The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs (22 page)

I once heard Tony Rominger, a top professional who was also one of Ferrari’s clients, talk about the difficulties of competing during the EPO era. Rominger said the problem was this: “Now everybody thinks they are a champion.”

I think this statement is deeply true, and Lance is Exhibit A. Because of his character, because of his comeback from cancer, Lance believed in his bones that, if he worked hard, he was entitled to win every single race. Now, Lance is one hell of a bike racer, Edgar or no Edgar. But here he was wrong, because sports don’t work that way. The reason we love them—the reason I got involved in the first place—is that they’re unpredictable, surprising, human. To me, that turned out to be Lance’s problem: he couldn’t let go of this idea that he was destined to be a champion, and he couldn’t let go of the power that allowed him to control his performance so precisely. It’s the oldest paradox: Lance could withstand just about anything, but he couldn’t withstand the possibility of losing. And that, in my opinion, is not normal.
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Though if Lance is Exhibit A, I might be Exhibit B. I saw my numbers. I saw the look in Ferrari’s eyes. I remembered what Pedro had told me years before. And quietly, though like the others I was standing on a foundation that was anything but solid, I started to believe: maybe I was destined to be a champion, too.

Normally, we skipped the Tour of Switzerland, because of its timing. It was usually scheduled two weeks from the start of the Tour de France, which was a problem, because it limited our use of Edgar before the Tour. The 2001 edition, however, contained a unique feature: an uphill time trial that closely resembled a key stage of the upcoming Tour. So Lance and Johan decided we would ride the race; early in the season, Johan had told me that I would be the team leader.

So I prepared in the usual fashion, training hard and using Edgar to make sure my levels were good. A couple days before the race, I stopped using Edgar altogether. Despite Ferrari’s assurances, I wasn’t in the mood to take chances. I wasn’t about to risk carrying EPO during a race, particularly now that the authorities were using the new EPO test.

What I didn’t know, however, was that Lance had no intention of racing the Tour of Switzerland at anything less than his top form. It turned out Lance and Ferrari had worked out their own plan; Ferrari advised Lance to sleep in an altitude tent and to microdose Edgar in the vein, 800 units a night. This would keep his hematocrit high and also beat the new EPO test, which worked by comparing ratios of natural and synthetic EPO. The altitude tent would create
more natural EPO, helping to balance out any synthetic EPO that might linger. It was a classic Ferrari move—simple, elegant, and not offered to anybody on the team except Lance.

In the prologue, Lance and I were pretty close—he beat me by five seconds. But as the race went on, Lance stayed strong and I faded. By the time we got to the uphill time trial on stage 8, Lance was well positioned in third place; I was in 22nd place, six minutes back, and no longer in a position to lead the team. Lance crushed the time trial. I finished third, 1:25 back. I was disappointed. For Lance, though, it was a great result—his plan with Ferrari had worked out perfectly.

That is, until Lance tested positive.

Yes, Lance Armstrong tested positive for EPO at the Tour of Switzerland. I know because he told me. We were standing near the bus the following morning, the morning of stage 9. Lance had a strange smile on his face. He was kind of chuckling, like someone had told him a good joke.

“You won’t fucking believe this,” he said. “I got popped for EPO.”

It took a second to absorb. My stomach hit the floor. If that was true, Lance was done. The team was done. I was done. He laughed that dry laugh again.

“No worries, dude. We’re gonna have a meeting with them. It’s all taken care of.”

It was weird. Lance wasn’t embarrassed; he wasn’t horrified or worried. It was like he wanted to show me how little he was bothered by this, how in control he was. Questions leapt to my mind—What the hell had happened? Was there a new EPO test? Who was he going to meet with?—but judging by his expression I didn’t feel like I could ask them. After our brief conversation, Lance never mentioned the subject to me again.
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Sometime after that, I remember Lance phoning Hein Verbruggen from the team bus. I can’t recall what they talked about, but what struck me was the casual tone of the conversation. Lance was talking to the president of UCI, the leader of the sport. But he may as well have been talking to a business partner, a friend.

After the 2001 Tour of Switzerland ended, it became clear that I was no longer in Lance’s inner circle. I’d suspected it had been happening since Lance’s angry reaction to my Monzuno test. But now it became reality. Lance became even more distant than usual; we rode together less and less. I wasn’t asked to do a pre–Tour de France transfusion, as I had been in 2000. Now, Chechu and Roberto would lead Lance up the climbs. And if there was any doubt, Lance and Johan made sure I understood just before the Tour began, when they called me on the carpet for something I’d said in
VeloNews
.

It happened on the morning we were to fly to the Tour in Lance’s private jet. I was at home, packing my bags, when I got a call from Johan. His voice was low, worried. He said he and Lance had just read an interview I’d given in a
VeloNews
Tour preview issue. And now we had a problem. A big problem.

“Your quote, Tyler,” Johan said. “You have to be careful what you say.”

—What?

“You need to apologize to Lance. He’s read it, and he’s very upset.”

I was confused. I hadn’t said anything particularly controversial in the article—in fact, here’s the quote:

“Rather than just sitting up on Alpe d’Huez and losing a lot of time, which normally I’d do—I’ll do my job [setting tempo for Armstrong], and then sit up—it might be important to try not to lose too much time. And then in the Pyrenees, if I follow a break [when] somebody attacks, that takes pressure off our team. Maybe Telekom has to chase, and they have to put four or five riders at the front to bring back the breakaway because I’m in there.”

