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

by Daniel Coyle

  • A 2003 incident in a St. Moritz airport, when Lance and Floyd were unexpectedly searched by Swiss customs agents. (One of the benefits of private jets, the story noted, was the lack of stringent customs checks.) Inside a duffel bag, agents discovered a cache of syringes and drugs labeled in Spanish. After persuading the agents that the drugs were vitamins and the syringes were for vitamin injections, they were allowed to pass.

  • Floyd’s account of Ferrari relating his worries that steroids had given Lance testicular cancer in the first place.

  • An account, from a source familiar with the government’s investigation, that Lance had, in the late 1990s, gained access to a blood booster called HemAssist, a new drug which was in clinical trials at the time. “If somebody was going to design something better than EPO, this would be the ideal product,” said Dr. Robert Przybelski, who was director of hemoglobin therapeutics at Baxter Healthcare, which developed the drug.

  Via Twitter, Lance responded to the story in the usual way: first with a casual shrug (on his Twitter account, he wrote, “that’s it?”), and then a shot of brazenness: “Great to hear that @usada is investigating some of @si’s claims. I look forward to being vindicated.”

  I checked in with Novitzky occasionally; he didn’t tell me all that much—he was careful to stay professional in that way. But as the months passed, we got to be comfortable with each other. He was always warm and relaxed and helpful; we talked about more than the case. We talked about his daughter’s volleyball tournaments, his own athletic career (he’d been a high jumper and had once cleared seven feet). He said “bullshit” a lot; he called me “dude.”

  You might think that Novitzky hated Lance, but whenever we talked about Lance, Novitzky became the cool professional; he never got emotional or offered his opinion on Lance’s character, never called him a name or cursed. I know that Novitzky has sympathy for dopers in general. He’d met enough of us to realize that most of us aren’t bad people; he certainly treated my situation with empathy. But did that empathy extend to Lance? I don’t think so. When Lance’s name came up, Novitzky was cold, factual, focused. I think he disliked what Lance represented: the idea that one person could use his power to flout the rules, lie to the world, make millions, and walk away scot-free.

  In March, I was contacted by 60 Minutes producers working on a major investigative piece on Armstrong. According to their sources, indictments were on the way soon; the producers said that my going on 60 Minutes would be a good chance to tell my side of the story. After weeks of hesitation, I agreed to fly to California in mid-April and sit down with 60 Minutes correspondent and CBS News anchorman Scott Pelley for an interview. Before I could do that, however, there was something I had to do first, something I’d been dreading: tell my mom the truth.

  I’d told my dad earlier; I’d just blurted it out to him one night earlier in the year, when I’d been visiting home. He didn’t believe me at first—then, all at once, he did. He tried to keep his chin up in the best Hamilton tradition, but I could see the pain on his face; I felt like I’d stabbed him in the gut. After talking about it more—after hearing about the investigation and the coming indictments—he’d seen the logic; he’d understood, and he’d seen how much better I felt. Still, Dad had suggested we hold off telling Mom for a while, and I had agreed.

  But now I couldn’t hold off anymore; my interview was a few days away. The moment came during a family gathering at my parents’ house in Marblehead. I was nervous, almost trembling, trying to pick the right time. It felt like that moment in a crash when you’re still falling and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. So I did what I did then: I shut my eyes and just got ready for impact. Toward the end of the party, everyone was eating chocolate cake, and there was a pause in conversation. I took a deep breath. Now.

  I’ve got something I want to tell you guys. Something big.

  Their first reaction was to smile—was Lindsay pregnant? Then they saw the expression on my face, and they froze.

  Something I should have told you all a long time ago.

  I think in their hearts they knew what was coming. They probably knew subconsciously all along. But it didn’t make it any easier. The fact was, they’d all worked so hard for me all these years, defended me, loved me. Believed in me.

  I started to tell them, and then I lost it when I looked at my Mom’s eyes, which were filling up with tears. I took some deep breaths, looked away. I told it as quickly and plainly as I could. I told them about the investigation, and the trial, and how all the secrets were coming out. I told them that I needed to tell the truth for myself, for the sport. I told them that sometimes before you can go forward, you have to take a step back. I told them I had so much more to tell them, that I knew they couldn’t really understand now, but that someday I hoped they would. Then my mom gave me a hug.

