Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong Read online

  On September 14, 1996, at the 50-yard line of the University of Michigan’s football stadium, Andreu told Kramar that he loved her, and proposed. She cried and said yes.

  The wedding was set for New Year’s Eve.

  Two weeks after their engagement in the fall of 1996, the couple learned that Armstrong had been diagnosed with cancer. Neither of them had ever imagined he would be anything less than a powerhouse. Now the thought of him wasting away sickened them.

  Two days after Armstrong had tumors removed from his brain, Kramar and Andreu flew to Indianapolis and walked into a conference room in the downtown Indiana University Cancer Center to visit their friend.

  Always nosy, she took inventory of her surroundings. To the left, a bathroom. To the right, a long, rectangular table. Beyond that, a sofa and a television against the far wall. Armstrong was seated at the table with an IV attached to his arm. To Kramar, Armstrong looked like a ghost of himself, nothing like the indefatigable Texan she had come to know so well.

  Cancer had stolen his bravado. He was frail and bald with a long scar that bisected his scalp where doctors had opened his head for the surgery. She smiled and said he looked good. In truth, she was startled to see so much life drained out of him.

  Kramar and Andreu gathered with Armstrong and four of his other friends in the conference room because his hospital room had been too small. A Dallas Cowboys football game was on TV. Everyone strained to make small talk.

  Armstrong had received a juice machine as a gift, and Kramar started there. “Do you like carrot juice?” she asked him, preparing to extol the virtues of what she called “the power of juicing.”

  “How about apple? You like apple juice? You know, I have a juicer and I make all kinds of juice with it. You can even put vegetables in it. It’s so good for you.”

  “Thanks, I didn’t know that,” Armstrong said.

  The conversation ended abruptly when two men in white coats walked in. They were there to ask Armstrong about his medical background.

  “I think we should leave and give him his privacy,” Kramar said, nudging Andreu.

  “No, you can stay,” Armstrong said.

  Kramar motioned again to Andreu, trying to get him to leave. She tapped him with her foot.

  “No, Lance said we can stay,” he said.

  One of the doctors asked Armstrong if he had ever used performance-enhancing drugs. Betsy’s pulse quickened. What did he say? She snapped her head to look at Armstrong. She saw him scanning the room, looking at the people there.

  There was Coach Carmichael, and Carmichael’s future wife, Paige. There was Lisa Shiels, a blond premed student from the University of Texas who’d been Armstrong’s latest live-in love. Also in the room was Stephanie McIlvain, Armstrong’s personal representative at Oakley, the sunglasses company.

  These people were in Armstrong’s closest circle. With his glance around the room, he decided he could trust them. One hand on his IV, Armstrong answered the question calmly, as if reading a grocery list.

  He said, “Growth hormone, cortisone, EPO, steroids and testosterone.”

  At that point, sensing Kramar’s slack-jawed surprise, Andreu pulled her out of the room and into a hallway. Away from the hospital room’s door, near the elevators, Kramar addressed Andreu in a raised voice.

  “God, that’s how he got cancer, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m not marrying you if you’re doing all that stuff. The wedding’s off!”

  “I swear to God. I swear to God. I swear to God,” Andreu said. He motioned the sign of the cross. “Please, I promise you, I’m not doing all that stuff.”

  All Kramar knew about steroids was that Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, had been busted for them at the 1988 Seoul Games after winning the 100-meter dash. But she knew enough to know steroids were unhealthy. And illegal. Worst of all, by her measure, using steroids was an immoral act. It was against the rules of competition. It was cheating.

  “Is that what cycling is all about?” she said.

  Andreu begged her to keep her voice down. “Betsy, please, I’ve never taken steroids. I’ve never taken any of that stuff.” He told her not to worry: He was clean. “I’m not involved in any of that doping shit.”

  She stormed off to the hotel, and he followed. The situation was so tense that they didn’t go back to see Armstrong that day. While she wanted to know more, he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Kramar had no idea that her fiancé had just lied to her face about his drug use. Several of his former teammates said Andreu had taken EPO starting, if not before, the 1995 season. Armstrong and the fellow Motorola rider Stephen Swart said the entire team, including Andreu, had used the drug for the 1995 Tour.