This is standard bike-racing strategy: having two threats makes it better for Lance—as the article pointed out, this was the same strategy that had been used in the 1986 Tour. I said it because I knew that Lance would understand I was a loyal teammate, lieutenant, and friend, and that I would never, ever consider myself his rival as the leader of Postal.

Unfortunately, by the sound of Johan’s voice, I had been wrong.

“You have to call Lance immediately,” he said. “Apologize. Make this better.”

I called Lance and apologized profusely. I said I’d been misquoted, that there was never any chance I’d have any ambitions of my own, that I was giving him 100 percent of my effort, no questions asked. Lance listened, and seemed satisfied, if a little grudgingly so.

In the media, the 2001 race was known for The Look, when Lance stared down Jan Ullrich at the base of Alpe d’Huez, then rode off to win the race and secure his third Tour. But for me, The Look was happening the entire race, directed squarely at me. Watching me. Looking for signs that I was going to betray him.

Which was a joke. I was zero threat to Lance in the Tour. I was riding paniagua. I had no secret bag of blood stashed away, no Motoman
delivering Edgar, no Plan B to keep my hematocrit up, no chance. But Lance thought I might. That’s why he’d been so angered by the
VeloNews
quote. It was the old rule again:
Whatever you do, those other fuckers are doing more
. And now I was officially one of the Other Fuckers.

Lance has a thing about friendships. They all follow the same pattern. He gets close to someone, then
—click
—something goes haywire, there’s a conflict, and the friendship ends. That’s what happened with Kevin and Frankie, Vaughters and Vande Velde and all the others. That it would happen with me isn’t surprising—it was inevitable.

I remember once Lance was giving advice to a new Postal rider about riding the Tour, and he said, “Remember, these guys are stone-cold killers.”

Stone-cold killers
. That’s how Lance saw the world. He believed everyone around him was 100 percent ruthless. And his way of thinking worked well. It delivered results. Lance didn’t agonize or hesitate over cutting Kevin and Frankie from Postal; he simply did it. He didn’t agonize over cutting me out, not for a second. Whatever it took to win.

I wasn’t his only problem. On the day the Tour began, David Walsh of the London
Sunday Times
wrote a story linking Armstrong to Ferrari. Walsh had done his homework: he had hotel bills, dates of visits, quotes from anonymous ex-Motorola teammates talking about Lance’s role in the team’s decision to dope back in 1995. Plus, Ferrari was about to go on trial in Italy for doping charges.

Lance handled it pretty well: first, he minimized Walsh’s Ferrari bombshell by doing an interview with an Italian paper where he mentioned he had been working with Ferrari to help him break the hour record for distance covered in sixty minutes on an indoor track, or velodrome. (When I read this with the rest of Postal, we couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Lance had never mentioned the hour record to us, or even ridden in a velodrome, as far as I know.)
Chris Carmichael assured the world that he alone was Lance’s true coach, and other riders issued statements of support—the whole thing was flawless.
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The rest of the Tour went smoothly. The controversy gradually dimmed and Lance dominated Ullrich, who was his only real threat. Lance won at Alpe d’Huez, finishing the climb in 38:01, a full 10 minutes faster than Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault had ridden it in 1986. Lance won the uphill time trial at Chamrousse in similar fashion. Heras and Rubiera did their jobs admirably, and the rest of the team rode strongly, with one notable exception: me. Riding paniagua, I went from Tour contender to a complete non-factor. I was 45th in the prologue. In the first mountain stage, I finished 40 minutes behind Lance; I’d go on to finish 94th, two and a half hours behind Lance, by far my worst Tour finish ever. I was supposed to be the Next Big Thing; now I could barely finish. The story in the press was that I was “ailing,” that I had a stomach virus. I played along; what else was there to do?

Though anybody with eyes could see that I was in no position to perform, that didn’t matter much to Lance and Johan. At one point early in the race, I was supposed to cover the breaks—that is, to stay at the front of the race and join early breakaways, to make sure Lance had a teammate up ahead. Getting to the front is no picnic in the Tour, because everybody’s riding like hell and you have to fight your way past the other 188 riders who want to be there. It was
early in the stage and we’re going like crazy, and Johan is yelling over the radio for me to get to the front, get to the front, and I’m going all out but in my exhausted state, I couldn’t make progress. Then I felt a hand grab my jersey by the neck and pull me back, hard. Lance’s voice, yelling in my ear at the top of his lungs.

What the FUCK are you doing, Tyler?

As the other riders watched, Lance shoved me forward.

Cover the fucking break!

After that stage, Johan asked me to apologize to the entire team for my poor performance. Which I did. I swallowed whatever pride I had left, and I said I was sorry for letting the team down, as Lance looked on approvingly.

That night, I told Haven that I was not re-signing with Postal, no matter what. If they offered me $10 million, I would say no thanks. I told my agent to start looking for offers. The question was, Where to go? There were more than a few team directors who were interested, who saw my potential as a team leader, perhaps even as a Tour winner.

But the more I thought about it, there was only one answer. Only one guy who had been at the top. Who could build a team stronger than Postal. Who knew how to help me become the kind of leader who could take on Lance and win. The Eagle. The original strongman himself.