The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

by Daniel Coyle

  Kevin, Lance, and I. We rode together most days, with Frankie joining up some of the time. We’d usually meet on the road by the sea, then head up and out into the mountainous country north of Nice. Training like that is sort of like sitting with your friends and watching a movie—in this case, the movie was the countryside of France, scrolling past us. As with movies, you spend most of your time talking nonsense, making observations, trying to crack each other up.

  We all had our roles. Frankie was the anchor: clear-eyed, unflappable. Kevin was the fizz; he was always bubbling with good humor, stupid jokes, his ever-growing repertoire of impressions (he did a spot-on Michele Ferrari: Ahhhh, Tyler, you are too fat!). I was the sidekick, the quiet, dry-humored one; the one who saw everything and didn’t say much.

  Lance was the big boss, lit up by this new life, by success. If he was intense before, now his intensity seemed to have doubled. Everything interested him; one day it would be tech stocks that were the best fucking buy on the market; the next it would be some bakery in Normandy that had the best fucking bread you’ve ever tasted; the next it would be about some band that was the best fucking band you’ve ever heard. The thing is, he usually was right.

  Lance’s eye was also on the competition. He spent a lot of time talking about Ullrich, Pantani, Zülle, and the rest. Lance knew a lot—who was working with which doctor, who was targeting which race, who was five kilos overweight, who was getting divorced. Lance was like a one-man newspaper: you could go for a two-hour ride and get the scoop on the entire peloton.

  Sometimes he was too talkative. I remember sitting at a restaurant on the Nice waterfront with him and Kevin, and Lance was talking about some new type of EPO he’d heard some Spanish riders were using. He was talking really loudly and openly, and not using any code words, and I got nervous, hoping there weren’t any English-speakers in the next booth. I was so worried, in fact, I said something like “Hey, I think the walls might have ears.” But he didn’t seem to care. He kept right on talking. It was like his keeping EPO in his fridge. The rest of us were borderline paranoid about getting caught, while Lance acted like he was invulnerable. Or maybe acting invulnerable made him feel more secure.

  While I learned a lot from Lance, my real education happened every few weeks, when Ferrari came to town. Ferrari was our trainer, our doctor, our god. Ferrari had a knack for designing sessions that were like torture devices: enough to almost kill us, but not quite. In later years we often heard Lance tell the public that Chris Carmichael was his official coach—and Carmichael built quite a business on that relationship. I know they were friends. But the truth is, during the years I trained with Lance, I don’t recall Lance ever mentioning Chris’s name or citing a piece of advice Chris had given him. By contrast, Lance mentioned Ferrari constantly, almost annoyingly so. Michele says we should do this. Michele says we should do that.*

  I had a lot to learn. Until then, I’d trained like most old-school bike racers trained—which is to say, by feel. Oh, I did intervals and counted hours, but I wasn’t very scientific about it. You can see the proof in my daily journals, where most days are marked by a single number: how many hours I rode—the more, the better. That ended the second I set foot in Nice. Lance and Ferrari showed me there were more variables than I’d ever imagined, and they all mattered: wattages, cadence, intervals, zones, joules, lactic acid, and, of course, hematocrit. Each ride was a math problem: a precisely mapped set of numbers for us to hit—which makes it sound easy, but in reality it was incredibly difficult. It’s one thing to go ride for six hours. It’s another to ride for six hours following a program of wattages and cadences, especially when those wattages and cadences are set to push you to the ragged edge of your abilities. Supported by steady doses of Edgar and the red eggs, we trained like I’d never imagined was possible: day after day of returning home and falling unconscious into bed, utterly exhausted.

  Every month or so, Ferrari would travel from his home in Ferrara and test us. His visits were like scientific experiments, only he was measuring the ways in which we were disappointing him. He always stayed at Lance and Kristin’s, and so I’d wake up in the morning and ride over to see him. He’d be there with his scale, calipers, and blood spinner. Pinch pinch. Spin spin. He’d start to shake his head.

  Aaaaaah, Tyler, you are too fat.

  Aaaaaah, Tyler, your hematocrit is too low.

