In this episode, I sit down with Lance Armstrong to talk about the doping scandal that rocked the sport of cycling and how it changed the culture of the sport for the better. We talk about what it was like to be Lance Armstrong in the early days of his career and how he dealt with the pressure of being the first person to ever win the Tour de France. I also talk about how he handled the aftermath of his doping scandal and what it did to the sport and the legacy he left behind. It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy listening to this episode. I know I did and I appreciate you guys for tuning in and supporting me. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much to Lance Armstrong for coming on the show and talking about doping and what he went through in the wake of the scandal and the impact it had on the sport. I appreciate it so much and I'm sure you will too. I hope this episode makes you feel a little better about the sport we all love and respect the sport that Lance represented in the Tour and the people who worked so hard to make it what it is today. I hope it makes you think about it and reflect on the legacy that Lance left behind and how great it really is. Peace, Love, Blessings, Cheers, and Cheers. Cheers! -Joe and the Crew -Drew and the crew at the Biker Club Podcast. -The Crew at The Biker Crew. . -Bretta -Jon & the Crew at . . and The Crew at the Crew at Biker & the Clubhouse. and the Crews at The Club. & The Club at Podcast - in honor of Lance Armstrong ( ) is celebrating the life of the greatest athlete in the world and his incredible career and his amazing career and life in the next episode of the Tour De France of the 2019 Tour de ! , and the rest of the world, and the life he s the greatest in this episode of ... and so much more! and much more AND MUCH MORE! - Thank you for tuning into this episode! & so much love, Thanks for listening and support, Thank you, Lance Armstrong, I really really appreciate all the love and appreciation, and I can't wait to see you back in the future!
00:00:43.000You're just going to have, I mean, what did we, I mean, I posted the other day, we were putting our Christmas tree up.
00:00:51.000And my family, you know, all the kids there and Anna and, you know, the lights and the ornaments and And it's at the fucking Christmas tree.
00:00:59.000And, you know, of course, most people love it.
00:01:44.000All the people that won the Tour de France in all the years that you did it, if you go back to people that either weren't implicated or didn't test positive, like, what is it, like, 18th place or something fucking crazy like that?
00:03:36.000And literally almost everybody stayed and fought.
00:03:41.000And they fought, you know, we fought the way that the fight was being fought.
00:03:46.000And, you know, and that all meets with where we are today.
00:03:51.000And the people who were there, I think, can speak to it.
00:03:55.000Me, my teammates, my peers, my rivals, the competition.
00:03:59.000And we have a unique perspective on it because we were in the war.
00:04:03.000But the person on Main Street, right, the corner of Main and First, Wasn't there, and they don't understand it, and so they can't really speak to it, but that doesn't change the fact that they're disappointed.
00:04:45.000Well, they have a legitimate point, but there's also, there's people out there that want you to be wrong and want you, they want to find someone who's done something bad and never let it go.
00:04:57.000And I think there's definitely some of that going on.
00:04:59.000And there's also people that they don't have a lot of sympathy for people who've been extremely successful and have made mistakes.
00:05:07.000Like it gives them the green light to just decide to just continually attack you.
00:05:12.000But what I tried to do when this whole thing was going down is I tried to put myself in your position.
00:05:18.000Like you're this world-class biker, it's 1994, and that's right around when you started UZPO? 95. 95?
00:05:29.00095. So around this time, when you realized...
00:05:37.000When you realized that pretty much all the best guys are doing this now, what is that feeling like when you're like, okay, I've got to cross over into this deceptive territory.
00:05:47.000Now all of a sudden I have to lie about this, I have to hide this, and I have to be a part of this sort of Underground thing this underground aspect.
00:05:56.000That's a part of this great sport, right?
00:05:59.000Well we we held off as long as you know, I mean You know EPO came along in the early 90s We sort of got to Europe in 92 93 And then it's by that point by 94. It's you know full-on and And we're thinking,
00:06:20.000okay, this isn't good, but surely they're going to have a test for this for EPO. And we waited, we waited, and it just never came.
00:06:28.000And then we get to 95. There's tremendous pressure on the team, within the team.
00:08:04.000Well, it's such a strong anti-inflammatory that with that, inevitably, you feel better.
00:08:10.000Whether it's physically you feel better, even just a euphoria that comes with that.
00:08:17.000That's, you know, and who knows what, you know.