  I felt the hug, and I realized: she’d never cared if I won the Tour or came in last. All she cared about was one question. She asked it now: “Are you okay?”

  My smile showed her the answer. I’m okay.

  A few days later I flew out to California. Being interviewed by 60 Minutes is a combination of luxury and torture. You’re taken to a five-star hotel, you sit in a cushy chair surrounded by super-nice production people who do their best to make you relaxed and comfortable, and then—click!—the lights come on, and they steadily begin peeling back your life layer by layer. Pelley asked all the tough questions, and I told him the truth as best I could. He was focused like a laser on Lance, of course, and I did my best to redirect him toward the bigger picture, to tell him that Lance didn’t do much the rest of us weren’t doing, to show him the world we were living in.

  At one point, we were talking about my decision to dope back in 1997. I told Pelley how I had been so close to my goal of riding a Tour, how it had felt like an honor to be asked to dope by the team doctor, how I felt like my choice was to either quit or join. I asked Pelley: What would you do?

  I’m glad I asked him that question, because I think everybody who wants to judge dopers should think about it, just for a second. You spend your life working to get to the brink of success, and then you are given a choice: either join in or quit and go home. What would you do?

  * In the 2005 SCA Promotions hearing, McIlvain testified under oath that she had never heard Armstrong admit to doping. In a tape-recorded conversation recorded secretly the previous year by Greg LeMond, however, McIlvain says that she heard Armstrong confess in the hospital room. “So many people protect [Armstrong] that it’s sickening,” she said.

  In September 2010, McIlvain testified for seven hours in front of the grand jury. Afterward, her attorney, Tom Bienert, said she had “a very emotional day” and that she had testified that she had never seen, or heard of, Armstrong using performance-enhancing drugs. Whether that was true or not remains to be seen; as Bicycling columnist Joe Lindsey sensibly pointed out, if it was a simple denial, why did it take seven hours?

  Chapter 15

  HIDE-AND-SEEK

  60 MINUTES AIRED ITS REPORT on May 22, 2011. Along with my interview, the broadcast included details of George Hincapie’s proffered testimony, in which he allegedly told investigators he had shared EPO with Lance. (George did not deny the report.) Frankie Andreu appeared, telling about the high speeds of the EPO-fueled peloton, saying, “If you weren’t taking EPO, you weren’t going to win.” 60 Minutes also gave details behind Lance’s suspicious EPO test at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland, and the UCI-instigated meetings Lance and Johan had with the lab director that helped make the test disappear. Lance was offered the chance to come on air and tell his side; he refused. A few days before the broadcast, I gave my Olympic gold medal to USADA, until such time as they could decide where it belonged.

  I watched the show in Marblehead with my family and Lindsay. My family was incredibly supportive, of course, but I had no idea how it was being seen by the larger world. People had spent years believing Lance; it was natural to be pissed at me for telling
the hard truth. Back when Floyd spoke out, some people had showed up at races waving signs with pictures of a rat on them. Would that happen to me?

  Over the following days, I could feel people eyeing me, recognizing me. While I waited in the ticket line at the Boston airport, a passenger walked up to me, shook my hand, and congratulated me for telling the truth. Then on the plane, someone from across the aisle passed me a note: I appreciate your honesty. You did the right thing. On Facebook, people left dozens and dozens of supportive messages. A few days later, my parents mailed me a two-inch-thick stack of emails and letters they’d received. Keeping to that Hamilton honesty, they didn’t filter the letters. Some people attacked me, said I had to be lying because I’d lied before. But the overwhelming majority were positive. They used words like “courage” and “guts,” words of which I didn’t consider myself remotely worthy. But it felt good to read.

