1
It's interesting.
I didn't think about this.
It's like living a lie.
I didn't live a lot of lies,
but I lived one big one.
You know, it's different, I guess.
Maybe it's not.
But yeah, it's...
And what I said in
there with just how
this story is
all over the place,
and there are these two
just complete
opposite narratives.
You know, the only person
that can actually
start to let people
understand what
the true narrative is is me.
And you should know that
better than anybody.
Let's get to the real nature and
the real detail of the story.
'Cause we haven't
heard it yet, is the truth.
Lance, how you feeling?
Good. I'm very good.
Nervous. But that's good.
Always nervous for these.
Not a lot of room for error.
So makes it interesting.
Oh, yeah.
Welcome to the party.
In 2009, I set out
to make a film about
Lance Armstrong's comeback year.
It seemed like a great ride.
A retired champion
with a contentious past
comes back to
cycling to show them all.
Then the Lance
doping scandal erupted
and I had to put the film aside.
When I picked
the film back up, I faced
the same question
that haunted me in 2009.
Why did he come back?
He'd won the Tour de
France seven times.
I wondered what
I had been witness to in 2009.
And what did it mean now that the
truth about Lance was known?
In making my new film, all roads
seemed to lead back to the past.
I viewed my battle with
cancer as an athletic competition.
But in that,
you either win or you lose.
When you lose,
or if you lose, you die.
So I took that perspective,
which is a little dark,
and I put it into everything
I've done since then.
I like to win.
But more than anything,
I can't stand
the idea of losing,
because, to me,
that equals death.
Look at this. Armstrong
accelerating once again.
And there's a gap
now starting to appear
between Lance Armstrong
and Marco Pantani.
Well, I never
thought I'd see the day when
Lance Armstrong
would blow away the man
we've always referred to as the
finest climber we've ever seen
in the current
peloton of cycling.
But there's one matter
that's stayed on Armstrong's tail,
allegations he's used
banned performance enhancers.
Where he's found this
strength from, I don't know.
He has torn
the field apart here.
The mythic nature
of his essential comeback,
getting cancer and
coming back and being
a great athlete,
is an astonishing story.
If he's clean,
it's the greatest comeback.
If he's not,
then it's the greatest fraud.
I don't think any
sports team or any athlete
has ever come under
this kind of scrutiny.
Oh, and Beloki's gone down!
Armstrong's off
the road as well.
Armstrong,
complete control there.
He's into the field,
but what a great bike rider.
He's gone across.
This is unbelievable.
I've never seen this before.
Armstrong went
across the field there.
He's back on the road
with four kilometers to go.
Oh, this is incredible.
Armstrong is such a star.
There are people
who have really been ruined
because of Lance's aggressive
attempts to keep them quiet.
He was an
immensely intimidating person.
Thing about Armstrong,
he has the acceleration.
When he wants to go into
a climb, he can do it.
He has now decided,
"I want to go."
You can see the yellow jersey is open...
What's happened now'?
What has happened there?
Can he recover?
He's come back.
Armstrong is out
of the saddle again.
He's jumping onto the
tail here of {ban Mayo.
This is unbelievable.
Armstrong is now one of
the world's most recognized athletes.
To Americans, Lance
Armstrong is cycling's Superman.
The bigger you are,
the better target you make.
In any generation
of professional sportsmen,
there will be guys who cheat and
there will be guys who don't cheat.
This is a guy who was going
to succeed no matter what.
His comeback and
storybook life have put
Lance Armstrong
under a global spotlight.
Armstrong has been
less successful in
outracing accusations
of possible drug use.
I've said it for seven years. I've
said it for longer than seven years.
I have never doped.
It's very hard to
conceal the truth forever.
So this has been my downfall.
No, thanks.
There you are.
Come on in.
I just walk on in?
Hi. Thank you.
Good to see you.
Ready?
Saw you get your shoes on.
We're getting my shoes on.
Everybody, let's do
everything we need to do...
This is where I came
back into the story.
I was in Austin when Lance decided
to do an interview with Oprah
to address charges
of doping in the press
that had become
impossible to deny.
Tonight on Nightline...
Did Lance cheat?
Lance had been the subject
of a criminal investigation.
He was also probed by
the US Anti-Doping Agency.
Many ex-teammates
testified against Armstrong.
Did you see Lance Armstrong using
performance-enhancing drugs?
At times, yeah.
There was EPO.
There was testosterone.
And I did see
a blood transfusion.
Look,
at some point, people have to
tell their kids that
Santa Claus isn't real.
You're saying Lance
Armstrong is a liar'?
Yes.
The anti-cancer crusader
was now portrayed as a cheater
who ran a doping ring and used his
power as a celebrity to cover it up.
UCI will ban Lance
Armstrong from cycling,
and UCI will strip him of his
seven Tour de France titles.
Lance Armstrong has
no place in cycling.
We ready to go. Ready?
So let's start
with the questions
that people around the world have
been waiting for you to answer.
For now I'd just
like a "yes" or "no."
Did you ever take
banned substances
to enhance your
cycling performance?
Yes.
Yes or no, was one of those
banned substances EPO?
Yes.
Did you ever blood dope
or use blood transfusions
to enhance your
cycling performance?
Yes.
Did you ever use
any other banned substances
like testosterone, cortisone
or human growth hormone?
Yes.
Yes or no, in all seven of
your Tour de France victories,
did you ever take banned
substances or blood dope?
Yes.
The first few
minutes of Oprah was just riveting.
To finally witness
him saying that he doped
after the years and
years and years and years
of just the most
amazing denials.
I can emphatically
say I'm not on drugs.
Neither I nor any
member of my team
did or took anything illegal.
We got nothing to hide. We know that.
Everybody knows that.
You have never taken
any performance-enhancing drug?
Correct.
And to call somebody a cheater,
a fraud, a loser,
to call them that,
it has to be,
I repeat, has to be
followed up with
extraordinary proof,
and we've never seen it.
It's cliche'. He looked me
in the eyes and told me he didn't dope.
But when he does that,
he's got a power.
It goes a long way.
Any idiot with half
a brain should have
been able to see
Armstrong was lying.
They've been
testing you like crazy.
They've been
following you, watching you.
Don't the results speak for
themselves at a certain point?
Hello!
Lance Armstrong is a fraud.
I don't believe a word he says.
I want this man to suffer.
And I say that with all sincerity.
I can't believe
we all got duped.
Lying jerk.
The guy's a complete phony.
He could've come clean.
He owes it to the sport
that he destroyed.
Was it a big deal to you?
Did it feel wrong'?
At the time? No.
It did not even feel wrong?
No.
The prime time confession turned
out to be a bumpy ride for Lance.
But it might never
have happened if he hadn't
decided to take
a victory lap in 2009.
And your comeback.
Do you regret now coming back?
I do.
We wouldn't be sitting here
if I didn't come back.
The comeback.
What was he thinking?
I kept wondering
about that question
throughout the year
as I followed him.
It's been a long time.
Will you be ready for the Tour?
I'm comin'.
I'll be there July 4th.
A few weeks
ago, when he first came up with
the idea of a possible comeback,
I was really surprised.
I remember I sent him
a message back and I said,
"Are you at a party?
Are you sober?"
Johan Bruyneel,
Lance's team director
for all seven of
Lance's Tour wins,
was now running Team Astana.
He reunited with Lance
to help guide his comeback.
We good?
Sure.
So is there a motivator
for you this time around?
Is this in some way for you
to say to all the critics...
It's been an interesting
reaction with the comeback.
I mean, some people are curious,
some people are pissed,
and some people are ecstatic.
Few people in sport divide
public opinion quite like Lance Armstrong.
To millions, he is
a source of inspiration.
But to some, his incredible tale is
just that, incredible, hard to believe.
Yet so many wanted to believe.
Wherever Lance went,
he moved the needle.
More fans, more money
for sponsors and promoters.
Even so, the organization
that ran the Tour de France
was reluctant to
invite him back.
Just 10 months before the race,
the comeback was in jeopardy.
The story is,
"Refused entry into
"the Tour de
France for no reason."
This guy is comin' back.
He's never been caught,
prosecuted, busted for anything.
He's coming back with the most legitimate,
credible program that there is.
They won't let him
in the marquee event.
I think the media
would fuckin' crush 'em.
If they don't let him ride...
He's gonna take so
much attention away
from the Tour de
France to other events
that they have to let him in.
I think they may
come out of the gate and say,
"Of course he can't race
in the Tour de France."
Neither could Ivan Basso,
neither could Floyd Landis.
They all cheated.
That's not the same.
They were all busted.
And they think Lance is busted.
No, he's not.
But they think...
He's not.
They think it might be that way.
L'Equipe said he cheated.
