Lance Armstrong: The End?

There was a bombshell Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes”: Armstrong tested positive for EPO at the Tour de Suisse in 2001. Armstrong and his team manager, Johan Bruyneel, went to the International Cycling Union and reached an agreement in which the positive result would be wiped away in exchange for a substantial gift.

This has been known for some time now. Armstrong has actually made two gifts to the International Cycling Union: $25,000 at that time, and one at $100,000 three years later. The message sent was this: Not only has Armstrong never doped, he actually finances research on doping. If this positive control exists, that’s all well and good; it changes the perspective and gives an altogether other meaning to those gifts. The news came out for the first time in the Wall Street Journal, citing Floyd Landis, the fiendish, the unstable Landis … and let’s leave it at that. Who’s not going to believe this inveterate liar Landis?

Except that on Sunday night, the story was taken up again by Tyler Hamilton, the loyal lieutenant and friend of Armstrong, who was always so reluctant to attack him (1).

“Who told you that Lance tested positive for EPO in 2001 at the Tour de Suisse?”

“Lance himself.”

“He wasn’t worried?”

“No. Lance was relaxed. He told me that his entourage and some people at the UCI had found a point of agreement. He told me that a lot of people got involved. I don’t know the exact details ….”

This allusion to a possible collusion between the International Cycling Union and a member of his team — that’s huge. If that were to be verified, we would no longer just talk about a doped hero or about doping in a team; we would be talking about an international federation that cleared a doped athlete for money, in order to…finance doping research! That’s original. Incidentally, notice that the president of the International Cycling Union at the time was the Dutch Hein Verbuggen, ardent defender of Armstrong and now…vice president of the International Olympic Committee.

Since he is a member of the vice-presidents club, let’s point out that Bill Stapletown, Armstrong’s perennial agent, was vice-president of the American Olympic Committee when this committee ordered (to Don Caitlin) the analysis of three B samples, of three positive controls in testosterone of Armstrong in the nineties. Fortunately, the three B samples came out negative.

We are no longer in front of a juiced athlete. We are seeing a sort of Al Capone on pedals who controls everything, intimidates everyone, imposing his culture of secret, rigorous protector of the two grand traditions of professional cycling: lies and silence.

The godfather, thus, but a godfather to the end. Almost no one is afraid anymore. The secrets are coming out. The loyal lieutenants, pressed by federal agents, speak in order to save their own hide.

That’s the case with Tyler Hamilton. And even more so with George Hincapie, who had declared, also under oath, that Armstrong and he took EPO together. Hincapie isn’t the last link. There is still Popovych, Leipheimer, Livingston, Bruynell, and Hincapie, a very fat piece that is an authority in the current pack. Hincapie is the one that will signal when it’ll be every man for himself.

I’ve said a little quickly that, except for that bomb of the 2001 Tour de Suisse, we learned nothing on this “60 Minutes” program. I would like to add: The cycling community has learned nothing. For months now, it doesn’t stop. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal; there were those in the New York Times; there was the interview with Floyd Landis given to Paul Kimmage of the Sunday Times; there was the May issue of Bicycling, a long paper from another ex-friend of Lance, Bill Strickland. The title on the front page: “He’s done.” The title of the article: “Endgame.” The end could not be better evoked.

But for millions of Americans that do not follow cycling — who only know Armstrong through his yellow Livestrong bracelet and his foundation to fight cancer (that has raised $400 million in 14 years) — it was a difficult night, even a painful one. They have begun to realize that it wasn’t a French plot; that Hamilton, Landis, Hincapie, are not jealous; that, according to their own values, the values of the heartlands of America, their hero is a liar and a cheater.

(1) Recall that Hamilton changed sides after being coerced by the Grand Jury, which was investigating allegation of misuse of public funds to finance doping.