  In Andreu’s little corner of the world, everyone seemed aware that riders were relying on EPO to race.

  It’s just that Betsy Kramar was the last to know.

  Over the next few weeks, Kramar called four friends and two family members to talk about Armstrong’s drug admission. One was Dawn Polay, Kramar’s college roommate, who had known Andreu since grade school. “You never know what the truth is,” Polay said. “Just listen to what he has to say before you decide anything. Just because one person is doing it, it doesn’t mean Frankie is doing it, too.”

  Polay thought it all was one big, complex mess that Armstrong had created. Why had he trusted Kramar? If he paid any attention to her over the years, he knew she was opposed to smoking and drinking, let alone drug use. Polay thought Armstrong had made a monumental mistake—admitting to something so obviously “against the rules” to Betsy Kramar, an unflinchingly judgmental moralist.

  For weeks, Kramar and friends dissected what Armstrong’s admission might mean for her impending marriage. If Andreu had doped, would their children have three arms? They wondered if Armstrong had caused his own cancer. Kramar even asked her doctor as much.

  Most oncological experts say it is impossible to definitively say Armstrong’s use of PEDs caused his cancer or exacerbated a preexisting cancer. While testosterone has been shown to cause prostate cancer, there is no proof that PEDs cause testicular cancer, one of the most uncommon types of the disease. Men have a 1-in-270 chance of getting it. At twenty-five, Armstrong was in the age group—twenty to forty—with the highest incidence for testicular cancer.

  Though it is still unproven, some experts say that EPO and growth hormone use could hasten the development of tumors and cause cancer cells to replicate at a faster pace. Growth hormone stimulates the liver and other tissues to secrete insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1)—according to Dr. Arjun Vasant Balar, an oncologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York—and IGF-1 has been shown to increase the growth of cancer.

  Lucio Tentori, a cancer researcher at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, produced a research paper in 2007 that explored whether doping with HGH, IGF-1, anabolic steroids or EPO increases the risk for cancer. He was aware of only one described case of a cyclist’s getting cancer after using growth hormone, and that cyclist was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, not testicular cancer.

  After all his studies and analysis, Tentori would only go as far as to say that “athletes should be made aware that long-term treatment with doping agents might increase the risk of developing cancer.”

  CHAPTER 7

  In the picture they are a team. J.T. Neal and Lance Armstrong: two smiling, bald-headed cancer patients. Neal cherished the photo. It was proof they each had someone to lean on through the uncertainty of a grave illness, someone who every day confronted the frailty of life.

  In the fall of 1996, Neal had guided his young charge through cancer treatments at the Southwest Regional Cancer Center in Austin. Neal knew the nurses and doctors from his own stint there, knew the cancer ward layout and arranged a private room for Armstrong.

  The seclusion of the private room was perfect for Lisa Shiels, Armstrong’s new girlfriend, a college senior who was serious about her schoolwork. She could study and give him the support he needed.
/>   Among the friends and family who rallied to Armstrong’s side, only a few thought beyond his survival. Bill Stapleton did. To keep Armstrong looking to the future, Stapleton suggested he establish a cancer charity in his name, so he could remain in the news during his recovery. Armstrong and some of his cycling buddies—Bart Knaggs, John Korioth, and Austin chiropractor Gary Seghi—thought it was a brilliant idea and talked it through during dinner one night. The foundation was a good PR move, but it could also raise awareness for testicular cancer, something that Armstrong felt could keep others from suffering his same fate. If he had known something about the disease, if he had caught it earlier, if his testicle hadn’t grown to the size of a lemon before he did anything about it, the cancer likely wouldn’t have spread to his abdomen or his brain. He thought the foundation could help save others from their own neglect.

  In 1997, Stapleton filed official papers with the Texas secretary of state that established the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Korioth, a bar manager in Austin and one of Armstrong’s closest friends, stepped up to run it. Knaggs encouraged some of his rich friends, including Jeff Garvey, a venture capitalist in Austin who was heavily involved in USA Cycling, to join the board of directors.

