Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong

by Macur, Juliet

  In early November 2012, foundation board members who had formed a cabal against Armstrong talked to Ulman about a way to completely extricate Armstrong from his own organization. Outing Armstrong as board chairman hadn’t been enough. The board realized that Armstrong needed to cut all ties.

  The decision wasn’t simple to make. Armstrong had accomplished a lot with the Livestrong Foundation. He made it cool to survive cancer, and removed a stigma from those who had gone through months and years of pain and hospitalization. He personally donated $7 million, and the foundation raised a total of $500 million to help families touched by cancer. Without him, Nike would never have cobranded all those yellow bracelets or the entire Livestrong sportswear collection, which included things like sneakers, shirts, hats, etc.

  Now, though, the foundation had evolved out of his hands. Actually, it was taken out of his hands.

  Those board members gave Ulman an ultimatum: “If Lance doesn’t leave, then we’re leaving.”

  About a month after the USADA report was published, Ulman told Armstrong that most of the board members wanted him to step down as chairman. Armstrong blew up. First he blamed Ulman for betraying his loyalty. Then the man with a quick temper and no impulse control went to his laptop. He wrote a scathing e-mail to board members. He reminded them he had built the foundation from scratch and that the charity would be nowhere without him. He called them “cowards” for not sticking by his side. McKinnon said Armstrong’s e-mail showed “a lack of remorse or any notion that he has to serve a cause greater than himself.”

  Though he apologized the next day for his language in the e-mail, the board members weren’t about to change their minds. So Armstrong abandoned the organization.

  Two days later, the Lance Armstrong Foundation officially was renamed “Livestrong,” as the organization began to scrub itself of its founder. The charity no longer displayed a duplicate set of Armstrong’s seven yellow jerseys in its lobby.

  Armstrong stopped talking to the board members, including some, like Garvey, who had been personally close to him. He removed more than a dozen pieces of his art collection from the foundation’s headquarters, leaving large rectangles of blank space on the walls.

  He felt hurt that his own charity had forsaken him. But if Livestrong didn’t want him, he didn’t want Livestrong, either.

  Betsy Andreu was at home in Michigan waiting for the USADA report. When it went live, she took her laptop and clicked to the page listing which riders and other witnesses had submitted affidavits for the prosecution.

  As she saw the names on sworn affidavits from eleven of Armstrong’s former teammates, she said, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” She called across the room to Frankie and said, “All of our work paid off!”

  For more than a decade, Betsy had called reporters, antidoping officials and federal investigators with tips. Check out these documents, she’d say. Call this cyclist, call that lawyer. During that time, I estimate, we easily spoke more than two hundred times, mostly after she sent me a link to a story about Armstrong or doping, or both. She always told me, “Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” and wanted me to chase every one of her leads in the hopes it would prove Armstrong had doped. It was clear that on some days she spoke to reporters nearly nonstop because while we were speaking on her home phone, her cell phone would ring and ring, as if she were a switchboard operator.

  All good, Frankie agreed. But he was less than happy. So what, he asked his wife, if ten other riders had admitted to doping and had testified against Armstrong? While he’d been shunted aside, other guys still rode. “Yeah, yeah, but every one of those guys still has their money, and where does that leave us?” he said.

  The Andreus weren’t millionaires, like some of the riders. They didn’t have a a $105,000-plus Maserati parked in their driveway or own a boutique hotel, like Hincapie did. Nor did Frankie Andreu ever own a Corvette and eight acres of land outside of Chicago, like Vande Velde did. He never made upward of a half-million dollars a year, like most top Postal Service riders eventually did.

  But after the USADA report, Betsy Andreu was rewarded with intangibles. She had regained her dignity. She was no longer the “crazy bitch,” as Armstrong had told so many reporters. In tears, she told her children, “Mom stood up to the bully. Always stand up to the bully.”

  In the weeks after his fall, Armstrong went into seclusion on the Big Island of Hawaii. He let his closely shorn hair grow into a wild mess. He stopped shaving. He looked lonely and, truth be told, like a man who didn’t care about anything anymore.

