Nghị lực và sự kiên nhẫn cần có cho bất kỳ ai, ở bất kỳ vị trí nào.
Theodore F. Merseles
Liên Kết Nhanh
Biên tập viên
Cập nhật: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
ePub
A4CHAPTER NINE
T
HE TOURLIFE IS LONG—HOPEFULLY. BUT “LONG” IS A
relative term: a minute can seem like a month when you’re pedaling uphill, which is why there are few things that seem longer than the Tour de France. How long is it? Long as a freeway
guardrail stretching into shimmering, flat-topped oblivion. Long as fields of parched summer hay with no fences in sight. Long as the view of three nations from atop an icy, jagged peak in the
Pyrenees.
It would be easy to see the Tour de France as a monumentally inconsequential undertaking: 200 riders cycling the entire circumference of France, mountains included, over three weeks in the
heat of the summer. There is no reason to attempt such a feat of idiocy, other than the fact that some people, which is to say some people like me, have a need to search the depths of their
stamina for self-definition. (I’m the guy who can take it.) It’s a contest in purposeless suffering.
But for reasons of my own, I think it may be the most gallant athletic endeavor in the world. To me, of course, it’s about living.
A little history: the bicycle was an invention of the industrial revolution, along with the steam engine and the telegraph, and the first Tour was held in 1903, the result of a challenge in the
French sporting press issued by the newspaper L’Auto. Of the sixty racers who started, only 21 finished, and the event immediately captivated the nation. An estimated 100,000 spectators
lined the roads into Paris, and there was cheating right from the start: drinks were spiked, and tacks and broken bottles were thrown onto the road by the leaders to sabotage the riders chasing
them. The early riders had to carry their own food and equipment, their bikes had just two gears, and they used their feet as brakes. The first mountain stages were introduced in 1910 (along
with brakes), when the peloton rode through the Alps, despite the threat of attacks from wild animals. In 1914, the race began on the same day that the Archduke Ferdinand was shot. Five
days after the finish of the race, war swept into the same Alps the riders had climbed. Today, the race is a marvel of technology. The bikes are so light you can lift them overhead with one hand,
and the riders are equipped with computers, heart monitors, and even two-way radios. But the essential test of the race has not changed: who can best survive the hardships and find the
strength to keep going? After my personal ordeal, I couldn’t help feeling it was a race I was suited for.
Before the ‘99 season began, I went to Indianapolis for a cancer-awareness dinner, and I stopped by the hospital to see my old cancer friends. Scott Shapiro said, “So, you’re returning to stage
racing?”
I said yes, and then I asked a question. “Do you think I can win the Tour de France?”
“I not only think you can,” he said. “I expect you to.”
BUT I KEPT CRASHING.
At first, the 1999 cycling season was a total failure. In the second race of the year, the Tour of Valencia, I crashed off the bike and almost broke my shoulder. I took two weeks off, but no
sooner did I get back on than I crashed again: I was on a training ride in the south of France when an elderly woman ran her car off the side of the road and sideswiped me. I suffered like
the proverbial dog through Paris–Nice and Milan-San Remo in lousy weather, struggling to mid-pack finishes. I wrote it off to early-season bad form, and went on to the next race–where I
crashed again. On the last corner of the first stage, I spun out in the rain. My tires went out from under me in a dusky oil slick and I tumbled off the bike.
I went home. The problem was simply that I was rusty, so for two solid weeks I worked on my technique, until I felt secure in the saddle. When I came back, I stayed upright. I finally won
something, a time-trial stage in the Circuit de la Sarthe. My results picked up.
But it was funny, I wasn’t as good in the one-day races anymore. I was no longer the angry and unsettled young rider I had been. My racing was still intense, but it had become subtler in style
and technique, not as visibly aggressive. Something different fueled me now–psychologically, physically, and emotionally–and that something was the Tour de France.
I was willing to sacrifice the entire season to prepare for the Tour. I staked everything on it. I skipped all the spring classics, the prestigious races that comprised the backbone of the
international cycling tour, and instead picked and chose only a handful of events that would help me peak in July. Nobody could understand what I was doing. In the past, I’d made my living in
the classics. Why wasn’t I riding in the races I’d won before? Finally a journalist came up to me and asked if I was entered in any of the spring classics.
“No,” I said.
“Well, why not?”
“I’m focusing on the Tour.”
He kind of smirked at me and said, “Oh, so you’re a Tour rider now.” Like I was joking.
I just looked at him, and thought, Whatever, dude. We’ll see.
Not long afterward, I ran into Miguel Indurain in a hotel elevator. He, too, asked me what I was doing.
“I’m spending a lot of time training in the Pyrenees,” I said.
“Porque?” he asked “Why?”
“For the Tour,” I said.
He lifted an eyebrow in surprise, and reserved comment.
Every member of our Postal team was as committed to the Tour as I was. The Postal roster was as follows: Frankie Andreu was a big, powerful sprinter and our captain, an accomplished
veteran who had known me since I was a teenager. Kevin Livingston and Tyler Hamilton were our talented young climbing specialists; George Hincapie was the U.S. Pro champion and
another rangy sprinter like Frankie; Christian Vandevelde was one of the most talented rookies around; Pascal Derame, Jonathan Vaughters, and Peter Meinert-Neilsen were loyal domestiques
who would ride at high speed for hours without complaint.
The man who shaped us into a team was our director, Johan Bruyneel, a poker-faced Belgian and former Tour rider. Johan knew what was required to win the Tour; he had won stages twice
during his own career. In 1993, he won what at the time was the fastest stage in Tour history, and in 1995, he won another when he outdueled Indurain in a spectacular finish into Liege. It
was just Johan and Indurain alone at the front, and he sat on Indurain’s wheel the whole way, until he pulled around and beat him in the sprint across the line. He was a smart, resourceful
rider who knew how to beat more powerful competitors, and he brought the same sure sense of strategy to our team.
It was Johan’s idea to hold training camps. We bought into his plan, refusing to complain, and spent a week apiece in the Alps and the Pyrenees. We scouted the mountain terrain of the Tour,
and practiced the climbs we’d be facing, riding back-to-back seven-hour days in all weather. As we went over the mountainous sections, I worked especially closely with Kevin and Tyler
because they were our climbers, the guys who would have to do most of the work pulling me up those gradients. While most other riders were resting in the off-season or competing in the
classics, we rode uphill in foul conditions.
Johan and I had a running joke. It was January in the Pyrenees, and every day it pissed down rain. I was getting beat up, hammered by those climbs, while Johan followed in the warmth of a
car, talking me through it via a two-way radio.
One day I got on the air and said, “Johan.”
“Yes, Lance, what do you want?”
“I’m doing the classics next year.”
From then on, I said it every day. Pretty soon Johan knew what was coming.
“Johan.”
“Let me guess, Lance,” he’d say, tonelessly. “You’re doing the classics next year.”
“Right.”
When we weren’t in the Alps or Pyrenees, I trained on my own. There was a purpose to everything I did. Kik and I lived day in and day out with only two things in mind: the Tour de
France and having a healthy baby. Anything else was secondary, an unnecessary distraction. But there was a sort of peace in the simplicity of our dedication.
I geeked out. I tackled the problem of the Tour as if I were in math class, science class, chemistry class, and nutrition class, all rolled into one. I did computer calculations that balanced
my body weight and my equipment weight with the potential velocity of the bike in various stages, trying to find the equation that would get me to the finish line faster than anybody else. I
kept careful computer graphs of my training rides, calibrating the distances, wattages, and thresholds.
Even eating became mathematical. I measured my food intake. I kept a small scale in the kitchen and weighed the portions of pasta and bread. Then I calculated my wattages versus my caloric
intake, so I knew precisely how much to eat each day, how many calories to burn, so that the amount coming in would be less than my output, and I would lose weight.
There was one unforeseen benefit of cancer: it had completely reshaped my body. I now had a much sparer build. In old pictures, I looked like a football player with my thick neck and big
upper body, which had contributed to my bullishness on the bike. But paradoxically, my strength had held me back in the mountains, because it took so much work to haul that weight
uphill. Now I was almost gaunt, and the result was a lightness I’d never felt on the bike before. I was leaner in body and more balanced in spirit.
The doubt about me as a Tour rider was my climbing ability. I could always sprint, but the mountains were my downfall. Eddy Merckx had been telling me to slim down for years, and
now I understood why. A five-pound drop was a large weight loss for the mountains–and I had lost 15 pounds. It was all I needed. I became very good in the mountains.
