Bad Blood (13 page)

Prior to the final Tour time trial in 2001, he was scathing about Jan Ullrich’s level of pre-Tour preparation. ‘Where was Ullrich when I was here in April, in the pissing rain, riding the time-trial course?’

But then the Armstrong-Ferrari-Bruyneel combination always
went
to extraordinary lengths to defend their supremacy. Nothing was left to chance. Forget the allegations of doping (always fiercely denied, and backed up by countless negative dope tests): there were other incidents that summed up their collective attitude towards the spirit of fair play.

Armstrong understood that Ferrari was notoriously indiscreet. As the mystery about him grew, the tales about him achieved the status of urban myths. He was once supposedly spotted racing in a triathlon in Lavarone, wearing a fake race number, illegally ‘pacing’ his daughter, Sara, while she competed for the Italian national team.

Despite his unassuming appearance, Ferrari’s ego demanded recognition. Among his most famous gaffes, was his own revelation that he would ‘talk’ Armstrong through the Tour, simply by watching the race on TV. ‘Lance calls me from his bike,’ Ferrari told Danish newspaper
Ekstra Bladet
.

During the Alpine stages of the 2000 Tour, as Marco Pantani did his damnedest to dethrone the champion, Ferrari advised the American via a link from Bruyneel’s mobile phone to Armstrong’s in-race radio earpiece. When Pantani attacked, Ferrari, watching in front of his TV screen at home in Italy, told Armstrong to remain calm and not to waste energy, because he believed that the Italian had overreached himself. And Ferrari was proved right.

‘Obviously it wasn’t good to let Pantani go,’ recalled Armstrong. ‘But how fast was he really going? How long could he sustain that? And Ferrari would know the answer to that, because he is above all a mathematician. A brilliant mathematician with a ton of experience.’

This was the Tour de France by remote control.

If Greg LeMond’s interpretation was that the Italian was a ‘crazed scientist’, Armstrong preferred to call Ferrari ‘misunderstood’.

He described Ferrari as ‘very, very smart’, but also acknowledged that he was prone to painful gaffes. Ferrari, Lance said, had ‘made some incredibly bad mistakes in terms of press and
interviews
, and the way he reacted to certain questions. I’ve known him for a long time and … we’ve known him to be fair and honest and correct and ethical, so we cannot punish the guy, because that’s the person we see.’

The Italian case against Ferrari over doping offences was, Armstrong said, trumped up. ‘It wouldn’t make it through the first five minutes in a court in the United States of America, where you have ethics and you have codes, and you have laws and you have judges that are unbiased … Ferrari’s not getting a fair shake.’

Lance later used similar language when, in 2005,
L’Equipe
published allegations – which Lance fiercely denied – that EPO had been present in his urine samples during the 1999 Tour. After this, would he ever return to France? he was asked: ‘No way. I wouldn’t get a fair shake in France on the roadside, in the doping controls, or in the lab.’ Yet Armstrong had praised the same French anti-doping laboratory, at Châtenay-Malabry in Paris, in 2004 and described it as having ‘an excellent reputation’.

In Pau on that July afternoon in 2001, Walsh and Armstrong linked their fates, like a latter day Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. The press conference had begun amiably enough, an American journalist asking Lance about chateaux and wine, the German media asking him for an assessment of Jan Ullrich. Then Armstrong looked up to see that Walsh was the next questioner.

‘Glad you could make it, David,’ growled Lance.

It was an extraordinary encounter, Walsh on the offensive, Lance maintaining his cool, their positions entrenched by mutual loathing. The Irishman appeared willing to stake his reputation on his ability to topple the icon, to force him into submission. But Armstrong was too tough to fold in front of us all and gladly locked horns with him.

He defended the Italian: ‘I’ve never denied the relationship. I believe Dr Ferrari’s an honest man. Until somebody’s proven guilty, then I see them as innocent. If there’s a conviction then we will re-evaluate the relationship.’

In response, Walsh raged at Armstrong, like a demented Catholic priest – ‘
Yew preeesent yerself as the cleaaanest of the cleaaan!
’ he bellowed in his high brogue – but the Texan didn’t buckle. The confrontation was a tie. When it was over, Lance strode out into the afternoon sunshine, Stapleton and The Entourage – PR men, brand managers, personal assistants, bodyguards and sunglasses reps – hot on his heels. He stepped into a US Postal Service team car, no doubt turning the air blue as he was sped away. After that, every Armstrong press conference was strictly controlled.