  As the federal whistle-blower case creeped ever forward, Armstrong worried what it could cost him. If he was found guilty, it could mean that he’d have to pay the Postal Service $120 million out of his pocket.

  Bad enough, the money. Worse, the lifetime ban from sports. He had expected to start a second career in triathlons, but USADA’s order made that impossible. He wanted to get the ban lifted or at least mitigated. His complaint to anyone who would listen: Why should teammates like Vande Velde and Hincapie get six months while I get the death sentence?

  Tygart said USADA might reduce the ban in exchange for information about people in cycling who facilitated or condoned his doping. From USADA’s perspective, Armstrong would have to give up big names that the antidoping agency suspected were involved in his doping scheme: Verbruggen and McQuaid at the UCI, Bruyneel, Stapleton, the team owner Thomas Weisel and others involved with USA Cycling. As Armstrong hesitated, at least one advisor told him to come clean for the simplest of reasons: Americans were a forgiving bunch.

  That man was Steven Ungerleider, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, a sports psychologist and an antidoping expert who had written a book on the East German doping machine, Faust’s Gold. Ungerleider had met Armstrong through a friend, Armstrong’s lawyer Tim Herman.

  Herman had enlisted Ungerleider, who had extensive experience working with Olympic athletes, to be a volunteer consultant in the matter and help talk to Armstrong about coming clean. Ungerleider spoke with Armstrong about how his confession would unburden him and how it would be beneficial for his children in the long run. He suggested that he look the public straight in the eye and say, “Look, I really fucked up. Please don’t hurt my foundation.”

  Armstrong wanted to know two things—how he could rebuild his reputation and how he could mitigate his lifetime ban from Olympic sports. Ungerleider told him that he could turn around his reputation in a second if he came clean. Telling USADA everything should be a part of that deal, he said.

  If Armstrong confessed to the antidoping agency, it could help the sport of cycling and USADA might reduce Armstrong’s suspension. It would be good for both parties, Ungerleider said. Armstrong could set an example for other riders to come forward with their own doping tales. The entire sport would come clean and start anew.

  They went back and forth for days. Armstrong: “Oh no, these motherfuckers are out to destroy me. They are sleazebags out to destroy me, my home and my children.”

  UNGERLEIDER: “You need to trust the system.”

  ARMSTRONG: “Why did they break out that report on me? It just ruined me.”

  UNGERLEIDER: “You left them no choice. If you had come forward in June, it would have been another story.”

  ARMSTRONG: “Screw them.”

  UNGERLEIDER: “You should give back your Olympic bronze medal. It would be a gesture of good faith.”

  ARMSTRONG: “Fuck you, I’m keeping it.”

  In the end, Ungerleider helped broker a meeting between Armstrong and Tygart. They met on Friday, December 14, 2012, at noon, at the former Colorado governor Bill Ritter’s office in downtown Denver. Ritter agreed to host the gathering because he was a cycling fan who years before had befriended Armstrong.

  They gathered in a conference room on a quiet floor of the building. Armstrong was late, worrying everyone that he wouldn’t show. When he finally walked through the door, he looked unkempt and unshowered. He looked like
“Robinson Crusoe,” one person said. No wonder his close friends had been worried about how he was handling the aftermath of the USADA report. Those friends saw that Armstrong was depressed and that he had turned to alcohol for solace. Even USADA was nervous that he’d do something to hurt himself, based on how quickly his kingdom had collapsed and how quickly the public had turned on him.

  Herman, Armstrong’s lawyer, was there to help Armstrong navigate the situation. Tygart was there with his colleague, Bill Bock. Ungerleider was there as someone who had been authorized to speak on Armstrong’s behalf. Ritter were there acting as a neutral party, though everyone knew he was buddies with Armstrong.

  For a few minutes, everyone exchanged pleasantries. How was your flight? Did you find the building OK? Anyone want coffee? But Armstrong couldn’t remain civil. He was face-to-face with Tygart, his nemesis, for the first time.

