Cycle of Lies

[Merckx index]

The 3d Armstrong thread is pretty long, and discusses a lot of topics, so I thought we could use a separate thread for this book. It's out in kindle, and I've just started reading it. You can post quotes and comments here.

The Prologue appeared in the recently posted NYT article, except that the latter was a condensed version. The full version has passages cut from the NYT article that show that JM is going to pull no punches, e.g.:

Though he’d deny it, I know that he has chosen to sit down with me because he thinks he might be able to control the direction of my book. No chance, I’ve told him. After multiple criminal and civil investigations into whether Armstrong orchestrated a sophisticated doping regime to win seven Tour de France titles; after all the testimonies from riders who knew him better than anyone else, and who contradicted under oath every public defense Armstrong had ever given; after he lied, lied and lied some more, the most notorious athlete of our generation realizes I’m suddenly holding a lot of rope. And I realize that, even now, he imagines himself to occupy a position of almost absolute power.

“You can write what you want,” he tells me in one of our many conversations. “But your book is called Cycle of Lies? That has to change.”

He says how much he likes having kids in the house— children are transparent and pure, too young to con him. I ask if he feels like people have taken advantage of him, if he feels used.
“Uh, yeah,” he says.
“Who?”
“Everybody. Get in line.”

Around the corner from his office, overlooking a stairwell, there is another vision of the crucifixion. The piece’s full effect is apparent only from certain angles, where an image of Christ nailed to the cross comes into view.
“One man has taken the blame for a thousand sins,” Armstrong says. But even in the presence of these crucifixes, he is talking about himself. Like he wants me to write that he has been made a martyr for cycling’s century of dopers and this is the way to make sure I do.
He walks over to a coffee table in his office and picks up a sculpture— an arm from hand to elbow. The sculpture, by Japanese artist Haroshi, is made with many layers of pressed skateboards. The sculpture’s middle finger is sticking up.
“This is pretty much the story of my life,” he says. Then he shoves the sculpture in my face. I notice Armstrong’s hands. On each palm, there is a small wound where he’ll tell me a doctor burned away a couple of cysts. I think of the stigmata.
“**** you,” he says, laughing.

Box #64 goes onto the truck with the rest. I follow the movers into the media room. Wearing white cotton gloves, they take down the seven yellow Tour leader’s jerseys framed above the couch. The day before, as Armstrong and I sat in this room, he had an idea. He asked if I wanted to lie on the couch, if I wanted to pose for a photograph under the jerseys that were still left.
“It’ll be funny,” he said.
I didn’t get the joke.

Really, the Prologue is worth the price of admission.

One thing mentioned in both the NYT and the Prologue was that he sold his Austin home in order to move into a "more modest abode". But that modest abode was reported to cost $4.3 million, more I think than he got for the sale of his former house. I never understood why he moved out of a house that he promised his kids they could live in till they graduated, if it wasn't to save money, but it doesn't sound as though he did. Maybe the upkeep on the former house was much more?

Edit: In the Epilogue, she returns to the moving scene, and claims the house cost $2 million. If he actually sold the former house for $10 million, that would be a big saving, but I heard $3 million plus.

Oh, man, when it came to social skills he had bad genes as well as a bad environment:

Both of Armstrong’s grandfathers had been heavy drinkers whose wives fled with their children after one sodden mishap or another. His paternal grandfather was so mean that he would put kittens in fruit jars to smother them. Armstrong’s father was an alcoholic with as many wives as his mother would have husbands— four.

Here's the part about Frankie:

Motorola rider Frankie Andreu allegedly approached a Coors Light rider, Scott McKinley, to propose a $ 50,000 deal: a flat fee if the Coors Light team would help Armstrong win the million-dollar prize by not challenging him for the victory in the rest of that second race and the entire final race. Coors Light was a strong team with riders who also were among the top contenders.
Later that night, several riders from each team discussed the deal in the hotel room Armstrong shared with his Australian teammate, Phil Anderson. By the time the Coors Light riders left the room, the deal had been done.

And this:

Catlin made his pitch in 1988. But the code of silence that had served cycling for so long could not be broken. Seven years later, Lance Armstrong used EPO for the first time.

So here she says 1995. But she contradicts herself later when discussing Hendershot, as already discussed here before.

