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 (30 page)

We were big on innovation and technology. Working with the BMC bike company (which, conveniently, was also owned by Rihs), the team started designing a series of new bikes for me to ride in the Tour—light, fast designs based on race cars. We’d have the best skinsuits for the time trials, the best chefs, the best soigneurs. Our team bus was a thing of beauty: a rock-star bus far newer and nicer than Postal’s bus, with two bathrooms, leather couches, stereo, TV, altitude-simulation machines, the works.

When I saw Ufe in February, he told me some big news: he’d just bought a freezer. This was not an ordinary freezer. It was a special medical freezer, and along with some assorted equipment, it would be the foundation of a major innovation he was planning. Ufe nicknamed it “Siberia.”

Talking even faster than usual, Ufe explained the idea: instead of the usual method of refrigerating blood—which necessitated the trips to and from Madrid every few weeks—he would start freezing the BBs. Once a BB was frozen, it would keep indefinitely. This was music to my ears. I could avoid the hassle and stress of the BB shuttle; I could make deposits at any time that suited me. And instead of being limited to two or three BBs in the Tour, I could use more.

There were, Ufe explained, two main factors I should consider. First, Siberia would cost me more. He would have to do a lot of time-consuming work to keep the RBCs alive, slowly mixing them with a glycol solution (basically, antifreeze) that replaced the water and thus kept the cells from bursting when they were frozen. Second, the Siberia BBs would be slightly less potent than the refrigerated BBs: due to the trauma inherent in the freezing process, only 90 percent of the cells would survive—not a huge difference, but worth noting. Ufe explained that I would simply piss
out the 10 percent of red blood cells that died. My urine would be rust-colored for a bit, a disconcerting side effect, but essentially harmless.

Then came the best part. (Ufe always knew how to sell.) He told me he would not be offering Siberia to all his clients, but only to a select few: me, Ullrich, Vino, and Ivan Basso. The price tag was $50,000 for the season, plus the usual bonuses for each of my victories.

My choice was simple, because it wasn’t really a choice. I could either let my rivals use the new freezer while I fell behind, or I could join the club. In a way, it felt fair to have all four of us together being advised by the same doctor, our blood kept in the same freezer—a level playing field. So I told Ufe absolutely, yes, and I expressed my thanks. I wouldn’t find out until later how misplaced my gratitude was.

I’ve never been so busy as I was that spring as I worked to prepare Phonak and myself for the 2004 Tour. There were a thousand details to consider, a thousand decisions to be made. At times, I felt calm. Other times, however, it felt like life was on the verge of spinning out of control.

I remember one visit to Ufe in particular. I’d come straight from a race; I was exhausted and toting a roller bag. Ufe kept me waiting for an unusually long time at the café. I had reservations on a flight back to Girona and desperately wanted to get home. I drank coffee after coffee. When I finally got the text—
all clear
—I raced in, lay down, and Ufe got to work. When I was hooked up, I flexed my hand into a fist, urging the blood to flow faster.

When the bag was full, I hopped to my feet. I usually held my arm over my head for a few minutes, applying pressure with a cotton ball—but I had no time for protocol. I taped on a cotton ball
with a Band-Aid, rolled down my sleeve, said my goodbyes, and headed for the exit. Then I was outside, on the streets of Madrid, racing down the street toward a cab, dragging my roller bag across the cobblestones, hoping I wouldn’t be late. I was maybe two blocks from his office when I felt a strange wetness in my hand. I looked down. My hand was dripping with blood. My sleeve was soaked. I lifted my hand, and it looked like I’d dipped it in red paint. I looked like I’d just murdered someone.

Quickly I tucked my bloody hand inside my jacket, put pressure on the hole in my arm. I hailed a cab, trying to disguise my condition from the driver, while I tried to wipe the blood from my arm and hand with a Kleenex. When I got to the airport, I went to a bathroom. I threw the shirt in the trash, covering it with paper towels. I went to a sink and tried to scrub the dried blood from my palm, my wrist, from beneath my fingernails. I scrubbed and scrubbed, not just for me but also because I wanted to hide it from Haven; I didn’t want to upset her.

When I got home, Tugboat started smelling my hand and getting agitated; he could tell something was up. Haven asked how my trip went. Fine, I said.

Back in Girona, life at home took a twist when Lance showed up without Kristin and instead with his new girlfriend, Sheryl Crow. We’d heard that he and Kristin had suddenly divorced, but we hadn’t expected things to change quite so quickly. Sheryl seemed nice, down-to-earth, and Lance seemed happy, at least as far as we could tell.

Lance and I didn’t see each other much, beyond occasionally passing each other in the gateway of our building or in front of the coffee shop across the street. But we were watching each other in different ways. The cycling media was buzzing with the Lance versus
Tyler story; you couldn’t turn around without seeing a website or a magazine cover anticipating our showdown at the Tour de France. In public, I was my usual deferential self, talking about how I was hoping for a podium spot at the Tour. But in private, with my new teammates, I was aiming higher. I was aiming to win.