Each morning I rose and ate the same thing for breakfast, some muesli with bread and fruit, unless it was going to be a particularly long training ride, in which case I had a plate of
scrambled egg whites. While I ate, Kik filled my water bottles, and I bolted out the door by 8 A.M. to join Kevin and Tyler for a training ride. Most days I would ride straight through lunch,
until about 3 P.M. When I came home I’d shower and lie down for a nap until dinnertime. I’d get up again in the evening, weigh my pasta, and have dinner with Kik.
We didn’t do anything. We didn’t go anywhere. We just ate, and then went back to bed, so I could get up in the morning and train again. That was our life for several months. Sometimes
Kik’s friends would say, “Oh, you live in the South of France, how glamorous.” They had no idea.
While I trained, Kik would do errands or rest on our veranda. She thought Nice was the perfect place to be pregnant, because she could wander the outdoor markets buying fresh fruit and
vegetables. In the evenings we would thumb through pregnancy books and follow the growth of the baby. First it was the size of a pin, then a lemon. The big day came when Kik had trouble
buttoning her jeans for the first time.
The extent of the commitment from Kik as well as from me was very serious. Cycling was a hard, hard job, and Kik respected it as such. “Have a good day at work,” she said each morning
as I left. If we both hadn’t been equally dedicated to the lifestyle, it wouldn’t have worked. If she had felt bored, cheated, or discontented, we could not have gotten through the months
peacefully. She might as well have been a team domestique, that’s how integral she was to my training process.
Kevin could see it, because he was our best friend and also had an apartment in Nice. Unlike me, he had no one to come home to in Europe. When he returned from a race or training camp
he came back to an empty apartment, and sometimes to spoiled milk. I had fresh laundry, a clean house, a cat, a dog, and everything I needed to eat. But it took a lot of work from Kik to keep it
up. I had always been uncomfortable and lonesome living in Europe, until I did it as a happily married man. Now I was learning to love it.
There were days when I had a flat and was out in the middle of nowhere, and I’d call home and Kik would come look for me. Some afternoons she would drive up into the mountains just to
bring me Gatorade and food. She learned everything about cycling, so she could be helpful. She knew what I needed and when, which days were the tough ones, when it was good to talk, and
when to leave me alone.
On the really hard training days, she would be on pins and needles waiting to see how it had gone, because she knew how I measured my preparation and how important it was for me to be
on target. If it didn’t go well, she understood my disappointment and my grumpiness.
At the end of April, I returned to racing in a prestigious one-day classic called the Amstel Gold Race, to gauge my form. From the start, I felt like a different, stronger rider. For much of the
day I dueled with Michael Boogerd of Holland, considered one of the top riders in the world.
With ten miles to go, I rode at the front. Boogerd sat on my wheel, trailing me. By now I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that I was going to beat him in the final sprint to the finish. I would
have bet my health on it. I was that certain.
I started the last sprint–and Boogerd came out of the box. He cut around and drew even with me, and we dashed the last few hundred yards–and I lost. I lost by a centimeter. Less than a tire
width.
I was devastated. I had been absolutely certain I would win, but what cut me the most was that Boogerd was widely considered a big favorite to win the Tour de France. As we stood side by
side on the podium, all I could think about was what it meant for my Tour plans. Suddenly, I leaned over and I said to Michael, “You’re going to pay me back in July.”
He looked at me strangely. “What are you talking about?” he said. “It’s April.”
I went back to training. I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. There were something like 50 good, arduous
climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in a while, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in a day, over the course of a
six- or seven-hour ride. A 12-mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like.
I rode when no one else would ride, sometimes not even my teammates. I remember one day in particular, May 3, a raw European spring day, biting cold. I steered my bike into the Alps, with
Johan following in a car. By now it was sleeting and 32 degrees. I didn’t care. We stood at the roadside and looked at the view and the weather, and Johan suggested that we skip it. I said,
“No. Let’s do it.” I rode for seven straight hours, alone. To win the Tour I had to be willing to ride when no one else would ride.
The most punishing ride in Nice was the Col de la Madone, or the Madonna. It was a famously tough eight-mile climb above the city. You could almost see it from our house, beyond the
rolling hills that ringed the skyline. The Madone was too difficult to train on all the time, but it was a great test of fitness. Most people did it once or twice in a season. I did it once a month.
Tony Rominger, who for years was one of the top riders in the world, used the Madone as his training test when he lived in Monaco, and he held the record for climbing it–31 minutes and 30
seconds. Kevin Livingston, arguably the best climber on our Postal Service team, once did it in 32 minutes. At the beginning of my comeback in the ‘98 season, I had done the Madone in 36
minutes. But to win the Tour, I knew I had to whittle the time down considerably.
“I’m going to break 31,” I announced to Kevin one day.
That was big talk coming from someone who at the time couldn’t even break 35 on the hill.
“You’re crazy,” Kevin said.
But I got to 34, and then 33. Then one afternoon, I clocked in at 32:30. Right before the Tour, Kevin and I rode the Madone one last time.
It was a humid day, with just a little bit of wind, very muggy and hot. We raced toward the peak, which was in clouds, 3,000 feet above sea level. With a kilometer to go, Kevin flatted.
While he stopped to change his tire, I pedaled on. As I got to the top, I glanced at the time clock on my handlebars.
I waited for Kevin. He arrived out of breath and in a bad mood over his flat tire. I showed him the time on my computer. The implications for the Tour hit us. “Oh, boy,” Kevin said. “This
could be ugly.”
Kik knew that whenever I did the Madone, it was a serious day. I had been stone-faced over breakfast, already concentrating. When I came home she was waiting by the front door, anxious
to see how it had gone, whether I was cheerful or testy. Och was visiting us, and he waited anxiously, too.
I barged into the house, looking grim.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“The conditions were lousy,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “All I did was a 30:47.”
She threw her arms around me. Och slapped me on the back.
“Jimmy, I’m ready,” I said.
A few days later, Och went back to the States. He told everybody who would listen that I was going to win the Tour de France.
I PACKED FOR THE TOUR WITH A COMPULSIVE, NERVOUS
attention to detail. Kik and I laid out all my things and arranged them carefully in the suitcase. I insisted they be packed a certain way My bike shorts had to be rolled together so that they fit in
a neat line. My shoeboxes had to be set in the right place. Gloves were tucked into a particular corner, arm warmers into another. Everything had to be perfectly aligned, so I knew at
a glance that I had every type of clothing for every type of weather.
We arrived in Paris for the preliminaries to the Tour, which included a series of medical and drug tests, and mandatory lectures from Tour officials. Each rider was given a Tour “Bible,” a
guidebook that showed every stage of the course, with profiles of the route and where the feed areas were. We tinkered with our bikes, changing handlebars and making sure our cleats fit the
pedals just right. Some riders were more casual than others about the setup of their bikes, but I was particular. The crew called me Mister Millimeter.
In the prerace hype, our U.S. Postal team was considered an outside shot. No one talked about us as having a chance of winning. They talked about Abraham Olano, the reigning world
champion. They talked about Michael Boogerd, who had beaten me in the Am-stel. They talked about Alexander Zulle of Switzerland and Fernando Escartin of Spain. They talked about who
wasn’t there, the casualties of the doping investigations. I was a footnote, the heartwarming American cancer survivor. Only one person seemed to think I was capable of it. Shortly before
the race began, someone asked Miguel Indurain who he thought had a good chance of winning. Maybe he remembered our conversation in the elevator and knew how I had trained.
“Armstrong” was his answer.
The first stage of the Tour was the brief Prologue, a time trial of eight kilometers in Le Puy du Fou, a town with a parchment-colored chateau and a medieval theme park. The Prologue was a
seeding system of sorts, to separate out the fast riders from the slow and determine who would ride at the front of the peloton. Although it was only eight kilometers long, it was a serious test
with absolutely no margin for error. You had to sprint flat-out, and find maximum efficiency, or you would be behind before you ever started. The riders who wanted to contend in the overall
needed to finish among the top three or four.
The course began with a sprint of five kilometers, and then came a big hill, a long suffer-fest of 700 meters–a climb you couldn’t afford to do at anything less than all-out. After a sweeping
turn, it was a flat sprint to the finish. The course would favor a bullish rider like me, and it had also been perfect for the great Indurain, who had once ridden it in a record time of 8:12.
All told, it should take less than nine minutes. The biggest factor was the hill. You didn’t want to spend all your energy in the first 5K sprint, and then die on the hill. Also, there was a strategic
decision to be made: should I take the hill with a big chainring, or a smaller one? We debated the matter on and off for two days.