00:08:20.000But at the same time, you have a drug that, you know, I love it in cycling, if you took cortisone, you would be banned.
00:08:31.000However, you know, you watch, you know, the NFL and somebody gets banged up in the first half, they go in at halftime, they come out, The announcer says, they went in, they got a cortisone injection, they're going to play the second half, they rush for 100 yards, they win the game,
00:08:55.000We've talked about that a bunch of times with me and my friends.
00:08:59.000When you go to GNC, the UFC has this company, Muscle Farm, which sells a bunch of Supplements and things along those lines, but yet they ban performance-enhancing drugs.
00:09:33.000But there also, too, has to be – and I don't want to be critical of whether it's the UFC's efforts to combat doping or USADA or water or anybody or any major sport.
00:10:16.000I mean, anytime you mix athletes that are super motivated with money, with pressure that comes with that temptation that comes with that, you know, people are for the rest of, I mean, come on, I mean...
00:10:33.000The original Olympic Games, there was going on.
00:10:36.000So you have to think that it's going to happen forever.
00:11:14.000They would take a cork out of a wine bottle and they would put, this is fucking crazy, they would have fishing string in the cork, right, so wired up and they would have it, you know, they have a car up the road and they'd put it in their teat.
00:11:29.000And it would be, you know, just a subtle pull.
00:11:31.000I mean, they, you know, any way to get ahead.
00:11:34.000I mean, this is, you know, the sport is just, it's a brutal sport and you're not getting your face pounded in like UFC, but You certainly feel like you're getting your face pounded.
00:11:46.000Well, psychologically, it's almost more devastating because it's so grinding.
00:11:51.000When you're talking about something that goes three weeks, is it 2,200 or 2,500 miles?
00:12:03.000But once you get to the top level, it's remarkable how efficient it is.
00:12:07.000I mean, you have 200 guys going down the road.
00:12:10.000On a normal day, if it's a flat day and there's not wind or crosswind or rain or, you know, the conditions, it's pretty easy, to be honest.
00:12:36.000Like, you know, they sort of pace and police, for lack of a better word, itself.
00:12:42.000And obviously the mountains and the time trials are where the race is decided, and those are the hardest moments.
00:12:47.000When they first started introducing things like, when they started using transfusions and things along those lines, how much of an improvement did it have on the times?
00:12:59.000Well, you know, it's hard to say because the times are, you know, people look at our era, they look at my generation, and they say, okay, well the times must be You know, significantly faster.
00:13:13.000But you can't compare cycling to track and field or cycling to another sport that's had a rough patch and is now trying to clean itself up because technology changes, road surfaces change, obviously training has changed.
00:13:26.000But, I mean, if you go back to the 84 games right here in Los Angeles, that was really the first major exposure you had for transfusions.
00:13:36.000Which the American team did, and Rolling Stone exposed it.
00:13:41.000But a transfusion was an old-school...
00:14:02.000And then when the test, when they refined the EPO test and ultimately came up with it, then people went back to the old school system.
00:14:13.000And then came other ways to detect that through, not so much through a test, but just through what they call the biological passport.
00:14:23.000Studying parameters in your blood, whether it's reticulocytes or red cells or all of these things that smart people can come up with tests for.
00:14:31.000It was more of a screening method to detect a transfusion.
00:14:38.000What's kind of fucked up about all this is that you won the Tour de France seven times.
00:14:44.000You obviously trained like a demon, pushed yourself to the limits.
00:14:48.000You beat everyone in the competition, and they were all doing the same thing you were doing.
00:15:02.000There's a situation that happens when you're involved, you're involving money, you're involving sponsors, you're involved...
00:15:09.000Once you first start, once the ball starts rolling, and the first deception has been launched out there into the ether, there's no way to take it back if you want to keep racing.
00:15:37.000It is what it is, but that's, anyhow, there was the doping, okay, which led to the lying, right, which led to the treatment of other people.
00:15:48.000I think, by and large, people can have the perspective that you have.
00:15:51.000They can say, look, looks to me like everybody did it.
00:15:56.000Then they can look to the line, and that's where they really start to not like it.
00:15:59.000They say, this guy lied to us repeatedly.
00:16:02.000But of course, you get, you know, there's no defense to that, but if I could share any personal insight.
00:16:08.000I mean, once you lie once, you just keep lying, you keep lying.
00:16:11.000It's not as if I'm going to sit here, you know, this is 15 years ago, and Joe, you're a nice guy, and I mean, if I was on this podcast, I would have lied to your fucking face a million times, just so you know.
