Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour De France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever

by Reed Albergotti

  The 1993 World Championship was held in Oslo, Norway, on an urban road course 160 miles long, with one medium-size climb and a bunch of sharp turns through city streets and highways. Lance’s mother, Linda, traveled to the event from Plano, Texas, and sat in the metal bleachers near the finish with Stephanie McIlvain, a young, earnest Oakley rep assigned to sponsorships for several pro cyclists, including LeMond, and now Armstrong. The late August weather in Oslo was horrific. The cold downpour made the roads slick. After the race began, many riders slipped and fell. Armstrong himself went down twice.

  On the last lap, Armstrong accelerated on the climb and broke away from the pack, solo. The crowd began to buzz with surprise. Armstrong had so little experience, he didn’t know how long he could stay ahead of the field at his current speed. But that was what made him different. Most young and inexperienced riders would have erred on the side of caution, waiting in the pack and conserving energy. Armstrong just went and didn’t think twice about it. There was a chance he’d implode and get caught by some of the world’s best riders who were trailing him—men like Claudio Chiappucci and Miguel Indurain. But Armstrong kept his lead. He slowed down in the turns, taking the bends carefully, as he approached the final three miles. On the final straightaway, on a large four-lane highway, Armstrong ducked his head and shot into the driving rain, occasionally peeking behind him to look for the Chiappuccis and the Indurains. They weren’t there. With 0.9 miles to go, the riders behind Armstrong had given up any hope of actually catching him and were now just looking at each other, wondering which one of them would finish second.

  As he approached the finish line, the onlookers standing in the cold rain—many of whom previously had no idea who Lance Armstrong was—began cheering him on. When he was still about 0.6 miles from the finish line, he lifted his hands off the handlebars to signal his victory. The Texan was champion of the world. After the race, he hugged his mom. They both wept.

  A representative for King Harald of Norway soon approached them and invited Armstrong to the royal viewing area so that the king could congratulate him in person. Armstrong grabbed Linda, bringing her along. They were stopped at a security checkpoint and Linda was told to wait while Armstrong went on to see the king. Armstrong looked at the guard and shot back: “I don’t check my mother at the door!” They both strolled right in. Lance would later be quoted as saying of the king, “I’m sure he’s great and everything, but I just wanted to get out of there and go party with the guys.” And that’s exactly what he did.

  With the victory, Armstrong became the undisputed star of the team. His résumé now included a Tour de France stage and a World Championship. The majority of professional cyclists would have considered those career-defining achievements. Armstrong was only getting started. One benefit of his success was that he began collecting huge appearance fees—typically $20,000 to $25,000 per race—just for showing up at races in France and elsewhere in Europe. Often the payments were made in cash.

  Despite Armstrong’s growing success, higher-ups at Motorola were scratching their heads. Why, exactly, was Motorola sponsoring the puny sport of cycling? some of them asked. Sheila Griffin, who traveled to Europe to support the team and often rode in the “pace car” during the Tour, vehemently defended the sponsorship and insisted it would pay dividends over time as riders like Armstrong matured and as the team began winning bigger events. While Lance had racked up two big wins, the team still hadn’t won any big races. But to ensure that they did, Griffin wanted to be certain the team had every edge. She even began investing in a new technology for the team, which they called the peloton communications system, the first two-way radio connection between cyclists and team directors. A Motorola engineer created a prototype by soldering a tiny radio earpiece into Motorola team helmets. After the Motorola team began using it, other teams quickly followed suit. Eventually, it became standard technology for the sport. Motorola decided to extend its sponsorship for just one more year.

  But there was huge pressure on Ochowicz to deliver big results. When Armstrong heard rumors that Motorola might end its sponsorship, he was concerned about what that would mean for him personally. He knew that even the great Greg LeMond had had to spend a year playing the role of a domestique on the La Vie Claire squad, helping the team’s lead rider, the Frenchman Bernard Hinault, before being given his own chance to win the Tour de France. If the Motorola team folded and Armstrong signed onto another team, it seemed likely that he’d have to do the same—riding as a domestique to help out a more famous rider. If so, it might take him years to climb up the totem pole to lead rider. Whereas if things kept going well with Motorola, Armstrong felt sure he would soon become its unrivaled leader and a star in the sport. He was not interested in anything less.