  Lance and his team responded, too. Fabiani said I’d duped 60 Minutes and accused me of “talking trash for cash,” demanded a retraction from CBS (a demand that was soundly rejected), and sang the usual refrain about wasting taxpayer money. They also put together a website called Facts4Lance, on which they tried to attack my and Frankie’s credibility (though not George’s). But in all it was pretty weak stuff; in part because they didn’t have many facts, and also because they failed to reserve the Facts4Lance Twitter name, which was quickly scooped up by friends of Floyd Landis, who then filled the feed with their unique brand of heckling. Before long, Facts4Lance sputtered and was shut down. I found myself a little surprised. I’d expected Lance to attack me personally. The quiet made me wonder: Was he giving up? Had he lost his desire to fight?

  I should have known better.

  Earlier that spring, I’d accepted an invitation from Outside magazine to attend a June 11 event in Aspen, Colorado. I was happy for a chance to promote my training business, and the chance to see some old friends. As the date approached, though, I grew nervous. I knew that Lance was spending a lot of time at his home in Aspen with his girlfriend, Anna Hansen. But just before the event, a friend checked Lance’s schedule and told me he would be riding a 100-mile fundraiser in Tennessee on June 11.

  Good, I thought. This way our paths won’t cross.

  It was a beautiful day. I led an afternoon ride through the mountains with my colleague, Jim Capra. It was designed for intermediate-to-advanced riders, but we were joined by one ambitious beginner, a young woman named Kate Chrisman, who showed up with tennis shoes and an old bike with toeclips. She rode along, and though she was worried about slowing us down, she did great.

  After returning from the ride, Jim and I hung out at the Hotel Sky with the rest of the crew, enjoying the evening sunshine. I ran into my high school roommate and Boulder neighbor Erich Kaiter. We didn’t have any plans for dinner, but an outgoing friend of mine named Ian McLendon asked if we’d like to join him and a few other friends, and we said yes. By 8:15 there were a dozen of us in our party, and, it being Aspen, two of them were reality-television stars: Ryan Sutter and his wife, Trista, from The Bachelorette and The Bachelor, along with their two kids. Ian chose the restaurant, a little place called Cache Cache, which is French for Hide-and-Seek.

  What none of us knew was that Cache Cache was Lance’s favorite restaurant—his hangout. The moment we walked in, the co-owner, a woman named Jodi Larner, recognized me and phoned Lance to tell him I was there. Later, Larner tried to explain her call as a courtesy she gives to Aspen’s divorced couples: if one is in the restaurant, she notifies the other to avoid an awkward encounter. However, her call had the exact opposite effect, because it turned out Lance had just returned to Aspen from Tennessee. Within moments of getting Larner’s call, he was headed straight toward me.

  Later, I thought about the moment when Lance received Larner’s call. I’m sure Lance assumed I’d come to Cache Cache on purpose, and I was daring him to come down, and he responded the only way he knew how. But even so, I’m surprised that Lance would choose to get in his car and come to the restaurant. Because you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that if you’re the target of a major federal investigation, it’s probably not a great idea to seek out contact with likely witnesses.

  Unseen by us, Lance walked in with his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, and took a seat on a stool on the left side of the large, crowded U-shaped bar with a few people he knew. He was perhaps thirty feet from our table, where he had a clear view of the back of my head as I joined in the eating, drinking, and laughing. Around ten, Ryan and Trista decided to head home and get their kids to bed. The rest of us were finishing our meals, debating whether we should go grab a drink somewhere else. Around 10:15, I got up to use the bathroom, which was on the opposite side of the bar from where Lance was sitting.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I headed back to my table. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone in the bar area waving to me—Kate Chrisman, the woman from our ride. I decided to say hello, and I started threading my way through the crowd toward Kate.

  As I passed the bar, I felt something press hard against my stomach, blocking me like a gate, not yielding a millimeter. At first I thought it was one of my friends joking around—it was too aggressive to be accidental, so I smiled and turned, expecting to see a friendly face.

  It was Lance.

  “Hey, Tyler,” he said sarcastically. “How’s it going?”

  My heart jumped to my throat. My brain couldn’t quite register what was happening. Lance didn’t move his hand, kept it pushed hard against my midsection, relishing the moment. He could see I was stunned. I took a step back to create some distance.

