Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong (49 page)

35
When the house of cards came tumbling down in October 2012, two former US Postal riders issued a statement calling on statement calling on UCI president Pat McQuaid and honorary president Hein Verbruggen to resign. One was Scott Mercier, the other Darren Baker.

36
The story would be fairly unremarkable were it not for the ironies sown. The buying and selling of stages, one-day races and criteriums is an age-old practice in cycling, but after his retirement Stephen Swart’s next turn in the limelight would be when he told this story as part of his testimony in the SCA case in 2006. SCA were withholding money due to be paid to Lance Armstrong. SCA were an insurance company who accepted premiums to guarantee big prizes like that due to Armstrong for winning successive Tours de France. (Or the million dollars for the Thrift Drug Triple Crown of Cycling.)

37
There were conflicting reactions to
L.A. Confidentiel
at the time and even now commentators disagree on what it achieved. Below are two recent takes on the book.

‘Here’s what was so surprising about Wednesday’s Lance Armstrong evidence dump from the United States Anti-Doping Agency: not all that much. Sure, USADA filled in many shocking details about Armstrong’s doping practices, but the basic outline of this story has been known since 2004, when David Walsh and Pierre Ballester published L.A. Confidentiel, a groundbreaking investigative work that was mostly ignored at the time.’

Outside
magazine, 2012

‘It’s just so easy to say, “Yeah the journalists should have dug deeper.” Well, my god Walsh and Ballester dug as deep as you could dig and, you know, they didn’t get anywhere. They really did not get anywhere. I’ve gone back, in fact, and looked at some of the things that I wrote at the time and I don’t find any of it embarrassing. Now of course, I did find it uninformed.’

Samuel Abt,
New York Times
,
Herald Tribune
, 2012

38
The repercussions of that interview would be long lasting. In 2005 Steffen told
L’Équipe
that some time afterwards in 2001 he had received a phone call from Lance Armstrong. Lance said: ‘I have a lot of money, good lawyers, and, if you continue to talk, I’ll destroy you.’

In 2008 at the Tour of Utah, Steffen ended up getting a punch in the face from Marty Jemison, whose name featured in the interview.

39
Hamilton claims not to remember the conversation. Prentice Steffen sticks to his version still. Jemison says he was asking about B12 injections and legal means. It is possible that Jemison and Steffen were merely at cross purposes in a time of stress.

40
Years later, Alex Butler would say that as we were going to be sued no matter what we wrote, we should have run the original piece and be shot for a sheep as a lamb.

41
In the nine years that have passed since she and I did that first long interview, Emma O’Reilly has despaired about Britain’s libel laws. All she ever wanted to do was tell the truth and she discovered it was possible to do this in the US and in France but not in England. Judge Leveson and his inquiry into the media could have done worse than to invite Emma in to tell them her experience of British libel law.

42
In the light of the USADA report in October 2012, the
Sunday Times
decided to seek re-imbursement of that payment to Armstrong and legal costs of its own during that 2004-2006 case. The file remains open.

43
Armstrong’s legal team were the masters of brinkmanship. At one point they were proceeding against the
Sunday Times
and me over an article about
L.A. Confidentiel
, dealing with an unfair dismissal claim by former personal assistant Mike Anderson, and a counter-claim by Armstrong. Along with a public defamation suit by Italian cyclist Filippo Simeoni, to be heard in Paris; a libel action, also in Paris, against me, Pierre, Emma O’Reilly and Stephen Swart; a libel action against La Martinière, publisher of
L.A. Confidentiel
; and one against
L’Express
, which published extracts from the book. Lance was also facing an Italian police inquiry into sporting fraud. He ultimately managed to avoid going under oath in any of the cases.

44
In September 2012 Tyler Hamilton spoke publicly about Emma O’Reilly. ‘Emma was the best
soigneur
I ever had. A great, great person. You can see it in her eyes: she’s the salt of the earth and everyone in the team knew that. When she came out with the doping stuff about Lance, I couldn’t be seen to support her but I knew what she was saying was true. And I liked it in a strange way. “The asshole,” I thought, “is getting some heat.” I kind of felt he deserved it.’

45
During his relationship with Emma, Simon got to know different people in and around the US Postal team, and perhaps his reluctance to publicly support Emma’s account of the drug trip to Spain was based in part on a desire to preserve those friendships. Up until recently he was exchanging tweets with Johan Bruyneel.

46
I never received that $1.20. Lance, you still owe me.

47
Belinfante could see I was the black sheep of the cycling family. Pitying me, he asked if I’d like to do an interview for his television station. In October 2012 he sent a link to the piece, recalling a time and a Tour de France that wasn’t much fun as it happened.

The last question he asked was if I thought Armstrong would win the 2004 Tour. ‘This is a strange answer,’ I said, ‘but I mean it: I don’t care. I don’t care who wins the race. What I care about is clean sport. We must come back to the Tour believing in it more than we do now. This is a bad time for cycling but I hope the times will get better and they will get better if we’re honest.’

48
It was brainless of me to mention Betsy by name as a source for
L.A. Confidentiel
and it brought trouble Frankie’s way, but neither Andreu complained. Remarkable people.