  As Armstrong’s stature in the sport grew, so did his ego. Motorola had earned a top-five world ranking, a first for an American team. It already was paying Armstrong $500,000 a year, plus bonuses. But he was becoming increasingly demanding of the team management and of his teammates. As a world champion, he believed he should be pampered. He griped about the food riders ate and the team’s choice of hotels. “Michael Jordan wouldn’t stay at a place like this,” he complained. Additionally, he was jealous of Andy Hampsten, the team’s leader and star. There was room for only one leader on the team and Armstrong wanted to be it. He expected his teammates to be completely subservient, abandoning their own ambitions for the sake of his glory.

  When Lance returned to Austin that September, he was a twenty-one-year-old with a lot of money and a narcissistic streak. Had he been an up-and-coming star in baseball or football, the US media would have been all over him. He would have had his pick of groupies and celebrity friends. But Americans weren’t particularly aware of his cycling accomplishments. Some US cycling safety activists had even chastised him for riding in the Worlds without a helmet. Back in Austin, Lance began a relationship with Sonni Evans, an old high school friend in Plano who had graduated from Southwest Texas State University. His relationship with Sonni reassured him, because they had met long before he became a world champion. Soon, she was living with him in Como.

  He also asked his former coach, Chris Carmichael, to relocate from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Austin, where he could train him. But Carmichael declined, wary of Lance’s potential demands on him.

  For support in Austin, Lance turned again to J.T., who had continued serving as Lance’s personal masseur while he rode for Motorola, and who had provided Lance with advice on what to do with his growing assets. An eccentric and opinionated man, with a deep empathy for others, J.T. saw himself as a father figure to Lance, keeping in touch with Linda, helping Lance manage his newfound wealth, and looking after his affairs while he was racing in Europe. J.T also volunteered to act as Lance’s personal soigneur at no charge and monitored his training, scolding him for drinking too much beer or not drinking enough water on rides, and making sure Lance ate proper meals. J.T. also gave Lance the use of his speedboat on Lake Austin, for Lance’s other passion at the time: waterskiing. For Lance, the relationship was more transactional—J.T. gave him some good tips and advice. He was more like a stock broker than a dad.

  Eventually, even Linda became concerned by Lance’s attitude and sought out advice about how to handle him. Linda knew that Greg LeMond had a lot in common with Armstrong. He was very young when he went to Europe and had won the World Championship at almost exactly the same age. Linda asked LeMond and his wife, Kathy, if she and J.T. Neal could visit them in Minnesota to talk to them about her son. Over coffee, Linda laid out her concerns. But the LeMonds didn’t know what to say. Greg certainly had his issues. He could be demanding to the point of being a jerk. He had character flaws, and he knew it. But LeMond felt he was nothing like Armstrong, who sometimes seemed to be mean simply for the sake of being mean. And Greg, at the time, seemed to have an inner stability very different from Armstrong’s volatile nature. He had met his wife, Kathy, at a very young age and they (so far) had
stayed happily married throughout all the ups and downs of LeMond’s career. Linda left with the sympathy of the LeMonds but few answers.

  To kick off the 1994 season, Armstrong raced in Mexico and then did some of the minor tune-up races in Europe in February before flying back to the United States. Armstrong was anxious about the coming season. He knew the public now expected more of him. Despite considerable training, Armstrong’s season was marked with a major trouncing in March in Milan–San Remo, a 180-mile single-day race that is usually won by cyclists with incredible endurance capacity and the ability to sprint. It was a major blow to Armstrong’s ego. In April, he went to Belgium and raced in the famous Liège–Bastogne–Liège, a spring classic that had been around since 1892. He finished second in the 160-mile course, which winds through the hilly Ardennes region of Belgium. It was an impressive show of strength, but a disappointing finish that showed Armstrong’s still immature tactical sense. Russian Evgeni Berzin, who was racing for Ferrari’s Gewiss team, caught Armstrong by surprise with a late solo attack for the win. In May, Armstrong finished second in the Tour DuPont for the second year in a row. Armstrong needed to win—not finish second—in big races. And if he wanted to be considered one of cycling’s greats, he needed to think about training to win the Tour de France. But endurance riding—the kind needed to win a race like that—still was not his strength.