Johan was calm and exacting as he plotted our strategy. He broke the race down into wattages and split times, and gave me precise instructions. He even knew what my heart rate should be
over the first sprint: 190.
Riders went off in staggered starts three minutes apart. Reports drifted back from the course. Frankie Andreu, my teammate, sacrificed himself with an experiment when he tried to climb the
hill using the big ring. It was the wrong decision. By the time he reached the top of the hill, he was done, blown. He never recovered.
Olano broke the course record with a time of 8:11. Then Zulle beat that with an 8:07.
It was my turn. When I’m riding well, my body seems almost motionless on the bike with the exception of my legs, which look like automated pistons. From behind in the team car, Johan
could see that my shoulders barely swayed, meaning I was wasting no extra energy, everything was going into the bike, pumping it down the road.
In my ear, Johan gave me partial time checks and instructions as I rode.
“You’re out of the saddle,” Johan said. “Sit down.”
I was pushing too hard, not realizing it. I sat down, and focused on execution, on the science and technique of the ride. I had no idea what my overall time was. I just pedaled.
I crossed the finish line. I glanced at the clock.
It read “8:02.”
I thought, That can’t be right.
I looked again. “8:02.”
I was the leader of the Tour de France. For the first time in my career, I would wear the yellow jersey, the maillot jaune, to distinguish me from the other riders.
At our campers, I got giant bear hugs from my teammates, and the biggest of all from Johan. An ESPN camera crew arrived for an interview, but I could barely get through it. My mouth felt
tight, and I was afraid I would break down on the air. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t get the words out. “I’m just in shock,” I said, hoarsely. “I’m in shock.”
Out of the crowd, I saw Indurain. He pushed through and came toward me, and gave me an affectionate handshake and hug.
There is really no time to celebrate a stage win in the Tour. First you’re hustled to drug testing, and then protocol takes over. I was ushered to a camper to wash up for the podium ceremony,
and presented with the yellow jersey to change into. As much as I had prepared for the Tour, this moment was the one thing I had left out. I hadn’t prepared for the sensation of pulling on
that jersey, of feeling the fabric slide over my back.
Back home in Nice, Kik watched on TV as I stepped onto the podium in the yellow jersey. She jumped around our house, shrieking and shaking up the baby, and making the dog bark. Finally,
I got down from the podium and went into our team camper, where I used the phone to call her. “Babe,” I said.
All I heard on the other end of the line was, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” and she burst into tears. Then she said, “Damn, honey, you did it.”
There was a second supremely sweet moment of victory. As I made my way through the finish area, I passed the Cofidis team. Assorted members of the organization stood around, the men
who I felt had left me for dead in a hospital room.
“That was for you,” I said, as I moved past them.
WE SET OFF ACROSS THE NORTHERN PLAINS OF FRANCE.
I was the first American riding for an American team, on an American bike, ever to lead the Tour de France. That morning, I looked at the date: it was July 4.
Suddenly, I got nervous. The yellow jersey was a responsibility. Now, instead of being the attacker, I would be the rider under attack. I had never been in the position of defending the
jersey before.
The opening stages of the Tour were the terrain of sprinters. We hurtled across the plains on flat and monotonous roads, playing our game of speed chess on bikes. Nerves were taut; there was a
lot of maneuvering and flicking in the peloton, close calls, and a couple of classic Tour crashes.
Handlebars clashed, hips bumped, tires collided. There was less to contend with at the front of the peloton, so that’s where we tried to ride, but so did every other team, and the road was only
so wide. With almost 200 riders jockeying for position, it was tough to avoid collisions. The main strategy in those first few days was to stay out of trouble–easier said than done. In the
position battle, with such constant movement, you could get spit out the back before you knew it. The year before, Kevin had crashed twice in the flats and found himself 15 minutes down
before he ever reached the mountains.
Our team setup consisted of two following cars and a van. In one car were Johan and the crew, with our reserve bikes on top, and in the other were team managers and any sponsors who
happened to be along for the ride. The van carried all the bikes and our bags and assorted other equipment. If someone got a flat tire, a mechanic was available, and if we needed water or food,
the crew could hand it to us.
Johan directed the race tactically from the car. He issued time checks and status reports and attack orders over a sophisticated two-way radio system. Each Postal rider had an earpiece and a
small black radio cord around his collar, and was wired with a heart monitor so that Johan could keep track of how our bodies were performing under stress.
All day, every day, my teammates rode in front of me, protecting me from wind, crashes, competitors, and other hazards. We constantly dodged overeager spectators and photographers
and their various paraphernalia: baby carriages, coolers, you name it.
In the second stage, we came to a four-kilometer causeway called the Passage du Gois, a scene of almost surreal strangeness. The Passage is a long, narrow, blacktop road across a tidal marsh,
but the brackish water floods at high tide, covering the road and making it impassable. Even when the road is passable, it’s slick and treacherous, and the edges are covered with barnacles
and seaweed.
The peloton was still bunched up, full of banging and maneuvering, and it would be a tricky crossing. The first teams across would have the safest passage, so most of the Postal riders
gathered around me and we surged near the front. Along the way, some of our teammates got separated and wound up in a second group. Frankie and George got me over with no mishaps,
but it was frightening; the road was so slippery under our tires that we hesitated to so much as turn the wheel, and we fought a crosswind that made it hard to keep the bike straight.
Behind us, other riders weren’t so lucky. They rode straight into a massive pileup.
Somebody hit his brakes, and suddenly there were competitors lying all over the blacktop. Bikes flew up in the air, wheels spinning crazily, and riders tumbled to the ground in a huge chain
reaction. Guys lay prone on the asphalt as the rest of the peloton bore down on them, and more riders fell. We lost Jonathan Vaughters, who banged his head and cut his chin wide open, and
had to abandon. Jonathan had averted disaster the previous day in another crash, when he vaulted headfirst over his handlebars–and managed to land on his feet. He earned the nickname
of El Gato, “The Cat,” from the peloton for that, but now he was out. Tyler Hamilton came away from the crash with a sore knee.
As it turned out, the Passage du Gois was one of the more critical moments of the race. By getting across the Passage early, I picked up valuable time, while some of those bodies scattered
behind me in the road were Tour favorites. Michael Boogerd and Alex Zulle fell more than six minutes behind–a deficit that would become more and more telling as the days wore on.
Over those first ten days, we had just one aim–to stay near the front and out of any more trouble. I was seeking a balance: I wanted to remain in contention, while staying as fresh as
possible for the more crucial upcoming stage, a time trial in Metz. I gave up the yellow jersey for the time being.
These were some of the longest days of the Tour, and there was a sameness to the roads and scenery. We went from Nantes to Laval, to Amiens, but it seemed like we rode forever without
going anywhere. Mario Cippolini of Italy won four consecutive stages to tie a Tour record, and we conceded them without a fight. Cippolini was a great rider, but he wasn’t a climber and we
all knew he wouldn’t be a factor for the overall victory.
Each night we shared the same routine: massages for our sore legs, dinner, and then we would surf the six channels of French TV available in the hotel. Johan banned me from bringing my
computer, because I had a tendency to stay up too late fooling around online.
We sped on, across the plains, toward Metz.
I hung back, saving myself.
IT IS CALLED THE RACE OF TRUTH. THE EARLY STAGES
separate the strong riders from the weak. Now the weak would be eliminated altogether.
We arrived in Metz for the time trial, and in this one, unlike the brief Prologue, riders would have an opportunity to win or lose big chunks of time. It was 56 kilometers long, which meant
riding full-out for more than an hour, and those riders who didn’t make the time cut were gone, out of the race. Hence the phrase “Race of Truth.”
Kik came in from Nice. For much of the first week she had watched us on television at home, but she would spend the rest of the Tour traveling in Europe with her parents to keep the
boredom and tension at bay, while checking in with me periodically. The Tour wasn’t exactly the ideal situation for a conjugal visit, because I was sequestered with the team, but seeing her
for a day was better than nothing, and I got to check on how her pregnancy was progressing. Also, having her in Metz reminded me of how hard I had worked and studied for this
occasion.
Early in the morning of the stage, I went out and previewed the course, but I was already familiar with it, because we had scouted it during training camp. It had two very big climbs, one
1.5K long and the other 4K long. The early part would be windy, then came the hills, and the final flats would be into a strong headwind. It was a course that favored strength, a rider who
could drive a big gear into the teeth of that wind. It wasn’t enough to be fast; I would have to be fast for over an hour.