  Armstrong wanted all of his friends to help him in his new, off-the-bike endeavor. In searching for a headquarters for the foundation, he decided one of J.T. Neal’s renovated apartments would be perfect. Though the apartment may very well have had a market value of $650 a month, he offered $200—and Neal was offended.

  Neal didn’t want to give Armstrong another cut-rate deal. Armstrong was rich. Besides, Neal wanted to save money for his family’s future. Going through chemotherapy in Austin, he had seen death up close, had known people who didn’t make it. His own end was coming, maybe not next week, maybe not next month, but soon.

  So Neal said no to the $200 offer, and Armstrong was furious. He claimed Neal wasn’t doing everything he could to help build the foundation. Neal expected that reaction, because he had seen everyone in Armstrong’s life become yes men: Stapleton, Carmichael, Korioth, Ochowicz. He’d also seen all of them benefit financially and/or professionally from their association with Armstrong.

  “He had all the people coming around who liked money and who wanted to impress and he wanted to impress, and he got a lot of values and deals from people like that,” Neal said. “It was nothing I could handle.”

  The Lance Armstrong Foundation’s first fund-raiser was a race in Austin called the Race for the Roses, which eventually became the Ride for the Roses. The name suggested that Armstrong had learned the hard way about the need to stop and smell the flowers. Korioth’s cold calls seeking sponsorships were met by a surprising ignorance: Rare was the person on the other end who had ever heard of Lance Armstrong. But Michael Ward, a guitarist with the rock band the Wallflowers and an avid cyclist, contacted Korioth to say he wanted to help out with the fund-raiser by having his band play there. Korioth quickly agreed. For the fledgling foundation, it was a huge coup.

  Armstrong had not yet won the Tour de France, nor was he in the clear with cancer. The one-year mark with no reappearance of cancer would be a key date in his recovery. But Armstrong didn’t think that far ahead. No time for that. Besides continuing treatments and assuring the success of the Race for the Roses, he brought a new woman into his life.

  He met Kristin Richard at a news conference announcing his fund-raising event. As a public relations account executive, her job was to promote the race. Armstrong liked her looks, but he particularly loved that she was working so hard for him. She was his official cheerleader, paid to convince people to pay attention to him, his foundation and his big cycling event.

  He told Neal he had met this “hot new girl” from a stable, well-to-do family. Her father was a business executive. The family owned a home near New York City. To Armstrong, the Richard family seemed too perfect to be true. He told Neal that he liked the family’s normalcy as much as he liked Kristin.

  Shiels was history. Neal’s oldest daughter, C. C., bumped into her a few months after the breakup and told her she was sorry that the relationship hadn’t worked out. Shiels burst into tears. She had sacrificed basically her entire senior year of college for Armstrong and felt he had discarded her when she was no longer of use. Neal’s wife, Frances, said, well, that was Armstrong for you. “He treats people like bananas. He takes what he needs, then just tosses the peel on the side of the road.”

  Heartbreak notwithstanding, the Race for the Roses event succeeded beyond Korioth’s early hopes. To the casual U.S. sports fan, Armstrong’s accomplishments—a world championship and a couple stages won at the Tour de France—might not have meant much. But to cyclists, Armstrong was a big-time celebrity. Nearly three thousand riders showed up, including the Olympic speed-skating-legend-turned-cyclist Eric Heiden and Dan Jansen, a speed skater who won a Gold Medal at the 1994 Olympics. In the end, Korioth realized he should have expected a large turnout.

  Korioth saw how Armstrong’s fans felt as if they knew him intimately. They understood the agony of ascending a steep climb, the monotony of traversing long, endless roads. “It’s a very personal connection,” Korioth says. “They feel like they could go on a ride with him. And the thing is, they probably could.”

  Armstrong’s cancer deepened those emotional connections, intertwining the circle of cycling fans with cancer survivors. It brought together people who looked to him for inspiration, both as an athlete and a symbol of resilience.

  And so began Armstrong’s surge into the pantheon of American sports heroes. He had risen from his deathbed to a secular sainthood, and Americans were all but salivating to claim him as their own. He was someone the country could cheer for and be proud of, a man on a classic hero’s journey that had all the elements of a boy-done-good story. Not only could American cancer patients beat their disease, but in time they would realize that they also could go on to beat the damned French at their own game, the Tour de France. Armstrong would become a cancer-kicker, a France-kicker and an all around ass-kicker, and Americans are suckers for a sympathetic tough guy.