He's never tested positive.
They think he has.
He didn't.
But L'Equipe said he did.
What was the headline?
Yes.
"The Armstrong Lie."
Long before Oprah,
"The Armstrong Lie" article
offered proof that Lance's first
Tour win had not been clean.
Through clever detective work,
the author
discovered that many of
Armstrong's urine
samples from 1999
contained
a doping drug called EPO.
If you consider my situation,
a guy who comes back from,
arguably, a death sentence,
why would I then
enter into a sport
and dope myself up
and risk my life again?
That's crazy.
I would never do that.
No. No way.
It was a bold claim,
considering how many
riders around him
had been busted.
And even after
Lance's seven Tour wins,
pro cycling continued to
suffer from doping scandals.
There are a lot of us
who wanted this to be
a clean sport and a clean effort
and a clean
victory and everything.
But there's just too much
swirl around it constantly.
Shortly after
Armstrong retired, there was
this huge bust
called Operation Puerto,
in which most of
his rivals got popped.
If it was
the NBA All-Star game,
it would have been every
player on both teams
essentially busted for doping
except that one
guy who just retired.
Throughout Lance's Tour wins,
all but one of the cyclists who
finished on the podium with Armstrong
were implicated
in doping scandals.
And finally,
the last thing I'll say for
the people that
don't believe in cycling,
the cynics and the skeptics,
I'm sorry for you.
I'm sorry you can't dream big, and I'm
sorry you don't believe in miracles.
After winning in 2005,
what better moment to walk away?
What better moment to stay away?
Why couldn't he have
just said thank you?
"I had a nice career and now it's over.
Thank you."
But that's not in him.
And that urge to crush,
that urge
to push back,
that urge to dominate,
not just to be content with
winning, but that urge to dominate,
is what ended up
bringing him down.
Lance tried to
dominate my film, too.
He had lied to me, straight to
my face, all throughout 2009.
When the truth
came out, I told him
he owed me
an explanation on camera.
Whether he wanted to try
to make things right
or whether he still wanted
to influence my story,
he agreed to sit
down one more time.
You vigorously
defended your reputation.
Do you feel,
in retrospect, that you were
protecting that too assiduously?
Had the lie become too big? Did
it get out of control for you?
Yeah, that's
the biggest regret of my life.
Um, I'm a fighter.
I grew up a fighter.
I was a fighter on the bike.
I was a fighter off the bike.
And if you were in the race, I was
competitive and I was fighting.
I forgot to turn that...
I'd get off the bike, and whether
it's in a press conference,
whether it's in a team setting,
whether it's in
a personal relationship,
I continued to fight.
And I wanted to defend myself,
and I wanted to defend the
sport, the team, my foundation.
I was defending
all of these things,
and I was
prepared to say anything.
The gift that he has that gets
overlooked is his gift as a storyteller,
his gift as a manager
of his own storyline.
A guy at death's door comes back
to win the toughest
event on the planet.
The story brought more money,
brought more attention,
brought more sponsorship,
brought more inspiration.
Lance became this
international cultural icon.
And he had to
keep the story going.
He could've ridden around the
world to raise money for cancer.
There were a lot of
things he could've done,
but the best story is
to go back to the Tour.
By racing the bicycle
all over the world,
beginning in Australia,
ending in France,
it is the best way to
promote this initiative.
It's the best way
to get the word out.
He understood the power of
that story, and he used it.
The disease, testicular
cancer, travels up a young man's body,
so next stop is the abdomen.
Next stop is the lungs.
And the last stop is the brain.
My dumb ass just
ignored symptoms,
obvious, glaring, dirty
symptoms, for a long time.
And it traveled all the way up.
Severe headaches.
Blurry vision.
Coughing up of blood.
Extreme pain downstairs.
I read that you had a testicle
the size of an orange.
That's an exaggeration.
Lemon?
Good-sized lemon.
In 1996, Lance had
the cancerous testicle removed
and flew to Indiana University
for an experimental treatment.
The doctors there
thought Lance's chances
of survival were less than 50%.
Lance underwent brain surgery
to remove cancerous lesions,
then began a special chemotherapy
program that would not scar his lungs.
The immediate side
effects would be brutal,
but if he survived, the treatment
would protect his career.
Whatever I do in cycling, or
whatever I do in the Tour de France,
or whatever I do in training, I'll
never suffer like I did then.
That initial surgery to remove
that primary tumor in the testicle
was a big surgery, a big cut.
The cut was
probably six inches long,
right up at the waist
and very physically painful.
So I got on the bike and I just
gently rode
around my neighborhood.
That was a big day for me.
And I went half a mile.
And I did it in tennis shoes, and
I did it on a mountain bike.
But I was on the bike.
I was pedaling the bike.
All the feelings that are associated
with that, the wind in the hair,
that initial sense of freedom
that a bicycle gives a child.
Kids love bikes because it's the first
time in their life they're free.
It's the first time when they're
not in their mom's car,
they're not in Mom's living room,
they're not in Mom's backyard.
They get on the bike,
they go down,
they take a right, take a left.
Nobody sees them.
They're completely free.
I'm a mean machine
I'm the kind
you don't wanna meet
My middle name is trouble
I'm a danger in the street I'
Lance Armstrong
grew up in Plano, Texas,
raised by a young mother
who worked as a receptionist.
He never met his father.
He comes out of Plano,
Texas, and he comes out angry.
He comes out ready to
take on the world with
his mom at his side
and needing no one else.
My morn, she doesn't
really have that much money, so...
I could probably get
money from somebody,
but I don't wanna borrow money,
so there's pressure
to make the money.
You can see in
the yellow helmet there
the youngest professional in
the field from Plane, Texas,
16-year-old Lance Armstrong.
I just like
competing with the best, man.
I like beating those guys.
I love beating people.
Comin' at you live
Comm' atcha live
Comin' at you live
Comm' atcha live
Comin' at you live
I Oh, here I come
He got into a fight with
one of his coaches early on,
and the thing he kept saying
is, "You're not my dad."
And I think that statement
has been something he's been
telling everybody since then.
Kids from Plano High School, "Hey,
you're not in charge of me."
European cyclists,
"Hey, I'm going
to take you all on,
"and I'm going to
show you who's boss."
Oh my, oh no, no!
It's Armstrong
who's losing the temper.
I was content with my career.
In '93, '94, '95,
I was a young kid.
One of the best
one-day racers in the world.
I made plenty of money.
I thought, "This is cool. I'm young.
I make some decent money here.
"I'll just do
this for a few years
"and then find
something else to do."
Then the disease came along,
took all of that away.
Just gone.
And when I came back, I thought,
"Nobody thinks I'm
gonna do anything.
"I'm just washed-up,
damaged goods here."
Which is really what
the view of the sport was.
I thought, "Okay, fuck it. I'm gonna
try to win the Tour de France."
He's got the
fastest time in half distance.
SPORTSCASTER 2:
He really is flying, Paul,
and he looks so good here, making his
big return to the Tour de France.
He's been scorching it
on all the time checks.
What a comeback this could be.
There's only two men behind him now.
Armstrong is the leader.
That is astonishing.
Beautiful.
Good job, Lance.
Hold on a second. There we go.
Say hi to the camera.
This is Johan Bruyneel,
directeur sportif.
Hi, camera.
Here we are with the
rock star, George Hincapie.
This is how he
prepares for a time trial.
What's up, Lance?
After his bout with cancer,
Lance returned to the Tour in 1999,
racing for US Postal Service.
Lance, Jon
Vaughters, Frankie Andreu.
We were just like
The Bad News Bears.
Nobody was really
expecting us to do well.
They were so young.
They had a lot of optimism and
this youthful carelessness.
I hate the French.
Screw the French.
And they were
gonna go over there
and just dominate the Tour and
change the way cycling is run.
Postal, this tiny team
from an unlikely place.
They didn't have a team bus.
They were so small
they just had two campers.
Like a family going on vacation.
Betsy, Frankie, smile.
Say cheese.
The innocence of '99, it's
a fantastic moment in the story.
Howdy.
It really started
with this spectacular prologue
that Armstrong won by
a handful of seconds.
And there it is,
the maillot jaune
for an American,
Lance Armstrong.
He put on the yellow jersey.
And he's clueless about what to say
or what to feel or who to hug.
I mean, right now
I'm so surprised.
But yet I'm so pleased and so
happy for the team and for...
It's the moment where
Lance crossed a boundary.
And this man, Lance Armstrong,
from Texas, now has destroyed the field.
That full
confidence that he had before
he had cancer when he
was a little punk kid,
you can see that building in
him as the Tour was going on.
This man is quite unbelievable.
Towards the mountain stages,
when everybody was like,
"Okay, this is when
he's gonna lose his jersey."
