The Armstrong Lie Page #6

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Where is everybody?

His perspective

was, "Listen, this doping's

"been in place for 100

years in this sport.

"And I came into the system, and

the system was already in place,

"and I just have to

'play by the rules."'

You weren't trying

to beat the system.

You were trying to

be in the system.

Nobody made me dope.

I just knew that I had to dope to

do the sport that I love to do.

I was a good bike

racer, and then all of a sudden,

guys who can only sprint were getting

over big climbs in front of me

and doing things that they

never could do before.

And I was getting dropped

and struggling, and so...

I lived with that for a while,

but after a while, I cracked.

And so I ended up

taking EPO also.

And admitting to it doesn't make

it justifiable or any better.

But it was something that was

pretty prevalent at the time.

Now, in '99, when you were on

Lance's team, was there a team program?

I'm not gonna go into all that.

VAUGHTERS. Going into '99, there

were massive risks regarding doping.

I was really scared.

You could go to jail

for having this stuff.

The big fear was basically

getting caught holding.

The Festina affair was not an

entire team testing positive.

The Festina affair

was a soigneur crossing

a border and

a customs agent going,

"Hang on a second."

1999 was the year

they cracked the code.

It was the year they figured

out how to win the race.

They hit on a plan, and it was

really Lance who hit on a plan.

They would hire a guy.

He was Lance's gardener.

He was also a mechanic.

They called him Motoman.

He had a fast red motorcycle.

He was fearless.

Motoman basically did the Tour

de France on a motorcycle,

and he would meet up

with a staff member

and just do a subtle handoff

at some restaurant.

And then, next thing you know,

I was back at the hotel

and the doctor

would administer it.

A lot of people

who watch our programs

have heard of your illness

and see you winning now

and think it's

nothing short of a miracle.

Do you see it that way?

Um...

It is a miracle.

At that time, he had recently

taken delivery of EPO from Motoman.

He was involved in

all manner of doping.

If they were doing this

drug, why didn't they get caught?

Well, there was no

test for EPO at the time.

Those early years,

people, they always say to me,

"Why didn't they do more?

Why didn't they do more?"

They could not do any more.

You couldn't find it.

In 2000, they

developed a test for EPO.

So the smart guys,

Ferrari being one of them,

went back to

an older technology,

which was you take out bags

of blood before the race.

During the race,

you put them back in.

During the race,

the body, in need of oxygen,

is thirsty for red blood cells.

A transfusion boosts the

number of red blood cells.

And unlike EPO, transfusions are

almost impossible to detect.

They're still against the rules,

but hard to stop unless inspectors

can find the blood bags.

My initial reaction to this

was how gross it was.

That you want to

win this race so bad

that you would take

your blood in a bag,

put it in a cooler with ice

and beer and other stuff,

and then

eventually put it back in?

On the other hand,

it's like, "Look,

"if this is what they

thought it took to win,

"and that they also thought that

everybody else was doing it..."

Is that an argument you buy?

No, I don't buy it.

But I think that when you're

talking about this stuff,

there is definitely a moral

relativism to the whole thing.

2000. It was a time

when they were

trying to implement the test.

They didn't know exactly what was

positive, what was negative.

The science wasn't ready yet.

My suspicion is that

everybody used it at the Tour.

Michele came to me and said,

"You shouldn't

use EPO at the Tour.

"I don't feel good about that. I think

they're close to getting the test right."

He knew when

the test was gonna be ready.

He said,

"it's not worth the risk.

"Let's just do

one transfusion."

We all agreed, and so we did one

transfusion in

the middle of the Tour.

But a lot of

the Tour was won before...

The Tour was won on Hautacam in

2000 when I won by four minutes.

That was pre-transfusion.

But he made that call.

And we all questioned that call.

Because you thought

it wasn't gonna be enough.

I thought that was

not gonna be enough.

Each year, the bar got

nudged a little higher.

The innovation demands grew.

You had to keep up with the

Joneses or fall behind.

It became this

game of hide-and-seek.

And the best place to hide

sometimes is plain sight.

And that's what they

chose to do in 2004.

They faked

a mechanical breakdown,

pulled the bus over

to the side of the road

and administered blood bags

to the entire team.

In front of everybody. In front of

the police, in front of the fans.

It struck me as odd,

but it made sense.

We were gonna do it eventually.

So might as well knock it out on

the bus before we got to the hotel

and be done with it.

When everyone cheats,

then it becomes hugely distorted.

It becomes a different contest,

a contest of who's

got the best doctor,

who's got the most money, who's

got the biggest risk tolerance.

And the guy who was that guy

for this era was Lance.

That's where it

becomes a game of power.

When you can say, "I'm signing up

Ferrari to be my exclusive doctor."

When you can say,

"I'm gonna use a private jet

"to travel around

to evade detection."

Life, for me,

at the time, was moving fast.

Look at 2005.

I had won seven Tours in a row.

I was engaged to

a beautiful rock star.

But that all just

felt normal to me.

I certainly was very confident

that I would never be caught.

Armstrong rather enjoyed this.

I think he embraced it.

I think he had the attitude,

"If you're gonna cheat,

"you don't cheat halfway.

"You cheat all the way.

You bring everything."

If it's training, it's 100%.

If it's equipment, it's 100%.

If it's doping, it's 100%.

So once he crossed that tine, and

once he'd overcome his moral dilemma,

it was two feet in for him.

Don't bring

a knife to a gunfight.

I think he thought that the

Tour de France was a gunfight,

and why show up with a knife

if everyone else has guns?

When you take that killer

mentality and put it in a sport

where there are no regulations,

where there are no rules

and people are transfusing bags of

blood and taking all kinds of drugs

and using their power

to avoid being detected,

that's where it

stops being sport

and starts being

something much darker.

Why did you come back in 2009?

Did you think this

was an opportunity

to actually convince people

that you had never doped'?

I don't think so.

I don't think you're ever

gonna shut their mouths.

But I did intend to go back

and win and do it clean.

Did you have any

concern about going back

and opening up

some of the questions

that had been

raised in the past?

Of course.

So Lance knew the risk

he was taking in coming back.

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