Eki implicated in a passage about how USPS flushed drugs down the toilet during a police raid:

The prospect of a drug-free ride was so painful that Viatcheslav Ekimov, a Russian rider on Postal who has denied ever doping, joked about diving into the toilet to retrieve the stuff. One teammate looked at the desperate Ekimov and thought, “My God, I thought he’d actually do it.”

the Festina scandal inspired Armstrong to build a more complex operation.

Vaughters could raise his hematocrit with EPO to about 52— an improvement of 4 points at most— then he would temporarily lower it for UCI’s health check by infusing a bag of saline into his blood— a common practice among riders manipulating their blood with EPO. After using the drug, Vaughters saw the numbers tick upward on his power meter, the electronic machine affixed to his bike’s handlebars that measured a rider’s power output.
Vaughters noticed that many times EPO would give him a 4 to 6 percent increase in power. That translated into a few percentage points of speed. That translated into better finishes.

From about 8% increase in HT.

Hadn't heard this:

On the doctor’s suggestion, Armstrong and his teammates experimented with a plasma-expanding drug— none remember the name of it— made to boost their blood volume and, consequently, increase their endurance. The substance, normally used in patients who had lost blood after being burned or going into shock, was supposed to accomplish the same thing as a transfusion or EPO, only on a smaller scale and in a slightly different manner.
“Um, I’m peeing purple,” Vaughters once told del Moral. “Are you sure this is OK?”

Also mentions use of blood thinners to reduce risk of clotting and strokes. The downside of this is, not mentioned, is if you crash and bleed, the bleeding could be very serious.

 

[SundayRider]

The 3d Armstrong thread is pretty long, and discusses a lot of topics, so I thought we could use a separate thread for this book. It's out in kindle, and I've just started reading it. You can post quotes and comments here.

The Prologue appeared in the recently posted NYT article, except that the latter was a condensed version. The full version has passages cut from the NYT article that show that JM is going to pull no punches, e.g.:









Really, the Prologue is worth the price of admission.

One thing mentioned in both the NYT and the Prologue was that he sold his Austin home in order to move into a "more modest abode". But that modest abode was reported to cost $4.3 million, more I think than he got for the sale of his former house. I never understood why he moved out of a house that he promised his kids they could live in till they graduated, if it wasn't to save money, but it doesn't sound as though he did. Maybe the upkeep on the former house was much more?

Oh, man, when it came to social skills he had bad genes as well as a bad environment:



Here's the part about Frankie:



And this:



So here she says 1995.

Lots of people who make it to the top level of sports (particularly sports like cycling) have pretty poor/unconventional upbringings.

 

[Merckx index]

Organized and unemotional, del Moral kept everyone’s doping plan on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. He wasn’t interested in coming to riders’ homes to discuss how and when to use the drugs he had brought. In Vaughters’s case, del Moral usually dropped off drugs in Girona, Spain, when he was on his way to see Armstrong in Nice, France. He wouldn’t bother driving into town. He would meet Vaughters next to a tollbooth and make the handoff.
Vaughters would ride his bike there and stuff the package of drugvials and syringes up his jersey for the ride home. Once, on his way back, he put his foot onto the road at a stop sign and the package inside his shirt crashed onto the pavement, vials and syringes flying everywhere, as a group of old ladies looked on. With del Moral in charge now, Vaughters was more stressed out than ever. One thing that bothered him was that the good doctor used preloaded syringes, leaving riders guessing what was inside because there was no label to inspect. When cyclists asked, “Hey, what’s that?” he’d say, “It’s a professional secret. Do you want it or don’t you?”

Says Emma managed to get the customs agents in Ireland to let the drug-laden team cars through without a search.

Defending his sport and its biggest race, Verbruggen would eventually declare that the Tour was “mostly clean.” He said the proof was that the UCI’s blood tests on the riders during the Tour had shown that all of the competitors were way under the cycling union’s limit of a 50 percent hematocrit, unlike in past Tours when riders’ hematocrits were mainly 48 or 49. Verbruggen said the 1999 Tour tests didn’t not reveal any “such a level.” But had he misspoken? At the start of the Tour, according to Vaughters, nearly all of the nine riders on Postal Service had hematocrits that were dangerously close to 50. And it was just one of twenty teams in the race.