That really helped
fuel him and fuel the team
and pushed us to limits that we
thought we weren't capable of doing.
And the boys who
have guided Lance Armstrong,
they're in that yellow jersey
for two full weeks now.
It was an American team
bringing an American captain
to the Tour de France and finishing
potentially on the podium.
That was unprecedented.
And there's no doubt now
who will win the Tour de France.
We hoped maybe to
get a podium or top 10.
Soto win was
beyond our comprehension.
The power of the
story was growing every day.
But so were the suspicions
among seasoned observers
that it may have been
too good to be true.
In 1999,
the Tour de France organizers
were desperate for what they
called a "Tour of Renewal,"
where they could renew the
public's faith in their race.
You've gotta go back to 1998
when Lance was
just about coming back
into racing after
his cancer recovery.
We had this
extraordinary Tour de France
where the world number one
team at the time, Festina,
had their masseur
traveling to the race.
And he was stopped
by French customs
and they found a huge
cargo of drugs inside.
The police then came
and investigated other teams,
and pretty much wherever they
looked, they found drugs.
So that was 1998.
A year later,
Lance Armstrong comes back.
He was sensational.
And everybody who was at that race,
in terms of the journalists,
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
heart, lungs, is big, is huge.
After Lance
survived cancer, Ferrari found
a way to turn his
weakness into strength.
He was definitely lighter.
He lose a lot of muscles in the whole
body, upper and also in the legs.
He lose a lot of power
in terms of strength.
To make up for
the loss of strength,
Ferrari had Lance shift to a
lower gear and pedal faster.
So he essentially was
shifting the load from the muscles
to the heart and
the lungs and the blood.
And if you can have the aerobic
engine to sustain a higher cadence,
you can go farther,
faster, longer.
Ferrari also
included a secret ingredient,
drugs to boost oxygen
in the blood that had
a special impact
with the new cadence.
This unbelievable
cadence that he's adopted
since he survived
testicular cancer
is what has
allowed him to become
one of the best
climbers in the world.
Utilizing a higher cadence...
At the beginning,
we had to do this choice.
And then, because this choice paid
in term of results, we continued.
Ferrari's remarkably unromantic.
I remember one
particular conversation.
We had just
finished a training ride.
And I said, "Am I watching the
limits of human potential here'?
"Is that what I'm seeing?"
And Ferrari almost laughed.
He said, "We're
nowhere near the limit.
"No, there are ways
to push the limits."
Amongst the 200 guys doing
the Tour de France at that point,
they're like, "You're working with Ferrari.
Okay. Respect."
He knew that
everybody was doping.
He was like, "Look, you can't
do this stuff on your own.
"You guys aren't doctors. You have
no idea what all this stuff is.
"So here's what I'm gonna do.
"You can still dope a little bit.
I'll tell you what to do.
"The minimum amount of doping,
the maximum amount of training.
"Nutrition. Lifestyle.
"Everything that
goes into making you
"a good cyclist,
I will help you with."
And doping was just
a small piece of that.
Ferrari was careful
about doping for another reason.
He wanted to avoid detection.
He had sources
inside anti-doping labs
who kept him updated
on the latest tests.
And Ferrari's whole program
was cloaked in secrecy.
In March 1999, Lance said,
"I gotta go see Michele.
I have to do some testing."
We met Michele Ferrari,
Lance's doctor,
who traveled in a camper van,
in the parking lot
outside of Milano
off the highway by
a hotel gas station.
I don't know about you, but I
don't see my doctor that way.
It's best that you use
the most knowledgeable people,
regardless of their reputation.
It's a great mind in cycling
and somebody that I consider
and my team considers
to be an honest
man and a fair man.
The guy was a liar and a cheat.
Not only did he dope,
but he doped
with the best
expertise available.
Dr. Ferrari provides that.
And he doped in the most
professional, efficient way,
perhaps in the history of sport.
What kind of message
do you think that your
working relationship
with Michele Ferrari
sends out to
the general sporting public?
Well, David, I'm glad
you showed up, finally.
It's good to see
you finally here.
Good question.
Again, I think that
people are not stupid.
People will look at the facts.
They will say, "Okay,
here's Lance Armstrong.
"Here's the relationship.
"Is that questionable?"
Perhaps. But people are smart.
Do they say, "Has Lance Armstrong
ever tested positive?" No.
"Has Lance Armstrong
been tested?" A lot.
Is it fairly easy to
prepare for a test?
Does it dissipate
in your system really quickly?
The half-life of
EPO is four hours.
So, you can back
it out from there
and figure out when
you're in trouble.
"Will he pass every test
because he does not take EPO?"
Yes, he will.
My defense was that I've
passed every control you've given me.
And that's true.
The samples that
were given were clean.
But you never,
ever stopped there.
You always went
one step further.
No, Alex. I can't...
I would have gone...
if David Walsh wanted
to put on boxing gloves,
I would have done it
right there. Let's go.
You present yourself as
the cleanest of clean riders...
And I have the proof,
which you refuse to believe.
Just let me finish the question.
You present yourself as the
cleanest of clean riders,
and yet you
associate with somebody
whose reputation is
incredibly tarnished.
And that person is going to go
on trial in two months' time.
Would you not think that it would
be in the interest of cycling
for you to suspend your
relationship with Michele Ferrari
until he has answered the
charges of which he's accused?
You have a point.
It's my choice.
I view him as innocent. He's
a clean man, in my opinion.
Let there be a trial.
There was a trial.
The star witness was an Italian
cyclist, Filippo Simeoni.
He told me very clearly
that to prepare for a big race
I needed to take
certain substances.
In particular, EPO.
I had some journals confiscated
where I meticulously documented
my interactions with Ferrari
In October 2004,
the Italian court
convicted Dr. Ferrari
of sporting fraud,
forcing Armstrong to publicly
end their relationship.
However, Ferrari's conviction would
be overturned two years later.
At the end, I was absolved.
Probably, we need a movie to explain
the whole story with Simeoni.
But in
relationship with EPO, okay.
Generational riders utilize
that drug in competition.
That's historic true.
EPO, or synthetic EPO stimulates
the production of red blood cells
which transmit
oxygen to the muscles.
Originally
developed to treat anemia,
cyclists began
using it in the 1990s
to boost
performance and recovery.
It doesn't make
your muscles stronger,
it doesn't give you more energy.
There's nothing you feel.
It's just simply
that it allows your body
to deliver more oxygen from
your lungs to your muscles.
So, that burning sensation, that fatigue
where you can't go any further,
it just happens later.
It began in the late
'80s and into the early '90s,
and our frustration
really came to a head in 1995.
But leading up to that, specifically
1994, I was the world champion.
I was wearing the world champion's
jersey, the rainbow-striped jersey,
and competing clean.
We were just
getting annihilated.
Go on, Lance.
Give us the tour.
Holy COW.
There was a group of
us primarily living in Italy,
and we just said, "We either have
to play ball here or go home."
Were you pissed off
that you had to do it?
Or was it just you
had to do what you had to do
in order to be able to compete?
The latter.
Maybe I'd approach the
decision differently today,
but at the time,
I didn't lose sleep over it.
One time, I went into
Lance's room to borrow his laptop,
and he's brushing his teeth
in his boxer shorts,
and he decides to give himself a
shot of EPO right in front of me.
That was an attempt
by him of just saying,
"Listen, buddy,
you've stepped over the line.
"You're in the club.
There's no going back."
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.
With new doping
controls in place in 2009,
maybe he thought he had a
chance to ride clean and win.
I thought that his
comeback might have been a way
of proving to his
critics and to himself
that it didn't matter
if he had doped in the past.
I know what I did and didn't do,
so therefore, I sleep at night.
Um...
And I'm one of the greatest
riders of all time.
If you look at the books
and you look at the records,
you won seven Tours in a period where
everybody thought everybody was dirty.
If I win again,
they can't say that.
They cannot.
Well, you can, but...
There'd be a few dickheads that
say that, trust me, but...
No way.
Lance,
you've spoken recently about
the return of Ivan Basso and Floyd
Landis after their suspensions
and that they
should be welcomed back.
What is it about these dopers
that you seem to admire so much?
So I'm driving to
the press conference.
And George Hincapie texts me.
And he says, "Kimmage is here. He's
asking all kinds of crazy questions."
I knew the name, but I didn't
really know what he looked like.
I knew he was Irish, obviously.
And so I said, "Okay.
It's on. Today's the day.
"He's gonna ask something. He's
gonna say something stupid."
Excuse me.
What is your name again?
My name is Paul Kimmage.
I work for Sunday Times.
I asked for an interview,
but I didn't get one.
