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The Armstrong Lie Page #6
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
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.
entire team testing positive.
The Festina affair
was a soigneur crossing
a border and
"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
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.
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.
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,
"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
Armstrong rather enjoyed this.
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.
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
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
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
and opening up
some of the questions
that had been
raised in the past?
Of course.
So Lance knew the risk
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