaper Le Monde offered a place in their car. There was no English-speaking journalist I could have asked with any confidence.

At This time the difficulty in discovering the truth on Lance Armstrong wasn't just timid journalism but the challenge of substantiating wholly credible allegations. Especially against a sportsman who was ready to sue those who raised questions about his doping. What we knew in 2004 was that Armstrong was working with a doctor, Michele Ferrari, who was under investigation for suspected doping. It didn't prove anything but it wasn't what an anti-doping rider would ever do.

There was also extensive testimony from Emma O'Reilly, Armstrong's physical therapist through the 1999 and 2000 seasons.

She claimed to have been present when Armstrong and two officials from the US Postal team concocted a story that allowed the rider to escape punishment after a doping violation at the 1999 Tour.

O'Reilly also insisted she had been asked by Armstrong to dump his used syringes and had done so. On another occasion she said she was required by the team to travel to Spain to pick up drugs she would take back to Nice in France and hand over to Armstrong.

O'Reilly's former husband, Simon Lillistone, now an official with British Cycling, admitted in a telephone interview with me that he had been with O'Reilly on that trip and the pick-up had happened as she described. He would later beg to be left out of the story because he felt it would hurt his career in the sport to be involved in any accusation against Armstrong.

Stephen Swart, a former teammate of Armstrong's at the Motorola team in 1994 and 1995, told of how the young team leader had encouraged use of the blood booster erythropoietin [EPO] within the team.

Betsy Andreu, wife of Armstrong's one-time teammate and close friend Frankie, told how she and her husband had heard Armstrong admit to doctors he used performance enhancing drugs before the onset of his cancer in 1996.

Their stories were told in LA Confidentiel and when The Sunday Times reported this, Armstrong sued. He also sued the book's French publishers and L'Express magazine, which had serialised it.

His London lawyers sent out warnings to every publication in Britain and pursued the case against The Sunday Times.

Under French libel law he was less aggressive, abandoning his case the day before it was due. Armstrong's legal might meant few in this country were prepared to challenge him. Though prepared at first to repeat every accusation she had made in LA Confidentiel, O'Reilly, who was by then living in Liverpool, realised nobody was interested in hearing her story. "When the book came out, Armstrong called me a prostitute and an alcoholic and would repeat the accusation about being a prostitute under privilege in a legal tribunal a couple of years later.

"I worked hard in the US Postal team to do everything correctly in my work as a therapist.

What Armstrong said was scurrilous and totally wrong, as many members of the team, including Jonathan Vaughters, Frankie Andreu and Marty Jemison all said. I thought, 'What kind of man uses the privilege granted to those speaking under oath to claim things like that?' "And pretty soon I learnt that because of our libel laws I couldn't speak the truth in this country. A guy from Sports Illustrated interviewed me, a really good investigative journalist, and his legal advice to me was that everything I said would be fine in the US but if Armstrong sued me in England, that could be a problem. "So I shut up. Plenty of others were running scared and why should I risk ruining the lives of those closest to me by speaking the truth?"

The Extent of Armstrong's power was apparent from a small incident on a rest day during the 2002 Tour de France. With nothing much better to do, a Danish journalist, Olav Andersen, and I travelled to the village of Miribel-les-Echelles in southeast France, where the US Postal team were staying at a favourite hotel, Les Trois Biches.

Close to the village, we saw the actor Robin Williams out on his bike with some friends. Williams and Armstrong were friends and it wasn't unusual to see the film star at the Tour supporting the team. At the hotel a waiter said the team were out training. Andersen decided to have a coffee in the hotel bar while I sat on a wall on the village green, knowing Armstrong would see me on his return.

After about 40 minutes the small train of US Postal riders zoomed back into Miribel-les-Echelles. Armstrong was at the front and immediately noticed my presence. Andersen didn't know this. As soon as Armstrong returned to the hotel he spoke with the owner and the atmosphere in the bar immediately changed.

Soon the owner was moving through it, looking closely at the few who were having a coffee or a drink.

He came to Andersen and could see the outline of an accreditation badge beneath a T-shirt. Eye-balling the Danish journalist, he wanted to ask him to leave but didn't dare. It was a public bar and hard for the patron to eject a customer on suspicion of being a journalist — but it was a close-run thing.

As Armstrong's supremacy became more established, another development was noticeable: some of the brighter, more inquisitive journalists stopped travelling to the Tour de France and covering the sport.

Ballester walked away, so, too, did Benoit Hopquin of Le Monde, who had revealed Armstrong's positive test for a corticosteroid during the first Tour victory in 1999, a breach that was subsequently covered up by producing a post-dated medical prescription.

Jean-Michel Rouet was a lead writer for L'Equipe on that 1999 Tour who did not believe Armstrong was clean and reflected that viewpoint in a number of his columns. At the beginning of the final week, he was spoken to by the director of the Tour de France at the time, Jean-Marie Leblanc, and emphatically told he was being too negative. L'Equipe and the Tour de France were both owned by the Amaury Group. Rouet, too, would stop coming to the race.

Armstrong's friendship with Hein Verbruggen, the man who was president of the UCI, the governing body of world cycling, deepened the sense that the American was untouchable, a feeling not lessened by the news that Armstrong had made two sizeable donations to the UCI to help the organisation in its anti-doping efforts. Asked about the amounts he had paid, in what form the payments had been made, the champion said he couldn't recall. After his seventh consecutive victory in 2005, Armstrong retired.

The very next winner of the race, Floyd Landis, was declared positive two days after his victory and subsequently stripped of his title. As would be the Spaniard Alberto Contador after his 2009 win. But Armstrong left the sport almost unscathed in 2005 and if he hadn't returned to professional cycling three years later, it is conceivable he would have escaped punishment.

When he made his comeback at the start of 2009, the landscape had changed. The United States Anti-Doping Agency [USADA] had successfully prosecuted a small-time rider, Kayle Leogrande, for "a non-analytical positive". In other words, they banned him on evidence that he had doped rather than on a conclusive positive test.