  When Lance returned to Como for the racing season, he brought along Sonni, who had graduated with a degree in fashion merchandising. The couple lived in Lance’s two-bedroom apartment there. To build up his endurance on the bike, Lance spent his days doing long training rides through Bergamo with his teammates Frankie Andreu and George Hincapie. But Lance, who was prone to lose his temper during training rides, would often get into heated arguments with Italian drivers. Sonni recalls that Lance struggled that season, even bailing out of a couple of European races and heading back to Como early. Just before the end of the season, Lance informed Sonni that they had to break up. He told her that his team manager, Ochowicz, felt he was slacking and that Ochowicz and Lance’s mother, Linda, thought Sonni was too much of a distraction. Heartbroken, she packed her belongings and headed home. Lance moved on quickly, however. Within months, he began a serious romance with beautiful young Dutch cyclist Danielle Overgaag, whom he met at the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas. The daughter of a chrysanthemum grower, Danielle stayed with him in Como, teaching him how to swear in Dutch. When Lance returned to the States, Danielle came along, moving into the apartment Lance rented from J.T. Neal.

  The highlight of the 1994 Tour de France was not a race but Motorola’s decision to renew its sponsorship, keeping the American team alive for at least another year or two. Shortly after, Armstrong signed a two-year contract that was estimated at a whopping $850,000 a year—the highest of anyone on the team. Despite Armstrong’s less than stellar season, Motorola was willing to invest in the rising star.

  As Armstrong rose up, Greg LeMond was struggling during the most difficult period of his career. A mysterious weakness was still holding him back and he dropped out of the Tour de France early in the race. LeMond had improved his training and hoped to perform well in the race, and was extremely disappointed at how it turned out.

  When LeMond dropped out of the race, Kathy LeMond was at their house in Belgium, where they lived during the cycling season. The day after Greg’s withdrawal, the phone rang and Kathy picked up. “Hi, it’s Lance.”

  “Lance who?” Kathy asked, not thinking that it might be the young up-and-coming American star.

  “It’s Lance Armstrong,” he said. “I’d like to rent your house in Belgium.”

  “What?” Kathy asked, perplexed.

  “Well, Greg’s done. I’d like to rent your house,” he said.

  “Well, our house isn’t for rent,” Kathy said. At the time, the LeMonds had three kids, all of whom were living there. Besides, Greg wasn’t even sure he wanted to retire yet. The phone call left the LeMonds feeling insulted and surprised.

  At the end of that year, Greg LeMond announced he was retiring from the sport, and the inevitable stories comparing LeMond and Armstrong circulated around the world. The word was that LeMond was “passing the torch” to Armstrong. Armstrong offered the obligatory praise to LeMond but was annoyed by the comparisons. “I’m not the next Greg LeMond,” he took to saying during interviews with the press. “I’m the first Lance Armstrong.”

  Armstrong headed back to Europe for the beginning of the 1995 season. In early March, Armstrong entered Paris–Nice, one of the stage races that Grand Tour contenders often use as spring training. The eight-day stage race is nicknamed the Race to the Sun because it goes from chilly, rainy Paris to warm, sunny Nice in the south. Armstrong nabbed the fifth stage of the race—an uphill finish. The win gave him a good boost for the season. Viatcheslav Ekimov, Armstrong’s rival from the Tour DuPont the previous season, was less than a second behind Armstrong, in fourth place.

  A week after Paris–Nice, the Motorola team returned to Milan–San Remo, the long, grueling Italian road race. Armstrong and his teammates were again annihilated. On the way home from the race, Armstrong started complaining to his teammates about other teams using EPO. He felt the Motorola team had done so poorly because they were competing with riders who were pumped to the gills with the stuff. George Hincapie understood Armstrong’s message clearly. His buddy Armstrong wanted him and the other Motorola riders to start using EPO, too. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be strong enough to support him in the big races.