Right. And just
as a little preface,
I might just clear up one thing.
The reason you
didn't get it, Paul...
I wanted to make sure that was you
'cause I don't know what you look like.
When I decided to come back, for
what I think is a very noble reason,
you said, "Folks, the cancer has
been in remission for four years,
"but our cancer
has now returned."
Meaning me.
I am here to fight this disease.
I am here so that
I don't have to deal with it,
you don't have to deal with it,
none of us have to deal with it, my
children don't have to deal with it.
But yet you said
that I am the cancer,
and the cancer is
out of remission.
So I think it goes
without saying, no,
we're not gonna sit down
and do an interview.
And I don't think
anybody in this room
would sit down
for that interview.
You are not worth the chair that you're
sitting on with a statement like that,
with a disease that touches
everybody around the world.
Lance was
threatened there, and the only
thing he knows what
to do is to fight back.
I have to say,
at least in the footage,
you look a little
bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, you think?
That's one of those moments
where you're thinking,
"Why the hell did you
come back to this sport?
"Why do you want to
deal with this stuff?"
I mean, here he was,
a successful, retired athlete, and had
everything he wanted in the world.
Why would you want to come
back and suffer with us?
This sport is not
glamorous at all.
I mean, you go out, ride in
30 degrees in pouring rain.
You just suffer on
the bike all the time.
And yet he wanted
to come back to it
and prove a point,
send a message.
Let's go, Lance!
Well I stumbled
in the darkness
I'm lost and alone
Though I said I'd go before us
And show the way back home
There a light up ahead
I can't hold onto her arm
Forgive me pretty baby but I
always take the long way home
Money's just
something you throw
Off the back of a train
Got a head full of lightning
A hat full of rain
Watch your back
if I should tell you
Love's the only thing
I've ever known
One thing for sure pretty baby I
always take the long way home I
The misery of the rain
stung one rider more than most.
Lance's old teammate,
Floyd Landis.
Floyd had ridden with Lance
for three Tour wins.
He'd also won the Tour on his own,
only to be busted for doping.
In the middle of the pack,
he wondered,
why should he be
treated as a cheater
while his old teammate, Lance
Armstrong, was welcomed back as a hero?
Great job, boys.
Congratulations.
Floyd actually
contacted Johan Bruyneel,
and he said, "Can I just
get a spot on your team?"
And Bruyneel said, "Look.
"You're radioactive in cycling.
We can't have you on our team.
"We're trying to portray ourselves
as this clean cycling team
"and you're
a convicted doper."
Landis was enraged about the
hypocrisy there, right?
Here's Johan Bruyneel
talking about a clean team
with Lance Armstrong
as its biggest star.
Of course, Floyd knows all
the details of the truth.
It was pretty tough
for him to swallow that.
The undertow of Floyd's
resentment would, in the end,
lead to the downfall
of Lance Armstrong.
Anybody else want to
write a message on the ground
for the Lance
Armstrong Foundation?
Hope rides again.
Hope rides again.
Lance!
I'm getting my pen ready!
There was a huge
energy at Tour of California.
It was almost like
he's a movie star.
There were people there that
know nothing about cycling,
and they were just screaming,
reaching over
the barriers, trying to touch
the great hope.
My grandpa loves you.
Will you sign this for my mom?
She's a cancer survivor.
This is a special year.
I wanted to come back,
and I wanted to tell this Livestrong
message around the world.
Some mock Livestrong
as nothing more than
a front to hide Lance's doping.
But I didn't see it that way.
Livestrong had raised over $300
million to support cancer victims.
And 70 million
people around the world
proudly wore those
yellow wristbands.
All right.
Thank you!
- What's he racing for?
- Sorry?
What's he racing for?
To raise money for cancer.
He raises money?
Yeah, to help...
And then he gives it to us?
Yeah.
The ones who always
stick with you are kids.
There's nothing like
seeing a kid with cancer.
Visibly with cancer.
And at the same time,
there's nothing like
seeing the parents of
a child with cancer.
So, while I've been that
patient, now I'm a parent.
And I can't imagine being that mom
or that dad in that hospital room,
looking down on a 5-year-old that's
weak, that doesn't want to eat.
Just hanging out? Yeah?
It's a little crazy
in there. Yeah.
There are some
crazy girls in there.
I wouldn't go in there. No.
I've seen him with
kids in the cancer wards.
And I also know people he's
reached out to, and that's real.
It's as genuine as sort of
that fury he has on the bike.
Hello!
We heard lots of
different things about Lance.
"Maybe he's doping."
"He's not a nice guy."
But all of a sudden, there are
wards full of people who think,
"Not only can I beat this disease,
I can be better than I was."
Good luck.
Ultimately, the chasm between
being this hero and the reality of it
just bothered people hugely.
He thought that, "Because I raised so much
money and I gave so many people hope,
"it allows me to do what
I did." No, it doesn't.
The critics say I'm arrogant.
A doper.
Washed up.
A fraud.
That I couldn't let it go.
They can say whatever they want.
I'm not back on
my bike for them.
The Tour of Italy
would be Lance's
vital warm-up for
the Tour de France.
He was determined to
see how he would fare
riding clean against
the best riders in the world.
I look to have some good days.
If I left the Tour of Italy,
and I didn't win a stage
and I wasn't a factor
on some of the difficult days,
I'd be disappointed,
and I think I have to do that.
To challenge
his critics, Lance started
to post his blood
values during the Giro.
Based on those findings,
even the most
skeptical observers
concluded that
Lance was riding clean.
The big question was,
"Could he still compete?"
Anytime you see him, if he's
in trouble, he can never be alone.
So, Dani, Jani and Chechu, on the
climb, you guys look for Lance.
And if there's a problem,
he needs guys to
stay with him and
pace him up the climb.
On this day's
final climb, Lance cracked
and dropped way
behind all the top racers.
His supporting riders
slowed down to stay with him.
It's tough because I put
pressure on myself and expect to...
In my mind, I think back to
what it used to be like.
And you forget that you've
been away for a few years.
It's hard, man.
It's not easy to be away.
And you can feel that...
Blood, urine, both?
Both.
Both, cool.
Yesterday was
number 31, I believe.
Blood and urine.
More than anybody else.
While I do the blood, I don't want
that the cameras will film it.
And also when we go to...
Whose blood is it?
It's a Dopingkontrollstation,
and it's not public.
We've had this... Yeah, you
can call PWC or the UCI.
I know it's not comfortable for
you, but it's my right, so...
Okay.
We're gonna film it.
It's my blood and my urine.
Yeah, but...
Go ahead and call the UCI.
Nobody else than you and I,
we are going to the toilet.
Yeah, that's obvious.
Hello.
Hi, Bella.
The biggest dilemma gets
to be that your home is your home.
You're there and you're eating
breakfast with your kids,
and they're getting
ready for day camp
and you're
thinking about your day,
and then these people just
kind of come into your world,
and it could take
close to an hour.
If you can't go to the bathroom,
it could take longer than that.
They sit there
and wait with you.
Is this the biggest
audience you've ever had?
Yes.
Nobody thinks that's normal.
We're used to it.
A few of the haters in the press
and these people that are just on
this whole anti-doping frenzy,
which I think we need...
There's a place for that,
but there are people
that are obsessed with it.
They think that's absolutely normal.
That's not normal.
Why are you taking blood, Dad?
For my job.
His job is to take blood.
No, her job is to take blood.
My job is to take blood.
My job is to give blood.
Oh.
All right.
Bye-bye, cameraman.
Bye-bye, cameraman
and funny, skinny man.
Go!
Let me tell you something.
I'm all for a clean game, but
this is fucking ridiculous.
Now here we are.
Yesterday, we had a surprise UCI
control, the 31st of the season.
Now, this morning, again.
See you pull up.
Fine, no problem.
32nd control.
Then, Higgs, look.
USADA walks in.
Talk about a broken system.
Stupid.
How can there not
be any communication?
It's 2009.
You guys look like fools.
When I'm in the bathroom,
going to the bathroom, I look outside,
another car pulls up.
And it's the American
Anti-Doping Agency.
So 10 minutes before, the International
Cycling Federation shows up,
and then the American Olympic
Federation shows up.
And I've got to
get dressed to ride.
So I gotta go up and change and
everybody's gonna escort me up there?
In front of my girlfriend,
who's breastfeeding'?
Is that the way it's gonna work?
Okay.
No.
So I gotta walk in
where you can't see me,
and you say,
"No, that's a violation"?
That's stupid.
Anyways, off we go.
Six hours on the bike today.
See you.
After his poor
performance in Italy,
Lance had to find
some way to get better.
With only a month
before the Tour de France,
Lance trained in Aspen with his
Astana teammate, Levi Leipheimer.
