"It's Not About the Drugs"

It's Not About The Drugs
Recovering from cancer and winning seven Tours de France in a row has made
Lance Armstrong a hero for many. Others question whether he's resorted to
drugs to get him to the top of his sport.
In 1993, Lance Armstrong rode his first Tour de France. Nine days into the
race, on the road from Chalons-sur-Marne to Verdun, Armstrong and a small
group of riders broke away from the peloton on the short-but-tough climb of
the Cote du Douamount, about sixteen kilometers from the stage finish.
Attack followed counter-attack, but soon the breakaway group solidified
around six riders who, working together, slowly stretched their lead over
the peloton. In the sprint for the line, Armstrong got clear by two bike
lengths and won the stage. The youngest rider in the 1993 Tour de France,
Armstrong had signalled his arrival in the race's history. Twelve years
later, he's torn up the Tour's history books, winning the race seven times
in a row.
After that stage win in 1993, one journalist asked Armstrong the obvious
question: "On 21st July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to land on
the moon. How high can this Armstrong go?" Even despite his innate Texan
self-confidence, Armstrong didn't answer that question. But in his heart he
knew the answer. Certainly he knew how far he wanted to go.

A year before, Armstrong had been interviewed by Samuel Abt and the pair had
talked about his Tour ambitions: "I know I want to do the Tour de France, I
know I want to win the Tour de France," Armstrong told Abt. "I think I can
someday get to that level but it's a long way off, a lot of hard work. The
desire is there, the ambition is there, the goal is there. It's only a
matter of doing the hard work and winning the race. [...] Win the Tour de
France and you're a star. I'd like to be a star. I'm sure I'd get sick of
all the pressure and all the appearances, but I'd like to try it for a
while."

Today, Armstrong is a star. Since being forced out of cycling in 1996 and
1997 with testicular cancer, he's put a virtual lock-out the Tour de France,
claiming it as his own private domain since 1999. Wherever he goes, he's
applauded for what he's done, not just on the bike, but in recovering from
testicular cancer and promoting cancer awareness. Appearances follow
appearances, interview follows interview. Today, Lance is living the life of
a star that he told Abt he wanted to try in 1993. But it's a life that has
come with a high price. The failure of his marriage has been blamed on his
commitment to the Tour. And his performance in the race is constantly being
questioned, the spectre of the sport's long history of drug abuse hanging
like a cloud over his achievement.

* * *
In recent years, the Irish journalist David Walsh has become one of the
American Tour de France champion's most outspoken critics. Today Armstrong
describes Walsh as "the worst journalist I know." The next time the two talk
is likely to be during one of several court cases against Walsh instigated
by Armstrong. Twelve years ago though Walsh and Armstrong had a totally
different relationship.

David Walsh was one of many journalists who covered the 1993 Tour. He wrote
a book about it - 'Inside the Tour de France' - in which he interviewed
riders and team personnel, telling their story. The book opens with Walsh
interviewing Armstrong, Walsh painting a picture of the sort of Tour
champion we all want to believe in, one with wings on his ankles and the
heart of a lion. "Physically I'm not any more gifted that anybody else,"
Armstrong explained to Walsh, "but it's just the desire, just this rage. I'm
on the bike and I go into a rage, when I just shriek for about five seconds.
I shake like mad and my eyes kinda bulge out. [.] That's heart man, that's
not physical, that's not legs, that's not lungs. That's heart. That's soul.
That's just guts."

Today, Walsh paints a totally different picture of Lance Armstrong. In his
2004 book, 'LA Confidential - Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong' (co-authored
with Pierre Ballester and still unavailable on English translation because
of on-going litigation in France and England), Walsh argues that Armstrong
has admitted to having used EPO. The evidence, Walsh admits, is not
conclusive. Could Walsh be right? Could Armstrong be just another Tour
champion in a long line of Tour champions who has resorted to performance
enhancing drugs to get around le grand boucle? Or is Armstrong as clean as
he himself contests he is?

The fact is, we don't know. That Armstrong's never officially failed a drug
test (the saddle cream incident aside) is, unfortunately, meaningless in
modern cycling. Up until French police found evidence of EPO usage in David
Millar's apartment, he too hadn't failed a drug test, despite being
repeatedly subjected to them. Right now, Millar's just over halfway through
a two year suspension because of his drug use.

The evidence against Armstrong, the evidence that he is himself one of the
many cyclists whose performance is pharmaceutically enhanced, is all
circumstantial. But, sadly, the evidence trotted out by many who want to
believe in a clean Armstrong is equally weak. For then the thought that
Armstrong could be perpetrating such a massive sporting fraud is simply too
appalling a vista to be considered. And that is enough for them to declare
his innocence.

There is scientific evidence though, put forward by researchers at the
University of Texas (Armstrong's home state), which contests that he is
clean and that his performance is down to the fact that he's a genetic
freak. Much of that evidence though is, sadly, inconclusive. Take the
argument that Armstrong's VO2 Max rate (how much oxygen his body can
process) proves his ability is in his genes and not brought about by drugs.
Unfortunately for anyone relying on that argument, it has to be remembered
that the now disgraced sports doctor Michele Ferrari specialised in
increasing his clients' VO2 Max rate. Right up to the day Ferrari was found
guilty of sporting fraud by an Italian magistrate in October 2004, Armstrong
was his most high profile client and vociferously proclaimed Ferrari's
innocence.

