Lance Armstrong: The Downfall of a Champion

• 

• SPORTS
• October 7, 2013, 10:30 p.m. ET

An Excerpt From the Forthcoming Book "Wheelmen"

By 
• REED ALBERGOTTI
 and 
• VANESSA O'CONNELL
 
• CONNECT

The Wall Street Journal’s Vanessa O'Connell and Reed Albergotti discuss their new book "Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, The Tour de France and The Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever.”

In 2013, Lance Armstrong confessed that he had cheated to win the Tour de France. The moment marked the breathtaking fall of an athlete who had transformed himself from a brash and undisciplined teenage triathlete to a global sporting icon. In their forthcoming book, "Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever," Wall Street Journal reporters Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell give an inside account of Armstrong's career, from his enormous commercial and competitive success to his take-no-prisoners approach to protecting a devastating secret. The book arose from more than 100 interviews with former teammates, federal investigators and antidoping officials. Some of these figures spoke on background, asking not to be quoted so they could speak freely.

Getty Images

Lance Armstrong edges Ivan Basso atop Plateau de Beille to win Stage 13 of the 2004 Tour de France.

Related

2009:

• March 27: Lance's Plan for France- Off the Bike (Buying the Tour de France)

2010:

• July 2: Blood Brothers: Spilling Cycling's Secrets
• July 27: Prosecutors Step Up Armstrong Probe
• September 4-5: US Mulls Joining Cycling Lawsuit

2012:

• June 14: Armstrong to Face Doping Charges
• August 24: Cycling Legend Loses Titles
• October 11: Drug Case Against Armstrong Detailed
• October 12: The Women Behind Team Armstrong

The meeting began without Armstrong present.

Tim Herman, his lawyer, had shown up alone to scope out the situation, to determine whether it was worth his client's time. Neither Armstrong nor Herman had wanted to take this, their first meeting with U.S. Anti-Doping Agency executives, at the organization's headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., where they'd surely be noticed. So Armstrong's friend Bill Ritter, the former governor of Colorado, agreed to host the meeting at his Colorado State University offices in downtown Denver. A date was set: Dec. 14, 2012.

In addition to Herman, there was Travis Tygart, USADA's chief executive, who had come in from Colorado Springs, and USADA's general counsel Bill Bock, who had come in from Indiana. Only 16 weeks earlier, Tygart and Bock had banned Armstrong for life from elite competition for doping, stripping him of all of his athletic titles going back to 1998. At the meeting they hoped to negotiate a confession from Armstrong, who hadn't yet admitted doping, and to convince him to cooperate in an effort to clean up the sport.

Having sold his private jet, Armstrong chartered a plane to Colorado, bringing his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, and his two youngest children along, so they could spend time with Hansen's parents in Boulder. By now Armstrong was itching to race in elite triathlons. He'd agreed to the meeting in the hopes of cutting a deal that would have him competing again in 12 months or less.

The meeting had a down-to-business feel. There was no spread of food or even coffee for the participants, just bottles of water. Bock and Tygart wanted Herman to know they were concerned about Armstrong's well-being. They had actually been shocked by the magnitude and velocity of Armstrong's downfall and had worried about how he was dealing with it emotionally.

Lodged in the back of their minds was the memory of Antonio Pettigrew, a track athlete who committed suicide on an overdose of sleeping pills in 2010, at age 42, two years after losing his gold medal following a USADA doping ban. Herman, who seemed to consider himself something of a father figure to Armstrong, said Armstrong was doing fine but that he'd be a lot better if he could get back to competing in triathlons. He said that Armstrong would be willing to come in and talk, to lay it all out on the table, but that in exchange he wanted to be back competing within a year.

In response, Tygart and Bock explained that such a quick return was impossible under the rules of the sport. But they tried to make a case, sweetened by a few small overtures, for Armstrong to come clean. "There are many more benefits to getting on the side of the truth," Bock said. "Doesn't he want to leave a legacy of helping to repair the sport?"

After about two hours, Herman felt he'd seen just enough daylight to call Armstrong, who said he'd join them in an hour. Bock and Tygart went across the street to a deli for coffee and muffins and then came back to the meeting room, where they waited.

The Blue Train, 2004

At precisely 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 17, 2004, nine men in the dark-blue jerseys of the U.S. Postal Service cycling team rolled out of the quiet village of Lannemezan in southwest France to begin a painful six-hour journey over seven Pyrenean passes. It was stage 13 of the Tour de France. The temperature was already 78 degrees.