For both men, riding in the Rockies
was all about the altitude.
Training in the thin air causes the
body to produce more red blood cells,
the exact same effect as EPO.
I learned that altitude training
also played a role in doping.
To prepare for competition,
riders would often
train in the mountains
to boost their red blood cells,
take out a bag or two, and then be
ready to transfuse them during a tour.
At the time, I wondered, "Was that
what Lance was doing in Aspen?"
I watched Lance and Levi
do a series of 1K tests,
timed runs up
a one-kilometer hill
with a blood test at
the top of each climb.
They measure lactic acid levels,
which indicate fitness and the
ability of a rider's leg muscles
to deliver
sustained power over time.
It's a test that was developed and
refined in Italy by Michele Ferrari.
Okay.
You still pass on a suggestion
or two from time to time to Lance?
Yes, not so many as in the past.
But probably,
he doesn't need so many.
But sometimes I
give him some inputs.
May be useful.
They were useful.
Lance had told
everyone that he had
stopped working
with Ferrari in 2004,
but an investigation
by Italian police
revealed that
Armstrong kept contact
with Ferrari
through his son Stefano.
In e-mails, Papa Ferrari was
known by his nickname, Schumi.
Bank records and
e-mails confirmed
Armstrong's payments to Ferrari.
In 2009, I wasn't honest
about my relationship with him,
but I didn't know who else to trust
when it came to training and advice.
And to his credit, he was the first
to say, "You cannot take any risk.
"They are coming for you.
"They want you."
From Italy, Ferrari
monitored Lance's progress.
He compared his performance
from a month earlier
and concluded that Lance
had improved by 10%
in his power output number,
watts per kilogram.
The watts-per-kilo
number now is just a hair under 6.5.
6.5 might be good
enough to win the Tour.
I've seen higher.
I've been higher.
The best Lance
with 1K tests was 7.
More than 7.
The best Lance was
the year of the last Tour win.
He won the Tour like this.
It was impressive.
Lance took it easy, because...
if you win by too much...
everybody blah, blah, blah...
The other seven Tours...
In late June, you know,
the last test before the Tour
based on power output, we sat
down and said, "Okay. We win.
"If we don't fall off the
bike, if you don't get sick,
"if you don't have any kind of
terrible strategic error,
"you win easy."
it was amazing.
4.5?
At 326.
At 326?
Oh, snap! 4.7.
He pushed too hard on my finger.
I'm strong.
Quite honestly, I think...
I mean, if you want a prediction,
I think I'll win the Tour.
How could Lance be so confident?
He hadn't
performed well all year.
What did he know that I didn't?
We are close to the moment
when big Lance returns
to the sport of cycling.
And when he left in 2005,
he wouldn't be back, he said.
There he is. He's back.
Going good.
Going good. Going good.
Demand it.
Accelerate your body.
Come on.
Come on. Come on. Come on.
In the first stage,
a short time trial,
Lance wanted to
make a statement.
In the past, he had always
dominated time trials.
An impressive performance here
would show everyone he was back.
He doesn't look good to me.
Come on, Lance.
Come on, come on. Pick it up.
Come on, come on.
Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!
One kilometer.
One kilometer. Hello?
Yes, I'm in the race now.
I'm in the race.
I'm in the race. Call me back.
Look at his face.
Lance Armstrong, seven times
the winner of Tour de France.
He's headed for the best time.
Lance's time put him
in first place by 30 seconds,
but with all the best
riders still to come.
Cancellara
pushes on for the finish.
He's looking to beat the time
of Bradley Wiggins of 19:51.
He's sprinting for
the line and the best time.
One by one,
the best riders in the world,
including his Astana teammate,
Alberto Contador,
beat his time.
A great ride by Alberto
Contador, who won the Tour in 2007.
Contador is second.
Is he now the leader of Astana?
He certainly laid claim to that.
Lance finished
the first stage in 10th place,
40 seconds behind the leader,
and 22 seconds behind his
teammate, Alberto Contador.
From the start, I watched
Lance's comeback hopes collide
with a ferocious rider
who bore an eerie resemblance
to Armstrong 10 years earlier.
These guys never
talked to each other.
They came out of the bus,
I never once saw them look at
each other, make eye contact.
They would walk
right past each other.
It was the weirdest thing.
The honest truth is that there's
a little tension
at the dinner table.
The truth is...
I have seen Lance's statements,
but on my side
there are no tensions.
I'm completely relaxed...
He's got the gunslinger hat on.
Journalists behind...
That would drive me nuts.
This guy's gonna
fall in the fucking water.
That would drive me nuts,
people behind me.
The Tour de France is the
world's most demanding sporting event.
It covers 2,200
miles over three weeks.
The 21 daily stages combine flat
roads, brutal climbs and time trials.
Each day, among the entire group
of cyclists,
known as the "peloton,"
the rider with
the fastest overall time
wears the yellow jersey,
or the maillot jaune.
While each team on
the Tour has nine riders,
usually just one,
the team leader,
is riding for the yellow jersey.
On Astana,
Armstrong and Contador
are dueling for
the right to lead.
The other cyclists were known as
"domestiques French for "servants."
Ludi has no arm warmers.
This, this. Okay.
Who else? Anybody else?
An energy bar for Alberto.
This?
Another job
of the domestiques is
to shelter team
leaders from the wind.
When riding at high
speeds on flat roads,
the effects of wind
resistance are huge.
Riders in front have to work
as much as 30% harder
than those sheltering behind.
At high speeds,
you can see the domestiques,
often from different teams,
sharing the work of
fighting the wind.
For Lance's victories,
there were some where he rode in front
by himself only a matter of minutes,
like three to five
minutes for the entire Tour,
because he essentially
is using the muscle
of his team as
an extension of himself
to drive forward and to
burn other people off.
Relying on
a group of domestiques,
Lance found
a way to use the wind
when the cyclists
rode near the ocean
and sea breezes
whipped into the peloton.
We were coming into that
corner, and I was about 40 guys back.
And I was kind of like,
"I better move up."
The crosswinds
caused a split in the peloton.
Lance and two of his domestiques
made it to the front group.
The rest of his
Astana teammates,
including Contador,
were left behind.
In this situation,
Lance reached out to an old
teammate now on a different team,
George Hincapie.
I had to call in some
favors, George and those guys.
I said,
"George, you keep riding.
"Hard."
Just like I would
do in the old days
when he was on the same team.
I just remember Lance being all fired
up that he was in the first group
and asking us to go harder,
and we're like, "Dude, we're
doing our own thing here.
"Sure, you're here, but we're
not really doing this for you."
They could be
putting Lance Armstrong
in yellow in the next 24 hours.
Little bit further back down the
road, that is Alberto Contador.
He got caught out,
but he's keeping
at the front end
of the main field.
But I wonder what he's thinking
about the presence of Lance
Armstrong in that little group.
French radio was like,
"This is a betrayal."
Betrayal?
It's like,
"Why is he riding out front?
"Why is he pulling? Why don't
they wait for Alberto?"
Because I won the fucking
Tour de France seven times.
That's why we're out there riding.
That's not...
That's stupid.
If you can take
advantage of the wind
or any other
situation like that,
that's the way you race bikes.
That's the way
you win bike races.
We were in the right
place at the right time,
and I deserved to
have those guys ride.
That's what I told Johan.
"You better start getting
used to this again because..."
The breakaway finished
41 seconds ahead of the peloton,
enough to move Lance
from 10th to third,
nineteen seconds
ahead of Contador.
Suddenly, Lance's comeback
was looking pretty good.
If everything goes right,
I mean,
if it goes perfectly for us
and not that
great for the others,
we take the yellow jersey.
It would be...
You don't wanna
take the yellow jersey
this early in the Tour, do you?
Sure. I'd take it.
Hell, yeah.
Four years later, why not?
I'd totally take it.
I'm pedaling tomorrow for that.
Looking back on that moment
now, I admit that I was caught up.
I wasn't naive about
past doping allegations,
but I couldn't help
but root for the old pro,
and he promised he
was doing it clean.
But my presence at the Tour
and my access to Lance
was mystifying to
Lance's longtime critics.
It was perceived that you were
making the puff piece on Lance.
I thought it was
odd that you were
doing a movie
about the comeback,
because it seemed like it was going
to be an inspirational movie.
The fear was that you would
buy into the bullshit.
I was afraid I was starting
to buy into the bullshit, too,
so I sought out
Jonathan Vaughters.
He was running Team Garmin, the
so-called anti-doping team.
But he wouldn't
agree to talk to me.
Back then,
he had not yet made public
what he knew
about Lance's doping.
People have to realize
that the truth in all this was hard.