00:16:39.000Yeah, so I was stuck, for lack of a better word, in that lie or that deception.
00:16:47.000But then the way that I took my competitive nature, which served me well in training and in racing, and took it into the real world, took it into a press conference, took it into a personal relationship, took it into former teammates, my relationship, that's the part where people go,
00:17:06.000And so that, you know, you got sort of the three phases.
00:17:12.000None of them are good, but as it got further away, That lack of respect for others Is the thing that totally fucked me.
00:17:22.000And, you know, to that, I would say to anybody that I understand, and I may be in their time out forever, I have, and the only thing I will add that may sound like I'm trying to defend myself, is I've tried to make amends with all those people,
00:18:07.000Some people may view that as an apology or not.
00:18:10.000But the ones that I could go sit with, I did.
00:18:13.000And that's all that I would add to that.
00:18:15.000And I mean, I'm proud that most of those people, and I say most, not everybody, because not everybody's ready, but most of those people said, you know what?
00:19:43.000Seeing these kids with face masks on because their immune system is so compromised and they don't have any hair and they're just devastated.
00:19:49.000And you're hanging out with these kids and you're generating all this positive energy for them, generating all this money, all this research that's being funded.
00:21:00.000You know, most would say, well, that's all your fault, Lance.
00:21:03.000And maybe they're right, but it's been, you know, especially on the foundation side, dude, it just breaks my heart to see the effect it's had on their effectiveness.
00:21:20.000Well, it's got to be way more complicated than it's just all your fault.
00:21:24.000It's way more complicated, because when you're talking about an entire sport that's dirty, I mean, for lack of a better word, an entire sport that's being deceptive, an entire sport that's using these performance-enhancing drugs, and then you're talking about you,
00:21:41.000You're this one guy who is incredibly successful at it in a country where nobody gave a fuck about the Tour de France until you came along.
00:21:55.000The story being what it was, a cancer survivor that comes back, that wins this event, that transcends the sport, that brings the sport to cycling, although Greg did do a tremendous job.
00:22:10.000Really, that was like the first blow up of cycling in the United States.
00:22:45.000It's a high-profile, high-publicity avenue for them to achieve notoriety.
00:22:52.000Yeah, but, right, and we'll get into that, but the...
00:22:56.000My rivals, so if you take my main rivals, whether it's Jan Ulrich or Basso or Baloki or Pantani, their star factor, for lack of a better phrase, was just different.
00:23:09.000So there was this disparity, which the sport enabled there to be, because it's just kind of an old-school, janky sport in terms of the way it's organized and run as a business.
00:23:32.000When you have something like that, it doesn't work.
00:23:38.000All of those ships need to rise with that sea.
00:23:42.000I probably didn't do a good enough job trying to push for that in my time.
00:23:48.000But don't you have only a certain amount of resources?
00:23:51.000I mean, one of the things that I've always said about extreme winners is there's a borderline between greatness and madness, and it crosses back and forth.
00:24:00.000I would say that greatness and madness are next-door neighbors, and they borrow each other's sugar.
00:24:03.000Because there's almost no way you can get that good without almost losing your fucking mind.
00:24:42.000You have to have that aggressive competitive nature in order to succeed, especially in some fucking thing where everyone's doing the same thing.
00:24:48.000There's not a lot of creativity involved.
00:25:43.000Yeah, it's an endurance event, so you have to be a little careful with that.
00:25:46.000But there are those moments where you just have to unleash...
00:25:49.000Everything you have and you can unleash them in training or in in racing and yeah, but yes That seems like a really good point where you just put that up is there's you have to be careful with that You have to know when to put like how you have to know your body Yeah, like really intimately as far as you didn't you have to manage it over the course of many many Say the marathon I mean nobody takes off and you know like it's a hard-yard dash I mean you have to manage that you obviously you have the experience of knowing What that effort is going to look and feel like,
00:26:19.000and you know how to manage all of that.
00:26:21.000But yeah, three weeks long, man, you've got to be careful.
00:26:26.000Yeah, is there a moment where you remember, like, during a race, where you wanted to push, but you had to back down?
00:26:34.000Like, is there moments where you, like, you're managing your body?
00:26:53.000And then it came the heart rate monitor and they, you know, followed their heart rate and they managed their training and racing through that.