  “Hey, Lance,” I said stupidly.

  “So what are you doing tonight, dude?” he asked, his tone light, contemptuous.

  “I’m, uh, just having some dinner with some friends,” I managed. “How are you?”

  Lance’s eyes were shining, his cheeks were pink, a whiff of alcohol on his breath. He looked bigger, thicker through the middle; the lines on his face were deeper. I saw a blond woman sitting next to him; his girlfriend, I figured, along with a few people who, by their approving expressions, appeared to be Lance’s friends.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about all this shit,” I said.

  Lance didn’t seem to hear. He pointed at my chest. “How much did 60 Minutes pay you?”

  “Come on, Lance. They didn’t—”

  “How much did they pay you?” Lance repeated, his voice rising. It was the same slightly-too-loud voice he used to use on the Postal bus, the everybody-listen-to-me voice.

  “You know they’re not paying me, Lance,” I said quietly.

  “How much are they fucking paying you?”

  “Come on, Lance. We both know they’re not paying me.” I fought to keep my voice level.

  Lance’s nostrils were in full flare; his face was getting redder and redder. Across the room, I saw Kate Chrisman watching with a concerned look on her face.* I felt this was spiraling out of control; I wanted to defuse it.

  “Lance, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What the fuck are you sorry for?”

  “It’s gotta be hard on you and your family,” I said. “With all this going on.”

  Lance tried to look incredulous. “Dude, I have not lost one minute of sleep over this. I want to know how much they fucking paid you.”

  I pointed to my left, toward the restaurant door.

  “Why don’t we go outside and we can talk, one on one,” I said.

  Lance made a dismissive phffffff. “Fuck that. That’ll be more of a scene.”

  I looked to my right and spotted a small room off the bar. It was empty. I pointed. “Okay, if we’re going to talk, let’s go in there,” I said.

  Inside, I’m thinking, Lance, you piece of shit. If you really want to do this, let’s get away from your posse and really talk about the truth, man to man. I gestured to the room again.

  Lance lowered his voice. He pointed at me.

  “When you’re on th
e witness stand, we are going to fucking tear you apart,” he said. “You are going to look like a fucking idiot.”

  I didn’t say anything. Lance was on a roll now. “I’m going to make your life a living … fucking … hell.”

  I stood there, frozen. Later, a lawyer acquaintance told me that I would have been smart to mark the moment by saying in a loud voice, “Did everybody hear that? Lance Armstrong just threatened me.” But I didn’t think to do that, because part of me wasn’t believing that he was so stupid as to threaten me in public, and the other part of me was daring him to keep coming, keep talking, motherfucker, bring it on, give me your best shot. It was our old dynamic: he provokes, and I match him. Still here, dude.

  Over Lance’s right shoulder, a small round face of a black-haired fiftyish woman appeared: Jodi Larner, the co-owner of the restaurant. Since she’d caused this encounter by phoning Lance, she figured it was time for her to play a role. She leaned in and pointed her finger at my chest.

  “You are no longer welcome in this restaurant,” Larner said. “You will never set foot in this restaurant again for … the … rest … of … your … life!” She glanced at Lance, looking for his approval. He nodded; she looked as if she might die from sheer satisfaction.

  My mind was churning. The realization was sinking in: I needed to document this encounter, so I asked Larner for her business card. I apologized if we’d caused a disturbance. I was trying hard to keep it civil. Then I turned to Lance.

  “Look, if you want to continue this conversation, I’m gonna ask one of my friends to join us. He won’t say a word.”

  “Fuck that,” Lance said. “Nobody fucking cares.”

  Lance was done. He’d delivered his message, impressed his posse, and rattled me—mission accomplished. He wasn’t going to cooperate with me, so there was no point in trying. I turned to walk back to my table. But before I did, I took one step to my left, toward where Lance’s girlfriend, Anna, was sitting. She was facing the bar, her body slightly turned toward Lance, staring straight ahead. She looked sad, as if she wished this would all just go away.