  Hincapie, who was living in Como, Italy, found out from Frankie that EPO was available at a pharmacy in Switzerland, not far from the apartment he shared with several other teammates. In fact, Frankie made regular trips to pick up supplies for himself and some of his teammates. And Hincapie rode over to the pharmacy himself, spending $450 or so for a month’s supply of the miracle drug. And it was clear that EPO was working.

  Armstrong in particular could ride stronger, for longer. He discovered endurance capacity he’d never had. Armstrong was convinced that EPO—sometimes referred to by riders as Edgar Allan Poe—was safe. But he wondered about the health effects of human-growth hormone, or HGH, which sped up his recovery, and helped Armstrong get leaner, more muscular.

  By mid-1995, Armstrong ranked fourteenth in the world cycling standings. He had won the Tour DuPont, the highest-profile race in the United States. To capitalize on his achievements and help him raise his profile, he decided he needed an agent, and, after interviewing several candidates, he ultimately settled on Bill Stapleton. A native of St. Louis, Stapleton had been an Olympic swimmer, though he never quite reached the top of his sport. After leaving the world of competitive athletics, he had gotten business and law degrees at the University of Texas at Austin, then taken a job as an associate at the large Austin law firm Brown McCarroll & Oaks Hartline. Bored by corporate law, Stapleton approached the law firm with his plans for a sports-management practice and convinced the partners to allow him to carve out a sports agency within the firm.

  Per the agreement he made with Armstrong, his law firm got a 3 to 5 percent fee on Armstrong’s employment contract. On top of that, Stapleton himself would take in 15 to 25 percent of any endorsement and marketing deals he made on Armstrong’s behalf, and he quickly began lining them up. He negotiated new endorsement deals with Nike, helmet maker Giro, and Milton Bradley, all within his first year of representing Armstrong. He also negotiated a lucrative extension with Oakley and signed an individual deal with Motorola. The endorsement deals with Oakley, Nike, and Giro stipulated that Armstrong would get an immediate $1 million bonus from each of them—plus another $2 million in possible long-term endorsements—if he won a gold medal in the upcoming 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Olympics had recently changed its rules to allow professionals into the competitions, meaning Armstrong would get another shot at a gold medal. Flush with endorsement and prize monies on top of his large salary, Armstrong began work on what would be a $1 mi
llion, 4,300-square-foot white Mediterranean-style villa on the banks of Lake Austin. J.T. had helped Lance find and purchase the plot of land, and helped to oversee construction of the villa, while Lance was off racing overseas for most of the year. Lance put his mother, Linda, in charge of finding a designer and hiring the movers. Though Linda hadn’t gotten a college degree, she had attended night school to get her real estate license while working as a secretary at Ericsson Telecommunications.

  Lance named the villa Casa de Linda after her. Even before the lakeside dock was built, Lance had picked out a name for his boat: Pedal Faster. J.T. loved palm trees, and so, to honor him, Lance planted twenty-six palm trees along the property.

  As the date of the 1995 Tour de France drew closer, Armstrong was feeling good. He was stronger than he had been the previous year, and his team was stronger, thanks to EPO. George Hincapie noticed that most of the riders on the team were now carrying thermoses that made a clinking sound when they moved around, and he knew what was inside the thermoses—vials of EPO. Before the 1995 Tour de France, Motorola team doctor Massimo Testa gave the riders a talk about the dangers of EPO. Testa believed that if riders took too much of it, their blood would become thick and syrupy and could overload the heart, or cause a dangerous blood clot, possibly resulting in death. So, during the Tour, Testa borrowed a blood centrifuge from another team doctor, which he used to test the riders’ blood to make sure their hematocrits—a measure of the ratio of red blood cells to overall blood volume—were not dangerously high. Nobody on the team had taken too much EPO, but most of their hematocrits were unnaturally high, though not yet dangerously, considering the amount of exercise they were doing. The percentage of red blood cells to overall blood volume tends to go down with hard training, especially during grueling races like the Tour de France.