Sports Articles: Sporting Villains 4: Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong

In Plano, Texas in 1971, Lance Edward Gunderson was born to Linda and Eddie Gunderson and was named after Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Lance Rentzel. He was just 2 years old when his parents divorced and his mother married wholesale salesman Terry Armstrong a year later. Terry adopted Lance as his own, but that came with a price for young Lance, who remembers Terry as a strong disciplinarian, who would beat Lance with his fraternity paddle for even the most minor of things: "If he said, 'Don't leave your drawer open or you're gonna be in trouble,' and sure enough, I'd leave the drawer open, he'd pull out his fraternity paddle and just beat the shit out of me."

Terry himself admitted he was tough on Lance, but he believes that Lance became a champion because he drove him on: "I was tough on him as far as cleaning his room up and being orderly, and Linda was always there when I did it. It wasn't a belt, it wasn't hitting him. It was just, 'bend over and take your licks.' That came from five years in military school, very regimented, so I was kind of by the book. The failure of my bringing up Lance, I was the taskmaster, but I didn't put my arms around him enough and tell him I loved him. I was always there, always coaching him, always pushing him, but I didn't show him the love that I should have. Lance would not be the champion that he is today without me, because I drove him. I drove him like an animal. That's the only thing I feel bad about. Did I make him too much, win at all costs?"

Whatever it was that caused his attitude, Lance was 12 when he began his sporting career as a swimmer at the City of Plano Swim Club, finishing 4th in Texas state 1,500m freestyle. He quickly changed course after seeing a poster advertising the "Iron Kids Triathlon" which he entered and won at the age of 13. Swim-only races were no longer of interest to the young Lance as he threw himself into triathlons. By the time 1987 arrived the "cocky" and "precocious" teenager was being referred to as the "Triathlon Wonder" in the local press. In 1987, despite being just 16, Lance scored more points in competition as an amateur than 5 of the professionals ranked higher than him for the year.

By 1988 Lance was ranked number 1 triathlete in the 19 and under age category. Number two in the placings was Chann McRae, who later rode alongside him for the UPS team. He had left school to train with the US Olympic development team in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but continued to take private classes and got his high school diploma in 1989. Even before he left school there were signs of the unpleasantness that would be Lance's weapon later in life. Lance would mercilessly mock peers and coaches in school and one high school coach, who had been extremely supportive of the youngster as he embarked upon his path to the top, was cut right out of Lance's life because Lance beat him in a race.

Like many other great competitors, such as basketball great Michael Jordan, Lance would use perceived slurs by opponents to drive him on. Lance would take it further than most, he would taunt his opponents and openly admit to despising those who competed against him, looking to dominate through forceful bullying of anyone who showed potential to compare with him. Not that many could and he became national sprint-course champion in 1989 and 1990. Armstrong had come a long way from the "15-year-old high school junior" that won the men's Hillcrest-Tulsa Triathlon beating the course record of 1:49:26 with a time of 1:45:32.

After years of using a forged birth certificate to get around minimum age regulations to allow him to enter triathlons, Lance decided to focus on just one of the three events, cycling, in 1990. In 1992 he was ready to turn professional, but first there was the Olympics and he finished second in the US Olympic trials to set himself up as one of the medal favourites. However, in his final race in amateur cycling, Lance was beaten by the heat and humidity and finished just 14th before turning pro with the Motorola team. Armstrong's first ever race as a professional was the San Sebastian Classic (Clasica de San Sebastian) and he finished dead last.

His first full year was much more successful and Lance won 10 one-day events, including the World Road Race Championship in Norway, becoming the youngest to win it as he only turned 22 a month after winning it. Three of the races he won made up the (possibly ironically named) Thrift Drug Triple Crown of cycling, the Thrift Drug Classic in Pittsburgh, K-Mart West Virginia Classic and Corestates USPRO national championship in Philadelphia. But, as was to become normal with Armstrong, controversy greeted the Corestates win as another cyclist alleged that Lance bribed him not to compete with him. The Triple Crown came with $1m in prize money. Armstrong also entered his first Tour de France in 1993, when he was included in the team to get experience. He did win stage 8 but pulled out after struggling in the Alps and was 97th overall when he dropped out. Though he did beat the TDF winner Miguel Indurain in the World Championships the following month.

In 1994 he entered the Tour de France again, but pulled out before the Alps to save himself for the World Cycling Championships, which he failed to win. He did win the Thrift Drug Classic and came second in Tour DuPont, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Clasica San Sebastian. The following year he won Clasica San Sebastian and Tour DuPont but the Tour de France was a tragic one as teammate Fabio Casartelli crashed on stage 15 and died 3 days later. When Lance won the Limoges stage he pointed to the sky in honour of Casartelli. He finished 36th overall.

The next year had one main target, the Atlanta Olympics. Though that aim did not stop him becoming the first American to win La Fleche Wallonne and the last ever Tour DuPont. The Tour de France saw him last just five days before he pulled out believing he had bronchitis. At the Olympics he struggled badly looking fatigued. In August, just after the Leeds Classic, he signed for the French Cofidis Cycling team alongside Frankie Andreu and Laurent Madouos, a two-year deal that was worth $2m to him.

Armstrong was 25 years old and ranked number 7 in the world when he went into hospital coughing up blood and with a swollen testicle. It was discovered that he had not been suffering with bronchitis, he had metastatic testicular cancer of a particularly virulent kind and he had an orchiectomy on the 3rd October to remove the diseased testicle. Despite this urologist Jim Reeves said of Lance's chances of survival: "Almost none. We told Lance initially 20 to 50% chance, mainly to give him hope. But with the kind of cancer he had, with the x-rays, the blood tests, almost no hope." The cancer was a stage 3 embryonal carcinoma which had spread to his brain, lungs and abdomen.

Standard treatment involved a cocktail of drugs, bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin (Platinol), known as BEP which he had for his first cycle. But then Lance found out that bleomycin was associated with lung toxicity, which would have ended any chance of him resuming his cycling career, so he changed to a different cocktail, known as VIP, for the next three cycles of chemotherapy. Even during the treatment, Armstrong continued to ride 30 to 50 miles a day. On 25th October his brain lesions, which contained extensive necrosis, were removed surgically. Lance's final chemo treatment was given on 13th December 1996 and his cancer was in remission just over a week later.

Now Armstrong was working towards returning to racing in 1997, though it would not be with Cofidis, who had cancelled his contract. In February 1997, he returned to training in earnest after being given the all-clear of cancer. It was pretty much a miracle he survived, let alone was in a position to return to racing once more. He was not ready to return to racing that year, but Lance was offered a $200,000 a year deal with the US Postal Service/Discovery team, which enabled him to get into serious training and he moved to Europe with the team in January 1998. It was not all plain sailing for him though, he took a two month break from the sport while he considered retirement.