The Tour de France's brutality is legend. The race lasts for 23 days, including two rest days, and is divided into 17 road "stages," including the flat stages favored by sprinters, mountain stages for climbers, and medium-mountain stage, plus four "time trials"—individually timed races against the clock—beginning with the "prologue," which opens the Tour. This would be the cruelest day of all. The course ahead stretched 127 miles, winding through the forested Midi-Pyrenees region, where wooded foothills give way to alpine pastures, then to a flat prelude through shaded farmlands, and finally to a series of ever-rising peaks: the gradual Col d'Aspin, the deceptive Col de Latrape, and, finally, the infamous climb to the Plateau de Beille. Lance Armstrong began the day in second place among the 150 riders—5 minutes, 24 seconds behind the melancholy Frenchman Thomas Voeckler. Five minutes are substantial by the standards of any normal race, but in the Tour de France, they could easily disappear. Armstrong's main rival, the German Jan Ullrich, the man who had the best chance of emerging from the mountains on his tail, trailed him by just 3:36. Armstrong's aim, and the mission of his U.S. Postal Service team, was to make the time gap between him and the rest of his pursuers insurmountably large.

Lance Armstrong in the 2004 Tour de France

Laurent Rebours/Associated Press

Lance Armstrong crossed the finish line to win the 13th stage of the Tour de France on July 17, 2004.

• More photos and interactive graphics

After they hit the countryside, the Postal squad assumed its typical formation: eight riders forming a spear to pierce the wind, with Armstrong protected in the center. Every team in the Tour de France has a captain, the man who will finish first. While the captain pursues the yellow jersey, awarded to the rider with the lowest overall time, the rest of the team does cycling's grunt work: blocking the wind, putting pressure on rivals with clever tactical moves, even dropping back to the team car and picking up bottles of water for the leader. No team in cycling was more single-mindedly focused on its captain than the U.S. Postal team. And no captain expected more loyalty and hard work from his support riders than Armstrong.

Armstrong's teammates kept him securely in the sweet spot of the pack: right near the front, behind his Postal Service spear, where there's no wind and minimal risk of a crash. Armstrong pedaled in their slipstreams, using the momentum of the group, which enabled him to use 30% to 60% less energy than if he were riding alone.

The pack, called a peloton, resembles a graceful amoeba—its perimeter changing shape as it floats down the road. Inside the amoeba, teams elbow each other, jab ribs and collide wheels in constant combat for the best position.

On the 25-mile journey to the base of the day's first climb, the U.S. Postal squad shot to the front of the peloton, accelerating even on the flat roads where riders typically conserve their energy. Driving the pace on the flats—a technique pioneered by the Postal team—neutralized other squads' tiny, elflike climbers, whose smaller size offered no advantage on these relatively flat stretches.

The maneuver came at the direction of team director Johan Bruyneel, a handsome, dark- haired Belgian who trailed the riders in a team car. Watching the broadcast of the race on a television installed on his dashboard, Bruyneel carefully orchestrated every acceleration, attack and chase. Once the race neared the mountains, Armstrong would rely on the grunts, his four most trusted Postal teammates: José Azevedo, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis and José Luis Rubiera.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Armstrong with teammate Floyd Landis in 2004.

Just 40 miles into the stage, the peloton reached the first significant climb—a long, gentle ascent up the 11-mile Col de Portet d'Aspet. Here, in the climbs, the team faced its most challenging work. Armstrong was big for a cyclist. At 160 pounds, he was about 20% heavier than the average climber, weight that had to be carried over the decisive mountain stages. But the Blue Train, as they were known, proceeded as fast uphill as they had on the flats. Rivals began falling off the back of the pack like loose debris. Dutch, Belgians, Danes, Russians—they were heroes back home, national champions, endurance machines in the 99th percentile of the human race. Yet today they looked like amateurs. Armstrong had shaved Voeckler's lead to less than four minutes by the end of the first climb.

It was getting hotter and empty water bottles were shooting out of the peloton like popcorn. A bottle an hour for every rider equals about 300 on the side of the road—free souvenirs for fans. Basque rider Iban Mayo, a top Tour contender, succumbed to the heat and tension on the next climb, the relatively easy four-mile Col de Latrape. Mayo, suffering a deep burning sensation in his legs, simply got off his bike. Orange-clad Basque fans pleaded with him to continue. Slowly, he remounted his bike, his teammates joining onlookers in pushing him up the climb.