Vaughters was at home in Denver during the off-season when he heard about the French criminal investigation. Out of curiosity, he researched the drug on the Internet and surmised that it was the same one del Moral had injected him with at the 1999 Tour. Extract of calf’s blood? He felt like vomiting.
His first wife, Alisa, came home to find her husband balled up on the floor in the foyer, clutching his knees and crying.
“I didn’t know what it was,” he said. “They wouldn’t tell me.” He spat out the words as he sobbed. “And now, what if I have mad cow disease? What have I done? What have I done?”

We've discussed the meeting with Saugy, but here is how JM says it ended:

Armstrong and Bruyneel listened to Saugy like schoolkids in a classroom, but said nothing. At the end of the presentation, only Armstrong spoke. He crossed his arms and gave Saugy a menacing look. His eyes narrowed.
“Do you realize that you are putting so many careers under pressure?” he said.
Then he stomped out of the room.

Lots of people who make it to the top level of sports (particularly sports like cycling) have pretty poor/unconventional upbringings.

Zabriskie's childhood sounds far worse than Armstrong's. His father dealt drugs from the basement, and was arrested in a police raid of the house. And yet he ends up like this:

Later in the 2002 season, Bruyneel told him he would have to inject all the vitamins the team offered to him. Zabriskie agreed. He thought it was strange that his teammates didn’t comment on the fact that he injected himself regularly, like a junkie. Once, when he missed the vein with the “recovery,” prompting a huge bubble to form beneath his skin, Zabriskie ran to get Frankie Andreu’s help. Andreu laughed and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll go away,” as if he’d seen it many times before...

Zabriskie remained reluctant to blindly take what other riders got from the doctors. At the Spanish Vuelta in 2002, del Moral had the entire team line up on the team bus before the time trial for an intramuscular shot that no rider could identify. Zabriskie wasn’t sure if it was legal or not, but no one complained.
“OK, stand on one leg and relax your ****,” del Moral said before jamming a needle into each rider’s buttocks. Zabriskie wanted to lie down for the shot because it would be less painful. The doctor refused the request and demanded that he remain standing, so he declined the injection altogether. “No, thanks.”
Afterward, del Moral was annoyed that Zabriskie had not gone along with the plan.
“You are a *****, you are a ****ing *****,” the doctor said.

“Sometimes to beat the devil, you have to drink his blood,”

- Floyd

Interesting stuff about Floyd, pretty ciear lim was helping him dope. And it says Prentice Steffen suggested the whistlebiower iawsuit, whiie Fioyd was still riding, even before he had "won" the TDF, as a way of getting back at Armstrong. lim felt Floyd suffered from bipolar disorder, his former teammates reportedly had bets on when he would commit suicide. He had a Ricco moment, got sick from bad transfusion, but instead of going to the ER, he took another transfusion. The first transfusion was blood stored with del Moral, and Floyd suspected Armstrong might have purposely told del Moral to sabotage it.

lim thought Floyd was stronger naturally than Armstrong, and would have won ten TDFs if the race were clean.

Dr. Nichols:

He told me in 2013 that Armstrong had duped him, then hung up on me when I asked him to elaborate.

Frankie confessed to JM that he doped. Then when she talked to JV:

I then told him the other rider was Andreu.
“I’m not going to leave Frankie out there by himself, just hanging there,” Vaughters said. “Somebody has to back him up.”

after it was printed in the NYT:

Though the story didn’t accuse Armstrong of doping, his “mafia” saw it as an attack. His agent, Stapleton, called me “the worst journalist in history” and threatened a lawsuit. “You must have ****ing failed journalism school.”

lol, Bruyneel reacted by saying Frankie should be stripped of his results and give back his prize money.

Told JM that he had second thoughts on the comeback, was worried that someone was determined to have him test positive, he wanted to back out, but it was too late, Nike had already started the PR campaign.

“There are people who will not rest until I am cooked.”

lol, before Floyd spilled the beans on Armstrong, he threatened to out GH by calling the police to wait for him at the finish of P-R:

Hincapie was so unnerved that he finished ninth, more than five minutes back in a race he was favored to win.

