Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong (9 page)

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Last Wednesday the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf repeated comments made by the five-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong about David Walsh, chief sports writer of The Sunday Times.

“Walsh is the worst journalist I know,” Armstrong said. “There are journalists who are willing to lie, to threaten people and to steal in order to catch me out. All this for a sensational story. Ethics, standards, values, accuracy — these are of no interest to people like Walsh.”

Two days later, a letter from Armstrong’s London solicitors was couriered to The Sunday Times. The language, although more polite, was no less robust than that used by the firm’s American client. Its message was unmistakable: Armstrong has never taken performance-enhancing drugs and the slightest suggestion that he has would trigger a declaration of legal warfare by Armstrong and his US Postal Service team.

The article in De Telegraaf appeared because, as the newspaper put it, “Armstrong is in front of the firing squad again”. LA Confidential — The Secrets Of Lance Armstrong, a book written by Walsh and the French journalist Pierre Ballester, is soon to be published. Ballester is a cycling specialist who has written extensively about drugs in the sport.

Its contents have been a closely guarded secret, and tight security surrounded the printing of the book at a location known only to the publisher and its lawyers.

What is certain, however, is that it raises serious new questions about drug-taking in professional cycling and investigates the possibility that Armstrong might have taken performance-enhancing substances in order to compete in a sport riven with drugs, of which the most prominent has been the blood-boosting product erythropoietin (EPO).

EPO emerged in the early 1990s, a drug that alters the composition of the blood by boosting the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells in the body and greatly enhances the athletic performance of those who take it.

For much of the 1990s, cyclists could take EPO safe in the knowledge that it was undetectable. A blood test for the drug was only introduced in 2001. Even today it remains difficult to detect, as EPO is a natural body substance. Also, the test detects only recent use of EPO, so the risk involved in taking it in the lead-up to a race is greatly reduced, if not eliminated. For a clean cyclist to beat a rider taking EPO is extremely difficult. The book will quote experts who believe that in a race as gruelling as the Tour de France, to do so is probably impossible.

While the full extent of the information in the book will not be disclosed until its publication, it is understood that Stephen Swart, a teammate of Armstrong’s at the Motorola team in 1994 and 1995, admits to taking EPO. Swart, a New Zealander who retired from professional cycling nine years ago, says his decision to dope was due to the pressure on the team to deliver results. He says: “Motorola was throwing all this money at the team and we had to come up trumps.”

Armstrong is no ordinary cyclist, but there are those who fear that a man who has won five Tours de France in a row must have succumbed to the pressure of taking drugs, in particular EPO. Swart’s views on how pervasive EPO was in cycling during his time at Motorola will lead to fresh questions about Armstrong’s relationship with Michele Ferrari, an Italian cycling doctor with a controversial reputation.

In July 2001 The Sunday Times revealed that Armstrong was seeing Ferrari, who is currently on trial in Italy for sporting fraud and doping offences. Ferrari denies all charges, none of which relate to Armstrong. In 1994 Ferrari said that, if used properly, EPO was no more dangerous than orange juice. Armstrong has strenuously denied that there was anything wrong in his relationship with Ferrari, claiming he consulted him only on training methods and that with Ferrari’s help he planned an attack on the world hour record.

It is understood that the book could also force Armstrong to answer questions about a rumoured admission to doctors treating him for testicular cancer in October 1996 that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.

It also investigates the circumstances surrounding a positive drugs test returned by Armstrong during the 1999 Tour de France, the only time he has ever failed a dope test.

Traces of the corticosteroid triamcinolone, a banned substance, were found in his urine on the second day of the Tour at Challans. Armstrong was cleared of doping when his explanation that he had taken a corticoidal cream because he was saddle sore was accepted by cycling’s governing body, the UCI. This was despite the fact that Armstrong had not declared the cream on the doping form at Challans.

The new questions facing professional cycling do not stop there. A former soigneur has extraodinary stories to tell about the disposal of empty syringes and a furtive trip to Spain to collect a bottle of pills.