  Ferrari liked to test us at the Col de la Madone, a steep twelve-kilometer climb just outside of Nice. Sometimes we would do a one-kilometer test, where we’d ride uphill repeatedly at gradually increasing wattages, and Ferrari would measure the lactate in our blood, charting the results on graph paper so we could figure out our thresholds (basically, how much power we could sustainably produce without burning out). Then, we’d ride the Madone full gas, revving our engines to the maximum. Riding well for Ferrari on the Madone felt almost as important as winning a race.

  I tapped Ferrari for information; I used to write down questions on napkins so I’d remember to ask him. He taught me why hemoglobin was a better measure of potential than hematocrit, since hemoglobin comes closer to measuring oxygen-carrying capacity. He explained how a faster cadence put less stress on the muscles, transferring the load from the physical (the muscle fibers) to a better place: the cardiovascular engine and the blood. He explained that the best measure of ability was in watts per kilogram—the amount of power you produce, divided by your weight. He said that 6.7 watts per kilogram was the magic number, because that was what it took to win the Tour.

  Michele was obsessed about weight—and I mean totally obsessed. He talked about weight more than he talked about wattage, more than he talked about hematocrit, which could be easily boosted with a little Edgar. The reason: losing weight was the hardest but most efficient way to increase the crucial watts per kilogram number, and thus to do well in the Tour. He spent far more time bugging us about diet than he ever did about our hematocrit. I remember laughing with Lance and Kevin about it: most people thought Ferrari was some crazed chemist, when to us he was more like a one-man Weight Watchers program.

  Eating meals with Ferrari was a nightmare. He’d eagle-eye each bite that went into your mouth; a cookie or piece of cake would bring a raise of the eyebrow, and a disappointed look. He even persuaded Lance to buy a scale so he could weigh his food. I never went that far, but with his guidance, I tried different strategies: I drank gallons of sparkling water, trying to fool my stomach into thinking it was full. My body, which was being pushed like never before, didn’t understand—it needed food, now! But here, as in so many things, Ferrari was right: as my weight dropped my performance improved. And kept improving.

  This was a different sport than I was familiar with. Our opponents weren’t other riders or the mountains or even ourselves; they were the numbers, these holy numbers that he put in front of us and dared us to chase. Ferrari turned our sport—a romantic sport where I used to climb on my bike and simply hope I had a good day—into something very different, something that was more like a chess game. I saw that the Tour de France wasn’t decided by God or genes; it was decided by effort, by strategy. Whoever worked the hardest and the smartest was going to win.

  This is probably a good time to address an important question: Was it possible to win a professional bike race clean during this era? Could a clean rider compete with riders on Edgar?

  The answer is, depends on the race. For shorter races, even weeklong stage races, I think the answer is a qualified yes. I’ve won smaller four-day races paniagua with a hematocrit of 42. I’ve won time trials in similar condition. I’ve heard of other riders doing the same.

  But once you get past a one-week race, it quickly becomes impossible for clean riders to compete with riders using Edgar, because Edgar is too big of an advantage. The longer the race, the bigger the advantage becomes—hence the power of Edgar in the Tour de France. The reason is cost, in the physiological sense. Big efforts—winning Alpine stages, winning time trials—cost too much energ
y; they cause the body to break down, hematocrit to drop, testosterone to dwindle. Without Edgar and the red eggs, those costs add up. With Edgar and the red eggs, you can recover, rebalance, and keep going at the same level. Dope is not really a magical boost as much as it is a way to control against declines.

  That spring in Nice we trained harder and longer than I’d ever imagined I could train. It worked. Here are a couple of journal entries from 2000. (Note: By March 30, I had already been racing for nearly six weeks. Also, I wrote “HR” next to my hematocrit so that people would think it was my heart rate. Clever, eh?)