Lance founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation to assist cancer survivors, which later became the Livestrong Foundation with its ubiquitous yellow rubber bracelets. He also returned to racing with his comeback in the Vuelta a Espana, where he managed to finish a very creditable 4th. In May he won the Sprint 56K in Austin, Texas and won his first international tour in June, though he missed the Tour De France that year, which turned into a mess due to doping.

Performance-enhancing drugs had long been a problem in major tours, even early in the 20th century riders in the Tour De France would take the dangerous stimulant strychnine and hold ether-soaked hankies to their mouths to try and dull the pain of propelling a bike over hundreds of miles each day. Drug tests had been introduced as far back as 1966, which led to riders protesting and chanting, "No to pissing in test tubes!" However, despite this there had been no real drug scandal at the event until 1998.

Three days before the race was due to start on 11 July, Festina team soigneur (a team assistant who looks after the rider between stages, providing massages, making sure they get proper food etc) Willy Voet was arrested at the border between France and Belgium attempting to smuggle drugs and various paraphernalia into the country. The Festina team was kicked out of the race, to the ire of the 'peloton'. It soon became clear why the rest were so angry when a document in Voet's car exposed Festina's doping as systematic and involving the entire team. Every single Festina rider tested positive for (erythropoietin) EPO. Police raided the HQ and vehicles of several teams, causing five more teams to drop out, as it was soon exposed that Voet was not just smuggling for the Festina team. Several riders and staff members were arrested and the whole incident was instrumental in the founding of the World Anti-Doping Agency the following year.

Meanwhile, the tour itself was in serious danger, 7 teams in total had been either kicked out or dropped out to avoid being tested and the rest of the peloton were ready to quit. Race director Jean-Marie LeBlanc had to beg the peloton to continue racing to ensure the race was completed. Even so, it was later claimed by the US Anti-Doping Agency that the US Postal Service (UPS) team's doctor Pedro Celaya, "flushed tens of thousands of dollars of performance enhancing drugs down the toilet of the team's camper during the race. The staff was clearly part of the doping operation."

One rider, George Hincapie, remembers the ferry ride back to France from Ireland, where a few stages took place that year: "I recall that in 1998 at the Tour de France the team staff was very afraid of police attention given to doping as a result of the Festina team having been caught with doping substances. I understand from conversations with some of the soigneurs that drugs were dumped overboard when the ferry carrying the team was making the passage from ireland where a portion of the tour had been run."

Just 96 of the 189 riders who started the tour, made it all the way to the finish. The sports director of the ONCE team, Manolo Saiz, quit and claimed the French would kill cycling if they tried to police it. Despite the controversy, that year UPS announced that Lance Armstrong would be their lead rider on the Tour de France in 1999, a shock as, even putting aside his recent recovery from cancer, Lance was known primarily as a specialist in shorter one-day events.

The 1999 tour was meant to be a fresh start for the sport and so it was dubbed 'The Tour of Renewal', but it was anything but a clean slate. One of the few clean riders was a man called Christophe Bassons who rode for the FDJ team, who had been speaking out against doping in the peloton. He arrived to find his teammates and the rest of the peloton treated him like a pariah, Lance was particularly forceful in his treatment of Bassons, Jonathan Vaughter later described it so: "Lance frequently made fun of him in a very merciless and venomous fashion, much like a playground bully."

On Stage 10 the whole peloton deliberately isolated him by intentionally riding slowly and then caught up to him and stared him down en masse. Bassons spoke out about his treatment and claimed that Armstrong rode up alongside him and said to him: "It was a mistake to speak out the way I do and he asked why I was doing it. I told him that I'm thinking of the next generation of riders. Then he said, 'Why don't you leave then?'" Lance not just admitted doing so, but also told TF1: "His accusations aren't good for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody. If he thinks cycling works like that, he's wrong and would be better off going home." Bassons eventually did go home, abandoning the Tour de France and retired just a few years later with a promising career in ruins.

Bassons had every reason to speak out, as the race had not even passed the prelim stage before Lance had tested positive for cortisone. According to the rules that meant an immediate end to his tour, but he produced a doctor's certificate for a skin cream to treat saddle-sores that he had 'forgotten' to declare. The UCI were reminded of what an inspirational story he was for cancer sufferers and it was decided to let him race.

In a race shorn of 1997 winner Jan Ullrich, who was injured, and Marco Pantani, who was missing due to doping allegations, Lance won by over seven and a half minutes, leading TV commentator Phil Liggett to say: "If you believe in miracles, if you believe in fairy tales, if you believe in life, you believe in Lance Armstrong." Immediately after his win the doping allegations began to circulate, with Lance's win being at a record average pace, 0.3km/h faster than the previous year, fuel was added to the fire.

Following his win, the Dallas Morning News reported that Armstrong "quietly endured a week of innuendo and rumours since he took a commanding seven-minute 44-second lead in cycling's most important race." Lance himself said: "I've never tested positive. I've never been caught with anything." Clearly he forgot about the positive test in the preliminary testing very quickly. One thing is for sure, he would not be replying through Velonews, as he refused to speak to them after 1999 because they chose Anne-Caroline Chausson as their rider of the year!

Pantani and Ullrich both returned for the 2000 Tour, but Lance finished 6min 2sec ahead of Ullrich, who was second. Armstrong then released a best-selling autobiography entitled, 'It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life' which helped him to become famous around the world. The quote, "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever", became much repeated, as people bought into the Armstrong miracle myth completely.

In 2001, Armstrong made it 3 wins in a row, as he finished 6min and 44seconds aheads of Ullrich and buildings all over the USA were lit yellow in his honour. New York's Mayor Giuliano declared 29th July as Lance Armstrong day and his face was on the cover of Wheaties cereal as Lance earnt millions in endorsement deals, even receiving $200,000 a time to give motivational talks. But reality was beginning to intrude on the myth. This time reality came in the shape of Greg Lemond, a one-time cycling legend so good that Lance had once said he wanted to be the next Lemond.

Lemond was America's Tour de France hero before EPO arrived, when he found himself falling further and further behind the competition, as he was not taking EPO. By 1992 Lemond was forced to accept defeat and retire from the sport. But he had his very own comeback story, as Lemond nearly died in a hunting accident just after winning his first tour and recovered to win the tour twice more, despite a poisoning attempt. Lemond was one of the first to write to Lance to offer to help him with his recovery from cancer and return to racing.