00:27:18.000Like, if you go back to, like, a hundred years ago, assuming that people weren't using corkscrews or corks and fishing line and whatever other ways they were cheating.
00:27:53.000And so then people question everybody, whether it's Chris Froome, who won the Tour de France this year, or somebody that wins the World Championships.
00:28:10.000They look at my times in the Tour de France, they look at the Peloton's times, and they see now that the times are actually either the same or better.
00:28:18.000So they say, well, then of course, that supports my argument that you're dirty.
00:29:33.000I mean, doping affects other individuals differently and, you know, you might have won two or you might have won none.
00:29:41.000Well, that means that some people weren't doping correctly.
00:29:44.000But look, once you're doping, if you're doping and the other guy's doping better than you, like, well, then you're not doing your job doping.
00:29:51.000You know, you're not being a good competitive doper.
00:30:10.000But my perspective is really clear on that.
00:30:13.000I mean, I think if you have a sport where everybody's, you know, and we were both talking about the Bill Burr thing that he did on Conan, which is like, yeah, our psychopath is better than your psychopath.
00:31:00.000All I will say is that I don't think it's, far be it from me to talk about what's fair or not fair, but I don't think it's fair for the sport to leave those empty.
00:33:04.000And I'm proud of, and that's the thing, too, is that As weird as it is and as strange as it is that there's just a line through those years as if they did not happen, man, I was paid to do a job, right?
00:33:16.000As messy as the job was, whatever, I was paid to do it and I did it.
00:34:42.000And I think people expect me to say, well, it was just this huge relief off your shoulders when you talked to Oprah or whatever you did that you can now move forward and live...
00:34:56.000The life of an honest man and et cetera, et cetera.
00:35:01.000I mean, sitting here today having this conversation, I would much prefer to have this conversation than the one where I would have lied to your fucking face 15 times 10 years ago.
00:36:01.000You mean people didn't like you afterwards in that way?
00:36:05.000Yeah, well, I think there's two things.
00:36:07.000Number one, I wasn't emotionally ready to do that interview.
00:36:11.000I wasn't in a place where I think that I sit today where it is a position of contrition and understanding the tremendous sense of betrayal that's out there.
00:36:25.000My perception of that today is much sharper than it was three years ago when I sat with her.
00:36:31.000The feds and other lawsuits forced my hand.
00:36:34.000I had to sit there with that because I knew I was going to be sitting with her or with you or with Tom Brokaw, or I was going to be sitting with a government lawyer, being deposed, being videoed, and being leaked.
00:36:46.000So I said, well, I'm going to go, I'm going to find the place that I'd rather sit down and talk about this as opposed to a grainy video that the government leaks to the world.
00:38:36.000I mean, it takes a hit in terms of, obviously in terms of fundraising, which directly leads to its effectiveness in terms of helping create change for cancer survivors all around the world.
00:38:50.000You need to raise money in order to do that.
00:39:35.000My friend John was a professional cyclist, and this was 2003, 2004, and he told me, he was like, listen, man, we're all on it.
00:39:51.000He goes, guys would get off the bus in the middle of the night, you'd hear them taking off their bikes and going for a ride because their blood got too thick.
00:42:54.000I was like, it's kind of fucked up that he was lying all this time, and it's kind of fucked up that he was suing people that were saying that he was telling lies, and...
00:43:02.000But one of the things that shocked me the most when I was thinking about it was that you had recovered from cancer.
00:43:10.000You had one of your testicles removed.
00:44:02.000But you asked the question, knowing my health history with cancer, with all that I went through, Is going back to my sport and taking EPO a risk to my disease or to my health?
00:44:20.000And the answer to that, obviously, my answer to myself was no.
00:44:24.000You really didn't think that it was a risk to push your body like that and to put all these...
00:44:32.000I mean, in a lot of ways, they're pushing your body in an unnatural way or to an unnatural level.
00:44:42.000Testosterone and human growth hormone and EPO and all these...
00:44:45.000And that's the only difference that was made was, I mean, I had a slight experience with growth hormone before the disease and then after the diagnosis and the treatment and the recovery, I said, okay, that does not sound like a good idea.
00:45:26.000What changes did you make when you came back from having cancer?
00:45:31.000Man, I was, and again, this is the stuff that we can talk about.
00:45:34.000I talked about forever and, you know, and it's almost sort of mocked now, you know, because we talked about the change in diet and the increased, you know, intensity of training and the reconnaissance and the technology and the wind tunnel and we did all of those things and they all worked.