  MARCH 30

  Weight: 63.5 kg (139 pounds)

  Body fat: 5.9 percent

  Avg. watts: 371

  Watts per kilo: 5.84

  HR [hematocrit]: 43

  Hemoglobin: 14.1

  Max heart rate: 177

  Madone time: 36.03

  MAY 31

  Weight: 60.8 kg (134 pounds)

  Body fat: 3.8 percent

  Avg. watts: 392

  Watts per kilo: 6.45

  HR [hematocrit]: 50

  Hemoglobin: 16.4

  Max heart rate: 191

  Madone time: 32:32

  In sixty days, I went from being in the middle of the pack to being within shouting distance of Ferrari’s magic number for winning the Tour—a 10 percent improvement in a sport where half a percent can decide a big race. The timing was perfect for me, because the Dauphiné Libéré, the weeklong race in the French Alps that served as a traditional tuneup for Tour contenders, was just around the corner. I knew Lance wanted to win it, but I thought that perhaps I could acquit myself well, cement my role as his top lieutenant.

  It was around this time that I started to notice a shift in my relationship with Lance. He knew my numbers. He saw where I was, and how fast I was improving. I noticed that on the times when we trained side by side, Lance would edge his front wheel ahead of mine. I’m stubborn, though, and I’d respond. It became a pattern: Lance would edge out six inches, and I would respond by putting my wheel one centimeter behind his. Then he’d edge out another six inches, and I’d respond—one centimeter behind. I always stayed one centimeter behind, to let him control the pace. That one centimeter separating us came to mean a lot. It was like a conversation, with Lance asking the questions.

  How’s that feel?

  —Still here.

  This?

  —Still here.

  Okay, this?

  —Still here, dude.

  At the time I was proud of it—of proving what a strong lieutenant I was. Only later did I realize how this contained the seeds of disaster.

  The other part of my apprenticeship had to do with life at home. Haven’s a natural organizer, and she dove into our new life in Nice. She took French lessons. She handled shopping, banking, paperwork, you name it. She found a great produce market and raided it every day; she would chop my salad into small bits, figuring it would take less energy to digest it. That was the kind of small but important touch that made me appreciate her. Haven wasn’t just along for the ride, she was ready to do whatever it took to help me out, to be a part of our two-person team.

  We got along great, with one exception. Walking. I know this sounds crazy, but one of the first rules I learned as I entered topflight bike racing was this: If you’re standing, sit down; if you’re sitting, lie down; and avoid stairs like the plague. Bike racing is the only sport in the world where the better you get, the more you resemble a feeble old man. I’m not sure of the physiology behind it, but the truth was, walking and standing for extended periods wore you out, made your joints ache, and thus set back your training. (Five-time Tour de France champion Bernard Hinault hated stairs so much that during some Tours, he would have his soigneurs carry him into the hotels rather than walk.) This meant that when Haven wondered if I wanted to go for a Sunday stroll on the beach, or a hike in the nearby mountains, or a walk to the corner market, I would usually beg off. Sorry, hon, I gotta rest.

  I was kept busy, however, by other household errands, many of them revolving around Edgar. First I had to get it, which was more complicated now that the team was no longer carrying EPO to races. This meant buying the first of my many secret phones—prepaid cell phones. I’d use the secret phone to call del Moral or his assistant, Pepe Martí, and tell him I needed some “vitamins” or “allergy medication” or “iron tablets” or whatever code word we were using at the time. Then I’d drive to meet Pepe at some rendezvous point, and pick up a supply of red eggs and EPO from Dr. del Moral’s clinic. I normally bought about twenty injections’ worth, enough for about two months. I carried it in a soft-sided cooler with some ice packs, and del Moral would add a phony prescription for Haven—usually something about blood loss due to a menstrual condition—on the off chance I got stopped by the cops and searched, which, thank God, I never did.

  Unlike Lance, I wasn’t comfortable putting white boxes with the label AMGEN or EPREX next to my Diet Cokes. So I developed a system. First I soaked the outer cardboard packaging in water until it was unreadable, then I tore it up into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. Then I used my thumbnail to peel the sticky labels off the glass EPO vials, which in that day were about an inch and a half tall and a half-inch wide, and flushed the labels as well. Then I wrapped the whole thing in tinfoil and put it in the back of the fridge, behind a pile of vegetables. Later, trying to be clever, I bought a fake root beer can with a secret screwtop compartment, like you’d order from the back of a comic book, but I worried someone would mistake it for a real can of root beer and try to drink it. Foil turned out to work best, because nobody wants to open up small, wrinkly packages that look like leftovers. The system worked well, except for one drawback: the balled-up labels were sticky, and tended to find their way into my shirt or pants pockets. Many times, I would be out at dinner or the grocery store, reach into my pocket to get something, and my hand would come out with an EPO label attached. Oops.