Then, in 2000, Lemond claimed he was told by Julien Devriese, a bike mechanic who had worked with both Lemond and Armstrong, that Lance was still working with Michele Ferrari, a doctor alleged to be providing steroids. Lemond, who was now a cycling journalist, wrote that he was "terribly disappointed" that Lance continued to work with Ferrari. Immediately pressure was applied by major cycling business executives to retract the comments and Devriese denied that he had said anything.

That was just the start of a Lemond/Lance beef: "A former teammate of mine had heard, shortly before the Tour, that he was sure to win because he had an 'undetectable thing' but I took that with a smile because there were so many rumours and suspicion around him. Then in April 2001, at a conference I was present at, his former physician, Ed Coyle, revealed Armstrong's data: his thoracic capacity - 5.6 litres of oxygen, and especially his VO2 max. To me that was evidence that he had cheated." Lemond was sure that something was amiss as his own VO2 max was 93 but Lance's was just 78 and he calculated that Armstrong's power should have topped out at around 375 watts of power. Then he saw the data which showed Lance was produce 500w on the ride up Madonna. Lemond could see only one way that was possible.

At around the same time, Sunday Times journalist David Walsh produced an expose of Michele Ferrari, who compared EPO use to orange juice! Lance told Gazzetto dello Sport, in an interview, that Ferrari was on his support staff. Lemond wrote to David Walsh in praise of the article. Walsh asked Lemond if he could have a quote and Lemond gave him one: "If Lance is clean, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport. If he isn't, it would be the greatest fraud." Lance is alleged to have been furious when the quote was published and to have said that he was going to "fuck over" Greg Lemond. It was not until two weeks later that he called Lemond about the quote.

This was when it started to get nasty as Lemond alleges Lance threatened to tell everyone that he was the one that used EPO and even went so far as to pay someone $300,000 to tell people Lemond had been using EPO when racing. Lance, however, alleges Lemond was drunk and screaming at him down the phone, despite Lance being respectful. It was just the first of many calls Lemond was to receive in the following days, as, in Greg's wife's Kathy's words, "It was like the troops were being mobilised to shut Greg up."

There was Thom Weisl, an investor in Lance's team, the CEO of Bell Helmets Terry Lee and John Boxbaum, who was the CEO of a real estate company and massive cycling fan. Next it was Trek's CEO John Burke who got in touch, Trek sold Lemond's bike brand and also sponsored Armstrong. By this point Lemond had got wise to the need to record the phone calls he was getting and he captured Burke on tape agreeing that Lance was putting pressure on both Lemond and Trek to the point that it "constituted extortion". Lemond realised it was time to speak to lawyers and protect himself legally.

It was then that Lemond was reading the newspaper to find an apology attributed to himself. An apology he had not written, nor known anything about until he read the paper. The quote had been ghost written by Lance's agent and it was just the start of an attack on Lemond, who was now being discredited as an alcoholic and drug abuser. Trek were deliberately tanking sales of his bikes, so Lemond sued them and they counter-sued claiming Lemond's accusations were bad for the brand. Meanwhile Lance was taunting Lemond in a Nike commercial where he said: "Everyone wants to know what I am on? What am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass 6 hours a day."

Despite Lance and his allies all fighting to keep the lid on his cheating, the story refused to go away and a former doctor for the UPS team, Prentice Steffen, gave an interview to David Walsh in which he claimed he was fired in 1996 for refusing to give riders doping products. That did not stop Lance and his allies, such as Tour de France race director Jean-Marie Leblanc, from making life as difficult as possible for those trying to tell the truth, as Lemond recalls: "I was invited back in 2002 for the 100th Anniversary dinner. But I was treated so poorly and excluded from every activity. That was because of Jean-Marie Leblanc and Armstrong. I swore I would never go back."

2002 was a big turning point in the battle, though it was not obvious at the time. It seemed like life was going on as normal, with Lance winning the Tour de France by 7minutes again, though Ullrich was suspended. Even an investigation by French authorities into the UPS team concluded with no evidence of the use of performance-enhancing drugs. However it was 2002 that Armstrong got the UPS team to sign a promising young rider called Floyd Landis. Landis was from a conservative Mennonite family, they avoided technology such as radio and TV and so a young Floyd would ride a bike for his entertainment. Over time he became obsessed with biking and soon was being cherry-picked to join Armstrong's UPS team. He was to be the cork in the bottle that allowed the truth to burst out.

The following year Armstrong released his second autobiography, Every Second Counts, as his popularity stayed high despite the whispers. Lance's rivalry with Ullrich continued to motivate him, though Ullrich showed his respect by waiting for Armstrong to get up and get going after a tangle with a spectator's handbag on stage 15 made him crash. Armstrong went on to win the stage and he won the tour again, beating Ullrich by 1min and 1sec. But there was another block in the wall of silence which came tumbling down as Jesus Manzano passed out due to extreme dehydration during the Tour. Manzano believed an injection he received from his doctor caused it. Then he was nearly killed by a bungled blood transfusion on the Vuelta and he reported his doctor to the police. Doctor Eufemiano Fuentes became the subject of Operacion Puerto, which was to discover the biggest doping scandal in world sport. One which spread to almost every competitive professional sport.

While the Fuentes scandal would not hit in 2004, it was the year that really saw doping allegations become mainstream news. The expose of Doctor Ferrari led to a court case which saw Italian rider Filippo Simeoni testify against him. David Walsh, who was the main author of the expose, joined forces with another reporter, Pierre Ballester, to pen the book LA Confidentiel - Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong. Both Greg Lemond and Armstrong's former soigneur Emma O'Reilly were sources for the book which claimed that Lance Armstrong was using PEDs. Another rider, Steve Swart, claimed in the book that he and other riders, including Armstrong, began using PEDs as long ago as 1995, while with the Motorola team.

O'Reilly revealed that the prescription for Armstrong's 1999 positive drug test for corticosteroid was a backdated fake obtained after the test came back positive. O'Reilly told Walsh and Ballester that she heard team officials in a flap about the result of the test: "They were in a panic, saying: 'What are we going to do? What are we going to do?'" O'Reilly explained that the prescription was for an ointment to treat saddle sores, but her job would have been to apply it if Armstrong had needed it and claimed that Lance told her: "Now, Emma, you know enough to bring me down." She also revealed that part of her job was to dispose of his used syringes, to cover up needlemarks with make up and to pick up strange parcels for the team. Lance sued her for libel and regularly called her nasty names in public.

Lemond was being slaughtered in the US press because Armstrong was a "hero and inspiration", but Lemond stood his ground and said in one interview: "Lance is ready to do whatever it takes to keep his secret. But I don't know how he can continue to convince everyone of his innocence." The UK press were not so sure of Lance's innocence and The Sunday Times printed the allegations from LA Confidentiel, only to be sued for libel by Armstrong. They were forced to settle out of court after a High Court judge made a pre-trial ruling stating that the article "meant accusation of guilt and not simply reasonable grounds to suspect".