Armstrong’s legal advisers have not been alone in their determination to keep the questions at bay. When the UCI belatedly announced that Armstrong had used a corticoidal cream to treat a skin allergy, it also issued a statement that warned journalists about jumping to conclusions in doping cases: “We should like to ask all press representatives to be aware of the complexity of issues and the related aspects of the rules and the law before producing their publications. This will allow considerations of a rather superficial, not to say unfounded nature to be avoided.”

The story of the positive test had been broken by Le Monde. A few days later Armstrong rounded on the French newspaper, calling it “the gutter press”. When a Le Monde journalist asked about the positive test at a press conference, the cyclist replied: “Mr Le Monde, are you calling me a liar or a doper?” The fact that the journalist had simply asked a legitimate question was lost on his colleagues. In a room full of reporters, nobody dared ask Armstrong a follow-up question. Such is the way of the overwhelming majority of those who cover the sport for the world’s media: awkward questions are best left unasked. The reasoning goes that they will soon go away and everybody can get back to talking and writing about cycling again.

Walsh has reported on 18 Tours de France. In his work for The Sunday Times, he has consistently been one of the few exceptions to the sport’s rule of silence. For this reason he has earned Armstrong’s anger. For some time the cyclist has claimed that Walsh is pursuing a vendetta against him, and the publication of LA Confidential is likely to lead to further recriminations and a fresh assault on the credibility of a reporter who, three months ago, was voted sports writer of the year in Britain for the third time.

Twenty days from now, the 2004 Tour de France will begin in Liege, Belgium. Armstrong will be given the No 1 dossard, traditionally awarded to the previous year’s champion. It is the number he has worn in the past four Tours. This year he will attempt his sixth consecutive victory in the race, a feat that has never before been achieved. Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain all won five. Armstrong is expected to go one further.

What made Lance Armstrong a sporting icon, a man who is an inspiration to cancer sufferers and survivors? He earns about $16m a year, mostly from a string of endorsements with bluechip companies such as Nike, Coca-Cola and Subaru. If there are questions about the legitimacy of the success that has brought him these rewards, it is only right that they are posed and answered. That said, Armstrong has been tested many times throughout his career, and apart from the incident in 1999, has never failed a test.

Lord Justice Brooke recently expressed the view that the media are the general public’s eyes and ears. “In a free society,” he said, “fearless reporting has often exposed information which it has been in the public interest to expose.” But with lawyers charging up to £400 an hour, newspapers can sometimes be deterred from pursuing responsible investigative journalism, held to ransom by those with the means to do so. The cost of defending a high-profile libel action can easily run to seven figures.

Allegations of a vendetta are unfair. For eight years Walsh has written passionately in this newspaper about the cancer of drugs in sport, not just in cycling. His motivation for doing so was summed up in a piece he wrote for The Sunday Times four years ago: “Doping is destroying cycling and many other sports. It is pervasive and it is sanctioned by sports bodies and event organisers. Is there anybody out there who gives a damn? Who cares that today’s champions are hypochondriacs and that tomorrow’s will come directly from the laboratories, injected with alien but powerful genes?” Nor is sporting fraud the only serious issue at stake. In cycling, there has been a string of unexplained recent deaths. The health risks involved in using EPO are considerable. Too much of the substance can increase haematocrit to the point where the blood is turned to sludge. Such thickened blood can be responsible for the heart working excessively hard, which can cause heart failure.

Earlier this year, two cyclists died of heart attacks within 48 hours of each other, first the 21-year-old Belgian Johan Sermon, then the celebrated Italian champion Marco Pantani, who was 34. They were the seventh and eighth cyclists to die from cardiac arrests in just over a year, young men in the prime of their lives.

Responding to Walsh’s 2001 story about Armstrong’s link to Ferrari, the American Greg LeMond, a three-time Tour de France champion, offered an opinion about the Texan’s remarkable triumphant return to the saddle after his recovery from cancer. “If it is true,” said LeMond, “it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport; if it is not, it is the greatest fraud.”

