THERE WAS STILL ONE cycling prize Weisel wanted: the Tour de France. He couldn't ride it, of course, but he could create a team that might eventually triumph. In 1988 he formed a pro-am squad, sponsored by Montgomery Securities and Subaru and coached by Eddie B. The riders ranged in age from Weisel, a masters amateur then in his late forties, down to 18-year-old Lance Armstrong, who joined the team in 1990 and won the U.S. National Amateur Championships in 1991. That same year, the 50-year-old Weisel set a world masters record in the one-kilometer time trial.

But in 1992, Subaru-Montgomery suffered a setback: Armstrong quit and went to ride for Motorola. For five years, Weisel patiently strategized, testing out new riders and pumping more than $5 million of his own money into the effort. In 1996, Subaru-Montgomery became U.S. Postal—Weisel's company still owned the team, but the Postal Service brand sponsorship infused more than $3.5 million into the coffers, leading to better riders and, most important, an invitation to the Tour in 1997. Postal had a sprinter in George Hincapie and a good time-trial rider in Tyler Hamilton, but neither appeared to be a threat to win the Tour.

A year later, Armstrong came calling. The former Subaru-Montgomery standout was in a bad way: After being diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996, Armstrong took the 1997 season off to undergo

When Lance Armstrong returned to cycling in 1998, he approached Thom Weisel about riding for U.S. Postal. Weisel questioned his leadership abilities, in a conversation that Armstrong has called "the most brutal I've ever had."

chemotherapy. By the time he announced his readiness to return, in 1998, his new French team, Cofidis, had dropped him, and no other pro team was interested. At first Weisel turned Lance down, too, remembering him as an obnoxious prima donna. "He hadn't been enough of a leader," Weisel says today. "He was not very respectful of other riders and the support system around him." Armstrong, a man who has since fired some of his own friends, wrote in the foreword to Weisel's autobiography that this dressing-down by Weisel was "probably the most brutal conversation I've ever had."

But after Weisel spent more time with the "new" Armstrong, he changed his mind and signed him up for the 1998 season, sweetening the deal with a $1 million performance-based bonus. After a shaky start—Armstrong dropped out of a wet and miserable Paris–Nice race in March—he went on to finish an impressive fourth in the Vuelta a España, one of the big three stage races in cycling. A year later, Weisel was sitting in a Postal team car, following his star rider up a steep mountain road, as Armstrong dropped the peloton and won the stage to Sestriere. A week after that, he won the Tour de France for the first time.

But even as Armstrong started winning, American cycling was in the midst of a crisis. By early 2000, USA Cycling was running more than a million-dollar annual deficit. Membership numbers were declining, and hoped-for sponsorships had simply disappeared. The only development-program sponsor, the computer firm EDS, had pulled out altogether.

A bigger problem than money was talent. "We were at a transition point," says Jim Ochowicz, who serves as both president of USA Cycling and a principal for Thomas Weisel Partners. "Lance was racing, and other racers were riding on elite teams in Europe, but we weren't developing the next generation of riders."

Weisel rounded up his wealthy cycling friends, convinced them to bail out the federation, and established the USA Cycling Foundation to support rider development. In return, his group got three seats on the 12-member USA Cycling board, which oversees the organization. Longtime USAC board member Les Earnest, a Stanford professor, filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping Weisel's group, which he accused of manipulating the USA Cycling bylaws, but the case was settled out of court.

"It was an ego trip," Earnest says of the takeover. "I guess Weisel gets off on it." Whatever Weisel's motive, the ex-athletes and volunteer enthusiasts who traditionally populated the board were no match for him and his friends, who revamped the whole organization. "We had to bring in a new management team, redo the strategy, and raise a substantial amount of money," Weisel says.

Old-time USA Cycling hands resisted the change. Between 2000 and 2003, most of the staff quit or was dismissed. The management was streamlined, and Weisel installed trusted associates in important positions, starting with Steve Johnson, a former professor of sports physiology at the University of Utah.

But the takeover also put Weisel in an awkward position. He owned the largest U.S.-based pro cycling team, while also serving as a director (and major funder) of the sport's national governing body. As an article in SF Weekly noted last year, this created a potential conflict of interest, because USA Cycling is responsible for enforcing the rules, including those pertaining to doping. Last summer, when the French newspaper L'Équipe published a report alleging that Armstrong had used the banned performance-enhancing drug EPO at the 1999 Tour, USA Cycling officials stepped up—to denounce it.

Earnest argues that this sort of web- tangling is inevitable with Weisel. "USA Cycling oversees his operations," he says. "By controlling it, he eliminates any problems for himself."

Weisel calls that claim absurd. "I've never made a nickel off this sport," he says. "Cycling has been a deficit-spending activity for me."

Only belatedly did Weisel realize that cycling—and Armstrong—might get his buddies to open their wallets as well. "Lance is a magnet for successful business people," he says. "All the traits you need for success, Lance possesses: He's a deep thinker, he gets to the heart of issues, and he's a great motivator."