At this time Floyd Landis was looking to leave the UPS team, with other teams offering him much more money to sign for them. UPS decided to ask Armstrong to call him and sweet talk him into saying. Unfortunately for the team, Armstrong and Landis did not like each other from the start, Landis later saying: "The guy's a jerk and everybody knows it, but he was surrounded by yes-men, and they were also terrified of him, so they laughed at his jokes even if they didn't make sense." It is little surprise the attempt to sweet talk failed to work out, Landis saying that Lance spent just a couple of minutes being nice before spending 45 minutes telling his teammate how much he hated him and that he was going to destroy him.

Landis was not the only other rider Lance was attacking. Italian rider Filippo Simeoni had testified against Dr Michele Ferrari and Armstrong had publicly called Simeoni a liar. After Simeoni launched a defamation case against Armstrong he claims Lance told him: "You made a big mistake. You shouldn't have testified against Dr Ferrari and especially not sued me for defamation. I have no problems. I have time, I have money, and I can destroy you whenever I want."

During the Tour de France itself the Simeoni-Armstrong clash became very public after Simeoni tried to break away from the pack on stage 18. Lance, who was leading the race, made sure to go after him to ensure the peloton would have to chase him down. After chasing Simeoni down, Lance rode alongside him and mimed zipping his lips into the accompanying TV camera. Once the peloton caught up to him, Simeoni found himself a target: "They insulted me, as if I was a real traitor - a reprobate to be driven into the sewers."

It did not all go in Armstrong's favour this year though as the public watching the race were disapproving and he found himself being insulted and even spat at during the individual time trial on the slopes of Alpe d'Huez. It did not stop him winning the Tour de France again, winning five of the stages and becoming the first man since Gino Bartali in 1948 to win three consecutive mountain stages.

It began to turn really nasty in 2005 as a couple of court cases were turned into personal grudges by Lance, who went on the attack. There was a case filed in Travis County District Court in Texas on 31st March 2005 by his former PA Mike Anderson. Anderson was fired in November 2004 after two years in Armstrong's employ and Anderson alleged that he found a box of androstenone while cleaning a bathroom in Lance's apartment in Girona, Spain. While the substance is not on the banned list, it would give a lie to Lance's constant claims to never have taken any performance-enhancing drugs. That particular case was resolved via an out of court settlement in November.

The second case involved a sponsor, SCA Promotions, who tried to pull out of paying win bonuses to Lance over the allegations of performance-enhancing drugs. Lance took legal action in a Texas court to get the money. Pulled up in court was the report in LA Confidentiel that Armstrong had listed a number of drugs that he had confessed to using when diagnosed with cancer. When the doctor had asked him if he had ever used PEDs Lance had mentioned testosterone, EPO, growth hormone, cortisone and steroids, according to Franky and Betsy Andreu, who were close friends of his at the time and were called to testify under oath. After they did so, Lance attacked them both in public and private. He repeatedly called Betsy names, calling her obsessive and vindictive, while behind the scenes Lance was working to have Franky blackballed from cycling.

Greg Lemond was also called to testify about that same allegation. Though Lemond was not in the room at the time, he had recorded a phone conversation with someone who was there, Oakley rep Stephanie McIlvain. In the phone call, which was played to the court, Lemond tells her that he knew she heard the admission and asked if she would tell the truth in court. McIlvain replied: "If I was subpoenaed I would. Cause I'm not going to lie. You know I was in that room. I heard it." Despite this, the insurance firm settled out of court for $7.5m to Lance and Tailwind Sports.

At the same time this was happening, Dr Michele Ferrari was facing doping-related charges, which he was later convicted of (as recently as 2017 he was convicted in an Italian court of more doping-related charges in biathlons) and Lance publicly shunned and denounced him. Armstrong denied any involvement in doping, telling CNN: "If you consider my situation: a guy who comes back from arguably, you know, a death sentence, why would I then enter into a sport and dope myself up, and risk my life again? That's crazy. I would never do that. No. No way."

Lance went on to win his 7th consecutive Tour de France in 2005, by 4min and 40sec, while setting a new record for the highest average speed of 41.7km/h (26mph). At the end of the Tour he retired, but it was too late for him to escape the rising tide of doping accusations. The 23rd August saw L'Equipe's front page headline read "le mensonge Armstrong" (the Armstrong lie) and reported on a recent retest of 6 of Lance's urine samples from the 1999 TDF which tested positive for erythropoeitin (EPO). The samples had been frozen and stored at the Labratoire National de Depistage du Dopage de Chatenay-Malabry (LNDD) and retesting had been conducted as a research project into new EPO testing methods.

Armstrong replied to the story on his website: "Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrow's article is nothing short of tabloid journalism. The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: 'There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendant's rights cannot be respected.' I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs."

Despite Lance's protestations, there were calls from the IOC (International Olympics Committee) and WADA (World Anti-Doping Association) for an investigation into the research projects findings. The UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) appointed Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman to investigate. Vrijman had formerly been head of the Dutch anti-doping agency for 10 years before moving on to become a defence attorney defending high-profile athletes against doping charges using his inside knowledge. In other words, the UCI were so committed to the truth that they appointed a man who made his living protecting the likes of Lance Armstrong from drug charges to investigate a potential drugs charge for Lance Armstrong.

Unsurprisingly the report cleared Lance of any wrongdoing, claiming the samples were improperly handled and tested to such a degree that it was "completely irresponsible" to suggest they "constitute evidence of anything". The report recommended that no disciplinary action was to be taken against any rider on the basis of the LNDD's research. Instead the report called for WADA and LNDD to be investigated by an outside authority! The IOC Ethics Commission even censured Dick Pound, the president of WADA and a member of the IOC, for media statements suggesting Armstrong might have been guilty of wrongdoing.

There were still more problems that year as former UPS team doctor Prentice Steffen repeated his claims from 1996 that he had been fired by the team for refusing to give riders doping products. Steffen was working as the team doctor of the TIAA-CREF team, which was coached by Jonathan Vaughters and Vaughters soon found himself in the firing line. Armstrong leaned on him and accused Steffen of being a heroin addict according to Vaughters: "Shortly after these comments were published Lance called me and asked, 'What's this this guy's deal, why did you hire him?' Lance went on to say, 'I don't know if he was the best choice for you, everyone knows he used to be a heroin addict.' Lance called a couple of times about Dr Steffen and it soon became clear to me that we would likely lose sponsorships we had with Lance's sponsors such as Oakley, Shimano, Trek and Giro if Dr Steffen stayed with the team. Lance would say things like, 'I certainly hope this doesn't become a bigger issue for you than it needs to be.' As a consequence, we ultimately decided that to avoid a war with Lance we would need to let Dr Steffen go for a period of time."