  “Travis, you’re a motherfucker,” he said. “I can’t believe that shit you put in that report. You know that’s all garbage. You called me the Bernie Madoff of sports? [Which he hadn’t, actually.] You’re putting me in the same category as that motherfucker! He ruined and destroyed lives! He’s like Adolf Hilter!”

  He began to cite certain points in the USADA report with which he disagreed, speaking as if he had committed them to memory. He mentioned that the report had called his doping program “the most sophisticated and professionalized” in sports history. “It’s the most sophisticated doping program ever? C’mon, how about the East Germans?” He pointed to Ungerleider’s book on the East German doping machine, which Ungerleider had placed in front of him. “Fuck, they were doping children! They were real criminals doing real harmful things to people! That’s not at all what we were doing!”

  To Herman, who had grown close to the troubled star, Armstrong was both a client and a de facto son. He grabbed Armstrong’s arm and said, as if talking to a toddler, “Lance, remember we talked? You have to be nice.” Herman smiled. “All right, Lance, you feel better now? Are you OK, buddy?”

  Bock interrupted. “Lance, we just want to tell you how much we appreciate your coming here. It took a lot of courage for you to come. We’re here to help you and help you restore yourself in the community. We don’t know what we’re capable of doing about your lifetime ban, but we’re here to start the conversation.”

  “What kind of promises can you make?” Armstrong asked.

  Tygart answered, “None, right now, but we need to take baby steps.”

  Armstrong was set off again, “Why the fuck am I here? This is fucking bullshit! I knew Travis would do this!”

  Herman put a hand on his shoulder, telling him he should just let it all out, if he wanted to. Embarrassed, Armstrong fell quiet.

  In the next several hours of the meeting, they discussed how Armstrong could rid himself of his lifetime ban. He wanted to, he needed to, get back into triathlons and bike races, and to race in running events like the Chicago Marathon. (Three months before, he had been denied entry into that marathon because of his suspension.)

  Tygart said he could possibly lower Armstrong’s suspension to eight years, if Armstrong gave USADA enough information about the people who’d helped him dope and helped him avoid detection. Tygart said the ban could be even less, maybe four years, if he got the cooperation of the UCI and the World Anti-Doping Agency in determining his ban. He encouraged Armstrong to point fingers at those people who facilitated his doping. It was the perfect opportunity for him to give back to the sport he loved, to leave a positive legacy and start changing the public’s perception of him, Tygart said.

  Tygart said USADA worked closely with the Justice Department and could put in a good word for him in the whistle-blower case. Former governor Ritter mentioned the power in the room, including himself, and said they could help Armstrong, but only if he cooperated.

  Armstrong grew introspective. He said he was unfairly blamed for a whole era of cheating in cycling. But he allowed that he was part of a toxic system and admitted that the culture needed to be dismantled. “At the end of the day,” he said, “I can get you skeletons and dead bodies. I know where all the bodies are buried.”

  But if Armstrong was going to talk, he wanted a guarantee that he would receive a ban that was exactly the same ban his teammates had received for talking: six months. Worst-case scenario: two years.

  When Tygart said that wasn’t really a possibility—that any sanctions which would vary from the World Anti-Doping Code needed to be approved by WADA and the UCI—Armstrong’s voice rose: “You don’t hold the key to my redemption. There’s only one person who holds the key to my redemption, and that’s me!”

  “I don’t need to work with you, I think I can do this on my own,” he said. “I’ll just go out and tell the public what I know, and that will pressure you guys to give me a lesser ban. I’m the only one who can clean up the sport!”

  He mentioned that the UCI was going to form what was being called the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” a program that would allow riders to talk about all the doping they’d done and who’d helped them do it, in exchange for immunity from prosecution by antidoping authorities. He would give his information to them and his ban would be lifted, right? (Wrong: The UCI backed out of a commission, though in late 2013 there was talk to establish another one.) He didn’t need USADA—he was Lance Armstrong, for God’s sake, and he could fix things himself.

