A Record in the Midst of the Storm

At 39 years of age, George Hincapie celebrates his record-setting 17th participation in a Tour, while the International Cycling Union unsuccessfully attempts to find out if he has been sanctioned.

George Hincapie, a 39-year-old New Yorker with a Colombian father and a long career, has always been associated with Lance Armstrong. There was not a single finish-line celebration during any of the Texan’s seven-year dynasty in which one cannot recall that Hincapie – his loyal George – was the only one who accompanied him without fail during his seven victorious Tours, as well as before his cancer. It was the pride of Hincapie’s career, the pride of a lifelong pack member. However, when the moments of departure and the record arrived, the same George, always affable and smiling, hardly allowed the words “Lance” and “Armstrong” to come out of his mouth.

He did not speak about Armstrong when he announced, surprisingly, during the middle of the Dauphiné, that he would retire in August, only a few days after the United States Anti-Doping Agency formally charged the Texan and four of the people in his circle with doping based on the testimony of ten cyclists.

Neither did he speak much about Armstrong’s problems on the eve of the beginning of the Tour, at a press conference organized to celebrate that, upon finishing the 2012 season, Hincapie would become the cyclist with the most completed Tours (17), breaking his tie with the great Joop Zoetemelk, whose record was thought to be insurmountable. Hincapie then quickly passed over the subject of Armstrong: “I’m sad he is going through this,” he said, “[h]e’s done so many things for the sport. His accomplishments are incredible.” And upon reviewing his Tour years, he put him [Armstrong] almost on the same level as Cavendish, the Englishman with whom he launched in sprints for a time; or with Evans, the Australian for whom he is currently squiring and who he helped to win the last Tour. “Anyway,” he concluded, “my best memory of the Tours is having met my wife, the mother of my two children, in the celebrations in Paris from the 2003 Tour.”*

Evidently, having arrived at this point, there was no one who has not concluded that Hincapie’s surprising coldness was a sign that he was one of the 10 who had informed on Armstrong before the USADA. This interpretation also benefited from the fact that Hincapie, along with Leipheimer, Zabriskie and Vandevelde, all ex-companions of Armstrong, suddenly and jointly resigned their positions on the United States team for the London Games. According to knowledgeable sources about the case, in order to accuse Armstrong, the only cyclist prosecuted by the USADA, the four must have readily admitted to having been doping themselves. It was a negotiation, the sources relate, very much in the American style: You accuse Armstrong or we sanction you, because Landis and Hamilton, two already retired and talkative ex-teammates, have told us that you were doing it, too. The confession was penalized with two years’ suspension, but, according to the same sources, due to the quartet’s good conduct, and also to Jonathan Vaughters, manager of Garmin and another name on the list of collaborators, the penalty was reduced to one-quarter, or six months, with the right to choose the dates to be served – after the Tour as the four are participating this year, and without the Games. They were also promised it would be kept secret at least until September, when the USADA will be forced to send all of their evidence to Armstrong.

Of course, all of this reached the ears of the International Cycling Union, who the USADA has left outside of the investigation and the informational loop. According to sources close to its president, Irishman Pat McQuaid, the ICU, worried about the possible concession, has sent two letters to the USADA seeking information about whether sanctioned cyclists were running the Tour. He is still awaiting their response.

*Editor’s Note: The original quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.