His retirement saw Lance live the celebrity life, 2006 for instance saw him as the pace car driver at the Indy 500 and his run in the NYC marathon had a dedicated camera just for him throughout the entire race, which enabled Armstrong to raise $600,000 for Livestrong. More was emerging in public to threaten his reputation as in June Le Monde reported on the court case and Betsy and Frankie Andreu's claims that Lance had admitted to using PEDs to his physician just after brain surgery in 1996. Le Monde reported their testimony: "And so the doctor asked him a few questions, not many, and then one of the questions he asked was....have you ever used any performance-enhancing drugs? And Lance said yes. And the doctor asked, what were they? And Lance said, growth hormone, cortisone, EPO, steroids and testosterone." Lance claimed Betsy was just confused by the talk of his post-operative treatment, which would include steroids and EPO, which are taken to counteract muscle wasting and the red-blood-cell-destroying effects of chemotherapy.

The story continued to make headlines, and in July 2006 the Los Angeles Times reported on Australian researcher Michael Ashenden, who was a paid expert retained by SCA Promotions, who brought up the results of LNDD's tests on samples from the 1999 Tour De France. The LA Times reported: "The results, Australian researcher Michael Ashenden testified in Dallas, show Armstrong's levels rising and falling, consistent with a series of injections during the Tour." They added that Ashenden told arbitrators that the results painted a "compelling picture" that Lance "used EPO in the '99 Tour".

Also produced in court had been instant messenging logs of conversations between Frankie Andreu and Jonathan Vaughters about blood-doping in the peloton. Vaughters went as far as submitting a signed statement disavowing the comments he had made and stating that he had "no personal knowledge that any team in the Tour De France, including Armstrong's Discovery team in 2005, engaged in any prohibited conduct whatsoever." Then there was the testimony of Greg Lemond's wife, who alleged under oath that Nike paid former UCI president Hein Verbruggen $500,000 to cover up a positive test by Lance in 1999. Nike denied the accusation but tellingly they dropped Armstrong and his clothing brand. Lemond claimed that Lance threatened him and his family with violence after their testimony, claims which Lance denied, suggesting Lemond was no longer in touch with reality. After the case was settled out of court the LA Times wrote: "Though no verdict or finding of facts was rendered, Armstrong called the outcome proof that the doping allegations were baseless."

The lies were about to come crashing down in spectacular fashion before the first Lance-free Tour de France even took place. The first step was due to police raiding the home of Dr Fuentes and finding a stash of PEDs and a client list which gave up the names of some of the most famous riders in the world. Though many have never been identified due to the code used, elite riders such as Alberto Contador and Jan Ullrich were found to be clients and kicked out of the 2006 Tour. Ullrich, who had been favourite to win the 2006 Tour de France, saw his life end up in a downward spiral which saw him admitted to a mental hospital in 2018. He never raced professionally again.

The Fuentes trial is one which still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, as Spanish judges, no doubt panicking over the fact that Fuentes was implicating the Spanish national football team's domination of the sport, along with the nation's top club sides Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona, with his comments, ordered the evidence destroyed. There were over 200 bags of blood that contained DNA evidence of doping and Fuentes said: "Cyclists, soccer players, whole soccer teams - even boxers. I treated them all." He was charged with endangering public health, as there was no anti-doping law in Spain back then, but he denied the charge because he claimed the transfusions were good for the recipients' health.

In fact, he freely admitted administering transfusions on a regular basis on the basis they were for the recipients' good. What he would not talk about is what exactly was being injected into the patient. It is likely that he refused to discuss the products involved as at least some of them were illegal, such as Actovegin, which is a drug made from cow's blood in Russia. Jesus Manzano, the former cyclist who had collapsed during the 2003 TDF following treatment from Fuentes, was the prosecution's star witness: "He injected me with 50ml of Oxyglobin. Then I started the stage, and felt worse and worse - and finally I fainted." Oxyglobin is a drug made for dogs.

Manzano also testified that Fuentes would hide steroids in empty wine bottles and would give out mysterious pills that he was forced to take: "I couldn't confront them. If you even questioned these methods, you'd be out on the street. They'd fire you from the team." The fall out from it all saw one cyclist that was accused of helping Fuentes commit suicide. It was to get even worse for Armstrong though when the TDF did start, though it was not immediately apparent just how far reaching the implications were.

2006 was the first Tour since Lance retired and, with a lot of riders banned for involvement with Fuentes, including Lance Ullrich, Lance's former teammate Floyd Landis was the favourite for the race win. Landis had helped Armstrong to three Tour wins while with the UPS team, but he was now with Swiss team Phonak. It was all going to form until Stage 16, when Landis had a spectacular collapse and was struggling. The next day he turned in a sensational performances to put himself back in the running and 2 days later Landis was back in the lead after a time trial, going on to win the event by 57 seconds. Just a few days after the Tour was over, Landis received a call to inform him that he had tested positive on the post-Stage 17 drugs test and was being stripped of the race win.

The results from the laboratory found him guilty of using synthetic testosterone. Landis claimed his testosterone was just naturally high, then, when that excuse fell on deaf ears, he suggested the two beers and four whisky shots he had drunk the night before had affected the results. He got a call from Lance telling him to be more forceful with his denials but he says: "It was completely self-serving. Lance hadn't talked to me in years before that call." Nevertheless Landis stepped up his efforts, setting up an optimistically-titled 'Floyd Fairness Fund' to raise money to fight the charges.

Landis even took a leaf out of Lance's book, literally, by teaming up with author Loren Mooney to pen a book called 'Positively False' to explain why he succeeded. Journalist Sally Jenkins did the same for Lance with a bio entitled 'It's Not About The Bike'. Both tried to pretend PEDs played no part in the cyclist's success. Landis even claimed that he must have been set up as he was not doping. None of it worked for him though and in 2007 he was stripped of the Tour win, the first man ever to have the title taken off him for doping, and received a 2-year suspension from racing. Landis took the decision badly and turned to drink and painkillers, losing his family and his home in the process.

Meanwhile, Lance spent 2007 still living the celebrity life and along with Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Warrick Dunn, Jeff Gordon, Mia Hamm, Tony Hawk, Andrea Jaeger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning and Cal Ripken Jr founded Athletes For Hope. In 2008 he began to get back involved in cycling, buying a stake in Trek Cycles and bike component manufacturer SRAM, where he also acted as technical consultant. However it was not enough to scratch the itch and watching the Tour de France brought him out of retirement. On 9th September 2008 he announced publicly, with a celebrity girlfriend on his arm, that he would be returning to racing with the intention of competing in the 2009 Tour de France. Lemond called the decision a "nightmare".