To all the moments where Armstrong had a chance to prevent or at least modify what ultimately happened, add this one:

A“I just don’t think that’s the way to go,” Hincapie said. “Why don’t you just admit it? You could say it, get it over with and people would forgive you after a while and that would be that.”
Armstrong stared at him. “Admit what?”

GH told JM that USPS members once received transfusions on a bus parked at the finish of a TDF stage. Tygart got GH to talk by threatening him with a lifetime ban if he didn't. The original deal with Garmin's riders was no suspension, but they told GH and he complained that that was unfair, so Tygart reversed and gave them all the same bans.

 

[RownhamHill]

The 3d Armstrong thread is pretty long, and discusses a lot of topics, so I thought we could use a separate thread for this book. It's out in kindle, and I've just started reading it. You can post quotes and comments here.



Here's the part about Frankie:

Hi MI. Which section is the bit about Frankie that you've quoted in? I got to the end of chapter 5 last night, and haven't read further yet - in the earlier chapter (three I think!) in my version when she talks about the Coors Light bribe she doesn't mention Frankie by name (I can dig out the reference), so I'm wondering if she comes back to this story in a later chapter I haven't got to yet, or if we've got different versions somehow!

Anyway, the most interesting stuff so far for me has been the stuff about his mum/childhood; both the mythmaking around the 'single mum in the projects', but also some of the actual reality; the idea of Terry Armstrong telling a team of 7 year old mini-league players and parents that they're not here 'just for a run-around but to win', and then secretly filming the other team's plays in advance is fairly chilling. . .

 

[Merckx index]

Hi MI. Which section is the bit about Frankie that you've quoted in? I got to the end of chapter 5 last night, and haven't read further yet - in the earlier chapter (three I think!) in my version when she talks about the Coors Light bribe she doesn't mention Frankie by name (I can dig out the reference), so I'm wondering if she comes back to this story in a later chapter I haven't got to yet, or if we've got different versions somehow!

Anyway, the most interesting stuff so far for me has been the stuff about his mum/childhood; both the mythmaking around the 'single mum in the projects', but also some of the actual reality; the idea of Terry Armstrong telling a team of 7 year old mini-league players and parents that they're not here 'just for a run-around but to win', and then secretly filming the other team's plays in advance is fairly chilling. . .

Must be different versions?? Yes, Chapter 3.

Yeah, the childhood stuff is astonishing. Calling lance a loser and not speaking to him for a week, because he thought he didn't put out in the 4th quarter of a game. Sounds worse in some respects than his biological father. But it sure explains where he got his win at all costs mentality.

At the Ride for the Roses, [Terry] came within a foot of his son at the finish line, close enough to touch his arm and call out, “Lance Edward.”
Armstrong asked Stapleton to have police take him away.

And how about Armstrong's rage as a teen-ager?

On training rides, Crawford had to keep an eye on Armstrong, who saw every motorist as a threat. In a kind of bike rage, he would chase down cars that had come too close to him in order to curse and threaten the driver. He wouldn’t temper his emotions for anybody.

He once threw a Kestrel racing bike— one of the first generations of all-carbon-fiber racing bikes— across several lanes of road after his tire went flat during a Miami triathlon. Kestrel dropped its sponsorship of him. The tantrum had hurt Armstrong’s marketing appeal, especially since it was captured by television cameras.

 

[RownhamHill]

Must be different versions?? Yes, Chapter 3.

Yeah my version (from Google Play) says the following

Five stages through the second race, he was among the favourites to win. So, with the possibility of a million-dollar payment dangling in front of them, several riders on the Motorola team allegedly devised a plan to guarantee victory.

They allegedly offered to pay some riders on the Coors Light team a falt fee of $50,000 to help Armstrong win the million-dollar prize by not challenging him for the victory of that second race and the entire final race. Coors Light was a strong team with riders who also were among the top contenders.

Later that night, several riders from each team discussed the deal in Armstrong's hotel room.

If Armstrong won the million, both teams would benefit. Armstrong would receive the prize money - $600,000 taken in a lump sum - and would walk away with $200,000 while the balance would be distributed to his team and other cyclists who had helped him to win. Each rider on Coors Light would be given to $3,000 to $5,000, according to Stephen Swart, a Coors Light rider who claimed to be in on the discussions. . .

