Armstrong's tight inner circle crumbles

Ex-Postal Service teammate revelations almost unthinkable given past
camaraderie

LOS ANGELES -- After all these years, all these miles and all the
suspicion, it's still somewhat astonishing to see the cars on the old
Blue Train uncoupling one by one. This may forever be remembered as
the week when Lance Armstrong finally lost control over the U.S.
Postal Service cycling team that formally disbanded years ago.

One of Armstrong's most prominent support riders from early on in his
seven-year reign as Tour de France champion, Tyler Hamilton, admitted
to his own doping past and has given the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes"
an alleged eyewitness account of Armstrong using performance-enhancing
drugs that will air on Sunday evening.

The network also reported a potentially even more weighty revelation,
saying that George Hincapie, the only man to have been on all of
Armstrong's Tour-winning teams, has told federal authorities
investigating Armstrong that the two men supplied each other with
banned substances and their use. Hincapie has not confirmed the story
and said he never spoke to "60 Minutes."

Armstrong has never strayed from his blanket denial of doping. But
taken together with Floyd Landis' year-old detailed confession and
allegations of Armstrong doping, the new material constitutes a far
more serious assault on Armstrong's integrity than anything previously
unearthed in the 12 years since he became a global superstar. It also
represents a total rupture of formerly strong bonds between the
ex-teammates, bonds that once would have seemed impossible to break,
whether because of camaraderie or common interest.

The supremely efficient Postal teams of Lance Armstrong's heyday ran
on schedule -- his schedule. More than any other organization of that
era, they were built on the principle of all for one and one for the
Tour de France. Other races were tuneups or afterthoughts, and other
individual aspirations were footnotes, if they existed at all. Postal
riders were self-effacing and loyal to their leader; the Tour was one
big buddy movie on two-wheelers.

[+] EnlargePASCAL PAVANI/AFP/Getty Images
Armstrong, right, and George Hincapie in the Tour of Switzerland
cycling race in 2010.

At least it was made to appear that way. What the world was permitted
to see of the team off the road was tightly monitored. Minders sat in
on interviews. Journalists sympathetic to the team were enlisted to
keep tabs on who was saying what in the press room. Hostile
journalists were photographed and blacklisted. The Blue Train was also
a gravy train that altered the trajectory of many careers. Woe to
anyone who tried to derail it by raising doubts that the team was
clean.

Through that filter, Hincapie, Hamilton and Landis were all initially
viewed as charming sidekicks defined by the roles they played for
Armstrong, and they had to work hard to establish separate identities.
But Armstrong's grip on their psyches persisted after they left the
team, mainly because his power and influence within cycling continued
to grow. When Hamilton and Landis were busted for doping in 2004 and
2006, respectively, neither seriously considered telling the truth
about his own history or the toxic culture of the sport that had
turned cheating into a rational act and lying into a lifestyle.

Both riders fought their positive tests and didn't rat on anyone,
confident they had calculated the odds correctly. "If you point your
finger at [Armstrong] and a few other people who run the sport, you're
not allowed back in," Landis said Friday.

That construct is crumbling before our eyes now. It took the two
former Postal lieutenants who had the least to lose -- having already
lost so much -- to bring the heaviest sledgehammers to it thus far.
The triggers for their confessions and allegations may seem clear-cut:
Landis was angry, and Hamilton was subpoenaed to appear before a
federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case. But it would be
unfair to oversimplify their stories. Both men have suffered for their
hubris and mistakes. There are a lot of decent people in cycling who
have been warped by its extremes like plywood in the hot sun.

"I know what these guys are about to go through, and it's a rough
road," said Frankie Andreu, who five years ago admitted using
performance-enhancing drugs to prepare for the 1999 Tour, the race
that marked the start of Armstrong's dominance. "I have a lot of
respect for them for telling the truth."

Andreu and his wife, Betsy, were once close friends of Armstrong's,
but the relationship soured after they testified in a 2005 arbitration
hearing that they had heard him tell doctors he had used
performance-enhancing drugs when they visited him in the hospital
during his cancer treatment in late 1996.

In comments on Friday to VeloNews.com, Andreu said of Hincapie, "You
can't find a nicer guy, a more trustworthy guy, a more respected
person in the peloton. Lance has ripped apart, attacked and shredded
anybody that's said anything against him. I don't know that that would
work against George."

Veteran U.S. rider Michael Creed said he observed "a lot of self-hate"
in Hamilton while they were briefly teammates at Rock Racing in 2008,
and feels compassion for him now.

"Would it make more sense to lie after you get caught, or now?" Creed
asked rhetorically. "What makes more sense? I don't think you're ever
married to a lie."

Landis, who torpedoed his own credibility more than once in the
process of contesting his doping case and then coming clean, said he
hoped people would "look at the big picture and try to make a judgment
on everything that was happening. ... Don't look at [Hamilton] and
work backwards and say, 'This guy must be telling a lie and there must
be a reason.'"

The Hincapie report remains unsourced at the moment, and should be
regarded differently unless that changes. If it's true that he outed
himself, there could be implications for his career, unless the
admissions were to fall outside the eight-year anti-doping statute of
limitations or a deal has been struck with authorities. What would be
his record-tying 16th Tour start looms little more than a month away,
and he has spoken recently of wanting to race one more season.

What ultimately matters is not what any media outlet reports Hincapie
testified to, but what Hincapie actually said behind closed doors and
how it weaves into the vast, sprawling Armstrong odyssey. By virtue of
never having been involved in a doping case, Hincapie has a larger
reservoir of public goodwill than Hamilton or Landis, and that could
make him a more sympathetic figure. He also might engender more fan
disappointment, judging by the comments on his Twitter feed.

Those old Postal teams were disciplined. They rode team time trials
with geometric precision and they swarmed to the front of the peloton
at the base of major climbs, blowing up the group with a high tempo
and making sure one or more helpers were with Armstrong on the way up.
They protected him. On the rare occasions that he was isolated, it was
a jarring sight. This week, it feels like his escort is dwindling.



Bonnie D. Ford covers Olympic sports for ESPN.com. She can be reached
at .

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