  As the meeting went into its fifth hour, Armstrong seemed to realize that his aggressive posture was getting him nowhere. He softened and said that the ban would kill him. He wasn’t allowed to even run with his kids in USA Track & Field–sanctioned races in Austin. He was a man who thrived on testing himself against others in an athletic arena. Basically, he told USADA, the ban meant that he couldn’t be Lance Armstrong.

  “I can’t get up in the morning without knowing that I have something to live for,” he said. “For me, that’s training and competition. I’m not training because I enjoy it—I’m training because I have to. I need to train more than just to stay in shape—I need to know that I’m going to compete. This has been my whole life. I’ve been a competitive athlete my whole life. I need to know that you will help me back into competition.”

  For a moment, nobody said a word. Armstrong had just laid it out for them. He wasn’t just asking for a mitigated ban. He was begging for his self-esteem, his identity, his life.

  Ungerleider, the psychologist, later told Tygart: “I hope you guys got that memo. What he’s trying to say is that you are taking away his coping mechanisms. This is who he is as a human being. Any way he can get back into it, with a 10k or a swimming race, that might be healthy and give him the skills to cope better in life. I’m not asking you to do anything, I just want you to be aware of that.”

  With Armstrong seeming to lean toward confessing to USADA, the parties arranged another meeting in Austin for a week later. Armstrong went back to Texas to bide his time until then. When he did not receive a written guarantee that his ban would be reduced, he refused to meet again.

  A little less than three months after the USADA report came out, Armstrong called his longtime friend Oprah Winfrey. Both were in Hawaii. Armstrong was there with his family during a self-imposed exile from the United States mainland. Could he come over to her estate in Maui and have lunch? He had a business proposal for her. She jumped at the chance.

  Armstrong trusted Winfrey. She had been an admirer and had worn a Livestrong yellow band, had even sold the bands on her Web site. She had hosted the Armstrongs, including his mother, at her house for dinner. (Armstrong had grown closer to his mother since his divorce from Kristin in 2003, but their relationship, at times, was still strained.)

  He and Sheryl Crow had gone on her talk show when they were still a couple in February 2005, and it had been nothing but positive. Winfrey asked Crow, “Is he a big romantic?” Oh, yes, she answered. Armstrong’s mother, Linda, appeared also, and Winfrey cooed, “The thing that I love about Linda is that she w
as a single mom.”

  Weeks before their meeting on Maui, Winfrey had reached out to Armstrong to ask if she could interview him on her struggling Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), and he declined.

  But it got him thinking.

  He was sick of listening to lawyers who told him to keep quiet about his past, sick of waiting to hear back from spin doctors trying to gauge what the public thought he should do next. Most of all, though, Armstrong couldn’t stand Tygart’s wielding so much power over him: There would be no mitigated lifetime ban unless Armstrong came clean to USADA.

  He knew he’d eventually have to tell the federal prosecutors in the whistle-blower case about his doping. But he hated the fact that some no-name prosecutor desperate for fame would get the glory for outing him. He wasn’t ready to give up that control. He wanted to confess on his own terms.

  Besides, that fall Armstrong had had an upsetting experience with his teenage son, Luke. The boy had been teased at school for having a cheating, doping father, and then got into a fight at the bus stop defending him. Armstrong was shaken when Luke said, “So-and-so said this about you. Is it true?” The father wanted to set the story straight in the eyes of the public.

  So, he told his old friend Oprah: I want to come clean and I want to do it on your show, with you asking the questions and the whole world watching.

  Armstrong’s handlers were in disbelief that he’d gone ahead and set up an interview with Winfrey without consulting them. But he was adamant that there was no turning back. So his PR and legal team, plus a psychiatrist, streamed into Austin to prepare him for the show.

  The day of the taping, he made a special trip to Livestrong’s headquarters to apologize to the staff for what he had done and what he was about to do. “I’m sorry for everything that you’ve been through because of me.” He texted the soigneur Emma O’Reilly, hoping she would call him back so he could apologize for publicly vilifying her and calling her a whore. She didn’t.