As I warmed up on a stationary bike, results filtered in. The riders went out in staggered fashion, two minutes apart, and Alex Zulle, the Swiss favorite who had suffered the unfortunate crash on
the Passage du Gois, was the early leader with a time of a little over an hour and nine minutes. I wasn’t surprised; Zulle was a strapping blond strongman without an ounce of give-up, as I
would continue to learn throughout the race.
The pre-race favorite, Abraham Olano, set off on the course just in front of me. But as I waited in the start area, word came through that Olano had crashed on a small curve, losing about 30
seconds. He got back on his bike, but his rhythm was gone.
My turn. I went out hard–maybe too hard. In my ear,Johan kept up his usual stream of steady advice and information. At the first two checkpoints, he reported, I had the fastest splits.
Third checkpoint: I was ahead of Zulle by a minute and forty seconds.
Ahead of me, I saw Olano.
Olano had never been caught in a time trial, and now he began glancing over his shoulder. I jackhammered at my pedals.
I was on top of him. The look on Olano s face was incredulous, and dismayed. I caught him–and
passed him. He disappeared behind my back wheel.
Johan talked into my ear. My cadence was up at 100 rpms. “That’s high,”Johan warned. I was pedaling too hard. I eased off.
I swept into a broad downhill turn, with hay bales packed by the side of the road. Now I saw another figure ahead of me. A rider was lying by the side of the road, injured and waiting for
medical attention. I recognized the colors of the Cofidis team.
Bobby Julich.
He had lost control and skidded out on the turn. I would learn later that he had badly bruised his chest and ribs. His race was over.
I went into a tuck around the turn.
From out of the crowd, a child ran into the road.
I swerved wide to avoid him, my heart pounding.
Quickly, I regained my composure and never broke rhythm. Ahead of me, I saw yet another rider. I squinted, trying to make out who it was, and saw a flash of green. It was the jersey of
Tom Steels of Belgium, a superb sprinter who’d won two of the flat early stages, and who was a contender for the overall title.
But Steels had started six minutes in front of me. Had I ridden that fast?
Johan, normally so controlled and impassive, checked the time. He began screaming into the radio.
“You’re blowing up the Tour de France!” he howled. “You’re blowing up the Tour de France!”
I passed Steels.
I could feel the lactic acid seeping through my legs. My face was one big grimace of pain. I had gone out too hard–and now I was paying. I entered the last stretch, into that headwind, and I
felt as though I could barely move. With each rotation of my wheels, I gave time back to Zulle. The seconds ticked by as I labored toward the finish.
Finally, I crossed the line.
I checked the clock: 1:08:36.1 was the winner. I had beaten Zulle by 58 seconds.
I fell off the bike, so tired I was cross-eyed. As tired as I have ever been. But I led the Tour de
France again. As I pulled the yellow jersey over my head, and once more felt the smooth fabric slide over my back, I decided that’s where it needed to stay.
I stepped down off the podium and handed Kik the flowers, and gave her a huge hug and a kiss. That evening, I told her, “I think I’m going to win this thing.”
Back at the team hotel, we Postal riders drank a glass of Champagne together. We only sipped it, because the day’s ride had taken so much out of us that a glass felt like a whole bottle. After
we completed the toast, Johan stood up.
“Okay, no more Champagne,” he said. “That’s the last time we drink it, because we’re going to win so many stages that we’d drink it all the way to Paris.”
The team cheered.
WE ENTERED THE MOUNTAINS.
From now on, everything would be uphill, including the finish lines. The first Alpine stage was a ride of 132.7 kilometers into the chalet-studded town of Sestriere, on the French-Italian border,
and I knew what the peloton was thinking: that I would fold. They didn’t respect the yellow jersey on my back.
I held a lead of two minutes and 20 seconds, but in the mountains you could fall hopelessly behind in a single day. I had never been a renowned climber, and now we were about to embark
on the most grueling and storied stages of the race, through peaks that made riders crack like walnuts. I was sure to come under heavy attack from my adversaries, but what they didn’t know
was how specifically and hard I had trained for this part of the race. It was time to show them.
It would be a tactical ride as much as a physical one, and I would have to rely heavily on my fellow climbers, Kevin Livingston and Tyler Hamilton. Drafting is hugely important in the
mountains: Kevin and Tyler would do much of the grueling work of riding uphill in front of me, so I could conserve my energy for the last big climb into Sestriere, where the other riders were
sure to try to grab the jersey from me.
Here’s how an “attack” works: some riders were more threatening than others, like Alex Zulle of Switzerland and Fernando Escartin of Spain, the men who trailed me most closely throughout
the race. If one of them, say Zulle, tried to break away, one of my Postal teammates, let’s say Kevin, immediately chased him down. A rider like Zulle could get away and be two minutes up
the road before we knew it, and cut into my overall lead.
Kevin’s job was to get behind Zulle and stay right behind his wheel, making it harder for Zulle to pull up the hill. It’s called “sitting on him.” While Kevin “sat” on Zulle’s wheel and slowed
him down, the rest of my Postal teammates pulled me, riding in front of me, allowing me to draft and catch up. If we could get through the day without succumbing to any major attacks, it
was called “managing the peloton” or “controlling” it.
We didn’t chase down every breakaway. Some riders were not a threat to the overall title, and we didn’t waste our energy chasing them down. At those times, my teammates just took care of
me. They surrounded me and made sure I was positioned safe from harm. If I needed a new water bottle, one of them went back to the team car and got it for me.
There were three big cols, or peaks, en route to Sestriere. The first was the Col du Telegraphe, then came the monstrous Col du Galibier, the tallest mountain in the Tour, then Col de
Montgenevre. Lastly, there would be the uphill finish into Sestriere.
For the better part of 150 miles that day, Postal was a machine, making seamless transitions and controlling the action.
The Spanish attacked us right from the start. Escartin launched a breakaway on the Telegraphe in a kind of sucker play, but we kept calm and refused to expend too much energy too early. On
the Galibier, Kevin Livingston did magnificent work, pulling me steadily to the top, where it was sleeting and hailing. As I drafted behind Kevin, I kept up a stream of encouragement.
“You’re doing great, man,” I said. “These guys behind us are dying.”
We descended the Galibier in sweeping curves through the pines. Let me describe that descent to you. You hunch over your handlebars and streak seventy miles an hour on two small tires a
half-inch wide, shivering. Now throw in curves, switchbacks, hairpins, and fog. Water streamed down the mountainside under my wheels, and somewhere behind me, Kevin crashed. He had
tried to put on a rain jacket, and the sleeve got caught in his wheel. He recovered, but he would be sore and feverish for the next few days.
Now came Montgenevre, our third mountain ascent in the space of six hours, into more freezing rains and mist. We would ride into a rain shower, then out the other side. At the peak it was so
cold, the rain froze to my shirt. On the descent, it hailed. Now I was separated from the rest of the team, and the attacks kept coming, as if the other riders thought I was going to crack at any
moment. It made me angry. The weaker riders fell away, unable to keep up. I found myself out in front among the top climbers in the world, working alone. I intended to make them suffer
until they couldn’t breathe.
All I had for company was the sound of Johan’s voice in my ear. He was in the follow car. Riding shotgun was Thorn Weisel, the chief patron of the team.
On the descent from Montgenevre, Ivan Gotti and Fernando Es-cartin gambled on the hairpin turns through the mists, and opened up a gap of 25 seconds. I trailed them in a second group of
five cyclists.
We went into the final ascent, the long, hard 30K climb into Ses-triere itself. We had been on the bikes for five and a half hours, and all of us were struggling. From here on in it would be a
question of who cracked and who didn’t.
With eight kilometers to go, I was 32 seconds behind the leaders, and locked in the second group of five riders, all of us churning uphill. The others were all established climbers of various
nationality, the best of them Zulle of Switzerland, burly and indefatigable and haunting me.
It was time to go.
On a small curve, I swung to the inside of the group, stood up, and accelerated. My bike seemed to jump ahead. I almost rode up the backs of the escort motorcycles.
From the follow car, a surprised Johan said, “Lance, you’ve got a gap.” Then he said, “Ten feet.”
Johan checked my heart rate via the digital computer readout, so he knew how hard I was working and how stressed my body was. I was at 180, not in distress. I felt as though I was just
cruising along a flat road, riding comfortably.
He said, “Lance, the gap’s getting bigger.”
I ripped across the space.
In one kilometer I made up 21 seconds. I was now just 11 seconds back of the leaders. It was strange, but I still didn’t feel a thing. It was… effortless.
The two front-runners, Escartin and Gotti, were looking over their shoulders. I continued to close rapidly.
I rode up to Escartin’s back wheel. He glanced back at me, incredulous. Gotti tried to pick up the pace. I accelerated past him, and drew even with Escartin.