. . . In the TV broadcast of the prize ceremony, Armstrong summed up the victory with an ironic hint at the fact of the race: "Everybody won today."

So, interesting - there must be two versions floating around. Given RR has seen a preview which tallies more with your version (and presumably the printed book, as they couldn't have changed the print run now) it sounds like you've got the 'first edition' version and I've got a revised one - I wonder if there's any other specifics that have been 'revised' in subsequent versions?

Also would be interesting to hear from LisaB if the new account sounds more like something that Frankie can recall.

And yeah, the childhood stuff is extraordinary - taking his mum in the limo to the Prom just sounds so odd.

 

[Benotti69]

.............

And yeah, the childhood stuff is extraordinary - taking his mum in the limo to the Prom just sounds so odd.

Well he tends to pick girls that look like his Mother, so he defo has an Oedipus complex.

 

[Race Radio]

From about 8% increase in HT.
.

JV raises his Hct from 48 to 52 and gets 8%

Wonder what Lance got when he went from 39 to 56?

Interesting that Catlin tried to warn the IOC about EPO in 89 and they would not listen. Funny thing is I had a friend who tried to warn Catlin about HGH and in the 80's and he would not listen. Though it would not work

 

[Race Radio]

Carmichel's suitcase full of drugs makes an appearance. She points out the guy with the suitcase filled with drugs now charges clients $15,000 a week for training camps

 

[Race Radio]

Max Testa admits instructing Kevin, Lance, George and Frankie about how to use EPO. He says he wanted them to be safe when thy eventualy decided to use it.......so much for George's claim Frankie taught him how to dope

 

[SundayRider]

JV raises his Hct from 48 to 52 and gets 8%

Wonder what Lance got when he went from 39 to 56?

Interesting that Catlin tried to warn the IOC about EPO in 89 and they would not listen. Funny thing is I had a friend who tried to warn Catlin about HGH and in the 80's and he would not listen. Though it would not work

25% roughly?

 

[Netserk]

25% roughly?

43.6 %

or 5.23 times as much as JV.

 

[The Hitch]

Did the author know anything about cycling or doping before she saw the green, or like the dpcumentary, the movie and all the news reports is it again a total outsider taking a quick crash course in order to get the book done?

 

[Race Radio]

Armstrong told friends he regretted using HGH, thinks it helped his cancer spread more rapidly. Claims he never used it again after his cancer.

The book is good, well written. While we are putting the highlights here it is hard to touch on the many personal elements of the book. She really gets into what makes him tick.

 

[Race Radio]

Did the author know anything about cycling or doping before she saw the green, or like the dpcumentary, the movie and all the news reports is it again a total outsider taking a quick crash course in order to get the book done?

Yes, Juliet has been covering the sport for over a decade. She was a bit naive at first but she knows her stuff.

The part she gets well though are the many different personal elements and relationships. She paints a very dark picture of Lance

 

[sniper]

JV raises his Hct from 48 to 52 and gets 8%

has his 48 hct ever been confirmed by anybody other than himself?

 

[Merckx index]

Agree with RR, great book. The Epilogue is really powerful:

In my four hours of conversation with Lance Armstrong on his final day inside his Austin mansion, he gave profanity a bad name. Here, compressed into a sentence, is an abbreviated compilation of what he had to say about old friends, family members, teammates, journalists and cycling officials.

The spineless pussies included a blowhard, ***, fool, ****in’ weasel, piece of **** and weak, ***-covering mother****ers who are crazy, bat**** crazy, certifiably crazy, loopy, toxic, psycho and, anyway, calling her a ***** was just shorthand for saying she likes sex, and no, he didn’t sleep with his idiot teammate’s wife but the thought crossed his mind.

“I hated those mother****ers— the Betsys, Macur, Juliet the LeMonds. Walsh, I hate him. Bad guy. Cheater. Got some stuff right, lied about a lot . . . Yes, I doped. Yes, I was doping. These people, the lengths that they went to . . . it’s the reason I picked on these people. I really hated them. These people sucked. This is just so dirty, so dirty you just feel like you need a shower. Honestly, I hated these people and I still hate them. I couldn’t let them get away with it because they are so awful.”

