Authors: John Deering
There are echoes of Bradley Wiggins’s own upbringing in Armstrong’s childhood in that they were both sons of an errant father and a fiercely protective and loving mother to whom they
remained close. However, where Brad hides his fierce competitiveness behind a lugubrious exterior and a laid-back demeanour, Lance makes no effort to contain his combative nature. Indeed, he has
used it as a bludgeon his whole life.
There was a reasonable buzz around the young Texan as soon as he turned professional with the Motorola squad in the early 1990s, such was his brashness and willingness to be an iconoclast for
the new wave of English-speaking
arrivistes
sweeping away cycling’s European stranglehold. He famously fell foul of the revered Italian classics legend Moreno Argentin in an early
appearance in Europe seemingly for being unaware not only of the man’s achievements but also the races in which he achieved them. This healthy disregard for reputation was as refreshing to
see for the newcomers to the sport as it was disrespectful to those who sought to honour the old brigade.
But it wasn’t until the barrel-chested 23-year-old scored an immense and unanticipated victory in the torrential autumn rain of Oslo in the 1993 World Championship Road Race that the
cycling public really noticed Lance Armstrong. The swashbuckling attacking ride, the disregard for personal safety, the disregard for reputations of the old order were all there as Armstrong
stormed into the rainbow jersey and declared himself a proper bike rider.
His career as a one-day great developed beautifully, with storming rides in the spring classics and Tour de France stage wins marking him out as a hot favourite for the first open Olympic Games
– 1996 in Atlanta on home soil. The Olympics had been the preserve of amateur sportsmen up to this point, meaning the roll-call of champions was less than impressive, but for the first time
the big guns would be there. Miguel Indurain led the charge of the legends, becoming Olympic Time Trial Champion to add to his five Tour de France victories. Armstrong’s power and savvy made
him the stand-out favourite for the road race, but on the day he was strangely short on power and could only manage twelfth place behind the wily old Swiss fox, Pascal Richard.
That result may have been disappointing, but within weeks it appeared nothing short of miraculous. Still only 25, Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The virulent disease had already
spread to his abdomen, his lungs and his brain. The cycling world looked on aghast. It seemed to be a certainty. This colourful, wonderful, amazing young man was going to die.
An intensive bout of surgery and chemotherapy took place immediately and, incredibly, appeared successful, sending the cancer into complete remission.
Even from his hospital bed, his head bare from the effects of the chemotherapy and his body ravaged by the cancer, Armstrong spoke bravely of a return to racing. Scandalously, the French Cofidis
team that had signed the Texan to a lucrative contract at the peak of his success sought to annul the deal. There was widespread outrage and condemnation of such a callous decision, one that still
looks unfathomable twelve years later when one considers that the only reason sponsors become involved in the sport is to garner positive publicity. They may have been unwitting collaborators in
the truly great part of Armstrong’s story however, as his burning desire to prove Cofidis, and any other doubters, wrong drove him on and defined the rest of his career.
For Armstrong did return. Not just to his former glories but like a real-life Steve Austin, better, stronger, faster. The weight he lost during treatment was not replaced. His whole body shape
post-cancer was different: slender, but just as powerful. Perhaps the pain and duress that his body had suffered also left a positive legacy. Riding up Alpe d’Huez couldn’t hurt as bad
as chemo. Whatever the reasons, and there were several false starts on the road back, a new Lance Armstrong emerged at the back end of 1998 with consecutive fourth places in the Vuelta a
España, the World Championship Time Trial and the World Championship Road Race. His competitors had best look out.
His breathtaking and uplifting win at the 1999 Tour de France when he swept all before him was not only restorative for Armstrong, it was a Lazarus moment for the whole of cycling. On its knees
after the numbing purges of 1998 when it became clear to all and sundry that drug abuse was not only common in cycling, it was endemic to such a degree that nobody was certain that there was a
single ‘clean’ professional in the race, the Tour needed a hero. It had one now.