At the announcement press conference, Lemond tried to ask Armstrong if VO2 max measurement should be used in dope testing, but Lance cut him off and threw out the cancer card to put a halt to any further difficult questioning. 2008 was also the year that the peloton showed how it felt about doping practices when Prentice Steffen was confronted and knocked out by former UPS rider Marty Jamison for speaking out about the team's doping program to David Walsh in 2001. Former rider turned journalist Paul Kimmage asked Armstrong about his "admiration for dopers" in a 2009 press conference and received a scathing reply, beginning a spat which went on for years. Kimmage went so far as to call Armstrong a "cancer in cycling".

It was 'reported' that Armstrong was willing to race for the season for no salary or bonus and post his internally tested blood results online for all to see. Of course none of that actually happened, but it took attention away from his detractors and he joined the Astana team for the season. Despite UCI rules that a rider has to be in an anti-doping program of regular testing for 6 months before being eligible to compete, Lance was allowed straight in to the Tour Down Under in January. As ever, the rules did not apply to Lance Armstrong as he was bigger than the sport itself.

He raced in the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon in March but crashed in a rider pile up on the first stage, breaking his collarbone. Lance returned to Austin, Texas for corrective surgery and 4 days later he was back on a bike, training. It was only the following month that it emerged that Armstrong had been involved in a controversial incident on 17th March, when a French doping agency, AFLD, official came to test him after a training ride. According to Lance, he asked for and was given permission to take a shower while team manager Johan Bruyneel checked the official's credentials. What had actually happened is that Armstrong had come back from a training ride to find the official waiting for him. While he dived into the house, in breach of doping regulations which state that a rider must remain in eyeshot of the tester at all times, Bruyneel blocked the tester from entering. Twenty minutes long enough, enough time to pump in some saline solution, a freshly showered Armstrong emerged to take his dope test. All a clear breach of regulations but Lance was, of course, cleared of any wrongdoing by the UCI and returned to racing at the Tour of the Gila, New Mexico, on 29th April.

The Tour De France was not quite the triumphant return that Armstrong had hoped for as he joined a team where there was already an established number one rider in Alberto Contador and the Spaniard was not about to just move over and let Lance dominate the way he was used to. Instead it became a vicious personal battle between the two, but Armstrong had the team itself backing him, to the point where Contador even had to buy a set of wheels from a rival team for the opening time trial in Nice! While Lance had his celebrity pals, such as Ben Stiller and Matthew McConaughy visiting him mid-race, Contador had his family and girlfriend.

Contador was not intimidated though and, with Armstrong just 0.22 seconds off the lead as the Tour headed into Andorra, Contador attacked and put himself 2 seconds into the lead of the race. After the stage, there was a confrontation between the pair according to Contador: "Everyone got out, and it was just Lance and me alone on the bus. He took me to the back room of the bus which used to be shared among everyone, but since he came back it was his, and he said, 'Don't fuck me'. That pushed the tension through the roof." In the morning when Contador came down for breakfast, Armstrong was sat alone at the team's big table and Contador sat at the other end. Neither spoke throughout their meal.

There were stories leaked to the Spanish media about how a Spanish team-mate tried to pass Contador a water bottle during a stage only for Lance to snatch it before he could take it. Armstrong drank from it and then passed it on to the Spaniard, who refused to drink it. When Contador needed a ride to the decisive time trial at Annecy, there were no team cars available as they were too busy taking Lance's family to the airport. Contador had anticipated that move though and previously arranged for his brother Fran to take him to the start. At the end of each day, Contador would go round each of his team-mates' rooms, well except for Lance of course, and thank them for their help on the stage.

Desperate to upstage Contador, after one stage win by the Spaniard, Armstrong announced that he would be competing again in the 2010 Tour with a new team, Radio Shack, and most of the Astana team would be going with him. The mind games were not enough to stop Contador though, who held on to win while Armstrong came in third, saying afterwards: "My relationship with Lance is zero. I think despite whatever his character is, he's still a great champion. He's won seven Tours and played a big part in this one, too. But it's different to speak at a personal level. I have never really admired him that much, or ever will."

2010 was to change everything. Disgraced 2006 'winner' Floyd Landis had been attempting to return to cycling, only to find himself blocked at every turn by Armstrong and other top cyclists who refused to have him in their team. On 30th April 2010 Landis sent an email to the then-CEO of USA Cycling, Steve Johnson, with a subject line which read: "nobody is copied on this one so it's up to you to demonstrate your true colours..." It was explosive. In it Landis detailed how he and the rest of the UPS team had used illegal performance-enhancing drugs and methods to dominate the sport. The email explained year-by-year exactly how it was all done and became the basis of for a lawsuit Landis would lodge against Armstrong and his cronies.

Landis filed a suit under the US's federal False Claims Act, which allows citizens to sue on behalf of the government if they believe the government has been defrauded. He alleged that Armstrong, Bruyneel, the three main shareholders in Tailwind Sports (Bill Stapleton, Barton Knaggs and Thomas Weisel), as well as Tailwind Sports itself, and the team's parent organisation Capital Sports had defrauded the US Government by accepting money from the US Postal Service and lying about the use of PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs). The government immediately launched an investigation into the case. It was filed under seal and only came to light when The Wall Street Journal revealed its existence later in the year. By the time The WSJ had reported on it, Lance had already failed in an attempt to settle the suit for $5m out of court and to have it thrown out of court. He had also tried to block the USADA investigation that Landis's email had sparked off. Despite the case and the investigation, Italian law authorities investigating Dr Michele Ferrari believe he met Lance in secret outside Italy.

At the end of June, Armstrong announced that 2010 would be his final Tour De France. It was probably a Tour too far for him as he struggled but he did help his team to the team victory. January 2011 saw him race his final professional race outside of the USA as he took part in the Tour Down Under. A month later he retired altogether from competitive cycling and instead competed in triathlons. Ironically he was in the lead in the world championship only to crash out on the bike and end up finished 23rd.

Fresh from corroborating Landis's accusations in a deposition to USADA, former team-mate of both him and Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton appeared on CBS News's 60 Minutes to discuss the allegations and court case. There he was asked if Lance injected EPO: "I saw it in his refrigerator. I saw him inject it, more than one time...He took what we all took, really no difference between Lance Armstrong and I'd say the majority of the peloton, you know. There was EPO. There was testosterone. And I did see a transfusion, a blood transfusion. But I was transfusing blood. And my teammate was. And I guarantee you every other team probably had two or three riders that were doing the same thing. I'd bet my life on it." Armstrong's lawyer Elliot Peters demanded an on-air apology from the show: "In the cold light of the morning, your story was either extraordinarily shoddy, to the point of being reckless and unprofessional, or a vicious hit-and-run job. In either case, a categorical on-air apology is required." CBS made a strong response: "Lance Armstrong and his lawyers were given numerous opportunities to respond to every detail of our reporting for weeks prior to the broadcast and their written responses were fairly and accurately included in the story. Mr Armstrong still has not addressed charges by teammates Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie that he used performance-enhancing drugs with them."