I ask him how secretive he had been while he doped. Who else knew?
“Everybody,” he says.
Everybody?
“They knew enough not to ask.”
Bill Stapleton, his agent?
Silence.
Nike, his primary sponsor?
Nothing.
The board of directors of Livestrong?
Not a word.
“I ain’t no ****ing rat,” he says, “like these other pussies.”

At the meeting in Colo, Tygart suggested even a four year ban was possible. I mentioned this above, but will repeat it here. The Garmin riders were originally told they would not have to serve a ban, but when they told GH he complained it was unfair, so TT reversed, and gave them all 6 mo bans. He got GH to talk by threatening him with a lifetime ban like Armstrong if he didn't.

 

[The Hitch]

Yes, Juliet has been covering the sport for over a decade. She was a bit naive at first but she knows her stuff.

The part she gets well though are the many different personal elements and relationships. She paints a very dark picture of Lance

ok thanks.

 

[Race Radio]

At the meeting in Colo, Tygart suggested even a four year ban was possible. I mentioned this above, but will repeat it here. The Garmin riders were originally told they would not have to serve a ban, but when they told GH he complained it was unfair, so TT reversed, and gave them all 6 mo bans. He got GH to talk by threatening him with a lifetime ban like Armstrong if he didn't.

This is not exactly correct, remember it comes from George.

The WADA code allows for a reduction down to 6 months for significant co-operation. As I understand it Travis was instructed by WADA that they would have to give at least 6 months. George had nothing to do with it.

 

[Race Radio]

Agree with RR, great book. The Epilogue is really powerful:

Powerful. It is clear Lance is back to his old methods, it is just now the enemies list is larger.

The guy needs help, this is eating him alive.

 

[SaxonUK]

And yeah, the childhood stuff is extraordinary - taking his mum in the limo to the Prom just sounds so odd.

The Norman Bates of cycling

 

[Bosco10]

Agree with RR, great book. The Epilogue is really powerful:

“I hated those mother****ers— the Betsys, Macur, Juliet the LeMonds. Walsh, I hate him. Bad guy. Cheater. Got some stuff right, lied about a lot . . . Yes, I doped. Yes, I was doping. These people, the lengths that they went to . . . it’s the reason I picked on these people. I really hated them. These people sucked. This is just so dirty, so dirty you just feel like you need a shower. Honestly, I hated these people and I still hate them. I couldn’t let them get away with it because they are so awful.”

Holy Moly, Batman. So I guess those 'sweet' apology calls Lance made before his public confession were just a ruse. As Keith Olbermann would say, "Lance, SHUT UP!"

 

[proffate]

JV raises his Hct from 48 to 52 and gets 8%

Wonder what Lance got when he went from 39 to 56?

That 48 to 52 is the 8%. (4 / 48 ~= 0.08) The increase in power is 4-6%, which jives with what I've heard previously, power increases at about half of the HCT increase %. Or power % increase matches HCT absolute increase (4 HCT, 4% power). So Lance would have gotten about 17% power.

 

[martinvickers]

Powerful. It is clear Lance is back to his old methods, it is just now the enemies list is larger.

The guy needs help, this is eating him alive.

I disagree. It's precisely because it's eating him alive that he doesn't need help. Any hope, as a functioning human being, the man has requires he hits rock bottom. Reading the epilogue, he ain't there yet. Still too much fight, spite and arrogance. No help. Let him sting.

If it does one thing, it confirms that while most may have doped in those years, LA was a special kind of b**tard, deserving in some sense the 'special' treatment.

Time, methinks, he was just left with his anger and his sociopathy. Time energies were spent repairing the sport that still matters. He doesn't.

 

[DirtyWorks]

I disagree. It's precisely because it's eating him alive that he doesn't need help. Any hope, as a functioning human being, the man has requires he hits rock bottom. Reading the epilogue, he ain't there yet. Still too much fight, spite and arrogance. No help. Let him sting.

This is problematic though as it becomes as the feelings amplify and behaviour will become more erratic without some kind of something to break the cycle. He's clearly got plenty of money, so no outside forces to inspire change either.

I don't wish that suffering on him either, but he apparently could never deal with it on his own, never got help, and still will not change despite the world telling him to go away.