Such a huge number of people
wanted to believe so bad
that they hated
anyone who didn't believe
and hated anyone
who questioned it.
As a team manager, imagine what
the reaction would've been
had I said
something about Lance.
Lose the team Lose the riders.
You know, lose the whole thing.
As it happened, Vaughters
had a dog in the hunt in 2009,
Bradley Wiggins was
one of the leaders
and Lance's team
was worried about him.
We want to get rid of Wiggins.
You, too?
I know that ultimately you
want to get rid of us, too,
but that's another story.
Everyone at the Tour
was playing angles.
Greg LeMond, the former Tour
winner and longtime Lance critic,
paid for a video crew
to tail Lance's comeback.
Their mission, according to the
cameraman in the straw cowboy hat,
was to make
the anti-Gibney film.
I was caught in
the middle of a battle
between the myth-makers
and the myth-busters.
One of the strangest subplots
was Lance's interview strategy.
He insisted that the only American
to be able to interview him
would be Frankie Andrea,
an ex-teammate he had
feuded with for years.
Lance has multiple motivations.
One of them was
sort of to show Frankie
that he could still make
Frankie do whatever he wanted.
One of them was to
show everyone that,
"Hey, I can accept Frankie back.
"I'm not the jerk."
Another one was to control
who had access to him.
So all that was going on.
Months before, I was with
Lance when he hatched his plan
to make Frankie wait outside the
bus every day to interview him.
Johan begged him not to do it, but
Lance couldn't contain himself.
When I asked him later
about the Frankie plot,
Lance was back on message.
But there wasn't anything
mischievous about it like,
"Frankie's gonna have to come
to me now after those days."
Absolutely not.
No, this is totally different.
The kids had been
watching the Tour on TV,
and they said, "Mom,
Dad's interviewing Lance."
Frankie called me right after
and he said, "Lance wanted me,
and only me, to interview him."
I said, "Frankie,
you should spit on that guy.
"After everything he's done to
you, done to me, done to us?"
All right, thank you.
Yeah.
And to say the
least, I was shocked
because for four or
five years before that,
we just walked
right past each other.
No eye contact with me.
Wouldn't say a word to me.
Lance, Frankie and his wife
Betsy had once been good friends.
Frankie had been on
three US Postal teams,
but in 2000, Lance's second Tour
win, Frankie wouldn't dope.
He asked for a raise,
but the team director, Johan,
told him he'd have to
take a steep pay cut.
When Frankie
was looking at other teams,
he had two other offers.
He was on the phone with Johan
who asked him, "Which teams
are you looking at?"
And Frankie told
him the two teams.
Offers rescinded.
In late 2005, Frankie and Betsy
were served with subpoenas to testify
in a lawsuit involving Lance.
At issue was doping and a conversation
between Lance and his doctor
while he was being
treated for cancer.
Yeah.
Let's talk about
the Indiana hospital room.
Tell us what was said
during this conversation.
A group of us
were inside of a room
where Lance had mentioned that
he had taken certain drugs
when a doctor
asked him about it.
The doctor came in.
I said to Lance, "I think we should
leave to give you your privacy."
And Lance said, "No, that's okay.
You can stay."
Were you present when that
conversation or statement took place?
Yes.
The doctor asked him
a couple of questions.
And then came the question,
"Have you ever taken any
performance-enhancing drugs?"
Lance's response was
that he had taken...
EPO, growth hormone...
Cortisone...
Steroids and testosterone.
Do you deny the statements
that Ms. Andreu attributed to you
in the Indiana
University Hospital?
100%. Absolutely.
Do you also deny
what Mr. Andreu
said regarding those statements?
100%.
How could it have taken place
when I've never taken
performance-enhancing drugs?
Look, how could
that have happened?
That was my point. It's not
just simply you don't recall?
How many times do
I have to say it?
If you have a doping offense
or you test positive,
it goes without saying that you're
fired from all of your contracts.
Not just the team, but there's
numerous contracts that I have
that would all go away.
Sponsorship agreements,
for example.
All of them.
And the faith of all the cancer
survivors around the world.
So everything I do off of the
bike would go away, too.
And don't think for a second
I don't understand that.
Yeah, that was...
Um...
Honestly,
it's embarrassing to hear.
It's humiliating.
That was going too far.
I know that now.
I didn't at the time.
Were you surprised
when Mr. Armstrong said
he had taken those various
performance-enhancing drugs?
Yeah, I was surprised.
From that point on,
trying to do announcing gigs
or commentary or work,
I was too controversial.
And I was told that a lot.
I was shunned,
banned, from everybody,
and a lot of people wouldn't
look at me, shake my hand.
I was the outsider.
Lance wanted to
humiliate Frankie,
and he wanted to get back at me.
She swore to this, and Frankie,
your former teammate and former
friend also swore to this.
They had to be compelled to testify.
They did not want to testify.
Why would they say this?
You know, I was present
for Betsy's deposition
and we asked her that question.
We said something
to the effect of,
"What do you think
of Lance Armstrong?"
And, Bob, I've never been
in a room where somebody
looks straight across the table
at you right in the eye,
and she goes, "I hate him."
There's some
allegations being made by
the wife of a former
teammate of yours,
again accusing you of using
performance-enhancing drugs.
The things they
don't report is what
happened under
cross-examination
when the person who
made the accusation
couldn't remember
anything about the room.
Couldn't remember if the
doctor was a man or a woman.
Couldn't remember if they
had a lab coat on or not.
Couldn't remember if they had a clipboard.
Couldn't remember anything.
No facts, no figures, no evidence.
Just a mouth.
Aren't you sick of it?
Beyond the media,
Lance had many supporters
who helped him sustain the myth.
One of those was
Stephanie McIlvain.
She worked for Oakley,
one of Armstrong's sponsors.
She had also been
in the hospital room.
According to Betsy,
in their conversations,
Stephanie
confirmed Betsy's story.
But in Stephanie's deposition,
she took Lance's side.
Were you ever in a hospital room
or other part of the hospital
with Mr. Armstrong,
where he said anything about
performance-enhancing drugs?
No.
After the deposition,
she left a message
on Betsy's answering machine.
I HOPE SOMEBODY BREAKS
A BASEBALL BAT OVER YOUR HEAD
BUT I ALSO HOPE THAT ONE DAY YOU
HAVE ADVERSITY IN YOUR LIFE
AND YOU HAVE SOME TYPE OF TRAGEDY
THAT WILL HIT YOUR FAMILY
AND MAKE YOU REALIZE
WHAT LIFE IS ABOU OTHER THAN GOING AFTER PEOPLE
THAT YOU ACTUALLY HATE.
IT'S PATHETIC BETSY.
I THOUGHT YOU WERE
A BETTER PERSON THAN THAT.
I AM SO SADDENED
THAT YOU'RE NOT.
YOU ARE SUCH A SHALLOW
BITCH!
It didn't matter if the
world thought I was a liar,
as long as the people close to
me knew I was telling the truth.
However, when it affected Frankie's
ability to work in the sport,
that's when I put my
foot down and I said,
"I'm going to be obsessed with
getting the truth out there."
This is the first time
Andreu has spoken about it on television.
He replied, "Growth hormone,
"steroids, testosterone,
EPO, cortisone."
From the moment
Betsy started speaking out,
Frankie was confronted by an
old teammate, George Hincapie.
Frankie was my mentor,
and the first time I ever saw dope
was in Frankie's refrigerator.
And that's when I realized,
"Well, fuck, I have to dope."
So for me,
that really bothered me
that all of a sudden he changed,
and he wasn't racing anymore and
said, "Well, Lance is doping."
Well, I mean,
you taught me how to dope.
How could you stand by when you
know that you did what you did?
Lance never sat there and said,
"You're gonna dope or you're
out or I'm firing you."
That's just not true, and they made
it seem like that was the case.
You're either on his side,
or you're off his side.
If you crossed him,
you were doomed.
You were thrown out
very quickly, cast aside,
and then you could
sit there waiting
for the revenge to
be sent upon you.
That desire to bully.
That desire to crush people.
He tried to wreck their lives.
Armstrong used his fame
to undermine the credibility
of his critics like Greg LeMond.
Greg, who I know has serious
drinking and drug problems,
was clearly intoxicated.
Hey, Emma!
Emma O'Reilly, part of
Postal's team support staff,
had helped Lance
hide his doping.
After she left the team,
she told a reporter about it.
Emma.
Afraid that we were
gonna out her as a,
you know,
all these things she said,
as a whore or whatever.
I don't know.
Lance's lawyers pressured
Emma to change her tune,
but she was determined to tell the
truth and refused to back down.
Lance's counsel sued for libel
in Britain and France.
One of his many modus
operandi was "just sue."
The financial drain, the emotional
drain, the mental drain...
