If I mention the names Les Alp's Du Huez, the Col De Madeleine, the Tourmalet many readers would probably have no idea what I was talking about. If I however mention the name Lance Armstrong, all of you will know whom I am talking about.
Ironically the cycling star made his name by tackling and conquering the above-mentioned peaks in the French Alps. But maybe in 2011 Lance Armstrong will be faced with his toughest climb yet, this time the mythical peak is called the Mont Du Justice.
Over the past fifteen years the worlds hardcore cycling community along with many hardened new recruits to the world of velo racing have watched in amazement as Lance Armstrong along with his comrades have performed seemingly heroic feats over the alpine passes of Europe. But little did we all know how sinister the world of cycling; sponsorship and sports administration really is until the lid came off the world of cycling.
This story is about a falling hero who tries desperately to maintain his evangelistic values through his Livestrong brand while day-by-day the evidence against him reaches the glacial heights of those peaks he once used to ride in the peloton.
A few years ago when I was living in Europe at a time when my body was in a far better shape as it is today, I could claim to being pretty fit. Back in those days I used to do long distance triathlons, a sport for the mentally insane, a purely sadist way of self-indulgence at every level.
During this period I to was enthralled by the great sport of cycling. The heroic feats achieved by spindly little men on bicycles as they went up and down the Alps and Pyrenees seemingly without even breaking into a sweat.
It was during this period I became fascinated by one Messer Armstrong. As his juggernaut of a team decisively blew away all of the opposition on his way to standing atop the podium step on the Champs Elyse’s at the end of each July, I wondered how hard it really was to ride the Tour De France course.
So it was in the summer of 2001, just a month or two before the Grand Depart of the great race I set out with my own goal of completing two thirds of the intended route for the 2001 version of the great race on my own bicycle. By the way, that same year, 200,1 would see Messer Armstrong and Co successful once again in gaining first prize.
I intended to do the course on my own bicycle, with no mechanical advantage or support, no millions of screaming fans waving and yelling at me as I rode past, no television cameras watching me as I stood up on my pedals and danced to the top of the Alps, and finally, yes finally, with no assistance from any performance enhancing substances, in other words, no drugs. I had made the commitment to myself that I would remain clean and honest to the soul; there would be no blood transfusions for me on my lap around France.
As I commenced my journey full of confidence and feeling as fit as I had ever been, I imagined what I could possibly feel like when I had completed the 2'715 kms I intended to ride. I didn’t have a masseuse to rub me down each night, nor a chef to prepare me calorific bowls of pasta bursting energy.
I will save you all the details of pain I went through on that ride, also my uttering’s about French drivers, the miserable weather, the endless switchbacks on the climbs that wound their way up to the sky like a stairway to heaven, or should I say, my stairway to hell. Or about the blisters on my backside, the flat tires and failing brakes, it was all an absolute nightmare.
I started to think, how do the pros do it, day after day, up and up into those mountains, all at a speed that I could only reach on the steepest of the downhill sections.
Then I thought, there is more to this race than I was thinking, there was more to cycling than I was imagining, much more than people see on their high definition television screens, that is for sure.
Doping in sport has been around for years, centuries in fact. In 1807 Abraham Wood admitted to using opium to assist his performance in a walking race in London. It isn’t a secret, nor is it a new phenomenon. We, as general members of society have become more and more skeptical when records are broken, medals are won, times are surpassed than at any other time before, and all for good reason.
But where should we draw the line?
Messer Armstrong has created a brand of the magnitude of that of Oprah Winfrey, Obama Barrack and Bill Clinton. He is ‘the man’ behind the disease called cancer; living proof that so called miracles of hope and destiny can mix together to fight off evil.
Or are the facts something completely different?
What Lance Armstrong brought to cycling was something the UCI, the sports governing body, could never have manufactured. A story book tale of how a young man on the brink of death, rose from his hospital bed, to find fame and fortune from riding his bicycle (very fast), while at the same time becoming the prince on the white horse, or shall we say white Trek bicycle, for so many people around the world.
We, yes you and me, we love heroes, we love those amongst the nearly seven billion of us, who from time to time, rise above adversity to do things that are seemingly miracles, beyond the grasp of the average human being. People who inspire us, motivate us and generally make us feel good about human beings. Names like Nelson Mandela, Aung San Su Kyi, Usain Bolt, Roger Federer, Andrea Bocelli to name but a few. But as fickle as the human species is, we also love to see scandal around our heroes as well as their ultimate demise. Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant a couple of names of current contenders who are struggling with their once iconic status.