At the front of the pack, meanwhile, Armstrong barely seemed to be exerting himself. And he moved at a breathtaking pace: The Postal team hit the climb at roughly 20 miles an hour, a speed cycling teams had never attained in these conditions. The Americans chalked it up to technology and fitness—but the French, and other squads, had their suspicions. So did some members of the press.

On the slopes of the Col d'Agnes, 90 miles into the 127-mile stage, Postal led a pack that had now dwindled to about 40 riders. Voeckler couldn't keep up, and Armstrong now trailed him by only 44 seconds in overall time. Sensing the narrowing lead, Voeckler shot down the other side with reckless disregard for the off-camber, hairpin turns and choppy pavement. Fans winced as he came within inches of launching himself off a 30-foot cliff. By the start of the final climb, he had regained his advantage over Armstrong: 5:24.

At the base of Plateau de Beille, a 10-mile climb so steep that most people can hardly walk it, Postal took the lead. By then only about 30 or so riders had managed to hang with them. While the others were visibly suffering, the Postal riders looked positively comfortable. As the hill pushed to a 6% grade—on its way to an eventual 8%— Armstrong had only three teammates still supporting him. The others had dropped out. Still, Ullrich, the square-jawed German who'd won the Tour in 1997, clung to the wheels of the survivors. The year before, Ullrich had been Armstrong's toughest competitor, his tormentor in the mountains.

Michal Czerwonka for The Wall Street Journal

Landis in Idyllwild, Calif., in 2010

As the riders slowed and began to pant in the heat, the Postal team's rising star, Floyd Landis, pushed to the front to do the critical work of keeping pace so that Armstrong would get a smooth ride. Tall for a cyclist but rail thin, Landis was a latecomer to the sport. He had joined the team in 2002 and risen to become Postal's second-best. Landis, who had started out as a mountain biker before switching to road racing, had a cardiovascular capacity that was extremely rare—even more favorable than Armstrong's, according to calculations by team doctors. As he shepherded his team leader up the climb, Landis felt the attention of the cameras, the television commentators touting his talents. Other teams were courting him, and his performance proved he could be a potential rival to Armstrong. Armstrong counted on Landis's extraordinary strength to support him in the mountain stages, but Landis was not supposed to have ambitions of his own.

Slowly, the riders began passing red-and-white inflatable banners marking the distance to the finish line. With each checkpoint, Armstrong gained ground. Two seconds here, three there. The fans at the top of Plateau de Beille, some of whom had hiked for hours to get a good spot, cheered madly. Some ran alongside the riders, screaming encouragement or, occasionally, epithets. Cries of "dopée! dopée!" could be heard directed at Armstrong from French fans who suspected his performance was drug-fueled. In cycling, whether the fans love you or hate you, the cheers and jeers mostly blend into one savage din—punctuated by cowbells and the occasional air horn.

Landis, exhausted from knifing through the wind, finally pulled off and gave the lead to his Postal teammate José Luis Rubiera, known as Chechu. The Spanish climber screamed up the switchback turns, clearing the way for Armstrong through crowds waving colorful national flags. "Allez, allez!" "Go, go!" the fans screamed.

With 6.2 miles still left in the 9.9-mile climb, Ullrich had already lost 40 seconds. Voeckler, fading quickly, had lost 1 minute and 41 seconds. The riders passed the 3-mile mark, then the 1-mile mark. Armstrong was alone, far out in front of almost everyone, Ullrich a mere memory at more than 6 minutes behind.

Only one obstacle remained, and Armstrong, ever the assassin, charged after him. The Italian Ivan Basso was already so far down in the standings that he was merely hoping for a strong finish. Armstrong and Basso reached the summit together, and the roads began to flatten out. With less than one mile to go, Armstrong leaned his bike over at frightening angles around every turn.

He knew he had gained so much time that he could not lose the Tour de France now, but still he stuck to Basso's wheel. He looked angry, grimacing and pushing the pace. He wanted every second. He wanted not just to beat but to crush his competition. With 164 yards to go, Armstrong blew past Basso and sprinted across the finish line, raising his arms in the air triumphantly. He was now more than six minutes ahead of his closest competition in the overall standings. With a week to go, and only two more mountain stages ahead, it seemed inevitable that, barring some unforeseen disaster, he would win his sixth Tour.

While his teammates boarded a bus, destined for traffic jams down the mountain, Armstrong climbed into a helicopter with girlfriend Sheryl Crow. He may well have been, at that moment, the most thoroughly envied man in the world. His performance that day wasn't just miraculous—it was a seminal moment in the Armstrong legend. He had stared down cancer. He had a beautiful, famous girlfriend. And now he had once again beaten the Europeans at their own game.