I surged again, driving the pace just a little higher. I was probing, seeking information on their fitness and states of mind, how they would respond.
I opened a tiny gap, curious. Were they tired?
No response.
“One length,” Johan said.
I accelerated.
“Three lengths, four lengths, five lengths.”
Johan paused. Then he said, almost casually, “Why don’t you put a little more on?”
I accelerated again.
“Forty feet,” he said.
When you open a gap, and your competitors don’t respond, it tells you something. They’re hurting. And when they’re hurting, that’s when you take them.
We were four miles from the finish. I drove my legs down onto the pedals.
“You’ve got thirty seconds!”Johan said, more excitedly.
In my ear, Johan continued to narrate my progress. Now he reported that Zulle was trying to chase. Zulle, always Zulle.
“Look, I’m just going to go,” I said into my radio. “I’m going to put this thing away.”
IN A HOTEL ROOM IN ITALY, KlK SAT TRANSFIXED IN
front of the TV. As I jumped out of my seat and charged, she leaped up out of her chair.
“Haul ass!” she yelled.
In Piano, Texas, later that day, my mother would watch a tape delay of the stage. Because of the time change, she didn’t yet know what had happened.
“Look out!” she yelled. “There he goes! He’s got it!”
THE BIKE SWAYED UNDER ME AS I WORKED THE PEDALS,
and my shoulders began heaving with fatigue. I felt a creeping exhaustion, and my body was moving all over the top of the bike. My nostrils flared, as I struggled to breathe, fighting for any
extra air at all. I bared my teeth in a half-snarl.
It was still a long haul to the finish, and I was concerned Zulle would catch me. But I maintained my rhythm.
I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see Zulle on my wheel.
No one was there.
I faced forward again. Now I could see the finish line–it was all uphill the rest of the way. I
drove toward the peak.
Was I thinking of cancer as I rode those last few hundred yards? No. I’d be lying if I said I was. But I think that directly or indirectly, what had happened over the past two years was with me.
It was stacked up and stored away, everything I’d been through, the bout with cancer, and the disbelief within the sport that I could come back. It either made me faster or them slower, I
don’t know which.
As I continued to climb, I felt pain, but I felt exultation, too, at what I could do with my body. To race and suffer, that’s hard. But it’s not being laid out in a hospital bed with a catheter
hanging out of your chest, platinum burning in your veins, throwing up for 24 hours straight, five days a week.
What was I thinking? A funny thing. I remembered a scene in Good Will Hunting, a movie in which Matt Damon plays an alienated young math prodigy, an angry kid from the wrong side of
the South Boston tracks, not unlike me. In the film he tries to socialize with some upper-class Harvard students in a bar, and wins a duel of wits with a pompous intellectual to win a girl’s
affections.
Afterward Damon gloats to the guy he bested, “Hey. Do you like apples?”
“Yeah,” the guy says, “I like apples.”
“Well, I got her phone number,” Damon says triumphantly. “How do you like them apples?”
I climbed those hundreds of meters, sucking in the thin mountain air, and I thought of that movie, and grinned.
As I approached the finish line, I spoke into my radio to my friends in the support car, Johan and Thorn Weisel.
“Hey, Thorn, Johan,” I said. “Do you like apples?”
Their puzzled reply crackled in my ear.
“Yeah, we like apples. Why?”
I yelled into the mouthpiece, “How do you like them fuckin’ apples!” I hit the finish line with my arms upraised, my eyes toward the sky. And then I put my hands to my face in disbelief.
IN HER HOTEL ROOM IN ITALY, MY WIFE SAT IN FRONT of the television, sobbing.
Later that day in Indianapolis, LaTrice Haney and the staff of the medical center, and all of the patients on the ward, stopped what they were doing to watch the taped coverage. As I mounted
the hill, increasing my lead, they stared at their televisions. “He did it,” LaTrice said. “He conquered it. He conquered it.”
With the climb into Sestriere I now led the Tour de France by six minutes, three seconds.
You DON’T REALLY SEE THE MOUNTAINS AS YOU RIDE through them. There is no time to dwell on the view, on the majestic cliffs and precipices and shelves that rise on either
side of you, looming rock with glaciers and peaks, falling away into green pastures. All you really notice is the road in front of you, and the riders in back of you, because no lead is safe in
the mountains.
On the morning after Sestriere I rose early and had breakfast with the team. We went through 25 boxes of cereal each week, and dozens and dozens of eggs. First I powered down some
muesli, then a plate of three or four eggs, and after that I shoveled in some pasta. It would be another long, hard climbing day, and I needed every ounce of carbo-driven energy I could find.
We would be riding the Alpe d’Huez, a stage that held as much mystique as any in the Tour, a 1,000-meter climb over 14 kilometers, with a nine-degree gradient. The ascent in-eluded 21
tortuous hairpin turns, a seemingly endless series of switchbacks leading to the summit. It was hot going up and cold coming down, and in some places the road was only as wide as my
handlebars. Back in the early 1900s, when the mountain climbs were added to the Tour for the first time, one rider completed the journey up on his ponderous old contraption, and then turned
to race organizers at the roadside and screamed, “You’re all murderers!”
I wanted to avoid any high drama on the Alpe d’Huez. I didn’t need to attack as I had at Sestriere, I simply needed to keep my chief opponents in check: Abraham Olano was six minutes
and three seconds behind me, and Alex Zulle was in fourth place, trailing by seven minutes, 47 seconds. Fernando Escartin was in eighth place, down by nine minutes. The goal for the day
was to be steady and not to give back any of the time I had gained at Sestriere.
We reached the base of the Alpe d’Huez. I wanted to let the team know I was in good shape, because morale was critical on a tough climb. Everybody had an earpiece and access to the
two-way radio, so I knew they could all hear me.
“Hey,Johan,” I said.
“Yes, Lance,” he said, in that monotone.
“I could do this thing on a damn tricycle. It’s not a problem.”
I could hear cackling in the background.
We rode at a fast tempo, to limit the attacks and whittle down the riders who could challenge us. First, Tyler Hamilton pulled me up the mountain. I sat on his wheel and talked to him the
whole way, right into his ear. We moved past Olano. Johan came over the radio, reporting,
“Olano is dropped. Great job.” Here came Manuel Beltran, one of Zulle s teammates. I yelled at Tyler. “Are you going to let Beltran do that to you?”
We had 10K to go, about 30 minutes of work, straight uphill. Suddenly, here came Escartin and his teammate, Carlos Contreras, accelerating into the climb. Then Pavel Tonkov, a teammate of
Tom Steels, launched an attack. Tyler was done. He had nothing left, so I had to chase down Tonkov myself. Then came Zulle, with Beltran pulling him, while the French climber, Richard
Virenque, came up and sat on my wheel. They were all trying to put me on the ropes.
But I wasn’t tiring. All of this action was fine by me, because as long as I stayed with them no one could make up any significant time on me. I continued along in fourth place, keeping an eye
on everything. We had 4K to go to reach the summit, about six and a half more minutes of duress. An Italian, Giuseppe Guerini, a decorated rider who had twice finished third in the Tour
of Italy, charged. But Guerini was 15 minutes down in the overall standings, and I didn’t need to counter him. I let him go. Meanwhile, Zulle finally cracked. He couldn’t keep the pace.
Guerini opened up a 20-second lead–and then, unbelievably, he hit a spectator. The spectators had been flirting with disaster for days, skipping across the road in front of the peloton, and now
a frenzied fan had leaped into the middle of the road with his Instamatic, and stood there taking pictures. Guerini moved one way and then the other, trying to avoid him, but plowed right into
him with the handlebars, and went over. It was a classic Tour moment, proof that no lead was safe. Guerini jumped up unhurt and continued on, but now Tonkov was breathing on him.
Fortunately, Guerini got over the line first, the stage winner.
I finished the stage in fifth place. I now had a lead of 7:42 over Olano in the overall. Zulle, for all his work, had made up only seconds, and trailed by 7:47.
Just a typical day in the Tour de France.
I WAS MAKING ENEMIES IN THE ALPS. MY NEWLY ACquired climbing prowess aroused suspicion in the French press, still sniffing for blood after the scandal of the previous
summer. A whispering campaign began: “Armstrong must be on something.” Stories in L’Equipe and Le Monde insinuated, without saying it outright, that my comeback was a little
too miraculous.
