The Armstrong Lie Page #13

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firmly on his shoulders.

He learned this from Lance.

When you have a chance

to seize the yellow jersey

and take time out of your

opponents, you do it.

Alberto was doing

textbook Lance Armstrong.

It just backfired on Lance.

This guy is really unbelievable

Why did he have to attack?

There was still one

more mountain to climb,

cycling's mythic Mont Ventoux.

If Lance didn't do well here, his

whole comeback would backfire.

Some people would say he lost precisely

because he couldn't win clean.

It was a tough challenge.

In years past,

Lance had never won Ventoux.

I've had such a long history

with that f***ing mountain.

Lance believed that

a strong showing here

might somehow extinguish the

doubts that haunted his legacy.

Following a time trial, Contador

was still safely in the lead,

but Lance had clawed his way

back to third place,

just a few seconds ahead

of Wiggins and Frank Schleck

and just over

a minute behind Andy Schleck.

The Schlecks seemed determined

to break Armstrong's will

by attacking him

again and again.

But this time, Armstrong

would not be dropped.

Look at the face

of Armstrong there.

He's just telling Frank, "You ain't

going nowhere this afternoon, mate,

"because I'm going to stick

all over your back wheel."

Ventoux opens up,

and you could see a very small

group that included him.

Against every possible odd,

he had managed to

stay with that group

and he was not gonna lose time.

I was like, "He's gonna do it!

I can't believe it!" You know?

The guy is amazing.

To see him not just hanging

on, but having some aggression,

not just surviving,

but asserting,

was the most

dramatic moment of the Tour.

He wasn't gonna win. He was

doing it for some other reason,

some reason that

was unfamiliar to him.

I was caught up, too.

At that moment,

on that f***ing mountain,

I was just a fan,

rooting for Lance.

Just before the finish,

Wiggins cracked,

but Lance found another gear.

He pedaled on with

Contador and the Schlecks.

It was a good day.

I thought I'd be fine, but I

felt better than I expected.

Right.

Which was good.

Although I came in

here and wanted to win

and thought I could win,

thought I could be close,

that's not going to happen.

I'm gonna get third.

I can stand on the third step

and still say that I have won.

And I've won because of all of

the reasons I wanted to do this.

My foundation has benefited.

Cancer survivors and their

families all over the world

have benefited because of this.

I think I've

answered a lot of questions

about the performances

in the past.

Right.

Um...

It was incredible.

No sooner was the race over

than Lance was busy writing

a new ending to his story,

one that even

the French embraced.

The headline in the paper that had

once trumpeted "The Armstrong Lie"

now sang a different tune.

"Chapeau, le Texan."

"Hats off to Armstrong."

This was the perfect ending for the

original movie I started to make.

But four years later,

investigations

revealed something strange

about Lance's

blood values in 2009.

During the Tour, Lance

should have seen a decrease

in the concentration

of his red blood cells.

Instead, there was an increase

more than once.

And just before Ventoux,

the day he saved his comeback.

What happened there with Ventoux

is kind of what

happened with his life.

Just like when he was a kid

and he couldn't do it clean,

there came a point in 2009

when he couldn't do it clean.

And I think he'd made that

deal again before Ventoux.

I know what I know,

and I know that it was clean.

We finished the Ventoux.

It was a five or six hour day.

It was hot.

It was hard, obviously.

Immediately in the car,

down to the hotel

and the French guy was there

to take the blood draw.

I've never in my

career had blood taken

at the end of a day, at the

end of a stage like that.

It does not happen.

Why?

Because it's normal and natural

that when the body goes

through stress like that,

the body is obviously, if not very

dehydrated, extremely dehydrated.

It's not what they

would call "steady state."

And I think that's common

knowledge and common science.

It's not a fair number.

You know, he still

swears to me that he didn't.

We've talked about

this and I tell him,

"That's really

a tough one to believe."

it was tough for

me to believe, too,

since Lance had

lied to me so often.

But he was adamant he

did not dope in 2009.

Why was Lance

hanging on to this one?

Could it possibly be true?

Or was the comeback a new lie

to replace the old one?

Armstrong was in

a position of saying,

"Look, I'm gonna do

what I did in '99.

"I'm gonna come in

in the wake of this.

"I'm gonna clean up my name. I'm gonna

prove that I'm doing it clean."

it's like a bank robber breaking

back into the bank again

with everyone watching,

feeling he would

get away with it.

Feeling sure he

would get away with it.

Lance Armstrong!

Maybe this is why

they came after you.

It's almost like you were daring

them to look under the hood.

And they did.

We now know that the

comeback was not a new beginning,

but the beginning of the end.

Yet at the time,

in the fading sun of Paris,

Lance imagined the start of a new

chapter to his mythic story.

And I'll be back next year.

And then maybe we'll really win.

In 2010, Lance did not win.

He finished 23rd.

Contador won

the race and was busted

for violating

doping regulations.

Did you see Lance Armstrong using

performance-enhancing drugs?

I had, yeah.

Armstrong's comeback brought

all of his enemies out of the woodwork.

The first to come forward was

Lance's old teammate Floyd Landis.

Yes. I saw Lance

Armstrong using drugs.

I'd remind everybody

that this is a man

that's been under

oath several times

and had a very

different version.

This is a man that

wrote a book for profit

that had a completely

different version.

If you said, "Give me one

word to sum this all up."

Credibility.

And there's...

Floyd lost his

credibility a long time ago.

In the hubbub over Landis,

a new name surfaced. Jeff Novitzky.

He had prosecuted Barry Bonds.

And now, as part of the FDA,

he was looking at Armstrong.

Why would Novitzky

have anything to do

with what

an athlete does in Europe?

Armstrong's team was sponsored

by a branch of the federal government,

the US Postal Service.

It may have involved transfers

of controlled substances.

It may have money laundering,

tax evasion,

bribing foreign officials.

.Doping is not illegal,

but it's everything that

happens around doping

that federal investigators wanted to

try and use to prosecute a crime.

They started subpoenaing

cyclists, one by one.

Assistants, wives.

Jeff Novitzky called me.

I said, "What's taken

you so long to call me?"

"Well, I...

These things take time."

I said, "Do you have a pen

and paper on hand?"

And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "Let's get to work."

As the investigation continued,

another cyclist who had been

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