00:45:49.000You know, but I say they're mocked now because people now know the truth.
00:46:30.000You're always assuming that people have heard this.
00:46:32.000Yeah, if you look at me racing in 96 before I was diagnosed, and then you look at me winning the Tour in 99, I mean, this is 20 pounds difference.
00:46:39.000So, I mean, I had this, when I got out of sort of my cancer mission, you know, and recovered and took a year and a half away and went back, I viewed racing bikes as life and death.
00:46:55.000I viewed my disease as a competitive event, as a sporting event.
00:46:59.000It's me versus the opposition, looking at the scoreboard, how we doing.
00:47:03.000And then when I got back on the bike, it was like life and death.
00:48:24.000I feel bad for any top-level rider that is racing their bike in 2015 and has to answer questions about a guy from 1999. Like, if I was winning in 1999, what is that, 16 years?
00:48:35.000If somebody asked me a question about somebody from 1983, I said, what the fuck are you talking about?
00:49:12.000But there was just this revelation that came out of International Track and Field and the Russian Federation and the covers up there and all of those stories that get written, whether it's on Deadspin or...
00:49:23.000I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but it brings people back to my history.
00:50:53.000But with cycling, there's just so few.
00:50:56.000And you carrying the weight of that sport in the United States and trying to popularize it as well as holding onto this lie.
00:51:09.000Yeah, I mean, when I hear you say that, and you may not be defending me, but it sounds as if you're defending me, so I don't necessarily want that.
00:54:47.000And it came on the heels of a two or three year criminal investigation, which you're well aware of through Jeff Nowitzki and through the US Attorney's Office here in Los Angeles.
00:54:58.000So once that case was closed, Then the Civil Division picked up the postal case, and it's been ongoing for years, and we've sort of finished that first phase of litigation, and it'll go to trial maybe a year from now in Washington,
00:55:13.000D.C. We talked about this very briefly before the podcast.
00:55:17.000We wanted to kind of save it for the podcast.
00:55:18.000I don't understand the criminal investigation.
00:55:20.000I don't understand the allocation of resources towards someone who is bike racing.
00:55:25.000I feel like in a world where we have Bankers, it causes gigantic 2008 financial collapse.
00:55:33.000We have pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars getting people hooked on OxyContin when we have crime and murder and all the fucking problems we have in this culture to spend taxpayers dollars On bike racing, a guy who may have cheated or definitely cheated in a sport where everybody's cheating.
00:56:17.000I mean, when you have a federal agent in a guy like Nowitzki who's made his career with these types of cases, whether it's Balco or Bonds or Marion Jones, when you have a guy like that that all of a sudden is interested,
00:56:36.000And when you have that particular agent or any agent that walks into Interview a witness or interview an old teammate with a badge and a gun.
00:56:53.000So, of course, I mean, I heard what you said.
00:56:57.000Of course, I don't think it makes much sense, but I was in the crosshairs, so people are going to say, well, of course you don't think it makes sense.
00:57:02.000But, look, I mean, and I listened to your podcast with Nowitzki, and, I mean, it's just a...
00:57:22.000I think the idea that – and again, I don't work for the government, I don't work for the U.S. Attorney's Office here – but I think the idea that he was brought into the investigation I don't know that that's necessarily true.
00:57:37.000I think, and again, I don't know Jeff, but I think he looked for those cases.
00:57:46.000And whether or not, and by the way, when you're an agent for the Food and Drug Administration, I don't know how, I mean, all of these things have missions.
00:57:54.000He was an agent for the IRS, and so that's when Balco and Bond started.
00:57:59.000I don't know that doping in baseball is an IRS issue.
00:58:02.000I don't know that doping and cycling 20 years ago is an issue for the FDA. I mean, they regulate who makes aspirin and who gives you your lettuce and your eggs.
00:58:43.000I think the real problem is the allocation of money, like how much money is being spent on these cases.
00:58:49.000You know, he told me that the Barry Bonds case, that they only spent like $100,000.
00:58:54.000I didn't, I didn't expect that from, I didn't question them, and I didn't research it beforehand.
00:59:00.000I didn't, I didn't know that that was even going to come up.
00:59:02.000But then once I did research it, it seems like it was a fuckload more money than $100,000.
00:59:08.000Yeah, well that's, that's obviously, that's laughable, but Whatever the number was, it wasn't 100,000, but it was probably not as much as what was reported.
