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Outside Magazine June 2003

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Force Majeure (Cont.)

PEOPLE WANT TO BELIEVE it's the numbers, that Armstrong's ability to crush competitors like Miller Lite empties is attributable to the various measurements of his physiology. Add them up and the sum explains things, like how he can win without drugs.

The common wisdom goes like this: His heart is a third larger than the average male's; his VO2 max is double that of most healthy men; his anaerobic threshold, the point at which lactic acid kicks in, is freakishly high; and when he attacks, he pedals at 90 to 120 rpm, a cadence 10 to 20 percent higher (and more efficient) than most cyclists can maintain.

Armstrong's numbers have been mythologized like no other rider's. But cycling is not arithmetic. Knaggs, who has logged a lot of saddle time alongside Armstrong, gives what may be the most astute appraisal of his friend's invincibility. "He was this triathlon wonder child, and for ten years that's been the story on him—his big engine, blah, blah, blah," he told me. "But the genetics is just the ante to get you into the room. He knows all these guys have good numbers; they're all good enough physically. To Lance, it's a test of wills."

What underlies his willpower is the knowledge that he has trained as hard as possible. The moment he arrives in Girona each February, he officially goes into monk mode. "I just go from eating and drinking whatever—from having two beers or two glasses of wine with dinner—to absolutely zero," he says. "The strategy is you have to get on the scale every morning. I'll start the season at 79 kilos. I need to lose a kilo every month so I can be at 74 at the start of the Tour. A kilo a month isn't that hard."

His daily schedule is ascetic: "I eat breakfast between eight and nine, then I train straight through lunch. I leave at 11, get back at five, and try and starve until 6:30 or seven, then have dinner. People think that if you ride six hours, which would be 120 miles in training, that you can eat whatever you want—5,000 calories. You can't do that. If you just went out and rode easy on flat roads, you're not burning that much. It might be 300 calories an hour."

He rides for five to six hours most days. No music. No conversation. "I'll answer my phone if it rings," he says of his cell-and-earbud rig. "But I prefer not to talk to anybody."

It's a formidable regimen, to be sure. But there are those who think he gets help in not-so-wholesome ways.

Cycling journalists have always gossiped about Armstrong and doping—as they are bound to do with any champion in a sport whose traditions of drug abuse are as rich as its history, particularly when that champion has performed so magically. But most journalists who cover the Tour are loath to ask about doping, either because they don't want to taint their love of the sport or because they're simply afraid of getting frozen out by the Armstrong camp. Such reporters are sometimes referred to as FWTs—fans with typewriters. David Walsh, the chief sportswriter for The Sunday Times of London, is no FWT.

On the opening weekend of the 2001 Tour, Walsh published a story in which the bombshell was a detailed account of Armstrong's visits to an Italian sports doctor named Michele Ferrari. Ferrari specializes in working with pro cyclists and has been vilified for allegedly administering performance-enhancing drugs. (He once reportedly said that EPO—which can thicken the blood and cause heart trouble—was no more harmful than five liters of orange juice.) He is currently on trial in Bologna, charged with providing EPO to professional riders and managing their use. Until Walsh's article, Armstrong hadn't acknowledged his relationship with Ferrari.

Walsh never outright accused Armstrong of doping, but he amassed alarming circumstantial evidence—evidence gleaned from the Italian carabinieri detailing whom Ferrari has treated; on-the-record quotes from a former Motorola rider and USPS doctor asserting the teams were pro-dope; and accusations of drug use on the U.S. Cycling team. Asked by Walsh if he'd ever visited Ferrari, Armstrong played coy. "Have I been tested by him, gone there and consulted on certain things? Perhaps," he said. Walsh then listed details of exactly when and where Armstrong had met with Ferrari.

The article caused a small firestorm, and when Walsh confronted Armstrong about Ferrari at a press conference a few days before the finish of the Tour that year, Armstrong glared at him and said he had never denied his relationship with Ferrari, had never discussed doping with him, and that the doctor was innocent until proven guilty.

The question is, why not take a break from Ferrari if his reputation is under question? Regardless of whether the doctor is a scoundrel or a scapegoat, don't appearances matter? I asked Armstrong this. "First of all," he said, "I've never heard anybody—a team, a sponsor, anybody who has the power and influence to tell me what to do—say, 'You need to get away from that guy.' Never once. Number two, he's the best there is." Armstrong now says he works on altitude preparation, nutrition, and power output with Ferrari when he is in Europe.

The thing to remember in the "Does Lance dope?" debate is that Armstrong's blood and urine are tested more than that of any athlete in the Tour, and he has come up clean. The other thing to remember, however, is that it's extremely hard to bust someone on EPO. The Tour instituted a conclusive test in 2001, but it only detects EPO that's been taken within one week. There is no test yet for human growth hormone, which is thought to be the latest scourge of the peloton.

"I don't know that any cyclist will ever be free of suspicion," Armstrong says. "And for that matter, I think it's like a plague that will spread to other sports. So when somebody does anything, from cycling to the long jump to swimming to baseball, they're going to question it. I've been there and I know—it just gets old.

"If you think about what they're doing with genetic doping, I mean, if that happens, it's done," he adds. "I don't think they can test for that. And that will be a real shame."

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