It's a pretty effective legal
strategy when you think about it.
It's like,
"I've got deeper pockets,
"and I can fight this war of
attrition and you can't."
It just built one upon another,
and the denials
became more defiant,
and the arguments
became more heated.
I should have just backed away.
In 2004, Armstrong launched
lawsuits over L.A. Confidentiel,
the first book to air
doping charges against him.
He stopped its
publication in America,
forced an apology and won a
judgment worth $1.5 million
that tarnished the reputation
of the co-author, David Walsh.
How can this guy dope
so much and not get caught?
That tells us about
how cycling was run.
It tells us about
the attitudes of the UCI,
which is the world
governing body for cycling.
Its president for most of the Lance
Armstrong years was Hein Verbruggen.
Hein Verbruggen and Lance Armstrong
have always been friends.
The UCI denies that
they ever covered up
a drug test for Lance Armstrong,
but they do say
that when Lance and other top riders
tested with suspicious levels,
they would go and talk to those
riders and they would say,
"Listen, you're flying
a little too close to the sun.
"We're going to be watching you.
"You better stop
what you're doing."
There were dozens, if not
hundreds, of those conversations
going, "Hey, this is close."
But the truth is that
everybody was making money.
Everybody.
And I mean everybody.
Trek Bicycles, in 1998,
does $100 million in revenue.
Now they're pushing a billion.
We all made money. Some made
a lot more than others.
Some of
Verbruggen's money was managed
in an appearance of
conflict of interest
by an investment
firm owned by the man
who bank-rolled
Armstrong's team.
As head of the UCI, Verbruggen
knew how much money and popularity
Lance had brought to the sport.
So when L'Equipe published
evidence of doping by Armstrong,
cycling had a problem.
It was in his interest for the
sport to continue to grow
and grow controversy-free.
A thing we weren't very good at.
I mean, it was controversies every year.
Every year. Big ones.
Verbruggen asked an
acquaintance, Emile Vrijman,
to conduct an investigation
into the newspaper allegations.
In the conversations
with Hein Verbruggen,
clearly was
the focus point on saying
find out what kind of
research did they do
is this a positive test
according to our definitions
and if yes, should we
do something about it.
Oddly, the Vrijman Report didn't
focus on whether Lance had doped.
Instead, it looked at technical
details, lab protocols,
and attacked
the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Without examining samples for
drug use, the report concluded
that Lance was
completely exonerated.
The 130-page
Vrijman Report that came out,
he was
the independent investigator
hired by our
international federation,
it outlined,
very clearly, what happened.
What Lance didn't say then,
but what he told me years later,
was that he and his team
had input on the report
and were delighted
with the result.
Based on further talks with
Lance, I had more questions.
Did you or your
law firm receive any payments
from Lance Armstrong
or his representatives?
Not at all.
As far as I know, not at all.
Vrijman's denial
led me to an odd coincidence.
In 2007,
the UCI paid the final bill
for the report,
approximately $100,000.
Earlier that year, Lance had
made a donation to the UCI.
The amount? $100,000.
The reason, says the UCI,
to pay for a blood-testing
machine purchased in 2005.
Listen, nobody believes in
doping controls more than me.
I've submitted to all of them,
whether in competition
or out of competition.
On the road, Lance
was able to protect his lie
by enforcing
the power of omert,
a code of silence
among riders about doping.
During the 2004 Tour
Lance Armstrong very publicly
humiliated me.
What happened was that
Filippo Simeoni tried to attack
to join the six-man breakaway that had
built up a bit of a lead on the peloton.
The trouble is that Lance
doesn't like Simeoni,
who is actually
suing him for slander in Italy
after Armstrong
called him a liar.
Was that all about Ferrari?
Simeoni had testified
at a trial against Ferrari,
and Lance was working
with Michele Ferrari
and considered
Ferrari a good friend.
So, in the race,
Simeoni attacked,
and Lance,
who had the yellow jersey on,
followed the move,
which is unheard of,
'cause normally you just let your
team do all the chasing for you.
But he went up to Simeoni, and
Simeoni was trying to win the stage,
and, pretty much,
Lance said, "No way."
It was kind of
wrong of him to do that,
but the peloton
was happy about it
because they didn't appreciate what
Simeoni was doing at that point.
You mean sort of
outing the secret?
Yeah, outing the secret.
They were all probably
doing the same thing.
The result was that
Simeoni returned to the field
having apparently
been told by Lance
to sit at the back and shut up.
That's the kind of authority
the patron of the peloton has,
and Lance is not
afraid to wield it.
Lance,
can I ask just what went on
between you and
Simeoni today in the race?
I was just following the wheels.
He can be
revengeful and vindictive,
but then at the same time, very,
very loyal and supportive,
and I've been on both sides.
What do you expect at the
finish for yourself?
Honestly, I don't know.
If Cancellara's dropped, and the
climb isn't as hard as we all think
and I stay with the leaders,
then I can take the jersey.
And what would that mean to you?
It'd be great.
It'd be a trip.
After the first week,
the Tour moved to the Pyrenees.
Mountain stages are where the
best riders make their moves
and where Lance had
dominated in the past.
But unlike previous Tours, Lance
didn't look like he was in control.
He sure rode like he was clean.
He was struggling physically.
He looked beaten for
a lot of those stages.
He was not
anywhere close to as fast
as where he was in 2001 or '99,
but he was also
almost 40 years old.
Is it conceivable to think
that he was racing clean in 2009?
It's possible. You know, he
knows the answer to that.
Not that the sport was harder,
but I found it harder.
And I don't know
if it was being older,
or if it was being clean,
or if it was...
I want to believe that the
rest of the group was clean in '09.
I can't speak for them,
but I like to believe that
we all were basically clean.
Gibney, we gotta win
this fucking Tour de France.
Yeah, I'm counting
on you for the movie.
This is all about me.
Trust me, this will not
be the same if I don't.
Gonna be hard.
Harder than I thought.
Harder than I
thought a week ago.
Lance had lost ground, but
he was still close to the lead
and only two seconds
behind his rival, Contador,
going into the biggest climb
of the Tour.
I figured that if Lance was gonna
manage his mythic comeback,
he would have to
beat Contador here.
But would that be
enough to put an end
to all the questions
about the past?
Today is a very important day.
We have two weeks
of racing behind us.
We have one very
hard week ahead of us.
And today could be a day
where a lot of things change.
You know, everybody's always talking
about Alberto, Lance, Lance, Alberto.
We are here to win
the Tour de France.
Of course, both of
them are feeling good,
and both of them
want to try to win.
The start of that day,
I'd been hanging out at the bus
and Lance came out of the bus.
And I said, "Pretty big day."
And he said, "Yeah, this one's
for all the fucking marbles."
Just before the steepest
climb, Contador looked back at Lance.
Was that teamwork?
Or a last "fuck you"?
But who's
gonna stop Contador now?
Well, I don't think anybody can stop
him, because the gap is opening.
Twenty-three seconds to Schleck,
42 seconds to Armstrong,
a minute,
22 to the yellow jersey.
Alberto Contador
now is establishing himself
as the leader of
the Astana team.
And, boy, when you see him
climb like this,
who else could there be?
There's the pistol shot. Alberto
Contador's over the line.
He's the next maillot jaune
of the Tour de France.
Very fast at the
bottom of the climb.
Contador went once
and you went after him.
And the second time he went,
what were your thoughts there?
He showed he's the best rider
in the race, certainly the best climber.
When everybody's on the limit and
then you can accelerate again,
I've been there, and it's...
Do you think your chances for
winning the Tour now are over?
Um...
Yeah. It'll be hard.
You know, a day like this
really shows who's the best,
and I wasn't on par with what's
required to win the Tour, so,
I mean, for me,
that's the reality.
That's not
devastating news or anything.
But are you disappointed with...
The Lance Armstrong
I know always is a fighter,
always is one that
is in attack mode.
And when I asked him that
question, he was different.
I think there was
a lot of doubt in his head
on what he was gonna be able
to accomplish at that Tour.
When Frankie was talking to him,
it was such an honest exchange
between those two guys.
When he was looking at this guy,
who had been his friend for
years as well as his teammate,
and who had doped,
and he seemed to be admitting to
Frankie more so than to the camera
that, "I just don't have it.
I'm not good enough."
He had lost time, and he showed
himself to be the weaker rider.
I don't have that punch that
I used to have. GIBNEY: Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, but I mean, I...
I guess I'm... You know...
In terms of...
I know. It fucked
up your documentary.
No, no. No. Nothing fucks
up my documentary.
I'm sorry.
I don't think Lance's
apology was just banter.
Part of it was real.