The new book will reveal that shortly after expressing his doubts, on August 1, 2001, LeMond received a call on his mobile phone from Armstrong. It came as he was climbing into his wife Kathy’s Audi station wagon and, realising who was calling, LeMond mouthed, “It’s Lance” to his wife.

LeMond declined to be interviewed for the book, as he has agreed with Trek, a major sponsor of Armstrong’s US Postal Service team and the distributor of LeMond Bikes, not to speak publicly about his fellow American. But Kathy LeMond is not bound by this agreement, and it is understood that she told Walsh: “While the call was going on, I took notes of everything that was said by Greg and then recapped with Greg the comments by Lance immediately after the conversation was over. Some of his words I could hear because he was so loud while talking to Greg. Afterwards I pieced together the principal elements of what was said between them.”

The conversation is recounted in the book, as follows:

LA: “Greg, this is Lance.”

GL: “Hi, Lance, what are you doing?”

LA: “I’m in New York.”

GL: “Ah, okay.”

LA: “Greg, I thought we were friends.”

GL: “I thought we were friends.”

LA: “Why did you say what you said?”

GL: “About Ferrari? I have a problem with Ferrari. I’m disappointed you are seeing someone like Ferrari. I have a personal issue with Ferrari and doctors like him. I feel my career was cut short, I watched a teammate die, I saw the devastation of innocent riders losing their careers. I don’t like what has become of our sport.”

The conversation then becomes extremely heated, with questions raised about EPO, who was taking it, and why.

Interviewed by Walsh in April 2001, Armstrong was asked if he had been aware of EPO during his time at the Motorola team.

“How conscious were you guys at Motorola that EPO had become a factor in cycle racing?” he was asked.

“We didn’t think about it,” Armstrong replied. “It wasn’t an issue for us. It wasn’t an option.”

In De Telegraaf last week the US Postal Service director sportif, Johan Bruyneel, said: “For years we have been accused from all corners and time and time again it is based on nothing. This seems to be part of it.”

Walsh sent Armstrong and Bruyneel a list of questions related to the allegations made in LA Confidential. They declined to answer them.

The battle and the war

David Walsh

July 4, 2004

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Where once the keepsake might have been a peaked hat or a water bottle, the cyclist now keeps his old syringe

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Walking through Place Saint Lambert in Liege on Friday evening, an old picture returned. On a Sunday morning in April 20 years before, the best cyclists of that era had gathered in this same square for the start of the Liege-Bastogne-Liege classic. They were all there that morning, the biggest names, weaving a passage into the courtyard of the Palais de Justice before setting off on their race through the Ardennes.

The scene has remained vivid because of a photograph taken by Nutan, a remarkable man who could capture everything in one still frame. This was a picture taken of Eric Vanderaerden as he inched his bike through a forest of fans. The shot was taken from behind and showed the back of the rider in his black, yellow and red jersey of Belgian champion.

But it wasn't to Vanderaerden that the eye was drawn. Alongside him was a man in his early 30s with a child in his arms. Unknown to the cyclist, the man stretched the infant's right arm until the little fingers touched the hero's back. More than anything we could write or tell, that photograph reflected the European passion for cycling, and Belgians were as avid as any in their allegiance.

Twenty years on and we are back in this same square; the announcer calls the names and the Tour de France teams arrive in formation. Clapping, cheering; the excitement of the big event. Has it changed in two decades? For there is the same desire to acclaim today's giants of the road and the same fervour for the big occasion. But much has changed.

At 4.01 Belgian time yesterday afternoon, the Swiss rider Pierre Bourquenoud descended from a ramp on Avenue Rogier and began the second century of the Tour's existence. After Bourgenoud, 186 more riders followed. The total should have been 189, but the Cofidis rider Matthew White broke a collarbone on the eve of the race, and a pre-race blood test meant the exclusion of the Basque rider Gorka Gonzalez. Red cells help you to race; too many red cells and you are not allowed to race. Another non-starter was the British cyclist David Millar, excluded from the Tour because he is currently under police investigation relating to doping within the Cofidis team. While his fellow professionals were gathering in Liege, Millar was in Paris speaking with Richard Pallain, the judge in the Cofidis case.