Nonetheless, Walsh’s tirade had gained him some support. Allied to Ferrari’s long-standing ambivalence over doping, Armstrong’s admissions of regular contacts with the Italian and his refusal to distance himself from him during the doping trial all provoked debate.

Lance had constantly played down the Ferrari connection, yet seemed prepared to risk his image over the relationship. Was Walsh a fantasist? Was Greg LeMond simply as bitter as some said?

And even then, even if they were both as wrong as The Entourage insisted they were, why wouldn’t Lance and Stapleton, now so focussed on the global appeal of the Armstrong brand, ditch Ferrari until the court case was over? Why was Lance so fiercely loyal to him?

I watched the camera crews film Armstrong’s departure, turned back to see Walsh holding court in a huddle of journalists with notebooks, and realised that I would soon have to choose sides.

Alastair Campbell and Lance Armstrong had some similarities. Both had undergone a rebirth of sorts. An evangelical chord had been struck between them; Campbell, once a hard-drinking, stressed-out hack but now a born-again athlete, had, like so many, been smitten with the recovered, near-evangelical cancer victim and had seen a parallel in his own battle for redemption and understanding.

There was another strand of empathy between them. Both believed themselves to be misunderstood and misrepresented.

They loathed journalists and the mainstream media, particularly when they strayed off message. As Campbell wrote, a little pompously, in his
Times
piece: ‘Armstrong was attracted to meeting someone who feels even more deeply about the press and its misrepresentations than he does.’

It was ironic, then, given that Campbell was writing for
The Times
, that Armstrong’s media nemesis was Walsh, chief sports writer on the
Sunday Times
.

I pondered on whether it was legitimate to use Campbell’s interest in Armstrong to my own advantage. But, ostracised by The Entourage, I didn’t ponder for long. So I called him.

I told Campbell about Lance’s professionalism, his frightening focus, about how he’d taken cycling to a whole new level of wealth and prestige. With a lot of British media outlets now shunned by Armstrong in the aftermath of the Walsh confrontation, I told him that, yes, I was sure Lance would love to meet Tony Blair’s former right-hand man, but that things with the British media were delicately poised.

But I also knew that Lance, friend and Texan neighbour to ‘Dubya’, would respond positively to an invitation from somebody so close to Blair. This way he would have both sides of the transatlantic alliance covered – an ‘in’ with both the White House and Number 10.

Stapleton soon warmed to Campbell’s interest in Lance. Earlier when I’d embarked on a charm offensive it had taken days to get a reply. Not this time. A few hours later Armstrong’s agent responded: ‘Lance would be happy to do this.’

Campbell and Armstrong finally got together in Lance’s apartment in Girona in north-east Spain. He had moved there with Kristin and the kids after the atmosphere towards him in France, both from the media and the public, had become overwhelmingly hostile. But now his wife and three children were long gone, and when Campbell turned up, Sheryl Crow was at
Armstrong’s
side. I had negotiated access for a photographer, a rare privilege, but
The Times
ran only a couple of images. In contrast,
procycling
published almost a dozen. Lance, a confirmed atheist, posed a little eerily in front of the chapel he’d created for his Catholic ex-wife. This was the king in his castle.

‘Losing and dying,’ he told Campbell at one point. ‘It’s the same thing.’

The pictures showed Campbell and Crow sipping coffee and Lance and Alastair pottering in his bike workshop. Lance, prompted by Sheryl, ribbed Campbell about those weapons of mass destruction. Campbell defended himself and Blair. Lance, Sheryl and Alastair all agreed that President Bush was actually quite a bright guy and not at all like his public image.

Campbell did pause on Armstrong’s fight to clear his name against the rumours of doping, and Lance trotted out the usual defences. He was the most tested athlete on the planet and he’d never tested positive. It was a French conspiracy, he said, a witch-hunt. The French media were anti-American, even more so in the aftermath of the Iraq war. They were bitter after losing the Tour for so many years and were now so cynical that they couldn’t believe his story. Campbell wrote: ‘I’m not bad at reading people and either he’s a good liar or telling the truth.’