Forever driven onwards by his fire, which was beginning to resemble a war with the world, Lance Armstrong strung together another six wins in the world’s hardest race. Yes, that’s
right, seven Tour de France victories. Two more than Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault or Miguel Indurain could manage. And all after rising from his deathbed. What a rider, what a
man.
However, his retirement in 2005 as reigning Tour de France Champion was not met with universal regret. It wasn’t just his robust dismissal of anybody who opposed him that upset public
opinion, it was the constant allegations of doping that dogged him for an eternity that ground his public down. People were essentially unsure of whether they could trust in his feats.
Armstrong’s surprising comeback in 2009 wasn’t greeted with universal joy. It didn’t go entirely to plan either. Unable to regain his former stellar level, he could only manage
third in that year’s Tour de France, one place above the new British hope, one Bradley Wiggins. Even though there was plenty of credit and applause inherent in that result, it was largely
spoiled in the public’s eyes by his attempts to unseat the winner – and clearly the strongest rider – his teammate Alberto Contador. He finished behind Contador again in his last
Tour de France, this time 39 minutes adrift of the defending champion in 23rd.
Part of Armstrong, despite his stoic refusal to ever admit a mistake, must surely regret coming back to racing. His desire to prove his critics wrong overrode his diminishing powers. And it had
the detrimental effect of fanning the flames still burning around his alleged use of illegal products throughout his career. He must have wished he’d stayed at home with his latest celebrity
squeeze counting his yellow jerseys and resting on a
palmarès
unparalleled in the modern game.
Instead, he spent much of the time fighting a federal inquiry that ran until February 2012 before being closed down without any charges being brought. If he thought he was out of the woods
though, he was wrong. Based on the testimony of former teammates, riders and associates, and on blood samples taken during the 2009 and 2010 seasons, Armstrong was charged with doping offences by
the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA. They claimed that he had used EPO, the blood treatment that had been the scourge of 1990s cycling, and steroids, as well as illegal blood transfusions
throughout his career. After initially hotly rebuffing the charges, in August Armstrong announced that he would not be contesting them. He was careful not to admit any wrongdoing, repeating his
dismissal of allegations against him as a ‘witch hunt’, merely saying that ‘there comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say “enough is enough”. For
me, that time is now.’
USADA responded by removing those seven victories from the miscreant’s possession. They gave him a lifetime ban from competition and backdated it to 1 August 1998, meaning that all his
results since that date – effectively, his return to successful racing after cancer – were nullified.
To return to the question: hero or villain?
Once upon a time, many in cycling held a degree of sympathy for Armstrong’s situation. Drug testing in the late 1990s and early part of this century was a mess. There was no test for
synthetic erythropoietin or EPO, the drug that had transformed the endurance of many cyclists. Since it is a substance that appears naturally in the body, it was difficult to isolate. It mirrored
the effects of training at altitude, something that cyclists have done since time immemorial knowing the benefits it would bring. The sympathy for Armstrong stemmed from popular opinion preventing
him from using the understandable reasoning that many of his contemporaries were beginning to espouse: ‘Yes, I took drugs . . . just like everybody else.’
Armstrong’s self-acclaimed position as ‘the most tested athlete of all time’ and his proud boast that he had ‘never failed a test’ was sorely tried by the
development of that long-awaited EPO test, because samples from his Tour wins had been preserved with such an eventuality in mind.
As more and more cyclists and ex-cyclists, often under the threat of prosecution, admitted their own involvement in what they saw as a curse of their time, Armstrong steadfastly refused to
acknowledge any guilt. His return from retirement merely seemed to point out that the world had moved on, and that cycling didn’t dance to the narcotics puppet master’s beat any more.
Lance was out of step with the cleaner new world order. He was an unwelcome reminder of a dirty past.
It won’t have escaped anybody’s notice that the new Tour de France Champion, inheritor of Lance Armstrong’s crown, is one of this new world’s most outspoken critics of
the old ways.
In a recent
Guardian
article, Bradley Wiggins wrote an impassioned defence of his sport in 2012 and let those who weren’t prepared to play by the rules have a piece of his mind.
