“The Armstrong Lie”, A Film

Setting Up the Sprint. The pro peloton in Denver, Colorado in August, 2013. (Here’s hoping they are at least mostly clean now!)

Just saw this film last night. The interesting thing is that, being in the bike-crazy town of Boulder, we were lucky enough to have the producer, Frank Marshall, as well as Betsy Andreu and Jonathan Vaughters (Team Garmin-Sharp manager) on hand for a post-show panel discussion and Q&A.

First, the movie. Originally to be a documentary focusing on Lance’s 2009 comeback, it went through some interesting production contortions once all the doping mess started to come to light–Floyd’s and Tyler’s revelations, the federal investigation, and finally, the famous Oprah interview–before it was finally released last year in its final form.

The end product is, in my view, a pretty well balanced overview of Lance and the sport (both the beauty of it and its darker side). The film doesn’t make LA out to be the devil incarnate as you might expect, but neither does it justify his actions. To a huge degree, you get to come to your own conclusions. If you have been following this issue closely, you may not hear any new facts in the film but, for me, it was fascinating to actually see the faces (George Hincapie, Dr. Michele Ferrari, and Betsy Andreu especially) as they answer questions and present their testimonies.

On to the Q&A…And what a luxury to have these folks there to answer questions! I was very surprised at the lack of attendance given the opportunity of a panel discussion–the theater was maybe only 2/3 full with a total of a couple hundred souls. Poor publicity maybe???

Anyway, there were two things that stood out for me…first, was Betsy’s courage to stand up for the truth for so long when faced with the such powerful (brutal?) interests. Chapeau, Betsy!

The second was Jonathan Vaughters’ summary of how it was in cycling and how he sees it now. When he was a pro, he said you basically had three options: 1) don’t take performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and go home (what do you say to your friends and family?), 2) don’t take PEDs and be the worst pro in the peloton (humiliating), or 3) jump on the train and do what everyone else is doing to be competitive. The pro who refused “special aid” was often ostracized by the rest, making #2 even less of an option that it might have been.

Today, says Vaughters, the situation is reversed. Those ostracized on a team are those who seem to be leaning toward the PED path. The boys on his team talk about girls, not drugs, he says. This (if true) is a good sign.

My view on Lance? I, like so many others, wanted to believe his golden story. He brought incredible drama to cycling and his Livestrong Foundation was (is!) such a wonderful cause. I told myself that his success was primarily due to how the cancer changed his body, his mutant-man heart-lung physiology, and his laser-like focus on just one event–the Tour de France. I am, of course, disappointed. But even so, I don’t know that I can really judge him. The system at the time was ripe for doping–ineffective drug controls, foggy UCI interests, huge Daddy Morebucks sponsor interests, even the screaming desires of the cycling fans…What would I have done had I been in his cleats and with his VO2 max? Tough question.

The one thing that does bother me is how fiercely and cruelly Lance defended the tradition of omerta. He attacked people and abused his power to ruin people’s lives and finances–even using his Foundation as a moral screen. All that is a little tougher to forgive.

It crosses my mind to wonder if PEDs have drifted down into the amateur ranks. There are plenty of amateurs with medical profession connections who could likely get their gloved hands on some EPO. Or just about anyone with a cooperative doc could get a prescription. Did it ever happen? Who knows, since there was never any drug testing–except maybe once in a purple moon at a championship event. I did notice, though, that Dave LaDuc, a guy I watched race (from behind) on the East Coast and an animal of a Masters competitor, was finally nailed just a few months ago for EPO, steroids and amphetamines.

[Now Grandpa recalls…] I ‘member way back to the 1991 State Road Race Championships in Texas, in the then-vacant Stone Oak area north of San Antonio. For some funny reason I decided to jump into the 100+-mile Cat 1,2,3 race, despite the huge hills involved (I go uphill like a box o’bricks…and the box gets bigger each year). I lasted about 40 miles before I was definitively dropped by the peloton and I pulled out of the race. Some young triathlete kid we were all just starting to hear about went on to easily win it–Lance Armstrong. Was he taking something then? Makes you wonder.

In 1997 I rode the 10-day Vuelta a Mendoza in Argentina (the highlight of my “career”!). My buddy Dave Devol from the States, two Mendoza local cyclists and I formed a “team” to get in to the event. The goal: survive. My local Argentine friends in the support caravan would sometimes make the universal sign for an injection and point not-so-subtly to various cyclists in the peloton. I used every hard drug I personally knew of–aspirin, ibuprofen, and Gatorade–just to stay with the pack on each stage and take the sting off of the wounds from several big pileups (I was pretty much always at the back–the most dangerous place to be in the peloton). A few guys from the U.S. had come down that year to get January/February miles in their legs…Roberto Gaggioli, Radisa Cubric, Trent Klasna, Skip Spangenberg, and Scott Moninger are a few of the names I remember. If they and the Argentine teams were all “juiced” I don’t feel so bad about my performance (second to last place or so in GC). But, I guess I’ll never know.

Cycling is a tough, beautiful sport–like many sports, a metaphor of life itself. Hopefully, things are now moving the right direction around the velodrome and the kids coming up the ranks won’t be faced with the same choices Lance, Floyd, Tyler, Levi, Jan, Ivan, Marco (et al…et al…) and their teammates had to face. May the next “golden story” be real!

Then, perhaps, we can move on to really cleaning up NFL-AFL football and major league baseball, eh!?