In Messer Armstrong and Co we have another type of phenomenon happening, a phenomenon, like that of the story behind Facebook, (see the movie The Social Network), its creation and suspect beginnings, that I am 100% positive, will also see the life story of Messer Armstrong making its scripted way on to the Hollywood screens in the not to distant future.
I have come to learn that the professional sport of cycling is infested with various diseases beyond belief. Try as some people may to reinvent the sport from the bottom up, but as in politics you have to cut out the viruses that administer the sport at the top first. Remember a fish always stinks from the head.
Imagine this, your eighteen year old son, who loves cycling and has spent years being nurtured up through the junior ranks, supported by you, his devoted parents, comes home one day and announces that he has the chance to join a professional cycling team. You are ecstatic you can’t believe, it your son is going to be a professional cyclist, maybe he will even one day ride in the Tour de France.
It would probably be the proudest moment of your life. Then I ask you to visit this website,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling. Now tell me how you feel, about your eighteen old son, getting involved in the sport of professional cycling?
Why don’t we look back at the Tour de France top ten place getters from 1999 to 2008 and study the impact positive dope tests and doping scandals have had on the credibility of the event.
The 1999 Tour was supposed to be the Tour of Renewal after the disaster of 1998, when the French Festina team was kicked out of the race after a team car was stopped, searched and contained to found a large consignment of illegal drugs.
It wasn’t much of a fresh start because three members of that 1998 Festina team finished in the top ten. Looking back over the past ten editions of the Tour, I have crossed through the names of all riders who have tested positive, served a suspension or were significantly linked to an anti-doping investigation at any time in their career.
Riders with question marks hanging over them are marked with asterisks. Each rider’s offence or alleged offence is clearly explained the first time they appear in this article. To be absolutely clear, striking through a riders name does not equal an allegation that their result in that particular race was achieved while doping.
What it means is that the rider in question tested positive or was sanctioned or sacked at some point in their career, either prior or subsequently.
But woe and behold Messer Armstrong remains the ‘winner’ through all of those years 1999-2005, while all those around him faltered and were ultimately deemed cheats.
1999 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG (USA) *
In August 2005, L’Equipe alleged six of Armstrong’s urine samples, taken during the 1999 Tour de France, contained EPO. There was no ratified EPO test in 1999, but the samples were tested as part of a study in 2004 and 2005. There was no counter-analysis (B-sample tests) and no proceedings can be taken against Armstrong in any case because the alleged offence is more than seven years old. Also tested positive for a corticosteroid during the 1999 Tour, for which he retrospectively produced a medical certificate
2 ALEX ZULLE (Switzerland)
Admitted to using EPO in the wake of the 1998 Festina Affair and was banned for seven months
3 FERNANDO ESCARTIN (Spain)
4 LAURENT DUFAUX (Switzerland)
Admitted to using EPO in the wake of the 1998 Festina Affair and was banned for seventh months
5 ANGEL CASERO (Spain)
Named in Operacion Puerto documents in 2006, after he had retired
6 ABRAHAM OLANO (Spain)
7 DANIELE NARDELLO (Italy)
8 RICHARD VIRENQUE (France)
Part of the Festina team in 1998. Initially denied doping, but eventually admitted it in court and was banned for nine months in December 2000
9 WLADIMIR BELLI (Italy)
10 ANDREA PERON (Italy)
2000 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG (USA) *
2 JAN ULLRICH (Germany)
In 2006 he was named in the Operacion Puerto documents as a client of Dr Eufamiano Fuentes. Sacked by T-Mobile because he had signed a document stating he was not involved in the OP investigation. Retired. Served a suspension in 2002-03 after testing positive for amphetamines out of competition
3 JOSEBA BELOKI (Spain)
Named in Operacion Puerto documents. Denied any involvement with Dr Fuentes. Case dropped by Spanish court. Retired
4 CHRISTOPHE MOREAU (France)
Tested positive for anabolic steroids at Criterium International in 1998 but was not suspended because he claimed he was given the substance by a member of his team’s support staff and did not realize it was banned. Part of the Festina team kicked out of the 1998 Tour. Admitted using EPO. Served a six-month ban.