I knew there would be consequences for Sestriere–it was almost a tradition that any rider who wore the yellow jersey was subject to drug speculation. But I was taken aback by the
improbable nature of the charges in the French press: some reporters actually suggested that chemotherapy had been beneficial to my racing. They speculated that I had been given some
mysterious drug during the treatments that was performance-enhancing. Any oncologist in the world, regardless of nationality, had to laugh himself silly at the suggestion.
I didn’t understand it. How could anybody think for a second that somehow the cancer treatments had helped me? Maybe no one but a cancer patient understands the severity of the
treatment. For three straight months I was given some of the most toxic substances known to man, poisons that ravaged my body daily. I still felt poisoned–and even now, three years after
the fact, I feel that my body isn’t quite rid of it yet.
I had absolutely nothing to hide, and the drug tests proved it. It was no coincidence that every time Tour officials chose a rider from our team for random drug testing, I was their man. Drug
testing was the most demeaning aspect of the Tour: right after I finished a stage I was whisked to an open tent, where I sat in a chair while a doctor wrapped a piece of rubber tubing around
my arm, jabbed me with a needle, and drew blood. As I lay there, a battery of photographers flashed their cameras at me. We called the doctors the Vampires. “Here come the Vampires,”
we’d say. But the drugs tests became my best friend, because they proved I was clean. I had been tested and checked, and retested.
In front of the media, I said, “My life and my illness and my career are open.” As far as I was concerned, that should have been the end of it. There was nothing mysterious about my ride at
Sestriere: I had worked for it. I was lean, motivated, and prepared. Sestriere was a good climb for me. The gradient suited me, and so did the conditions–cold, wet, and rainy. If there was
something unusual in my performance that day, it was the sense of out-of-body effortlessness I rode with– and that I attributed to sheer exultation in being alive to make the climb. But the
press didn’t back off, and I decided to take a couple of days off from talking to them.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Postal team was a blue express-train. We entered the transition stages between the Alps and the Pyrenees, riding through an area called the Massif Central. It was odd
terrain, not mountainous but hardly flat, either, just constantly undulating so that your legs never got a rest. The roads were lined with waving fields of sunflowers as we turned south toward the
Pyrenees.
It was brutal riding; all we did was roll up and down the hills, under constant attack. There was never a place on the route to coast and recover, and riders came at us from all directions.
Somehow, we kept most of them in check and controlled the peloton, but the days were broiling and full of tension. It was so hot that in places the road tar melted under our wheels.
Frankie, George, Christian, Kevin, and Peter worked the hardest. Frankie would start the rolling climbs, setting a strong tempo and dropping riders. When Frankie got tired, George would pull,
and a few more riders would fall by the wayside, unable to keep our pace. Then came Tyler, who would pick up the pace, dropping even more of our competitors. Finally, I would be left
with Kevin, pulling me through the steeps. In that way we whittled down the field.
Each day, the attacks continued. The other riders still felt we were vulnerable, and they were determined to wear us out. We reached a section called the Homme Mort, the Dead Man’s
Climb, a series of undulations that lasted for miles. The breakaways were constant, and our guys were falling apart: Peter Meinert-Neilsen’s knee was sore, Kevin was sick as a dog from the
temperature changes in the Alps, and Frankie and George were blown from carrying the load. Everybody’s feet hurt, because they swelled in our bike shoes in all that heat.
All of a sudden 30 guys sprinted up the road, and we had to chase them down. It was a flash of my old self–I took off. I didn’t wait for Tyler or Frankie or anybody. I just went. I caught up to
them, and rode at the front, alone. Then the radio crackled, and I heard Kevin’s voice yelling at me. “Goddammit, what are you doing?” I had fallen back into my oldest bad habit, a senseless
charge and waste of energy. “Just back off,” Kevin warned me. “You don’t need to do that.”
I sat up and said, “Okay,” and I faded back, to conserve myself, while the other Postal riders did the chasing.
What did I think about on the bike for six and seven hours? I get that question all the time, and it’s not a very exciting answer. I thought about cycling. My mind didn’t wander. I didn’t
daydream. I thought about the techniques of the various stages. I told myself over and over that this was the kind of race in which I had to always push if I wanted to stay ahead. I worried
about my lead. I kept a close watch on my competitors, in case one of them tried a breakaway. I stayed alert to what was around me, wary of a crash.
For five monotonous days and nights, we rode through Central France toward the Pyrenees, from Saint-Etienne to Saint-Galmier to Saint-Flour to Albi to Castres to Saint-Gaudens. Stage
13 was the longest of the tour, and the hottest, with seven climbs and no flats. Frankie said the route profile looked like the edge of a saw blade, and that’s what it felt like. Peter
Meinert-Neilsen finally abandoned with his bad knee. Some of the hotels were so tiny, Frankie complained that when he sat on the toilet, his knees hit the bathroom door. George claimed that
he and Frankie, who were rooming together, couldn’t open their suitcases at the same time.
On the bike, we were always hungry and thirsty. We snacked on cookies, tarts, almond cakes, oatmeal-raisin cookies, nutrition bars, any kind of simple carbohydrate. We gulped sugary
thirst-quenching drinks, Cytomax during the day and Metabol at the end of it.
At night over our training-table meals, we talked trash, pure junk, embellishing old tales and bragging about conquests, 99 percent of it untrue. We delighted in the storytelling of our chef,
Willy Balmet, a 65-year-old Swiss and a dear friend who has cooked for every team I’ve been on. Willy looks like a much younger man, and can speak six languages, everything short of
Swahili. The kitchen was his domain, and in all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never once seen him be denied the kitchen in a hotel. He would arrive and make the hotel staff feel a part of our
team. He always cooked our pasta; nobody else was allowed to touch it.
While I rode, Kik lit candles all over Europe. No matter what village or metropolis she was in, she would find a church and light a candle. In Rome, she lit one at the Vatican.
FINALLY, WE REACHED THE PYRENEES.
We rode into Saint-Gaudens in the shade of the mountains, through a countryside by Van Gogh. The Pyrenees would be the last chance for the climbers to unseat me: one bad day in those
mountains and the race could be lost. I wouldn’t be convinced I could win the Tour de France until we came down from the mountains.
The pressure was mounting steadily. I knew what it was like to ride with the pack in 55th place and finish a Tour de France, but the yellow jersey was a new experience and a different kind of
pressure. When you’re in the yellow jersey, as I was learning, you catch a lot of wind. My fellow riders tested me on the bike every single day. I was tested off the bike, too, as the scrutiny I
underwent in the press intensified.
I decided to address the charges outright, and held a press conference in Saint-Gaudens. “I have
been on my deathbed, and I am not stupid,” I said. Everyone knew that use of EPO and steroids by healthy people can cause blood disorders and strokes. What’s more, I told the press, it wasn’t
so shocking that I won Sestriere; I was an established former world champion.
“I can emphatically say I am not on drugs,” I said. “I thought a rider with my history and my health situation wouldn’t be such a surprise. I’m not a new rider. I know there’s been looking,
and prying, and digging, but you’re not going to find anything. There’s nothing to find … and once everyone has done their due diligence and realizes they need to be professional and can’t
print a lot of crap, they’ll realize they’re dealing with a clean guy.”
All I could do was continue to ride, take drug tests, and deal with the questions. We embarked on the first stage in the Pyrenees, from Saint-Gaudens to Piau-Engaly, a route through seven
mountains. This was the same terrain I had ridden when it was so cold, but now as we traveled over col after craggy col it was dusty and hot, and riders begged each other for water. The
descents were steep and menacing, with drop-offs along the side of the road.
The stage would finish just over the border from Spain, which meant that all the Spanish riders were determined to win it–and none more than Escartin, the lean, hawk-faced racer who
followed me everywhere. In the midst of the frenetic action, our Postal group got separated and I wound up alone, pursuing Escartin. He rode like an animal. All I could hope to do was limit
how much time he made up.
As the mountains parted in front of me on the second-to-last climb of the day, I managed to ride Zulle off my wheel and move into second place. But there was no catching Escartin, who had a
two-minute gap. On the last climb, I was worn out and I bonked. I hadn’t eaten anything solid since breakfast. I got dropped by the leaders and finished fourth. Escartin won the stage and
vaulted into second place overall, trailing me by 6:19. Zulle was 7:26 back.
Not long after I crossed the finish line, a French TV journalist confronted me: there were reports that I had tested positive for a banned substance. The report was wrong, of course. I returned to
the team hotel, and pushed through a throng of clamoring media, and called another press conference. All I could do was assert my innocence each time there was a new wave of
speculation in the papers–and there was one every three or four days..