Saying he was sorry he couldn't
deliver, one more time,
the perfect fairy tale that
everyone had come to expect.
Going forward, he was looking
for a way to salvage things.
What meaning would
his comeback have
if he couldn't
finish in the top three?
Now in second,
he braced for attacks
from Garmin's Bradley Wiggins
and the Schleck brothers,
all determined to
push him off the podium.
Johan knew that
Lance was not at his best.
So he pursued
a delicate strategy,
protecting
Contador's yellow jersey
and a spot on
the podium for his old friend.
Without the
podium, the comeback,
it's not just a wash,
but it's a disaster for him.
Remember that to win the Tour
you don't have to attack.
Only if you know you can leave
everyone, then you can go.
Johan didn't want
Contador to attack,
because he might push the
Schlecks to a faster pace
than they would
ride on their own.
If they raced ahead, that could
cost Lance a spot on the podium.
What's happening here?
Contador's moved.
He's decided to go it alone.
Now can there be
a reaction from Andy
after all the work
that man has done?
Contador is now
going for the top.
He's allowed himself just
under two kilometers to the summit,
and he's going for the win.
Contador testing the waters
here this afternoon,
but he hasn't got the gap
on the two Schleck brothers.
Stop, stop Alberto,
they're on you.
And it was
a terrific acceleration,
but that's what
this man is famous for,
is the acceleration on the mountains.
There was no need for that shit!
Shit!
Lance took dangerous
chances on the descent.
It was his only chance
to get back in the game.
By following Contador's attack,
the Schleck brothers were now
second and third behind Contador.
Lance was in fourth,
off the podium.
I wondered what
words were exchanged
between Contador
and the Schlecks.
He doesn't care, he's going
all alone on the podium,
not with the team.
I don't blame Contador one bit.
He didn't trust anybody on that
team, and he wanted to make sure
that he had that yellow jersey
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 fucking 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 fucking 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
busted for doping, Tyler Hamilton,
began to consider his options.
Tyler had been
Lance's teammate in 1999.
Tyler had been subpoenaed by the
grand jury, and he had a realization.
Number one was, all this is gonna
come out one way or the other.
The lie is too big.
And the second thing was that
he wanted to tell his story.
You saw Lance
Armstrong inject EPO?
Yeah, like, we all did.
And you see in that footage
Tyler's intense discomfort
at facing the truth,
how hard that was.
Omert is very real, the code of
silence, which is why it took Tyler
until he was talking to someone
who had a badge and a gun
before he could fully start the
process of telling the truth.
It seemed like the dam broke
when suddenly somebody shows
up with a badge and a gun.
Different ball game.
That was never even
a thought in my mind
going, "Well,
I'm just gonna go lie to
"a federal prosecutor."
It's, like, no way.
Early in 2012, an election year,
the Department of Justice made
a surprising announcement.
It would not pursue charges
against Armstrong.
But USADA,
the US Anti-Doping Agency,
continued with its
own investigation.
He was one of the ringleaders
of this conspiracy
that pulled off this grand heist
using tens of
millions of taxpayer dollars,
defrauded millions of sports
fans and his fellow competitors.
Travis Tygart, with help
from government investigators,
pried detailed testimony from
many of Lance's former teammates.
Landis, Vaughters,
Hamilton, Andrea,
and most damaging
of all to Lance,
his loyal friend,
George Hincapie.
They said, "Cooperate,
and you'll get six months."
Right.
Yeah.
And don't cooperate?
And you're banned for life.
Through his lawyers,
Lance attacked Tygart and USADA.
USADA had said publicly
that they had offered Lance the
same deal as everyone else.
It's a claim Armstrong
and his lawyers deny.
The message wasn't,
"Hey, we gotta give you something.
"We gotta give you six months. We gotta
give you a penalty, a sanction."
That did not happen.
The call to me came and said,
"You're screwed.
"Why don't you come on in here
and confess?"
But I don't understand
then why go tell the world,
every opportunity YOU get today
that we offered
Lance the same deal
that we offered everybody else?
Just say, "We wanted him.
We got him.
"Go dance on his grave."
USADA banned Armstrong for life.
His sponsors and
Livestrong cut all ties.
The UCI stripped him of all
his Tour de France titles
and his third-place
finish in 2009.
Armstrong responded
with a defiant tweet.
I know what it took
to win those Tours.
Okay, it was a little
more detailed
than we were told,
or you guys were told.
But I know what it took, and my
teammates know what it took.
And those 200-strong pelotons over
seven years, they know what it took.
And they know who won.
Did Lance win it according to the
rules of the road at that time?
Yeah. But did Lance win it
according to the rules?
No. He still broke the rules.
Just because everybody's breaking
the rules doesn't mean it's okay.
Lance still refused
to admit to doping,
but his fans no longer
believed in his denials.
With his fairy
tale story in tatters,
Lance reached out to
friends and critics alike
and began to wonder out loud if he
should at last admit to his lie.
After 10 years of his tirade
on me, he called to say he was sorry.
I still get emotional.
It was...
It took a lot of courage
for him to say he was sorry
and for him to tell me
he's done a lot of bad
things to good people.
I said, "I'm sure this was a tough
phone call for you to make,
"and I'm sure that these last two
months have been hell for you."
But I said, "You know what? You've
put me through hell for 10 years."
I said, "You're
going through nothing.
"I hope you do
the right thing."
He started calling
me and we got to talk
about how his secrets were
gonna be given to the world.
His decision to go on
Oprah did not win back his fans,
particularly those who
had defended his lie.
For the cycling
crowd, it wasn't enough.
They didn't hear enough.
They wanted to hear more.
I didn't say enough.
I didn't tell them enough.
And for the general
population, it was too much.
Which leads to
everybody being pissed off.
Because he had lied for so long
and he was so vicious
in protecting that lie,
um...
I don't think people were...
I really think that people said,
"Okay, wait.
Let's see what he does.
"Just because he says this stuff
"does not mean
everything is gonna be okay."
We understand now
that if you wanted to win
or if you wanted
to help someone win
or if you wanted to make a good
living, you had to dope in that era.
We understand that now.
And I think people
would give him that context,
but it's the lie.
The doping is bad, but Lance's
abuse of power is worse.
I see the anger in people.
And they have every
right to feel betrayed.
And it's my fault.
Yet after all the revelations,
Lance would continue
to hold onto one thing.
Was Betsy telling the truth
about the Indiana hospital?
I'm not gonna take that on.
I'm laying down on that one.
Was Betsy lying?
I'm just not...
The hospital room
is where it all began.
It all started at
that damn hospital room.
And he just...
He was there. I know the truth.
He knows the truth.
If it's complicated
for him to say
that it happened, then fine.
I understand that.
But at this point...
It doesn't really matter what
happened in that hospital room.
Doesn't matter at all anymore.
But its symbolic
weight is enormous.
It's not about doping anymore.
That's out there. That's
the least of his problems.
He has a support
group that's around him
that have protected him
for years and years and years.
And now, if he comes out, he throws
a lot of them under the bus.
He's not ready. I don't think
he's ready for the entire truth.
He just can't stand to lose.
He'll go to any length if he
decides he's not gonna lose.
I think the stakes are enormous
for him really coming to terms
with what he did.
Did you feel in any way
that you were cheating?
No.
You did not feel
that you were cheating?
At the time, no.
Psychologically, when you
tell that lie for that long
over and over and over
and people are believing it,
it's very, very difficult,
if not impossible,
to fully reckon
with that right away.
I kept hearing, you know, I'm a...
That you're a cheat.
I'm a drug cheat.
I'm a cheat. I'm a cheater.
And I went and looked up
the definition of "cheat."
Yes?
And the definition of cheat is "to
gain an advantage on a rival or foe."
You know, that they don't
have, or that, you know...
I didn't view it that way.
GiBNEY: Another definition
for cheat is "to deceive."
That's why Lance is a cheater.
He deceived his fans.
Yet it's also fair to say that
they were willing to be fooled.
So many people,
from cancer survivors,
to reporters,
to sponsors, to myself
loved the beautiful lie
more than the ugly truth.
The story was
a bestseller for Lance, too.
It made him a fortune
of over $125 million.
That is a bitter truth.
It pays to believe in
winning at all costs.
And the cruelty Lance showed
his enemies off the bike
was the very thing that allowed
him to win on the bike.
People will forgive and forget
and move on, or they won't.
And there will be
plenty of the latter.
Sure.
You know, at some point people will
say, "Okay, here's what happened."
And then judge for themselves.
I mean, I don't know what people
will think in 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
Is the record book still gonna
be blank for seven years?
I guess it will be.
I don't know.
Or do people go...
They look at this thing,
in the context that it is
and say, "Well, yeah.
"He won the Tour de
France seven times."