‘When I look back, we now have an idea of what was going on in the sport back then, and it was a different era. Personally, I used to find it difficult. You’d be trying to negotiate a
contract – say, £50,000 – I had two kids to worry about, a livelihood to earn in the face of what was going on, and people beating me because they were doping. I wasn’t shy
of saying what I thought about doping, because it directly affected me and the lives of my family.’
Things have improved greatly via better testing. Brad himself and the reformed David Millar have made the simple, key point that it is essential to make not cheating more attractive than
cheating. Writing in the same paper, the renowned cycling journalist and drugs-in-sport commentator William Fotheringham noted, ‘The temptation to dope needs to be countered in the
athlete’s mind with “Why would I?” rather than “Why wouldn’t I?”’
Brad explained that much of his long-held stance against doping stemmed from cultural differences. In the cycling heartlands of other European countries people can pick up a ban or be implicated
in a scandal, sit tight for a few months and return unscathed. At a recent visit to a cycling clothing company in Italy, it was truly astounding to see one framed picture or jersey or medal of a
cycling star brought down by their unmasking as a fraud, still revered and lauded as heroes in the trophy room.
In Britain, it’s just plain cheating and you’d better have a bloody good story to get out of that. David Millar’s post-drugs-bust career has been defined by his need to point
out that he is a cheat, that he did wrong and he knows it, which is to be applauded. These lines in the first pages of his autobiography are eye-wateringly frank: ‘My name is David Millar. I
am a professional cyclist, an Olympic athlete, a Tour de France star, a world champion – and a drugs cheat.’
As Brad wrote in the
Guardian
, ‘If I doped I would potentially stand to lose everything. It’s a long list. My reputation, my livelihood, my marriage, my family, my house.
Everything I have achieved, my Olympic medals, my world titles, the CBE I was given. I would have to take my children to the school gates in a small Lancashire village with everyone looking at me,
knowing I had cheated, knowing I had, perhaps, won the Tour de France, but then been caught.’
Wiggins’s article was by way of explanation for his comments a few days prior when, wearied by the day’s tribulations that were barely over, he responded robustly to a question on
his own legitimacy regarding drug use, by labelling those who suspect him of foul play as ‘just fucking wankers. I cannot be doing with people like that. It’s easy for them to sit under
a pseudonym on Twitter and that sort of shit rather than getting off their arses in their own lives and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something. And that’s
ultimately it. Cunts.’
For every person outraged at his ‘foul-mouthed rant’ there were many more who stood up and praised his forthright attitude to those who sought to undermine his achievements. The
Guardian
column was thankfully free of an apology. It was a succinct and reasonable explanation made with more time to think through his words. While there are those within the
organisation at Team Sky who may well have their hearts in their mouths every time Brad is asked his opinion on something contentious, especially when the sweat of 200km is yet to dry on his
sideburns, the majority of those listening find his willingness to speak his mind a breath of fresh air. Sports reporting has already scared footballers into speaking almost entirely in
clichés and platitudes that are impossible to spin into a ‘rant’ or an ‘amazing attack’. Thank God for Bradley Wiggins and long may he continue to tell us what he
thinks. After all, it’s our choice whether we agree with him or not, just his decision to say it.
*
This is a race light on big names in the absence of Lance Armstrong, Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador. When the drug police discover a banned substance in the urine sample of
Frank Schleck, there is a massive feeling of disappointment across the whole race. Naturally, he denies it. Naturally, he says he must have been ‘poisoned’. Let’s hope he is
right. There must surely one day be an instance of a cyclist being wrongly accused of doping: let’s hope it’s today, eh Frank?
It’s the second doping infringement of the race after the earlier expulsion of Cofidis also-ran Rémy Di Gregorio. Unlike Bradley Wiggins’s Tour experience with Cofidis in
2007, this time Di Gregorio’s team decided to stay in the race. A sign of this being a more isolated incident than the old days, or shamefully turning a blind eye? Teams have to make their
own decisions in circumstances like these.