The Betrayal, 2010

Six long years later, in the spring of 2010, Floyd Landis was sitting in a conference room at the Marriott Hotel in Marina del Rey, Calif., reliving the 2004 race. But the other men in the room had no interest in his heroics on the road.

One of the men was a federal agent named Jeff Novitzky—a tall, baldheaded criminal investigator for the Food and Drug Administration. Another was Travis Tygart from USADA, the nonprofit group in charge of policing doping in sport. What had begun as a cathartic truth-telling exercise for Landis had morphed into a full-blown federal investigation with Landis as the chief witness for the government.

Associated Press

Armstrong with girlfriend Sheryl Crow after the 13th stage in 2004.

Landis was 10 pounds heavier than he had been in 2004. On the verge of confessing what no American cyclist had ever admitted, he looked as if he hadn't shaved for a week. A thin, reddish-brown beard sprouted on his pale skin. His eyes were slightly red from lack of sleep—Landis said in an interview that he hadn't slept in weeks—and he wore bluejeans and an old white T-shirt.

So much had happened since that day in the 2004 Tour, when the entire world watched him give his all as he shepherded Armstrong over those mountain passes. Landis had become a hero after winning the Tour de France in 2006, only to be stopped by a positive drug test. He became a martyr after publicly denying he had doped, writing a book professing his innocence, and taking donations from fans for his legal defense—which ultimately failed, leaving him with a two-year ban from the sport.

Since his troubles began, he had broken up with his wife and moved to a small cabin in Idyllwild, a remote town in the mountains of Southern California whose residents included hippies, gun-toting survivalists and people living on the fringes of society. His relationship with Armstrong had ended in a bitter feud. And even after he'd served his punishment, he found himself pushed to the fringes of the sport. Now he was a broken man. Now he was about to tell secrets he knew would tear the sport apart.

The conversation wasn't recorded, but Novitzky and Tygart took careful notes. For the first time in the history of professional bike racing, one of the sport's biggest stars—a true firsthand witness to cycling's most heavily guarded secrets—was going to tell the truth about doping. Describing the events of that 2004 Tour, Landis told Novitzky and Tygart that one night, after the conclusion of one of the stages—just a few days after Armstrong had climbed into the helicopter with Sheryl Crow—the entire U.S. Postal team, including Armstrong, had been on the team bus, driving along largely deserted mountain roads to a hotel near the start of the following day's stage, when suddenly, the bus came to an abrupt stop. The driver, an old Belgian man, had gotten out carrying orange traffic cones, as if to indicate that there was a mechanical problem. Great, just what we need. Our legs are aching, our bodies are wasting away and now we have to sit in a bus on the side of the road and wait for the French equivalent of AAA, Landis thought to himself.

But soon, Landis said, everyone on board realized what was happening. The bus was being transformed into a secret blood transfusion unit.

The riders had known they would be asked to take blood at some point in the Tour, but weren't told when. As had happened before, someone—sometimes a motorcycle driver who had been hired to do it, sometimes the team chef, sometimes a security worker—had delivered the blood immediately before the transfusions. Engine trouble was just a ruse designed to outsmart the journalists and the French police who suspected the Postal team of doping.

Associated Press

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart in 2012.

As the bus driver pretended to work on the engine, the team doctors began handing out blood bags with code names the riders had chosen for themselves, according to Landis. Some riders used the names of their pets; others used nicknames. Landis used his real name. He said he was too afraid of accidentally infusing a teammate's blood—a mistake that could end in death—to take the risk of using another name.

Landis described to the two investigators what sounded like a well-choreographed, ultrasecret M.A.S.H. unit. As the operation got under way, all the riders, including Armstrong, lay down on the floor of the bus, face up, while the team doctors, who always rode on the bus, hung the chilled transfusion bags from overhead luggage racks so that gravity could help the blood ease its way into their veins.

The cyclists were gaunt, their faces sunken, the fat burned away by the exertions of the race. Their veins and capillaries had pushed up to the surface of the skin, rising in sinewy, bulging mazes on their arms and legs—the human body's attempt to supercharge itself by maximizing blood flow. Every day during the Tour, the riders burned up red blood cells like kindling, drastically depleting their ability to bring oxygen to their muscles. The extreme physical demands of the race meant they were wasting away from the inside out. The blood transfusions—a banned form of blood doping—were meant to counteract those effects. Boosting the number of red blood cells in the cyclists' bodies was like injecting fuel into a car's engine.