Much has been made of the revelation earlier this year by Hein Verbruggen,
the head of the UCI, that Armstrong donated a substantial sum of cash to the
sport to aid anti-doping measures. The money was given after the 1998
Festina scandal. How could a man who has funded anti-doping measures be
himself using drugs? It would seem pretty clear-cut - until you start
considering some of Armstrong's other actions.

Take Armstrong's very public spats with WADA's Dick Pound. Pound is an
outspoken critic of the manner in which cycling authorities have handled the
drug problem within their sport. Given that French and Italian judicial
authorities have done more to clean up the sport than the UCI itself, you
would have to admit that Pound has a point. But Armstrong thinks Pound
should keep quiet and not publicise the problem. Armstrong is, sadly, a firm
believer in the sport's law of omerta, as evidenced by his treatment of
Filipo Simeoni and others who have spoken out of their own experiences of
drugs in cycling. Greg Lemond best sums up Armstrong's attitude to those who
dare to speak openly of the role drugs play in cycling: "The problem with
Lance is that you're either a liar or you're out to destroy cycling."

The role drugs continue to play in the sport should not be hushed up, hidden
from view. It needs to be aired publicly. For too long cyclists and sports
riders have obeyed the sport's law of omerta. Despite all the effort that is
being put into catching drug cheats and despite all the information
available about the dangers associated with these drugs, riders are still
doping.

Dario Frigo and Evgeni Petrov failed to finish this year's Tour because of
their drug use. Petrov was kicked off the race when a blood test suggested
he might be using EPO. Frigo left the race after French police found EPO in
his wife's car. Jurgen Scholl, the Gerolsteiner squad's soigneur, was sacked
just days before the Tour started after a reporter produced an email from
him in which he sought information on the effectiveness of various doping
products. "What do you recommend when mixing Insulin and HGH?," Scholl had
asked in the email, "What are the safe doses for Synachten? How long are you
positive with 2.5mg of Androderm?"

Riders are inexplicably dying of heart failure. In 2003 alone Denis Zanette
(32), Marco Ceriani (16), Fabrice Salanson (23), Marco Rusconi (24), Jose
Maria Jimenez (32) and Michel Zanoli (35) all died and their deaths have
been linked to a resurgence in the use of EPO and blood doping in the sport.
The deaths continue to mount up - only last month Alessio Galletti collapsed
and died during a minor Spanish race. In 2000 he had been suspended for four
months when EPO and Andriol were found in his fridge. Italian police raided
his hotel room during the 2004 Giro d'Italia, on the basis of phone-tapping
evidence. "I've bought a full suitcase of stuff from the doctor," the
transcript of one phone call read, "there was some left over from before as
well ... As long as we can, we use these and then when they're finished,
we'll use the others. I've got a ton of stuff, you understand? I have a
trolley-full."

Does a dirty sport mean that everyone participating in it is dirty? No, it
doesn't. Take the case of the French Cofidis rider, David Moncoutie. The
peloton is united in its defence of Moncoutie, constantly telling
journalists how clean Moncoutie is. Being clean hasn't stopped him from
winning stages in the Tour - Mouncoutie won the Bastille Day stages of the
Tour both this year and last year. But, perhaps tellingly, Mouncoutie is
about the only rider the peloton says this of. Does this mean that everyone
else is using drugs? Or that, in the eyes of the peloton, there is at least
a cloud of doubt hanging over every other rider?

Should any of this matter? Drugs alone will not make you a champion. Arguing
that Armstrong's performance is drug enhanced is, ultimately as pointless as
the catcalls from the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes story - naked (doped)
or not, the Emperor is still the Emperor. And Armstrong still has to put in
the training miles, he still has to ride races each year in preparation for
the Tour. He may not train as much as other riders and he still has time to
be photographed at basketball games eating donuts but he certainly trains
smarter than most, paying more attention to minor details. Even if he is, as
Walsh argues, a doper like all the rest, does it really matter? If everyone
else is doing it - now and throughout the history of the sport - then surely
that just means a level playing field for all?

None of it should matter. But it does. Drugs have stolen the soul of
cycling. Like a cancer, they've eaten it up from the inside. They're the one
cancer Armstrong thinks no one should talk about. They have transformed
riders and they have transformed the Tour. The French philosopher Robert
Redeker best sums up the situation the sport finds itself in today: "The
athletic type represented by Lance Armstrong - unlike Fausto Coppi or Jean
Robic - is coming closer to Lara Croft, the virtually fabricated
cyber-heroine." According to Redeker, "Cycling is becoming a video game; the
onetime 'prisoners of the road' have become virtual human beings."

The riders may have freed themselves from being prisoners of the road, but
today they are - to borrow the title of the Philip Gaumont's doping memoir -
prisonniers du dopage. In their quest to find the perfect pharmaceutical
solution to the inhumanity of the Tour de France, they have transformed
themselves into something not entirely human. According to Redeker, "A huge
gulf now exists between the race and the racers, who have become virtual
figures, transformed into PlayStation characters while the public, the ones
at the folding tables and the tents, drinking pastis and fresh rosé du pays,
are still real. The type of man once promoted by the race, the people's man,
born of hard toil, hardened to suffering and adept at surpassing himself,
has been substituted by Robocop on wheels, someone no fan can relate to or
identify with."

Feargal Mc Kay
July 2005
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