5 ROBERTO HERAS (Spain)
Tested positive for EPO at the 2006 Vuelta a Espana, which he had won. Stripped of that race win and banned for two years
6 RICHARD VIRENQUE (France)
7 SANTIAGO BOTERO (Colombia)
Named in the Operacion Puerto documents. Sacked by Phonak. Colombian Cycling Federation did not open proceedings. Resurfaced riding for Orbitel team, then joined Rock Racing
8 FERNANDO ESCARTIN (Spain)
9 FRANCISCO MANCEBO (Spain)
Named in Operacion Puerto documents. Sacked by Ag2r. Retired
10 DANIELE NARDELLO (Italy)
2001 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG (USA) *
2 JAN ULLRICH (Germany)
3 JOSEBA BELOKI (Spain)
4 Andrei Kivilev (Kazakhstan)
5 IGOR GONZALEZ DE GALDEANO (Spain)
French anti-doping authorities declared his level of salbutamol – permitted by a Therapeutic Use Exemption from the UCI – was too high during 2002 Tour de France. Prevented from riding the Tour in 2003
6 FRANCOIS SIMON (France)
7 OSCAR SEVILLA (Spain)
Named in the Operacion Puerto documents. Sacked by T-Mobile. Sevilla initially retired but is now riding for Rock Racing
8 SANTIAGO BOTERO (Colombia)
9 MARCOS SERRANO (Spain)
Named in Operacion Puerto documents in 2006
10 MICHAEL BOOGERD (Netherlands)
2002 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG (USA) *
2 JOSEBA BELOKI (Spain)
3 RAIMONDAS RUMSAS (Lithuania)
His wife Edita was stopped in her car as she tried to drive from France to Italy after the Tour. Performance-enhancing drugs were found in the car, which she said were for her mother-in-law. Rumsas failed a doped test for EPO at the 2003 Giro d’Italia, where he was sixth overall. He was banned for a year
4 SANTIAGO BOTERO (Colombia)
5 IGOR GONZALEZ DE GALDEANO (Spain)
6 JOSE AZEVEDO (Portugal)
7 FRANCISCO MANCEBO (Spain)
8 LEVI LEIPHEIMER (USA)
9 ROBERTO HERAS (Spain)
10 CARLOS SASTRE (Spain)
2003 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG *
2 JAN ULLRICH (Germany)
3 ALEXANDRE VINOKOUROV (Kazakhstan)
Tested positive for a banned blood transfusion at the 2007 Tour de France. Banned for one year by the Kazakh Cycling Federation, despite the mandatory ban being two years.
4 TYLER HAMILTON (USA)
Tested positive for a banned blood transfusion at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where he won the time trial, and again at the Vuelta a Espana a month later. Kept his gold medal because he successfully argued that the sample had been damaged in frozen storage. Banned for the Vuelta offence but fought a long defence. Also named in Operacion Puerto documents but has not been investigated for that. Now racing for Rock Racing
5 HAIMAR ZUBELDIA (Spain)
6 IBAN MAYO (Spain)
Tested positive for EPO at the 2007 Tour de France. Initially the B Test was negative. However, later in the year, a French laboratory confirmed the positive test. The case, though, is still in limbo
7 IVAN BASSO (Italy)
Named in the Operacion Puerto documents as a client of Dr Fuentes. Sent home before the start of the 2006 Tour, then left CSC ‘by mutual consent’. Signed for Discovery Channel but raced only a couple of times before being banned. Didn’t admit doping but did admit thinking about doing so. Signed for Liquigas and will return to racing in October 2008
8 CHRISTOPHE MOREAU (France)
9 Carlos Sastre (Spain)
10 FRANCISCO MANCEBO (Spain)
2004 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG (USA) *
2 ANDREAS KLODEN (Germany)
3 IVAN BASSO (Italy)
4 JAN ULLRICH (Germany)
5 JOSE AZEVEDO (Portugal)
6 FRANCISCO MANCEBO (Spain)
7 GEORG TOTSCHNIG (Austria)
8 CARLOS SASTRE (Spain)
9 LEVI LEIPHEIMER (USA)
10 OSCAR PEREIRO (Spain)
2005 |
1 LANCE ARMSTRONG (USA) *
2 IVAN BASSO (Italy)
3 JAN ULLRICH (Germany)
4 FRANCISCO MANCEBO (Spain)
5 ALEXANDRE VINOKOUROV (Kazakhstan)
6 LEVI LEIPHEIMER (USA)
7 MICHAEL RASMUSSEN (Denmark)