Landis described watching as Armstrong's bag slowly emptied. Normally, he said, Armstrong would squeeze the bag to the last drop, making sure that every possible red blood cell had flowed down the plastic tube and into his veins. This time, though, Armstrong had pulled the needle out of his arm without bothering to squeeze the bag. Landis said he thought it was because Armstrong was in a hurry, or maybe he just didn't care because he was so far ahead in the race by then.

Because the U.S. Postal team was under such intense scrutiny at that time, trying to arrange for two blood transfusions in a 21-day period was like trying to get away with two bank heists. In order for every rider to have two fresh blood bags ready by July, which was when the Tour de France took place, the team had to undergo a secret and complicated process that involved months of advance planning. The first blood draws were done well before the race when the riders were rested. The plastic transfusion bags were stored in refrigerators kept at 1 degree Celsius to preserve the blood as much as possible without freezing it. Shortly before the beginning of the 2004 Tour, the U.S. Postal team had the bags of blood smuggled into France in an unmarked camper. Then the bags were transported by motorcycles with refrigerated panniers.

As Landis told his story in the Marriott conference room that day, there was absolute silence. Other than Landis's voice, all that could be heard was the sound of scribbling pens. Novitzky had spent years investigating drug use in Major League Baseball and the National Football League. Tygart had devoted a decade of his life to fighting drug use in sports. The two men thought they had heard everything by that stage of their careers, but this was the most vivid picture ever painted of the secret world of professional sports.

They stayed in the room for six hours, pushing for details, for context, and the next morning they met with Landis for another two hours.

Keys to Redemption, 2012

Back at the conference room at Bill Ritter's Denver office on that December afternoon in 2012, Lance Armstrong finally showed up.

He walked in more than 90 minutes late, wearing a baseball cap and a North Face parka. His facial hair was grown out, almost to the point of being a beard. He looked nothing like the famous clean-shaven athlete with the beaming smile and the buzz cut. He sat down next to his lawyer, Tim Herman, across from USADA's Tygart and Bock. Armstrong spoke as if it were a foregone conclusion that he had doped. He didn't bother denying anything, but he didn't offer any explicit details, either. He referred to the systematic doping of athletes in the former East Germany and said that whatever he had done was nothing compared with that.

Tygart, who was meeting Armstrong for the first time, noticed that the people surrounding him seemed to be coddling him, which had probably allowed him to infer that he could avoid the ban completely. It became clear to Tygart that none of Armstrong's lawyers had given him the "come to Jesus" talk—the kind of frank discussion that would have shown him the true dimensions of his predicament.

Armstrong seemed to be laboring under the false impression that he could still get out of this mess with minimal damage. He said he would be willing to talk about others who might have helped him dope. But in exchange, "You have to give me a fair punishment." That "doesn't have to be six months," he added, but a year."

Tygart said he actually began to feel sorry for him. Armstrong still thought he could take charge of the situation, but this was one of the few times in Armstrong's life when he was no longer in control. Tygart told Armstrong that he had already had his chance to come clean and he'd blown it—that at best, if he gave full cooperation, the ban would be eight years. The offer was so far from a sweetheart deal that it didn't seem to create much incentive for Armstrong to talk. He'd be 49 before he could compete again at the elite level.

Armstrong tried to convince Tygart that he was just another rider on the U.S. Postal team, that he had done what was required of him by a sport in which doping was rampant. In fact, he said, every sport has similar problems, including the NFL and Major League Baseball, but those athletes hadn't been singled out by USADA. As the discussion wound down, Tygart didn't budge. He told Armstrong he stood accused of offenses that stretched beyond doping to a coverup marked by nearly 15 years of denials, as well as threats and actions against anyone who told the truth. Equally unbudging, Armstrong told Tygart that he held the keys to his own redemption. Armstrong said he could create his own "truth and reconciliation commission," laying out the facts as he saw them. Armstrong believed such a plan would put so much public pressure on USADA that it would have no choice but to allow him to compete again—to which Tygart responded: "That's b—! People will see it for what it is—a ploy for you to get back to competition."

Armstrong shot back that he would compete in unsanctioned races. And with that, the negotiation was over.

Write to Reed Albergotti at reed.albergotti@wsj.com and Vanessa O'Connell at vanessa.o'connell@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared October 8, 2013, on page D4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Downfall of a Champion.

Share this post