Pants on fire

It was the internet that did it for me. I’d been watching the Tour de France every year since the early 90s, but I was hardly a cycling devotee. So whilst I didn’t exactly enjoy watching Lance Armstrong dominate the Tour for seven long years, that was because he always won it so easily with very little in the way of competition rather than due to doping-based doubts.

I used to read the Sunday Times during that period too, and I remember reading pieces by David Walsh, one of my favourite sports writers, questioning the legitimacy of Armstrong’s accomplishments. But his was a lone voice at that point. The rest of the media and wider world had chosen, wrongly, to believe in miracles.

Then a few years later, in the wake of innumerable doping scandals, I began to read a couple of cycling forums, where the equation was put quite simply. Given that all Lance’s rivals were subsequently busted for or implicated in doping, with EPO and blood transfusions pervading the peloton throughout the period, was it really possible that a clean rider could beat all those guys not just once, but dominate them seven years on the spin? True, there was no smoking gun. But all the available evidence pointed to one sad conclusion.

Documentary-maker Alex Gibney was one of the believers. The Armstrong Lie was originally conceived as a straightforward document of Lance’s 2009 Tour comeback. But perhaps Gibney, who has previous in profiling corrupt institutions (Mea Maxima Culpa, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), knew in the back of his mind what was to come. The film he ended up making is a curious hybrid of doping exposé and a reassessment of his own beliefs and choices.

So although there are frequent interview excerpts from a rueful, post-Oprah Lance, the film is liberally sprinkled with the cocky, breezy denials from when he was in his pomp. If I really was doping, he always said, then how come I’m the world’s most tested athlete and have still never failed a test? Think of all my sponsorship deals, everything that’s at stake. How stupid would I have to be to risk all that? Although such boasts are grimly hilarious now, Gibney demonstrates how easy it was for us to be sucked in.

Walsh doesn’t appear in the film as much as you’d think, but he neatly sums up the faustian pact that the cycling establishment entered into in 1999. After the debacle of the Festina affair, in theory the organisers were desperate for a much slower, and thus demonstrably cleaner, Tour. Instead, they got a rider hitherto not regarded as a Grand Tour contender who had come from the brink of death to win the race with dismissive ease. Walsh recalls the laughter from his colleagues when Lance attacked decisively at ridiculous speed on the climb to Sestrières. And yet, they and the sport’s top brass chose to embrace a different narrative – Armstrong as superman, a shining beacon of hope for cancer sufferers everywhere and, of course, a revenue-generating goldmine.

The film barely has time to scratch the surface of the incredible lengths the riders and management of US Postal went to in order to perpetrate, in the US Anti-Doping Agency’s words, “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping program that sport has ever seen”. I’m slowly working my way through recent books on the subject, of which former team-mate Tyler Hamilton’s The Secret Race is a must-read if you have any interest in the sport. I must also recommend a fantastic blog called 100 Tours, 100 Tales.

And I recently finished Wheelmen, a more workmanlike account of Armstrong’s web of intrigue which nonetheless provides some interesting nuggets, particularly regarding the sinister ties between Lance’s financial backers and the president of cycling’s governing body, the UCI’s Hein Verbruggen. Almost incredibly, Armstrong was failing tests as far back as 1999. On that occasion, Verbruggen simply notified his team of the positive and gave them ample opportunity to find an ointment and backdate a prescription to explain away the result (a conversation which Verbruggen denies).

Gibney does get surprising access to Dr Michele Ferrari, the mastermind behind Lance’s doping program, who seems happy to skirt around the truth while clearly having no guilt whatsoever about his actions. It’s worth remembering, as noted in The Secret Race, that the reason why these guys are dicking around transfusing sportsmen rather than doing genuine good is that they’re mediocre doctors. As much as they convince themselves that they’re pushing the boundaries of human capabilities or some other Higher Purpose bollocks, they’re basically enablers and pushers. What with all that sneaking around and clandestine rendezvous in middle-of-nowhere lay-bys, the whole business couldn’t have been edifying, however much they try to convince themselves otherwise.

The final act of The Armstrong Lie, the 2009 comeback, unsurprisingly feels like a different film, but still has its moments. Lance was parachuted into the Astana team, run by his longtime partner in crime Johan Bruyneel, and already blessed with a talented leader in the form of young Spaniard Alberto Contador, and proceeded to run roughshod all over him except, crucially, where it mattered most – on the roads. Watching the slimy Bruyneel explode with rage when Contador attacks to consolidate his yellow jersey, because it might put Armstrong’s place in the top 5 under threat, is immensely satisfying.

And there’s a telling scene where Contador is having a press conference outside the team hotel. Cut to Lance, watching him from within and making snidey comments. Gibney clearly wanted to make something more than a mere hatchet job, but I was left almost begging for more explicit scenes of the Lance-as-A grade-asshole variety. (Contador, of course, got busted for doping himself in the end, let we feel too sorry for him.)

We also get glimpses of how the film might have been – would have been, had the house of cards not come tumbling down. Although Gibney is clearly wary of Armstrong, he can’t help getting caught up in the emotion as the Texan battles his way up Mont Ventoux to salvage a podium place. The racing footage is compelling, although it’s obviously overshadowed by the deeper questions. Armstrong denies doping in 2009, but blood data suggests a transfusion before the Ventoux stage. Who knows whether he was riding clean before that. His relative failure (make no mistake, he came back solely to win) could have been due to old age. Maybe we’ll never know.

As many talking heads point out, it was this very comeback that proved to be Lance’s undoing. More naysayers were coming out of the woodwork, ex-colleagues and associates with proof of alleged cheating. Urine samples from the 1999 Tour had retrospectively tested positive for EPO, and a UCI cover-up hadn’t convinced everyone. Lance being Lance, he went on the attack, figuring coming back to win another Tour would stick it right to his enemies.

It only served to wind them up more. And the disgraced Floyd Landis, furious that he had been ostracised from the sport after getting busted whilst the leader whose doping regimen he’d followed was waltzing back into the fold, finally decided to ‘fess up, setting the wheels in motion for the federal investigation which would eventually lead to USADA’s Reasoned Decision, and thence to Oprah.

Of course, neither that nor his interview with Gibney amount to anything like a full confession. Armstrong has never dished the dirt on other riders, never co-operated with USADA or other enforcement agencies, never apologised for the horrendous character assassinations of former friends and colleagues who’d dared to speak out. And frankly, would it change anything at this point if he were to play ball? It might be satisfying for some of us on a vindictive level, but we would probably dismiss it as Lance doing what he had to do to keep most of his money, or telling people what they want to hear.

Meanwhile, he will always have defenders, who point to the vast amounts of cash and goodwill he’s raised for cancer charities. Who believe his argument that everyone else was doping, so it was the only logical choice. Which, by the way, is nonsense – not only were there men in that era who tried to ride clean (the film fails to mention poor Christophe Bassons) but also, whether due to money, power or sheer physiological luck, some dopers are more equal than others. Far from creating a level playing field, the sport becomes, in short, a clusterfuck. But still I’ve had arguments with people who insist that Lance has been unfairly singled out.

In truth, as an ultra-competitive, ruthless dude who got away with the biggest sporting fraud of all time for many years, it’s doutful that it’s even in Lance Armstrong’s character to see himself as anything other than a victim. It’s bit much to expect him to turn contrite and achieve redemption. Sometimes there’s no such thing as a perfect ending. But still, what a story.