Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong (34 page)

Herman: Now you know in this proceeding she [Stephanie McIlvain] has denied that she heard Mr Armstrong say such things. Is that true based upon what she has told you previously?

Betsy: She was lying.

Herman: I’m sorry, Ma’am, I didn’t hear you.

Betsy: She was lying.

The hospital incident was just as much an obsession for the Armstrong team as it was for SCA. Perhaps because the details of the story are so human and believable. The science didn’t seem to bother the Armstrong people. They seemed to think they could take care of Emma and of the Swarts. But the hospital incident was chewing them up.

Questioned about it by Armstrong’s attorney Tim Herman during the arbitration, Bill Stapleton chipped in with some testimony of his own: ‘And I was there that afternoon through the whole football game.’

However, three days later, under cross-examination, Stapleton testified: ‘Lance had told me it hadn’t happened . . . I wasn’t in the room.’

He went on to say: ‘It just defies logic that it would [happen], three days after brain surgery, that his medical history wouldn’t have already been taken. But, no, it didn’t happen.’

Five weeks after the Andreus had been deposed in Michigan, their old friend and nemesis Lance Armstrong had made his way to his own deposition in Austin, Texas. It was the last day of November 2005. Jeff Tillotson, lawyer for SCA, began the questioning after a brief outline of the rules. Tillotson is respectful and unaggressive but even he gets snapped at once in a while.

Still, he asks what has to be asked in his low-key way. Indiana. Hospital:

Tillotson: Okay. Do you have any recollection while these individuals were there that a doctor or doctors came into the room and discussed with you your medical treatment or your condition?

Armstrong: Absolutely not.

Tillotson: Okay. Did any medical person ask you, while you were at the Indiana University Hospital whether you had ever used any sort of performance-enhancing drugs or substances?

Armstrong: No. Absolutely not.

Tillotson: So that just never came up? No one ever, as part of your treatment, no one ever asked you that?

Armstrong: No.

Tillotson: Can you offer, or can you— can you help explain to me why Ms Andreu would make that story up?

Armstrong: Well, she said in her deposition that she hates me.

Tillotson: Do you believe she’s making that story up to— to get back at you or to cause you harm?

Armstrong: Whether she’s making up that she hates me?
⁵²

Tillotson: No. Do you believe that she’s making— I mean, she’s— according to you, this story where she said she specifically heard you say stuff—

Armstrong: Yeah.

Tillotson: And that when she testified she took Mr Andreu out and confronted him regarding whether or not he was doing the same thing. Do you recall that testimony?

Armstrong: Yeah. Vaguely. But I have no idea why she did that—

Tillotson: Okay.

Armstrong: Other than she hates me.

Tillotson: Okay. Obviously you had a relationship with them. And you knew her, and you go back some time with her. And I’m asking if —

Armstrong: I knew her very little, not very well.

Tillotson: Why would Mr Andreu say the same things?

Armstrong: Probably to support his wife, which I don’t know if you’re married or not, but—

Tillotson: I am.

Armstrong: Sometimes it is required.

Tillotson: And so you think . . . is it your testimony that Mr Andreu was also lying when he said that he heard you say those things regarding your prior use?

Armstrong: One hundred per cent. But I feel for him.

Tillotson: What do you mean by that?

Armstrong: Well, I think he’s trying to back up his old lady.

Betsy and Frankie stuck to their guns about the hospital room. Interestingly, Lance’s friend and former coach Chris Carmichael and his wife Paige, whom one might have expected to be called by the Armstrong team, did not give evidence. Neither did Lisa Shiels.

It was a traumatic experience for Stephanie McIlvain, and I’m sure there was nothing she wanted more than to be permitted to escape from the headlights. She was trapped, however. James Startt, my initial conduit to Frankie and Betsy, testified that he and McIlvain talked about the incident at the 2004 Tour de France. He had heard the story and when the opportunity presented itself in 2004, he asked McIlvain about it.

James asked, ‘Is it true what happened in that hospital room . . . what Betsy told me?’ And she said, ‘Yes, it was.’

SCA had noted from her earlier deposition that Kathy LeMond had illustrated the stress she and Greg were feeling by telling the hearing that Greg had begun taping calls in connection with Lance. Stephanie had been taped in a thirty-three-minute call in July 2004. SCA issued a subpoena obliging LeMond to place the tape in the hands of the hearing. It made for uncomfortable listening. Greg LeMond assures McIlvain early on that he is not taping the conversation, he then goes on to talk about having been through personal issues, makes some small talk, and finally gets to the issue of the hospital room.

LeMond outlines the Betsy and Frankie version of the hospital story and asks if McIlvain would be willing to testify if he needed her support in some future lawsuit.

McIlvain: If I was subpoenaed I would.

Greg: Yeah?

McIlvain: ‘Cause I’m not going to lie. You know I was in that room. I heard it.

They continue to speak about Armstrong. LeMond indulges in a little conjecture as to what might happen if the entire Armstrong myth collapsed. McIlvain is more realistic:

McIlvain: Well, the whole thing of it is, Greg, there are so many people protecting him that it is just sickening, you know.

Greg: But the people protecting him know.

McIlvain: I know. They all know.

Greg: Yeah?