Expelled from the 2007 Tour de France while wearing the yellow jersey after it emerged he had given false information to the anti-doping authorities concerning his whereabouts in May and June of that year. There were also allegations he had asked a friend to import banned drugs to Italy for him, hidden in a shoe box. Rabobank sacked him for breaking the team’s internal code by lying about his whereabouts. Banned for two years, a suspension which ends in July 2009
8 CADEL EVANS (Australia)
9 FLOYD LANDIS (USA)
Tested positive for testosterone after stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Banned for two years. Mounted a lengthy legal challenge, which was unsuccessful. The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the initial verdict. Rumored to be set for a comeback next season when his ban expires
10 OSCAR PEREIRO (Spain)
2006 |
1 OSCAR PEREIRO (Spain)
2 ANDREAS KLODEN (Germany)
3 CARLOS SASTRE (Spain)
4 CADEL EVANS (Australia)
5 DENIS MENCHOV (Russia)
6 CYRIL DESSEL (France)
7 CHRISTOPHE MOREAU (France)
8 HAIMAR ZUBELDIA
9 MICHAEL ROGERS
10 FRANK SCHLECK
Note Floyd Landis reached Paris in the lead and took home the final yellow jersey of the race but it was revealed two days later he had tested positive for testosterone. He was stripped of his win and it was handed to Pereiro.
2007 |
1 ALBERTO CONTADOR (Spain) *
Alleged to be the rider referred to as AC in the Operacion Puerto documents. Vehemently denies he was involved and is allowed to race on
2 CADEL EVANS (Australia)
3 LEVI LEIPHEIMER (USA)
4 CARLOS SASTRE (Spain)
5 HAIMAR ZUBELDIA (Spain)
6 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE (Spain) *
Alleged to be the rider referred to as Valv.Piti in the Operacion Puerto documents. Vehemently denies he was involved and is allowed to race on
7 KIM KIRCHEN (Luxembourg)
8 YAROSLAV POPOVYCH (Ukraine)
9 MIKEL ASTARLOZA (Spain)
10 OSCAR PEREIRO (Spain)
Notes Denmark’s Michael Rasmussen won two stages and was comfortably in the lead at the end of stage 16. Later that day he was removed from the race by his Rabobank team after it emerged he had lied about his whereabouts – alleged to be an attempt to evade out-of-competition testing in the run-up to the Tour de France.
Alexandre Vinokourov had won two stages when he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion. Andrey Kashechkin was in the top ten overall when the Astana team was asked to leave the race. Kashechkin later failed a targeted out-of-competition test while on holiday after the Tour.
2007 |
1 CARLOS SASTRE (Spain)
2 CADEL EVANS (Australia)
3 BERNHARD KOHL (Austria)
Tested positive for CERA after the Tour de France
4 DENIS MENCHOV (Russia)
5 CHRISTIAN VANDE VELDE (USA)
6 FRANK SCHLECK (Luxembourg)
7 SAMUEL SANCHEZ (Spain)
8 KIM KIRCHEN (Luxembourg)
9 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE (Spain) *
10 TADEJ VALJAVEC (Ag2r)
As I finish writing this piece hot off the wire is the news that the 2010 winner of the Tour de France, Alberto Contador from Spain, is about to receive a one-year suspension for doping. As with Floyd Landis, the initial winner of the 2006 Tour de France, Contador will also have his Tour De France title stripped away.
Cycling is simply not making any headway in re inventing itself. I believe it wont until, first the top of the sports governing administration is cleaned out, then secondly, the phenomenon that is Messer Armstrong is resolved once and for all. We may very well find out that the two have more in common as far as secrets than you could ever had imagined.
Let’s all hope that the current US lead investigation into practices surrounding the US Postal Team during Messer Armstrong’s winning years will uncover the truth behind the pedaling philanthropist.
U2 Rock Band star Bono recently tweeted to Messer Armstrong,
“Sometimes my friend, the lie is ugly, but the truth is unbearable”, I say touché.
Mark Philpott
Philanthropist and Cyclist
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