We started out poorly. But we slowly got better. I was 12th at Critérium International, 14th at the Tour of the Basque Country, and ninth defending my title at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, before which I took a BB. Each race, I became a little more vocal, more decisive. For example, when we practiced the team time trial and guys weren’t riding in tight formation, I had no patience. The old me would have made a joke or tried to be gentle. Now, however, I told them in no uncertain terms:
Dammit, guys, get your shit together
.

It started to come together at the Tour of Romandie in late April, where we had three riders in the top six on the overall, and I won. We gathered at the finish, hugging, laughing, having a blast together. It felt fantastic: a Postal-quality victory, but on our own terms, accomplished with a smile instead of a grimace.

Our big pre-Tour target, however, was the Dauphiné Libéré, the last big tuneup before the Tour. Most of the big names would be racing: Lance, Mayo, Sastre, Leipheimer. To perform well would send a message that Phonak was a force to be reckoned with.

Before the Dauphiné began, a handful of teammates and I flew to Madrid for a transfusion. We kept it simple: we stayed at a hotel near the airport; Ufe and Nick came to meet us and give us each a BB in our respective rooms. It felt strange to be doing this all together, like we were back in the days before the Festina Affair, in the days of team-organized doping. I didn’t like my teammates knowing the details of what I was doing, and I certainly didn’t want to know what they did; I felt naked, exposed. But I also wanted us to race well, so I didn’t protest. Once the BBs were inside us and Ufe was gone, it felt great. We headed to the Dauphiné feeling
quietly excited, secure in the knowledge that we were going to do well.

It was usually possible to guess which teams had prepared for a race by seeing who did well in the prologue. By the same token, it was possible to guess which teams had been donating BBs before a race, because their performance suffered (as mine did so dramatically in the Route du Sud after my first transfusion in 2000). We had a phenomenal prologue: five Phonak riders in the top eight, while Postal’s riders finished 12th, 25th, 35th, and 60th. In the first few days of the race, I noticed Lance looked worried. Normally he’d talk with me during the stages, do his usual intimidation, send a few pointed messages. Now it was the silent treatment.

The big day was stage 4, the individual time trial up our old friend Mont Ventoux. This was the day when we would all be showing our cards for the Tour. It was a Tour-like atmosphere that morning in the start town of Bédoin. Flags, tents, pennants, hundreds of people buzzing. There were lots of rumors going around about Lance, most of them connected to a new book being released by David Walsh that was going to include new evidence alleging Lance had doped. Things over at the Postal bus were tense. Heads down, nobody talking, everybody walking on eggshells around Lance. Seeing their tight expressions, the wary glances, I felt a huge sense of relief that I wasn’t part of that anymore.

Around our bus, everything was calm and under control; everybody was doing his job. I was on a new climbing bike—light as a feather, jet black, with no logos, like it was some kind of secret test plane. I warmed up on the rollers. You can feel when you’re going to be good, and I was feeling it: my legs felt springy and responsive. We would start in reverse order of the standings, leaving at two-minute intervals and riding alone up the mountain. First, Lance. Then me. Then Mayo.

The lower slopes of Ventoux last forever: it’s a steep climb
through a shadowy pine forest. Ahead, I could hear the roar as Lance passed by. I pushed, wanting to draw that roar nearer. I emerged onto the famous moonscape of white rock; it felt like waking up, like being born. I felt good: I went to the limit and held it there, then pushed a little more. The crowd roar was getting closer now; I could see Lance up ahead. He was standing, as he usually did when he was at his limit. I could see by his body language that he was going full bore. And I was catching him. In my earpiece, I heard my time splits. By two-thirds up the climb, I had put forty seconds into Lance. I tried to relax—no sense getting excited yet—and pushed even harder.

Riding Ventoux is a strange experience, especially as you near the peak. Without any perspective—no trees, no buildings—distances can fool you. At times you can feel like you’re going fast, other times like you’re standing still. Now, it felt like I was flying. I could see Lance up ahead through the heat shimmer. For a moment, it felt like I was going to catch him and pass him. I almost did. When I crossed the line I had ascended Mont Ventoux faster than anyone else in history. I’d put 1:22 on Lance in less than an hour—a big number. More important, five of my Phonak teammates finished in the top thirteen; aside from Lance, the Postal guys were in the middle of the pack.
^*

I saw Lance for a second at the top. His face was tight. He had a towel around his neck. He didn’t say a word to me or anybody; I saw him pedal away toward a team car. He looked scared. He’d ridden Ventoux faster than he’d ever ridden it, and we’d throttled him. The Tour was in three weeks and everything was on the line: the possibility of a record sixth consecutive victory, his status as the all-time
greatest Tour winner, not to mention the millions in bonuses he stood to make from Nike, Oakley, Trek, and his other sponsors. I knew he would attack; I just wasn’t sure how he’d do it.

That evening, three hours after the Ventoux finish, our Phonak team management received a call from the UCI with a highly unusual request: as soon as the race finished, I was to come to their headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland, for a special meeting. I was confused and a little worried. I’d never heard of any rider being called in to speak with the UCI at their headquarters. It felt like I was being called to the principal’s office—
Hein Verbruggen wants to see you
. The question was why.