  That was mostly it. No big menus of drugs; just Edgar and testosterone (Andriol). One red egg of Andriol every week or two during training was usually enough; though if you needed a smaller boost you could poke an egg with a safety pin, squeeze out some of the oil onto your tongue, and save the rest for later. Ferrari came up with a way of mixing Andriol with olive oil; he put it in a dark glass bottle with an eyedropper, for little boosts. I remember getting some of the oil from Lance at a race once: he held out the dropper and I opened my mouth like a baby bird. At del Moral’s suggestion I tried some human growth hormone for one training bloc—a half-dozen injections over twenty days—but it made my legs feel heavy and bloated and made me feel like crap, so I stopped.

  I took a shot of Edgar about every second or third day, usually 2,000 units, which sounds like a lot but in fact is only about the volume of a pencil eraser. I’d inject it under the skin, in either my arm or my belly; the needle was so small it barely left a mark. Quick-quick, and then you have a little sparkle in your blood.

  When a vial was empty I’d wrap it in several layers of paper towel or toilet paper and pound it with a hammer or the heel of a dress shoe until the glass was crunched into tiny pieces. I’d take the broken-glass-and-paper-towel package to the sink and hold it under running water, removing all traces of EPO. Then I’d flush it all down the toilet or throw the wet mess in the garbage and cover it with the stinkiest stuff I could find: old banana peels, coffee grounds. I sometimes cut my hands on the glass, but overall it was a good system; I could sleep without being afraid of the French police raiding our house.

  We could sleep, I mean. I didn’t keep anything secret from Haven. She knew about the trips, the cost, my smash-and-rinse system, the whole thing. It would’ve felt wrong not to tell her, and besides, it was safer to keep both of us on the same page, on the off chance the police or a drug tester showed up. It wasn’t like we chatted about EPO over toast and coffee. We both hated talking about it, hated dealing with it. But it was always there, floating in the air
between us, that nagging, unpleasant chore we didn’t like, but that had to be done. No job too small or tough.

  I can’t speak for everyone on the team, but it was my impression that most of the riders had the same full-disclosure policy when it came to their wives and girlfriends. There was only one notable exception: Frankie Andreu. Frankie was in a tougher spot because he was married to Betsy, and Betsy’s attitude toward doping was the same as the pope’s attitude toward the devil.

  Betsy Andreu was an attractive, dark-haired Michigander with a big laugh and an open, no-bullshit manner that mirrored her husband’s. She’d been in Lance’s circle for years (Lance and Frankie had ridden for Motorola together from 1992 to 1996). Betsy’s relationship with Lance had two chapters. In the first chapter, before cancer, Betsy and Lance had gotten along well. They were both strong personalities who liked to argue about politics and religion (Lance was an atheist; Betsy was a practicing, pro-life Catholic). Lance trusted her to the point that he had Betsy vet his new girlfriends. (Betsy, who wasn’t always so positive about the women Lance chose, had given an early thumbs-up to Kristin.) Lance trusted Betsy because with her, as with him, there were no gray areas. Betsy saw the world clearly—true and false, good and evil. They’d both hate to hear this, but they’re more than a little bit alike.

  Lance and Betsy’s relationship had changed, however, one day in the fall of 1996, when a recently engaged Betsy and Frankie, along with a small group of friends, visited Lance’s hospital room in Indianapolis as he was recovering from cancer. According to Betsy and Frankie, who later testified about the incident under oath, two doctors entered the room and began asking Lance a series of medical questions. Betsy said, “I think we should give Lance his privacy,” and stood to leave. Lance urged them to stay. They did. Then Lance answered the questions. When the doctor asked if he’d ever used performance-enhancing drugs, Lance answered, in a matter-of-fact tone, yes. He’d used EPO, cortisone, testosterone, human growth hormone, and steroids. (Armstrong has testified under oath that this incident never happened.)