The Armstrong Lie Page #4

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when Lance made his big attack

in the mountains to Sestriere,

I was in the press room that

day, I saw the reaction.

People were laughing, incredulous.

They didn't believe this.

Because here we had a guy

who'd come back from cancer,

supposedly riding the race

clean, riding more effortlessly,

with greater power

at a greater speed

than all the Tours

that had gone before.

So it just didn't make sense.

We have to remember, this is

a guy who is not thought of

as somebody who could potentially

win the Tour de France.

He had always been

strong in short races,

but never over the long haul and

he had never been a climber.

Whenever you start the Tour, they

make you fill out these forms.

"How many Tours have you done?

How many have you completed?"

And I remember in '99, I had

to write down four and one.

Thinking,

"That's not a great record."

Lance Armstrong winning,

at one level, created a problem

because the organizers had

actually said before the race,

"We want this race to be slower

"than the drug

races of previous years

"to prove to the public that these

guys are now using less drugs."

But it was

the fastest ever Tour.

But on the other hand,

they had this winner

who was the most romantic figure

that sport maybe had ever known.

A cancer survivor, overcoming the

disease, comes back and wins the Tour.

Yeah, they liked that.

With Lance Armstrong

winning the Tour de France,

that opened up this

huge market in the US.

Oakley and Nike and Trek

and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

You name it.

There was a long list of companies

that were just getting in line

to sign deals

with Lance Armstrong

because they knew who Lance was,

as a cancer

survivor and as a person,

and an advocate for the

cancer-surviving community.

When he first won

in '99, that was

the last time he

was just a bike racer.

And after that,

he became a celebrity.

That celebrity is what gave

him such immense power.

This is not a story about doping.

It's a story about power.

And Lance got

the power in '99 and the story

became hanging onto that power.

Even in 1999, Lance

came close to getting caught

when steroids showed

up in a urine test.

It turns out I

was using some cream

for what we call a saddle sore.

It was something

that we all use.

Cortisone cream that

you use for a crash

or for a boil or any

sort of skin infection.

The traces were so small.

They were ridiculous.

It was always on my heels

right away from '99.

Of course, there were plenty of

supporters and

cheerleaders in the press.

Lance Armstrong forced once

again to defend himself there,

which is becoming a depressingly

familiar sight on this Tour.

But tonight, he has

some very high-level help

because the UCI, the

world-governing body of cycling,

have just released

this press communique.

It goes against all their commitment

to medical secrecy, they say,

but they want to do it

to clarify this situation

and stop it getting

further out of hand.

They confirm that

the rider used an

ointment and they

give the brand name,

and that he also offered them a

medical prescription before his test.

It showed up in the

test, and Verbruggen just said,

"Look, you gotta give us a reason

for this being in your system."

So the guys

scoured the Internet,

looking for this

particular type of cortisone,

and we found one that was,

indeed, a cream.

And we said it was

for saddle sores.

When you say

Verbruggen came to you,

do you mean he came to you like,

"Give us some excuse so that we don't

have to make an issue of this"?

He didn't come to me.

He went to Johan.

Johan told me that he did speak

to Verbruggen about

Lance's positive test.

Verbruggen, the head of the UCI,

denies that the conversation

ever took place.

I've proven my class.

I've showed my class from day one.

There's no secrets here.

We have the oldest secret

in the book, hard work.

The ninth day of the

Tour de France world-famous bike race

brings the greatest

challenge yet,

the lofty hills of

the Maritime Alps.

This is the acid test

of stamina and endurance.

The Tour de France has

always been a brutal event.

For a few dollars from sponsors

looking for human billboards,

working-class riders

are willing to suffer.

An ascent in

the mountains can mean

climbing steep grades

for more than 20 miles.

Lifting a man and his

bicycle up the rising road

demands

a furious release of energy

that is higher than any

other animal on earth,

except a hummingbird.

That inhuman suffering carves

the body in unnatural ways

and leaves riders to search

for doping methods

that can dull pain

and push human limits.

There's always

been a form of doping

in any form of endurance sport.

And in the Tour de France,

originally it was alcohol.

You'd be passed

a bottle of beer up by a monk

on a mountaintop

and you'd drink it.

They enter a cafe,

shoving everyone aside.

And take anything:

red wine, champagne, beer.

Even water,

if there's nothing better.

Then, of course, the clever doctors

would come on board saying to athletes,

"We can prepare you

properly for the Tour.

"We'll not just give you dope, but we'll

tell you the correct diet, how to train,

"and then the coup de grace is

to give you the needle of EPO,

"and you're gonna be

10% better than your rival."

That is enormous.

And that became

apparent in the 1990s,

firstly, with the Italians.

This ancient-walled

city in northern Italy

became a center for

a group of doctors

determined to find a way

to boost cycling performance.

The most notorious of these was Lance

Armstrong's trainer Michele Ferrari.

He was a doctor that gave a training

program, a full medical program,

and would boost your career

and make you into

the king of the road.

He had a very bad reputation

as being a doctor that could set

people up with a doping program.

If you took all the rumors

and the smoke and the stories

of the dark side of cycling

and condensed them into one human

being, that would be Michele Ferrari.

But he turns out to be a very delightful,

communicative, expressive scientist.

That's the bit that

gets lost a little bit.

I think he comes across as sort

of a cloak-and-dagger enabler,

when in fact, his whole story,

his core interest, the way

he educated himself,

is essentially scientific.

Michele Ferrari was

obsessed with pushing

the limits of human

athletic performance.

If cyclists saw themselves

as biological racing machines,

Ferrari was one of the world's

greatest mechanics.

This is one of the first

relationship with Lance.

Probably he was already with

cancer, but nobody knew.

Surprisingly,

in 2009, Lance and his team

gave me permission

to talk to Ferrari,

a man who rarely gave

interviews to outsiders.

So in '95, you saw Lance and

you thought he has enormous potential.

He was able to

develop a lot of power,

absolute power, a lot of watts.

His potential was impressive.

His engine, you can say his

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