Hamilton had been a member of UPS until 2001, helping Lance win three Tour De France titles, before testing positive for banned substances after winning the Olympic individual time trial and Vuelta a Espana in 2004. He was banned for 2 years but then failed another test in 2009 after his return. He was then stripped of his gold medal. Following the interview, he attended an 'Outside Magazine' event in Aspen, after checking to see where Armstrong would be that night. With Lance due to make a public appearance in Tennessee, Hamilton attended but Armstrong turned up at the restaurant he was eating in after the event: "In comments punctuated with expletives, Lance asked, 'How much did 60 Minutes pay you? How much are they fucking paying you?' He said, 'When you're on the witness stand, we are going to fucking tear you apart. You are going to look like a fucking idiot.' Lance continued, 'I'm going to make your life a living....fucking....hell.' The whole episode took perhaps ten minutes and it really shook me up. I believe it was a clear effort to intimidate me and to try to discourage me from testifying against Lance."

On 3rd February 2012 federal prosecutors officially announced that they were dropping their criminal investigation with no charges or explanation. Armstrong celebrated by entering the 2012 Ironman World Championship and making another failed attempt to get Landis's lawsuit thrown out of court. However more allegations were appearing as another expose book was released, The Secret Race, in which Hamilton accuses Armstrong of bribing the UCI to cover up a positive drugs test. USADA CEO Travis Tygart also claims that Lance attempted to bribe the USADA in 2004, offering them a $250,000 'donation'. Then the USADA investigation concluded and named him as the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".

The report revealed that Armstrong had paid Dr Michele Ferrari over $1m between 1996 and 2006, despite Lance's claims that he severed all ties with the disgraced doctor in 2004. Ferrari gave advice on drugs, recovery times and even such advice as telling Lance to raise his saddle by 2mm. There were email communications between Dr Ferrari, his son and Lance from the period after 2004. Numerous eyewitness accounts of Ferrari injecting Armstrong with EPO on multiple occasions were included, as well as detailing how Ferrari had once "smuggled past a UCI official a litre of saline concealed under his rain coat and administered it to Armstrong to lower his haemocrit right before a blood check." As well as accusations of doping, Lance was also accused of trafficking drugs. Over two dozen witnesses, including 15 pro cyclists, 11 of them former teammates (Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie), as well as his former soigneur.

"In 1995 there appeared to me to be a major change in the peloton. It was becoming very difficult to keep up, and I learned that the reason was the widespread use of erythropoietin (EPO), a banned blood oxygen booster for which there was, at the time, no effective doping test. As the speed of the peloton increased we seemed to be confronted with the choice of using EPO or not performing well in races." - George Hincapie's 2012 USADA affidavit.

It is believed, particularly by Greg LeMond, that Lance won because he controlled the dosages of his teammates. He would set up his season aimed squarely at the Tour De France, missing many of the early season races because, according to the USADA: "by avoiding most of the early season races Armstrong would be avoiding most of the drugs testing to which he could be subjected in the lead up to the Tour." Hincapie admitted: "I was generally aware that Lance was using testosterone throughout the time we were teammates. For instance at a race in Spain in 2000 Lance indicated to me that he was feeling good and recovered, that he had just taken some 'oil'. When I heard that drug testing officials were at the hotel, I texted Lance to warn him to avoid the place. As a result, Lance dropped out of the race." Lance had even had one doctor, Pedro Celaya, replaced by Luis Garcia del Moral because Celaya "had not been aggressive enough for Armstrong in providing banned products". As Hamilton said: "In the village prior to the start of a stage during the 1998 Vuelta I was talking with Lance, and he complained about Dr Celaya, saying that he was way too conservative in the way he dispensed doping products. Lance's comment was something like 'might as well race clean, he wants to take your temperature to even give you a caffeine pill.'"

Armstrong's teammates were forced to join the doping programme and those that tried to back out, like Christian Vande Velde, who was terrified of needles, were called in to a meeting and told in no uncertain terms to follow Ferrari's instructions to the letter. David Zabriskie, who had begun cycling to get away from a difficult home life with a drug addicted father, had vowed never to take drugs. In 2001 he joined the UPS team, initially he was just put under mild pressure but in 2003 he was called into a meeting in a Girona cafe, along with Michael Barry. There Bruyneel and del Moral gave them both EPO and orders to join the rest of the team on the doping programme. Both riders acceded to keep their career alive, feeling cornered but seeing little option. Zabriskie ended up having a nervous breakdown.

As well as controlling dosages, Armstrong also had other ways to maintain his lead on the rest of the peloton. For example, when Hamilton and Iban Mayo had a particularly strong showing on the 2004 Dauphine he put pressure on the UCI to investigate the pair. According to Hamilton: "I later heard from Floyd Landis that Lance had stormed onto the team bus after the stage on June 10 throwing things and swearing. That same afternoon Landis had overheard Lance call UCI President Hein Verbruggen and say words to the effect of: ' You have to get these guys, Hamilton and Mayo are not normal.' As I recall, Floyd said, Lance 'called Hein, after Ventoux. Said you guys and Mayo were on some new shit, told Hein to get you. He knew they'd call you in. He's been talking shit nonstop. And I think it's right that you know."

Lance was also an intimidating man, who thought nothing of threatening people and even their families. In October 2010, Levi Leipheimer attended a dinner with Armstrong after testifing. During the dinner, Leipheimer's wife received a text message from Lance reading: "Run, don't walk". Leipheimer continued to ride for Radio Shack and, despite suffering the scorn of his teammates, he had a good season. Even so there was no team willing to offer him a deal for 2012 because he had testified.

None of this saw an end to Armstrong's bluster, as he once again tried to just ride out the storm: "These are the very same charges and the same witnesses that the Justice Department chose not to pursue after a two-year investigation. These charges are baseless, motivated by spite and advanced through testimony bought and paid for by promises of anonymity and immunity....USADA's malice, its methods, its star-chamber practices, and its decision to punish first and adjudicate later all are at odds with our ideals of fairness and fair play. I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drugs tests and never failed one. That USADA ignores this fundamental distinction and charges me instead of the admitted dopers says far more about USADA, its lack of fairness and this vendetta than it does about my guilt or innocence. Any fair consideration of these allegations has and will continue to vindicate me." It should be pointed out that most of those 'drugs tests' he referred to are simply just designed to establish biological passport values and are in no way tests for PEDs.