It made for an intriguing read, even if it had the tone of a press release in parts. It was unquestioning, and accepting of the Armstrong legend, of the tenets of hard work, commitment and desire. Lance even pulled out some new bumper stickers: ‘Go hard or go home,’ he told Campbell, when asked for any tips for young athletes.

‘
Don’t Mess With Texas, Go Hard or Go Home, Ride Like Ya Stole Something, Live Strong …
’

The more interviews Lance gave, the more of these inanities he trotted out. On a slow afternoon, we would sit around in the
procycling
office coming up with clichés in the style of Lance. Travel writer, raconteur and cycling anorak, Tim Moore, who spent some long hours with me in the Tour car one year, was
annoyingly
good at the daytime TV self-help platitudes that Armstrong often resorted to.

‘
Hey – I climbed a mountain and when I got to the top, I met a guy I liked. And you know what? That guy was me!
’
Tim intoned in a flat, bored drawl as we motored onwards through the Alps
.

We weren’t alone; in response to the epidemic of ‘Livestrong’ wristbands covering the planet, a website selling ‘Livewrong’ wristbands, T-shirts and baseball caps soon popped up. As ever, Lance demanded a reaction; he didn’t leave people indifferent to him.

Campbell and I talked again as that year’s Tour ended in Paris. Could I arrange accreditation for him for the final stage? He wanted to write a piece on Lance’s historic win and was hopeful he’d be able to have a chat with The Great Man too. Late at night on the Tour’s final Saturday, as we drove north towards Paris, my phone flashed in the darkness. It was another text message from Alastair. ‘When can I get the passes?’ he asked. We finally got to the Meridien hotel at about two in the morning, had a nightcap and then turned in. Just before eight the next morning my phone rang. It was Campbell again. He was downstairs in reception. He wanted his tickets.

‘Give me twenty minutes to get dressed,’ I told him.

‘I’m wearing an orange T-shirt,’ he said.

‘I know what you look like, Alastair,’ I said.

He was in shorts and trainers having jogged his way over from the British ambassador’s residence, where he was staying with his family. As we finally shook hands, I realised he’d been standing in a blast of air conditioning in a sweaty T-shirt, waiting for me.

In person, Campbell was immediately charming and chatty. We talked for ten minutes, he thanked me for the VIP passes and then, narrowing his eyes, he leaned forward and asked: ‘Tell me, Jeremy – why is it that the French don’t like Lance?’

Over the years, I have developed several answers to this question. Simon Barnes, chief sports writer on
The Times
, had asked me the same thing a couple of years earlier and then filed a
piece
highlighting French chauvinism that concluded: ‘The French just don’t like the cut of his jib.’

The reality was far more complicated than simply Lance’s inability (and unwillingness) to charm his hosts. My usual responses to the ‘why do they hate Lance’ question ranged from ‘because he’s not French’, ‘because he makes it look too easy’, ‘because they like to think he’s on drugs’, ‘because he can be a pompous ass’ to ‘because they’re uncouth bigots’. Sometimes, it had been all of the above.

I paused for a moment, looked at Campbell and said: ‘Maybe it’s because they feel disconnected from him and don’t really understand him, his culture or his attitude. They respect his achievement but I don’t think they like him or warm to him. It’s all the talk about him as a “brand”. He’s too much of a ready-made hero. That makes them suspicious. Tradition dictates that no rider should be bigger than the Tour itself, but these days that’s happened with Lance.’

I told him about the way that Armstrong black-balled those who challenged him, like French rider Christophe Bassons and doping whistle-blower Filippo Simeoni, the Italian who had self-sabotaged his career by opting to testify against Ferrari: ‘Some people feel that he was bullying Simeoni, that he was making his personal gripe more important than the Tour itself. Some say that he was taking control of a situation that wasn’t his to take control of …’

Alastair Campbell listened intently, leaned in a little more, and then, with a wry smile, said: ‘Hmm, yes – but I quite like that, you see …’

LEARNING THE HARD WAY

MESSAGE BOARDS PULSE
with the poisonous, fetid glee of anonymous, untraceable hate. They post their rage in pixels, little darts of fury, for all to see. They hate Greg LeMond for his jealousy, his bitterness, for his attempts to debunk Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton.

They hate Greg LeMond for believing that Americans could cheat or lie.