00:59:21.000But hey, that's the United States of America.
01:00:04.000Well, I think he wanted to find out how he felt about it, what it feels like now.
01:00:11.000He works right now doing drug investigations for the UFC, and he's done a fantastic job to the point where, as I was telling you before the podcast, we've seen radical changes in fighters' physiques and their performances.
01:00:26.000Guys who are world beaters have dropped off substantially.
01:00:30.000The word in the mixed martial arts community, when I talk to fighters, when I talk to trainers, it's had a gigantic impact and they're terrified because they've imposed these very strict fines and probationary periods.
01:00:45.000And as you also said before the podcast, you have a sport where the bigger and stronger you are physically, the more you're pummeling somebody else's head in.
01:01:30.000There's a lot of fighters who weren't clean who are fucking awesome.
01:01:33.000When they weren't clean, Vitor Belfort, who went on this wild run For like, at 36 years old, when he, they had, this is one of the problems, one of the big problems with the UFC, was that they had legal testosterone replacement for a short period of time,
01:01:49.000for a few years, and guys were just fucking juicing to the tits.
01:01:55.000Oh, they would come back with these hyperhuman levels.
01:01:57.000They would test them and, you know, like a normal person in your testosterone level would be like a low 3, a high 800. Vitor was like 1,475 and he looked like a fucking silverback.
01:02:42.000Yeah, so yeah, so I mean that's I don't know that sport that well and I don't know what people's feeling are in and amongst the sport I mean you just gave a pretty good perspective on it so More power to him there.
01:02:59.000It's messy because it was so pervasive It's like if they had figured out If the tour, if half the guys were clean and half the guys were dirty in the Tour de France, and then they figured out how to pull the drugs out from half,
01:03:24.000But the tour seems like it's so pervasive that if they pulled the drugs out, the same guys would be winning, the times would be slower.
01:03:32.000But what happened was primarily, I guess, through Nowitzki's investigation, which when was closed, he more or less handed everything to USADA, USADA picked up the investigation, and then they acted.
01:03:50.000When the world reads that in 2012, it was the summer of 2012, the world reads that.
01:03:55.000The impression is, or when I do Oprah, for example, which is three or four months later, the impression is that we were hanging a blood bag six months ago.
01:04:37.000Being in the middle of it, being me, this is unreal.
01:04:40.000And I thought, you know, and we're talking about 1999 through 2005, but let's use 99 as an example.
01:04:47.000I remember thinking to myself, who won the Super Bowl in 99?
01:04:51.000And it was the Broncos, and Elway was the MVP. I remember thinking to myself, what if I opened the paper today and the NFL has opened a case against John Elway?
01:05:00.000In 2012. I would have read that and gone, this is a joke, right?
01:05:36.000Like, remember, they had that Nike commercial.
01:05:38.000When that Nike commercial, when you were doing that Livestrong Nike commercial, and you're riding your bike, and you're talking about people calling you a doper.
01:06:03.000But that's, again, I mean, all of this, whether it's agreeing to that commercial or the way you treat it, I needed, you know, somebody in my life to go, I just read this script or this storyboard, and I think that's a real bad idea.
01:11:38.000He has a very specific schedule, he told me.
01:11:40.000He drinks two cups of coffee in the morning, then he takes a shit, then he drinks water all day, and then he waits until about five, about five, and then he starts drinking.
01:13:33.000We were talking about marijuana and whether or not you used marijuana while you were holding back all those lies and how it would fuck with you.
01:15:09.000Well, the post office one, I know you can't talk about it, but can you talk about, this is a reality.
01:15:15.000When you are accused of defrauding the federal government, which is what they're saying, because you were riding for the U.S. Post Office, that was the team, and you won X amount of money during that time, they can sue you for three times that money.
01:16:06.000While none of this story is perfect, we believe that the Postal Service, and their own numbers support it.
01:16:15.000I mean, the Postal Service commissioned three separate studies to analyze the effect of the sponsorship on the team.
01:16:21.000We believe they made hundreds of millions of dollars.
01:16:24.000And we know that they were also using the team as a sales vehicle.
01:16:28.000So, coming during the tour, bringing over potential new clients, bringing over new clients, They were actually converting their business to the Postal Service.
01:16:37.000We know that happened, and we know that it equaled a significant increase in revenue.