Bluster was not enough though and on 24th August 2012 the USADA announced that it had imposed a lifetime ban on Armstrong and wiped out all his competition results going back to the date 1st August 1998. Bruyneel, the former UPS team manager, was banned for 10 years, which he claimed was unfair as he was a Belgian living in Europe. WADA agreed and appealed the ban to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), which also agreed it was unfair. Unfortunately for Bruyneel, everyone else felt it was unfair due to being too lenient and his ban was extended. CAS also banned former UPS doctor Pedro Celaya for life and the team's former trainer Jose 'Pepe' Marti had his ban extended.

10th October 2012 saw the USADA's "Reasoned Decision" reach UCI, WADA and the World Triathlon Corporation and Armstrong was formally charged by USADA with running a doping ring. A week later 8 of Lance's 11 sponsors had cut all ties with him. On 22nd October UCI accepted the USADA findings and all 7 Tour De France titles were stripped from him, but none were awarded to other riders as 20 of the 21 riders who stood on the podiums for those 7 Tours were implicated in doping to some degree. Armstrong decided not to fight the ban, stating that it would not be worth the toll on his family. At the end of October, SCA announced an intention to go back to court to recoup the more than $7m they had paid to Lance. They put in a formal request for $12m in bonuses that they had paid Armstrong. It was reported that Lance's legal team offered a $1m settlement option. The Sunday Times also revisited their previous battle with Lance, initially by republishing the article he sued them over, under the title Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong, then sued him for the return of the original settlement they paid him plus interest and defence costs from the original trial.

In January 2013 Lance did an interview with American talk show host Oprah Winfrey and admitted to some of the allegations, including taking EPO and using blood transfusions to improve his performances. Even then, during the interview he could not resist the opportunity to have a dig at some of his detractors, telling Oprah with a smirk, speaking to Betsy Andreu directly: "I called you crazy, I called you a bitch, I called you a bitch, I called you all those things, but I never called you fat." Immediately following the interview, the US Justice Department decided to join Landis's whistleblower lawsuit against Armstrong. However, it was not all digs and bluster, Lance did fly to Italy to personally apologise to Simeoni for the way he was treated.

More allegations were released that year as the book Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour De France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever was released by authors Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell. They claimed that Lance's former girlfriend, singer Sheryl Crow, told FDA investigators that she had watched Armstrong get an illegal blood transfusion in 2004. May saw one of his final sponsors, Nike, cut ties with Lance. In September the UCI's new president, Brian Cookson, made a request to Lance to testify completely about his doping. Armstrong refused unless given a complete anmesty. That month he was also forced to give back his Olympic bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In November Lance settled a lawsuit with AIC (Acceptable Insurance Company) out of court, as they sought to recoup the $3m in bonuses they had paid him for winning the Tour De France between 1999 and 2001. Documents from that case were then filed by Landis's lawyers in April 2014. In them, Lance had, under oath, stated that Jose 'Pepi' Marti, Dr Pedro Celaya, Dr Luis Garcia del Moral and Dr Michele Ferrari had all provided him with doping products in the period up until 2005. Armstrong had also named people who had transported or acted as couriers and people who were aware of the doping practices. Despite all that, Armstrong made yet another attempt to have Landis's whistleblower suit thrown out of court, this time on a claim that the offences were time-barred. However US District Court judge Robert Wilkins denied the request stating that: "The court denies without prejudice the defendants' motion to dismiss the government's action as time-barred".

Another unsavoury incident involving Lance kept him in the public eye in December 2014 as he was involved in a hit-and-run incident. His SUV had hit 2 parked cars in Aspen, Colorado and long-time girlfriend (and now wife) Anna Hansen took the blame, claiming that she had been driving. Hansen said: "Lance had a little bit to drink, so I was driving. I was not drinking." Three days later she changed her statement, admitting that Armstrong had been driving but said he was not drunk.

In February 2015 an arbitration panel decided in SCA's favour by 2-1, ordering Lance and Tailwind Sports Corp to pay SCA $10m. In their decision they stated that: "Perjury must never be profitable" and "it is almost certainly the most devious sustained deception ever perpetuated in sporting history". It took until September for a final settlement to be reached, with Lance paying an undisclosed fee and issuing a formal, public apology to SCA.

Lance was then invited to make a speech to Professor Roger A. Pielke's Introduction to Sports Governance class at the University of Boulder. He did so in 2016 and admitted there, for the first time publicly, that he began doping in "late spring of 1995". Despite that admittance, Armstrong made another attempt to have the whistleblower case dismissed, which again failed and it proceeded to court. In April 2018 he settled out of court with the US Department of Justice and agreed to pay $5m. He had been paid $31m between 2001 and 2004! Tailwind Sports escaped by dissolving as a business entity, while Bruyneel is in default after refusing to answer summons as a Belgian citizen. Since then Lance has admitted that he would not change anything that happened if he had a second chance, telling NBC Sports in 2019: "We did what we had to do to win. It wasn't legal, but I wouldn't change a thing - whether it's losing a bunch of money, going from hero to zero." He was also the subject of an ESPN documentary, entitled 'Lance' in 2020. In it he was asked if he would recommend PEDs to his son, who was playing American football for his college at the time: "If we were put in the position where Luke came to me and said either, 'I'd like to try this' or 'I'm doing this', I would say that's a bad idea, you're a freshman in college. It might be a different conversation if you're in the NFL, but at this point in your life, in your career, not worth it."

"Lance pointed casually to the fridge, I opened it and there, on the door, next to a carton of milk, was a carton of EPO, each stoppered vial standing upright, little soldiers in their cardboard cells." - Hamilton.

Despite having to sell his Aspen mansion and Gulfstream private jet to pay legal expenses, Lance is still estimated to be worth in excess of $50m, with the ability to earn huge sums for personal appearances. There was one travel company, called Out There, that were advertising a package back in 2020 called 'The Move Mallorca 2020'. There were just 12 places available priced at $30,000 apiece to go on a bike tour with Lance and fellow doper George Hincapie. A normal tour of Mallorca (over a longer period as well) would cost $4,250 from the same company without Armstrong. Who said cheats never prosper?

One thing that is for sure, nothing has really changed since then, with the usage of TUEs being exposed in recent years, which led to Floyd Landis to say: "Team Sky looks exactly like what we were doing - exactly. So they were able to do that without drugs, but we weren't? People haven't evolved over the last eight years."

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To read the previous episode in the Sporting Villains series, David Beckham, click here.

Written by Tris Burke July 04 2023 10:08:40