  In one sense, Armstrong satisfied a primal human need to create models for our sanctification. He was an underdog-turned-superhero, first in a cancer ward, later on a bike. Those who believed in him saw only the good side, or convinced themselves that was all there was.

  Just after Armstrong had been diagnosed with cancer, Kevin Kuehler, a competitive mountain biker, visited a doctor because he had experienced symptoms similar to Armstrong’s.

  That doctor said it wasn’t cancer, but four months later, Kuehler sought a second opinion. That time, yes, it was cancer. On the way home that day, Kuehler spoke to Armstrong on a call-in radio show.

  While nervously trying to explain his experience, Kuehler heard Armstrong cut him off. “Did you call for my advice,” Armstrong said, “or did you call just to talk?”

  Armstrong advised Kuehler to have the affected testicle removed, a surgery that he said would save Kuehler’s life. Two years later, Kuehler reached out to Armstrong again when the cancer reappeared in his lungs. That time, Armstrong arranged a conversation between his main oncologist, Dr. Larry Einhorn of the Indiana University School of Medicine, and Kuehler. Within forty-five minutes, Einhorn was on the phone with Kuehler, discussing a treatment option Kuehler hadn’t considered.

  That new treatment worked, and Kuehler survived to testify before the nation: “I think it’s phenomenal, what he’s doing. He could be cured and go on with his life, but he has chosen to go the more difficult route and help other people. Most guys don’t feel comfortable talking about what’s going on in their pants. But with this kind of cancer, the more you learn, the more you’re comforted. That gives Lance a mission.”

  Other believers would come to include people like a man named Jim from Nashville, Tennessee, whose wife had been diagnosed with leukemia. On his blog, he wrote words that many other Armstrong followers considered the truth: “Clearly, God is working thr
ough Lance Armstrong.”

  As the world’s Kevin Kuehlers came to worship Armstrong, J.T. Neal waited for his protégé at the Austin airport, calling his cell phone repeatedly with no answer. It was the spring of 1997, and Armstrong was on his way to a full recovery from the testicular cancer. Fans of his, many of them cancer patients, wanted to meet him, talk to him, even just touch him as he walked by. They sent tons of letters to his Nike representative, saying Armstrong was their hero and begging for Armstrong’s autograph. His friends had come to call him “Cancer Jesus.” Armstrong hated it.

  “I don’t like that big frenzy,” he says. “I don’t like crowds. I don’t like people. I don’t like strangers in general.” Neal thought he was closing himself off.

  Still, people liked him. They saw in him what they hoped to see in themselves: a generosity, kindness and, above all, courageousness necessary to survive cancer and return to work—and life.

  Neal was on his way to Arkansas for his second bone marrow transplant, which he knew would make him gag and vomit and give him oral thrush, a yeast infection of the mouth common in infants. It would further weaken his body. The transplant might even kill him.

  He needed help, someone to feed him and drive him to and from the hospital during the weeklong procedure. Trying to spare his own family the pain of seeing him so ravaged, he asked Armstrong to come with him. Armstrong agreed. He would stay at his side for the whole seven days. Until he wouldn’t.

  At the airport, Neal’s cell phone finally rang.

  “Where are you?” Neal said.

  “Um, I can’t make it, sorry,” Armstrong said.

  He had backstage passes to the Wallflowers (heck, they’d played at the Race for the Roses and all) and didn’t want to give them up. Neal felt betrayed. He had been there when Armstrong needed him. They had gone through cancer treatments together. He had brought him into his family and had kept his mouth shut about all the drugs he took in cycling, the EPO, the injections of who knows what else. He—not Stapleton, not the Wallflowers—was the one Armstrong called before the 1996 Olympics to help figure out how to get the EPO out of a hotel room refrigerator in Milan because Armstrong had accidentally left it there. He had listened to Armstrong’s deepest fears and secrets, including those about his biological and adoptive fathers. He had been his business manager and lawyer, without ever charging a fee. Later, Neal would say, “This is not the treatment I deserved or that anyone deserved.”