Le Monde had published a story stating that a drug test had turned up minute traces of corticosteroid in my urine, I was using a cortisone cream to treat a case of saddle sores–and I
had cleared the cream with the Tour authorities before the race ever started. Immediately, Tour authorities issued a statement affirming my innocence. “Le Monde was looking for a drug story,
and they got one on skin cream,” I said.
I was hurt and demoralized by the constant barrage from the press. I put forth such effort, and had paid such a high price to ride again, and now that effort was being devalued. I tried to deal
with the reports honestly and straightforwardly, but it didn’t seem to do any good.
I began to notice something. The people who whispered and wrote that I was using drugs were the very same ones who, when I was sick, had said, “He’s finished. He’ll never race again.” They
were the same ones who, when I wanted to come back, said, “No, we don’t want to give him a chance. He’ll never amount to anything.”
Now that I was in the lead of the Tour de France, wearing the yellow jersey, and looking more and more like the eventual winner, the very same people sent the very same message. “It’s not
possible,” they said. “Can’t be done. He can’t do it. What’s going on here? There must be another explanation, something suspicious.” They were consistent, the naysayers.
It’s a good thing I didn’t listen to them when I was sick.
It hurt me, too, that the French journalists in particular were so suspicious of me. I lived in France, and I loved the country. After the previous year’s problems during the Tour, a number of
top riders had stayed away from France in ‘99, but not me. While other riders were afraid of being harassed by the police or investigated by the governmental authorities, I trained there
every day. France was the most severe place in the world to be caught using a performance enhancer, but I did all of my springtime racing in France, and conducted my entire Tour
preparation there. Under French law, the local police could have raided my house whenever they wanted. They didn’t have to ask, or knock. They could have sorted through my drawers, rifled
my pockets, searched my car, whatever they wanted, without a warrant or any sort of notice.
I said to the press, “I live in France. I spent the entire months of May and June in France, racing and training. If I was trying to hide something, I’d have been in another country.”
But they didn’t write that, or print that.
The next day, we traveled to perhaps the most famous mountain in the Tour, the Col du Tourmalet. The road to the top soared more than ten miles into the sky. It was our last big climb
and test, and once again, we knew we would be under relentless attack. By now we were sick of riding in front, always catching the wind, while being chased from behind. But if we could
control the mountains for one more day, it would be hard to deny us the top spot on the podium in Paris.
As soon as we reached the base of the 20-kilometer Tourmalet, the other riders began nipping at us. We rode a strong tempo, trying to weaken the attackers, and with 8K to go, we accelerated.
The French climber, Virenque, drew even with Kevin and said, angrily, “What’s your problem?” Kevin said he didn’t have a problem. Virenque asked Kevin if he was going “a bloc,” which
means all-out. Kevin said, “No, are you going a bloc? ” With that, Kevin kicked into a bigger gear and sped away from him. For the rest of the day Virenque chased us, glowering.
As we labored upward, Escartin and I shadowed each other. I watched him carefully. On the steepest part of the climb, he attacked. I went right with him–and so did Zulle. Going over the
top it was the three of us, locked in our private race. At the peak, we looked down on a thick carpet of clouds below us. As we descended, the fog closed in and we couldn’t see ten feet in
front of us. It was frightening, a high-speed chase through the mist, along cliff roads with no guardrails.
All I cared about now was keeping my main rivals either with me or behind me. Ahead of us loomed a second climb, the Col du Soulor. Escartin attacked again, and again I went right with
him. We reached another fog-cloaked summit, and now just one more climb remained in the Tour de France: the Col d’Aubisque, 7.5 kilometers of uphill effort. Then the mountain work
would be over, and it was an all-out drop to the finish at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour.
There were now three riders in front, fighting for the stage win, and a pack of nine trailing a minute behind and still in contention for the stage, among them myself, Escartin, and Zulle. I
didn’t care about a stage win. With four kilometers to go, I decided to ride safely and let the rest of them sprint-duel, while I avoided crashes. I had just one aim, to protect the yellow jersey.
I cycled through the stage finish and dismounted, thoroughly exhausted but pleased to have protected my lead. But after five hours on the bike, I now had to face another two-hour press
conference. I was beginning to feel that the press was trying to break me mentally, because the other riders couldn’t do it physically. The media had become as much of an obstacle as the
terrain itself.
That day, the International Cycling Union released all of my drug tests, which were, in fact, clean. What’s more, I had received a wonderful vote of confidence from the race organizer,
Jean-Marie Leblanc. “Armstrong beating his illness is a sign that the Tour can beat its own illness,” he said.
Somehow, we had fended off all the attacks, both on the bike and off, and kept the yellow jersey on my back. We had done it, we had controlled the mountains, and after three weeks and
2,200 miles I led the race with an overall time of 86:46:20. In second, trailing by six minutes and 15 seconds, was Escartin, and in third place, trailing by seven minutes and 28 seconds, was Alex
Zulle.
I still wore the maillot jaune.
ODDLY, AS PARIS DREW CLOSER, I GOT MORE AND MORE nervous. I was waking up every night in a cold sweat, and I began to wonder if I was sick. The night sweats were more
severe than anything I’d had when I was ill. I tried to tell myself the fight for my life was a lot more important than my fight to win the Tour de France, but by now they seemed to be one and
the same to me.
I wasn’t the only nervous member of our team. Our head mechanic was so edgy that he slept with my bike in his hotel room. He didn’t want to leave it in the van, where it could be prey for
sabotage. Who knew what freakish things could happen to keep me from winning? At the end of Stage 17, a long flat ride to Bordeaux, some nutcase shot pepper spray into the peloton, and a
handful of riders had to pull over, vomiting.
There was a very real threat that could still prevent me from the winning the Tour: a crash. I faced one last obstacle, an individual time trial over 35.4 miles in the theme-park town of
Futuroscope. In a time trial very, very bad things could happen. I could fall and break a collarbone, or a leg.
I wanted to win the time trial. I wanted to make a final statement on the bike, to show the press and cycling rumormongers that I didn’t care what they said about me. I was through with press
conferences (although not with drug tests; I was random-tested yet again after stage 17). To try to win the time trial, however, was a risky proposition, because a rider seeking the fastest time is
prone to taking foolish chances and hurting himself–perhaps so badly that he can’t get back on the bike.
We saw it all the time. Just look at what happened to Bobby Julich in Metz, when he crashed at 55 mph and suffered massive hematomas in his chest. I’d nearly crashed myself in that time trial,
when the child jumped out in front of me as I came around the tight turn. On the Alpe d’Huez, the spectator had jumped in front of Guerini and he crashed. Zulle would have been only a
minute behind me if he hadn’t crashed on the Passage du Gois.
Bill Stapleton came to see me in the hotel the night before the stage. “Lance, I’m not a coach, but I think you should take it easy here,” he said. “You’ve got a lot to lose. Let’s just get through
it. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The smart play was to avoid any mistakes, don’t fall, don’t hurt yourself, and don’t lose ten minutes because of a crash.
I didn’t care.
“Bill, who in the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” I said.
“What?”
“I’m going to kick ass tomorrow. I’m giving it everything. I’m going to put my signature on this Tour.”
“Okay,” Bill said, with resignation. “So I guess that’s not up for discussion.”
I’d worn the yellow jersey since Metz, and I didn’t want to give it up. As a team we had ridden to perfection, but now I wanted to win as an individual. Only three riders had ever swept all of
the time trials in the Tour, and they happened to be the three greatest ever: Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, and Miguel Indurain. I wanted to be among them. I wanted to prove I was the
strongest man in the race.
I couldn’t sleep. Scott MacEachern from Nike came back to my room to visit, and so did Stapleton. Johan stuck his head in the room and saw Scott sprawled on my bed, while I was still
on my feet. Johan looked at his watch: it was 11:30 P.M. “Get these guys out of here and go to bed,” he ordered me.
My mother flew in for Futuroscope, and I arranged for her to ride in one of the follow cars. She wanted to see the time trial because she felt that old protective instinct; if she was with me, I
wouldn’t get hurt. But the time trials frightened her as much as anything, because she understood cycling well enough to know how easily I could crash–and she knew this day, the
second-to-last of the race, would either make it or break it for me, once and for all. She had to be there for that.
A time trial is a simple matter of one man alone against the clock. The course would require roughly an hour and 15 minutes of riding flat-out over 57 kilometers, a big loop through
west-central France, over roads lined with red tiled roofs and farm fields of brown and gold grass, where spectators camped out on couches and lounge chairs. I wouldn’t see much of the
scenery, though, because I would be in a tight aerodynamic tuck most of the time.
The riders departed in reverse order, which meant I would be last. To prepare, I got on my bike on a stationary roller, and went through all the gears I anticipated using on the course.