49
Daniel Coyle is a former editor of
Outside
magazine in the US, who spent 2004 living with the US Postal team in Girona, Spain. The subsequent book
Lance Armstrong’s War
became a bestseller. Since then he’s collaborated with Tyler Hamilton to deliver
The Secret Race
, another bestseller.

50
Fourteen English-language publishers considered
L.A. Confidentiel
and said no. Schillings’ threat to sue anyone who repeated the charges against Armstrong made in the book was enough to discourage would-be UK publishers.

51
Tailwind was principally a cadre of elite businessmen who shared an enthusiasm for cycling. They funded Thomas Weisel’s US Postal team and every spring got to spend a day at training camp hanging out with Armstrong and the boys. Weisel and five other investors originally put up about $2.5 million to finance what later became Tailwind Sports, the cycling-management firm that owned the Postal team. The ownership group eventually numbered at least 20 but the company remained stubbornly in deficit.

Investors also enjoyed good access to their team during the Tour de France. As the race would proceed, the businessmen, a macho bunch by all accounts, would pedal segments of the course. A following convoy of cars carried their food and water bottles. They ate well and were whisked to prime viewing spots each day. Like the team they would end the day with a massage. Having claimed to own roughly a 10 per cent stake in the company during the SCA depositions in 2005, Armstrong had changed his mind in 2010: ‘I was a rider on the team. I was contracted with Tailwind Sports, I never had any dealings with the Postal Service – zero. I didn’t own the company [Tailwind Sports]. I didn’t have an equity stake. I didn’t have a profit stake. I didn’t have a seat on the board. I can’t be any clearer than that.’

Tailwind had folded in 2007.

52
In fact, nowhere in testimony did Betsy Andreu say that she hated Lance Armstrong. In another reference to a secret tape, Timothy Herman had asked Betsy to recall the conversation that Frankie Andreu had wired himself up for in France in 2004 when asked to meet Bill Stapleton and Bart Knaggs. Herman had asked, ‘Without going through in detail, Frankie, on several occasions in that conversation with Mr Knaggs and Mr Stapleton, talks about how much you hate Lance Armstrong, doesn’t he?’ Betsy demurred: ‘No. He just says they don’t like each other but that’s the extent of it.’

‘Okay. So is it true that you do not like Mr Armstrong?’

‘No. I don’t like him.’

53
This transpired to be an even more generous pledge: $100,000.

54
In USADA’s ‘Reasoned Decision’ on Lance Armstrong it was noted that, in an arbitration over whether Mr Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs to win one or more of his Tour de France victories, Mr Armstrong stated words to the following effect, under oath and subject to penalties of perjury:

1. That Dr Ferrari never prescribed, administered or suggested any kind of a drug or doping programme for Lance Armstrong.

2. That there was nothing in Lance Armstrong’s dealings with Dr Ferrari that would suggest that Dr Ferrari was encouraging other athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs.

3. That Lance Armstrong had not had any professional relationship with Dr Ferrari since 1 October 2004.

4. That Lance Armstrong never violated the rules of the UCI or the Tour de France in connection with the Tour de France in 2001, 2002, 2003 or 2004.

5. That Lance Armstrong had never taken any performance-enhancing drug in connection with his cycling career.

6. That Lance Armstrong never had any knowledge of Tyler Hamilton using illegal substances when he was Armstrong’s teammate.

7. That Tyler Hamilton did not dope while he was on Lance Armstrong’s team.

As demonstrated by the testimony of numerous witnesses in this case, each of the above statements made under oath and subject to the penalties of perjury were materially false and misleading when made.

55
Tyler Hamilton has told the story of how, after an impressive ride up Ventoux in the Dauphiné Libéré in 2004, he got a call from Hein Verbruggen of the UCI. Verbruggen wanted to meet as soon as the race finished. At the meeting in Aigle, Switzerland, the UCI’s chief medical officer, Dr Mario Zorzoli, produced data which suggested that Hamilton may have been transfused with blood from another person. Hamilton brazened it out, claiming that such a thing was impossible. Zorzoli didn’t push the matter any further.

A few weeks later on the Tour de France, Floyd Landis told Tyler Hamilton that somebody had dropped a dime in a phone booth and called the UCI after the Ventoux ride. Lance Armstrong on line one.

56
This now stands as a straightforward error rather than cause to doubt the substance of the story. In
The Secret Race
, Tyler Hamilton wrote, ‘Yes, Lance tested positive for EPO at the Tour of Switzerland. I know because he told me.’ Hamilton went on to quote Armstrong on the subject: ‘“No worries dude, we’re gonna have a meeting with them. It’s all taken care of.”’ Further on again Hamilton writes of listening to Armstrong call Hein Verbruggen from the team bus: ‘He may just as well have been talking to a business partner, a friend.’ UCI officials claim Armstrong’s test at the 2001 Tour de Suisse was ‘suspicious’, not positive.

It was at this time that Armstrong made a donation of $25,000 to UCI to support their anti-doping work.

In October 2012, Pat McQuaid, president of the UCI, described Landis and Hamilton as ‘scumbags’.

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
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Copyright © David Walsh 2012

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SEVEN
DEADLY
SINS