McIlvain: Well, because I know – and this you don’t repeat – but I know for a fact then when the whole book came out, Chris Carmichael made a call to my friend and said, ‘Oh, you know, I’ve been sitting here, thinking, thinking, thinking who was in that room. If I totally remember the incident, yes he did admit to what he was taking. But I don’t really think Stephanie and Betsy Andreu were in there, and I don’t think Lisa Shiels was in there.’ And I just laughed. I said, ‘You tell him that, yeah, I was in there because I remember him [Chris Carmichael] looking around the room and seeing who was in that room.’ So then my friend says, ‘Oh my God, that’s what he said. He said he looked around the room to make sure everybody in that room was trustworthy.’

The SCA. Fun to stay at the SCA.

18

‘Dude, I thought we were friends.’

Lance Armstrong

For any future biographers of Lance Armstrong, the sworn deposition available in transcript form or in video on the internet is an essential resource.
Drive-by Character Assassinations, A Compilation Album.

Watch him. Lance sits patiently in a lilac shirt and crew cut and describes a world wherein a good man is beset at all times by a motley army of whores, drunks, addicts, cheats, liars and trolls. It is too much. He is above all this. He makes the point a few times that he has too much going on in life to have been able to familiarise himself with all this stuff he is being asked about. When Lance is not shredding somebody’s reputation, he is struggling to recall some of the bigger events in his life. How much he gave. What people said. When he met key figures in his life. Lots of things were very blurry.

Armstrong also had a talent for being difficult.

Tillotson: Were you able to examine the tape that Mr Andreu made of his conversations with Mr Stapleton and Mr Knaggs?

Armstrong: No.

Tillotson: Several years later do you remember at the deposition a transcript being produced of the tape he says he made?

Armstrong: Yes.

Tillotson: Okay. If you’ll turn to tab 16, which has been marked as ‘Andreu Exhibit 1’, I’ll represent to you this is a copy of the transcript that was produced at that deposition . . . I can’t remember, I thought you had an opportunity to read this transcript while at the deposition. Have you had an opportunity, either at the deposition or since then, to review this transcript?

Armstrong: No, sir.

Tillotson: Okay. I’m going to turn – direct – your attention to a couple of things that are said, and if you’ll turn to what’s been marked as page three of the transcript . . . If you’ll see there at the top, Mr Andreu was reported to say, ‘She won’t do that. She didn’t – she did not tell David Walsh about the hospital room, know that for sure . . .’ And then Mr Andreu says, ‘Cuz I never told anybody about the hospital room, you know.’ Someone says, ‘Right’. ‘I mean, cuz . . .’ and then it’s inaudible. ‘ . . . Hospital, and, you know, I don’t know about [inaudible] hospital room happened, but I’ve never told anybody, because I – you know – David Walsh for me, what does this shit accomplish? It accomplishes nothing.’ Do you see that?

Armstrong: Uh-huh. I do. It’s hard to follow, but I see it.

Tillotson: Okay. If Mr Stapleton was at the hospital room watching the game, and knew that the hospital-room incident had never happened . . . do you have any reason why he wouldn’t tell Mr Andreu: ‘What the heck are you talking about? What do you mean you never told anyone about something that never happened?’

Armstrong: Well, I don’t think he was there to take him on, but I have no idea why he wouldn’t say that.

Tillotson: If you’ll turn to page five of this transcript. Let me ask you this before I ask another question about some actual comments. Did you know that Mr Stapleton and Mr Knaggs were going to go meet with Mr Andreu to discuss the possibility of obtaining an affidavit or a statement from Ms Andreu regarding Mr Walsh’s book?

Armstrong: No. Not that I remember.

Tillotson: So you didn’t authorise them to go do it, or tell them to go do it? They just went and did it?

Armstrong: Not to my recollection.

Tillotson: Did they report back to you that they had met with Mr Andreu at the 2004 Tour de France and had talked to him about the book?

Armstrong: Not to my recollection.

Tillotson: Okay. So, until it was revealed at the deposition of Ms Andreu, did you have any idea that Mr Stapleton and Mr Knaggs had actually talked to Mr Andreu at the 2004 Tour de France regarding Mr Walsh’s book and the possibility of getting a statement from Betsy?

Armstrong: Oh, I think that would be unfair to say. I mean, there’s— the Tour is wide open. There are people everywhere. Frankie is somebody that was on our team. I mean, people were talking about the book, obviously, so . . . it didn’t come up like that, but . . .

Tillotson: Was Mr Andreu on the team in ’04?

Armstrong: No.

Tillotson: Okay. So I think it was their testimony that this conversation took place in 2004. It would have to have been because they’re talking about Mr Walsh’s book which wasn’t published till 2004. Right?

Armstrong: Correct.

Tillotson: Okay. I don’t think I fully understood what you were telling me. Do you recall if Mr Stapleton or Mr Knaggs told you that they had this conversation with Mr Andreu?

Armstrong: Not this— I mean, not this specific conversation. But they could have said that they saw Frankie in the lodge or outside the bus. I don’t know.

Tillotson: Now, prior to Mr Andreu’s deposition, you did call him, did you not?

Armstrong: I— yes.

Tillotson: Did you actually speak to him?

Armstrong: Yes.

Tillotson: What was your reason for calling him?

Armstrong: Well, I think I called because . . . because we— because Kathy LeMond had done her deposition, and had all kinds of crazy things to say, which were news to us.

Tillotson: Any other reason you called him?

Armstrong: Other than to say hello, no.

Tillotson: Were you trying to influence his testimony in any way?

Armstrong: Of course not.

Tillotson: Were you trying to warn him?

Armstrong: Of course not. And, in fact, he said that on the phone . . . he said, ‘I totally understand.’ He said, ‘I haven’t heard of any of this stuff either.’ No. I—