While I warmed up, Tyler Hamilton had his go at the distance. His job was to ride as hard and fast as he could, regardless of risk, and send back technical information that might help me.
Tyler not only rode it fast, he led for much of the day. Finally, Zulle came in at 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 26 seconds to knock Tyler out of first place.
It was my turn. I shot out of the start area and streaked through the winding streets. Ahead of me was Escartin, who had started three minutes before I did.
My head down, I whirred by him through a stretch of trees and long grass, so focused on my own race that I never even glanced at him.
I had the fastest time at the first two splits. I was going so fast that in the follow car, my
mother’s head jerked back from the acceleration around the curves.
After the third time check I was still in first place at 50:55. The question was, could I hold the pace on the final portion of the race?
Going into the final six kilometers, I was 20 seconds up over Zulle. But now I started to pay. I paid for mountains, I paid for the undulations, I paid for the flats. I was losing time, and I could
feel it. If I beat Zulle, it would be only by a matter of seconds. Through two last, sweeping curves, I stood up. I accelerated around the corners, trying to be careful not to crash, but still
taking them as tightly as I could– and almost jumped a curb and went up on the pavement.
I raced along a highway in the final sprint. I bared my teeth, counting, driving. I crossed the line. I checked the time: 1:08:17.
I won by 9 seconds.
I cruised into a gated area, braked, and fell off the bike, bent over double.
I had won the stage, and I had won the Tour de France. I was now assured of it. My closest competitor was Zulle, who trailed in the overall standings by 7 minutes and 37 seconds, an
impossible margin to make up on the final stage into Paris.
I was near the end of the journey. But there had been two journeys, really: the journey to get to the Tour, and then the journey of the Tour itself. In the beginning there was the Prologue and
the emotional high, and that first week, uneventful but safe. Then there were the strange out-of-body experiences at Metz and Sestriere, followed by the demoralizing attacks by the
press. Now to finish with a victory gave me a sweet sense of justification. I was going to Paris wearing the maillot jaune.
As I took the podium my mother clapped and waved a flag and wiped her eyes. I hadn’t seen her before the stage, but immediately afterward I grabbed her in a hug, and then took her to lunch.
She said, “You’re just not going to believe what’s going on back home. I know it’s hard for you to understand or even think about right now. But the people in the U.S. are going crazy. I’ve
never seen anything like this before.”
Afterward, we went back to the hotel, and another throng of press was in the lobby. We worked our way through the crowd toward my room, and one of the French journalists tried to interview
my mother. “Can we talk?” he asked.
I turned around and said: “She’s not speaking to the French press.” But the guy continued to ask her a question.
“Leave her alone,” I said. I got my arm around her and steered us through the crowd up to my room.
THAT NIGHT, I BEGAN TO GET AN IDEA OF THE RE-sponse back home in the States. A journalist from People magazine arrived and wanted an interview. Sponsors streamed into our
team hotel to shake hands and visit. Friends began to arrive; they had jumped on planes overnight. Bill Stapleton took me to dinner and explained that all of the morning shows and
late-night talk shows wanted me to appear. He thought I should fly to the States for a day after the Tour for a series of TV interviews.
But traditionally, the Tour winner travels to a series of races around Europe to display the yellow jersey, and I wanted to honor that. “It’s not up for discussion,” I said. “I’m staying here to
do these races.”
“Okay, fine,” Bill said. “Great.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think you’re being really stupid.”
“Why?”
“Because you have no idea what’s going on back there, and how important it is. But you’re going to find out. The day this thing is over, you cannot hide. Everybody in America is paying
attention.”
Nike wanted me to hold a press conference in New York at their mega-store, and the mayor wanted to be there, and so did Donald Trump. The people in Austin wanted to have a parade.
Nike offered a private jet to fly me to the States and back to Europe in a single day, so I could do the races. I was stunned. I’d spent years winning bike races, and nobody in the States had
cared.
Now everybody cared.
But part of me still didn’t entirely trust the fact that I was going to win. I told myself there was one more day to race, and after dinner I stayed sequestered, got my hydration and my rubdown,
and went to bed.
The final stage, from Arpajon into Paris, is a largely ceremonial ride of 89.2 miles. According to tradition, the peloton would cruise at a leisurely pace, until we saw the Eiffel Tower and
reached the Arc de Triomphe, where the U.S. Postal team would ride at the front onto the Champs-Elysees. Then a sprint would begin, and we would race ten laps around a circuit in the
center of the city. Finally, there would be a post-race procession, a victory lap.
As we rode toward Paris, I did interviews from my bike and chatted with teammates and friends in the peloton. I even ate an ice-cream cone. The Postal team, as usual, rode in superbly
organized fashion. “I don’t have to do anything,” I said to one TV crew. “It’s all my boys.”
After a while another crew came by. “I’d like to say Hi to Kelly Davidson, back in Fort Worth, Texas,” I said. “This is for you.” Kelly is the young cancer fighter who I’d met in the Ride for the
Roses, and she and her family had become my close friends.
Finally, we approached the city. I felt a swell of emotion as we rode onto the Champs-Elysees for the first time. The entire avenue was shut down for us, and it was a stunning sight, with
hundreds of thousands of spectators lining the avenue of fitted cobblestones and brick. The air was full of air horns and confetti, and bunting hung from every facade. The number of American
flags swirling in the crowd stunned me.
Deep in the crowd, someone held up a large cardboard sign. It said “TEXAS.”
As we continued to parade down the Champs, it gradually dawned on me that not all of those flags were the Stars and Stripes. Some of those waving pennants, I saw delightedly, were from
the Lone Star State.
The ten-lap sprint to the finish was oddly subdued and anticli-mactic, a formality during which I simply avoided a last freak crash. And then I crossed the finish line. It was finally tangible and
real. I was the winner.
I dismounted into pandemonium; there were photographers everywhere, and security personnel, and protocol officials, and friends, clapping me on the back. There must have been 50 people
from Austin, including Bart Knaggs, and my dear friend Jeff Garvey, and even, believe it or not, Jim Hoyt. Homeboy had talked his way into our compound.
I was ushered to the podium for the victory ceremony, where I raised the trophy after it was presented to me. I couldn’t contain myself anymore, and leaped down and ran into the stands to
embrace my wife. The photographers surrounded me, and I said, “Where’s my Mom?” and the crowd opened and I saw her and grabbed her in a hug. The press swarmed around her too, and
someone asked her if she thought my victory was against the odds.
“Lance’s whole life has been against all odds,” my mother told him.
Then came the best part of all, the ceremonial victory lap where I rode with the team one last time. We cruised all alone on the Champs-Elysees. We had been together for three weeks, and
we rode very, very slowly, savoring the moment. A stranger dashed into the street and handed me a huge American flag on a pole. I don’t know how he got there–he just appeared in front of
me and thrust it into my hand. I raised the flag, feeling an overwhelming blur of sensation and emotion.
Finally, I returned to the finish area and spoke to the press, choking back tears. “I’m in shock. I’m in shock. I’m in shock,” I said. “I would just like to say one thing. If you ever get a second
chance in life for something, you’ve got to go all the way.”
We were whisked away as a team, to get ready for that night’s celebration banquet, an elaborate fete for 250 people at the Musee d’Or-say, surrounded by some of the most priceless art in the
world. We were exhausted to a man, utterly depleted by the three-week ordeal, but we looked forward to raising a glass.
We arrived at the museum to find the tables exquisitely set, except for the rather odd centerpieces, which had been suggested by Thorn Weisel.
There was an arrangement of apples at each place.
We lifted our first glasses of Champagne since Metz, and I stood to toast my teammates. “I wore the yellow jersey,” I said. “But I figure maybe the only thing that belongs to me is the zipper. A
small piece of it. My teammates deserve the rest–sleeves, the front and back of it.”
My teammates raised their hands.
There was something clenched in the fist of each man.
An apple. Red, shiny apples, all around me.
THAT NIGHT, KRISTIN AND I CHECKED INTO THE RITZ, where we’d booked a huge and expensive suite. We changed into the complimentary bathrobes and opened another bottle
of Champagne, and had our private moment, our celebration. We were finally alone together again, and we giggled at the size of the suite, and had dinner from room service. Then we fell
into a very deep sleep.
I woke up the next morning and burrowed down into the pillow, and tried to adjust to the unfamiliar surroundings. Next to me, Kik opened her eyes, and gradually we came fully awake.
As she stared at me, we read each other’s thoughts.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “I won the Tour de France.”
“No way,” she said.
We burst out laughing.