01:17:41.000The federal government is interested, the Department of Justice is interested in the case, and I have no choice but to fight it.
01:17:48.000I don't have, after the dozen previous lawsuits, I'm not in a position to really cut any more checks, and so I'm in a position where I have to go fight this one out.
01:18:07.000Well, the first thing that I did was, and I saw this coming, knew this was going to happen, is life was big.
01:18:15.000I mean, we had three houses, we had a jet, I mean, we had the whole...
01:18:17.000You just take that burn rate way down.
01:18:20.000So you just, your overhead goes way down.
01:18:23.000And, you know, the crazy thing is, if you'd have told me before, like, you're going to go sell a bunch of shit and sell your plane, I'd be like, dude, that is, life is going to suck.
01:19:05.000Obviously, going direct somewhere and not dealing with a terminal and, you know, fucking TSA. Obviously, that's different, but it takes a little more time, you know, around more people.
01:19:19.000Yeah, they've done studies on people that actually complicate their lives with more success, more houses, more things, and it actually makes you more tense.
01:21:25.000I mean, as he's going through everything he went through, believe me, there were plenty of people going, all right, now it's my turn to make some money.
01:22:36.000But these are the friends that say, okay, you're out.
01:22:37.000And so I get it that there might be a strategic reason for that.
01:22:42.000But then when you never hear from these, then all of a sudden these people disappear from your life.
01:22:46.000I mean, the way I sum it up is anytime anybody goes through anything, and I don't know if you've had some heavy shit in your life, but when you're going through it, people either lean in or they lean out.
01:22:56.000And some people lean out, which means they run away, and you're surprised by that.
01:23:12.000But he probably has his own motive, either covering his own ass, or maybe he's one of these people that has a tremendous sense of betrayal and is just so pissed still and hurt.
01:23:20.000We have to, I mean, I have to be receptive to that.
01:23:23.000But then there are the ones who lean in, right?
01:23:25.000And most of those people don't surprise you, but then there are others that lean in and they surprise you like, wow.
01:23:31.000I didn't know you had my back like that.
01:23:33.000And so you get surprised on both sides.
01:23:36.000And at the end of it all, dude, you look around and you're like, all right, these are the people that are going to ride anything out with me.
01:23:45.000Which is kind of cool and refreshing for me to really know, right?
01:23:50.000If you're loading up a bus with all your most loyal, closest friends, I fucking know who's on that bus now.
01:24:24.000I remember, this is a funny question, we were, this is a postal thing, but we were, once I was at a, I don't remember the postmaster general's name, his name at the time, but we did a, this is totally unrelated, but you said adversity, so it reminded me.
01:24:36.000He was introducing me at this thing, and he wanted to say, you know, introducing me, he's overcome great adversity.
01:24:43.000He says, here's Lance, he's overcome great diversity.
01:24:50.000And I'm thinking, Jesus, white kid from Plano.
01:24:54.000I didn't overcome shit when it came to diversity.
01:25:02.000Raising kids, we both have children, and obviously when you're raising a kid, you're teaching them about life, you're trying to set an example.
01:25:14.000Did you have to sit them down and explain what was going on?
01:25:20.000How old were your youngest at the time?
01:25:22.000Oh, and the youngest were one and two.
01:25:29.000So I have three kids with my ex-wife, Kristen, and Luke is now 16 and twin girls that are 14. And then I have a six and a five-year-old with Anna.
01:25:38.000By the way, it's the craziest blended family you've ever seen.
01:25:43.000Like, those five kids are five siblings.
01:31:22.000Shit, anybody would have been surprised, I suppose.
01:31:24.000And it was just surreal, you know, the way it all came out, and, uh...
01:31:32.000And the method at which they sort of advertised the findings.
01:31:39.000To their credit, there was a strategy on their end.
01:31:44.000So let's take Nowitzki's work, let's do some additional investigations, let's package it in with something they called the reasoned decision, and then let's go out and talk about it all over the place.
01:32:18.000And I've had conversations with USADA. I mean, I think we're still getting to the point where we can Do stuff together or have a conversation, so I'm not trying to criticize them.
01:32:28.000I mean, I think there ought to be a place for them.
01:32:31.000But I think there's also realistic, I mean, in reality, there are people that think they're ineffective.
01:32:37.000They think they spend 10 or 20 or 50, whatever the number is, millions of dollars a year, and they don't catch anybody, right?
01:32:44.000I mean, if you look at the amount of positives, it must be, you know, less than 1%.
01:32:50.000Well, if I told you, well, Joe, we're all good, man.
01:33:05.000And I think also from a legal perspective, it sets some legal precedence for them that they can use going forward in other cases with future cases.
01:33:15.000And then you add in just a ginormous story that was guaranteed to get a lot of press.
01:33:24.000But it still pains me to—look, I know what went on.
01:33:29.000But I can't take—when I hear that this program or this particular athlete being me was the greatest fraud in the history of sport, You know, I can't.
01:33:44.000And then when you hear that our team's doping program was the most sophisticated program in the history of sport, well, we also know that's not true, right?
01:33:57.000And then the final one, which is really, I think, bothered a lot of people that this person, being me, Forced young, impressionable young men to put dangerous substances into their body.
01:34:34.000What is it like now, like, in, I mean, I don't want to get too personal, but your personal life, like, people value honesty.
01:34:42.000It's one of the most important things in friends and lovers, when you have this thing where you're On video over and over and over and over and over and over again being deceptive over and over again defending yourself when you it's and then you come out and say it's all a lie.
01:35:00.000And so this is like database of lying.
01:35:04.000Like what is it like like trying to get people to trust you?
01:35:51.000That will be the longest walk or the longest journey of my life.
01:35:55.000Do you have a code that you follow now?
01:35:59.000Have you imposed a stringent set of rules on yourself where because of this history, you can't lie about anything ever?
01:36:12.000No, I mean, I haven't thought, I mean, I guess the answer is no, because I haven't, there's not been a, you know, sort of a new mission statement or sort of this key, but, but, I mean, life was pretty transparent anyways before that,
01:36:30.000but, I mean, there was obviously, there was the huge deception, but it's not as if, you know, There's anything crazy out there outside of that.
01:36:41.000But I mean, you know, it's just, that's a big thing with people, you know, to be able to trust their friends or be able to trust their boyfriend or girlfriend, you know?
01:37:13.000I primarily run, and then I'll do a little bit of gym work, and then I'll ride occasionally, although very rarely, very rarely get on a bike.
01:39:16.000I didn't know you were a fan until I saw your, maybe Bill Burr, retweeted maybe your tweet that said, if there's one person that's dead that I could meet today or was alive, it would be Hunter.
01:39:28.000Yeah, it was an Instagram post that I made about one of his incredible quotes about...
01:39:33.000It was about heroes, and it was particularly poignant about...
01:39:40.000It was after Ronda Rousey got knocked out that I posted it, that people, they love the idea...
01:39:47.000Of someone who is like a superhuman person, like someone who's a legend, someone who can defy the odds because it gives them hope in this crazy world of boredom and cubicles.
01:40:00.000I'm doing a shitty job of paraphrasing it, but it's a fantastic quote.
01:40:04.000And then you got a hold of me about it and had that incredible book sent to me when Hunter was running for sheriff of Aspen.
01:41:15.000I mean, Hunter was nuts in a lot of ways, but I mean, he had such a diverse group of friends, whether it was our sheriff, or whether it was Lyle Lovett, or whether it was Johnny Depp, or whether it was Doug Brinkley, I mean, just this diverse group of fucking artists and thinkers and lawmen and druggies,
01:42:46.000I mean, that was the life that he was interested in.
01:42:49.000He was interested in just getting fucked up and having a great time and writing about shit and pontificating on the demise of civilization.
01:42:57.000But it, you know, I don't know if that's what caught up to him, but...
01:43:48.0006 p.m., grass to take the edge off the day.
01:43:52.000Three hours he's been awake and been stressful.
01:43:55.000Seven o'clock, Woody Creek Tavern for lunch with Heineken, two margaritas, coleslaw, taco salad, double order, fried onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, a bean fritter, Dunhills, another Heineken, cocaine, and for the ride home, a snow cone,
01:44:11.000a glass of shredded ice over which is poured three or four jiggers of Chivas.
01:45:08.000So I asked these guys, I asked the sheriffs, I'm like, that shit's not real.
01:45:11.000Yeah, there's the quote that I posted.
01:45:13.000Myths and legends die hard in America.
01:45:15.000We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality.
01:45:23.000Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as proof to those who need it that the tyranny of the rat race is not yet final.
01:45:32.000I mean, that applies to you too, dude.
01:46:18.000Like, that's some bullshit right there, that disease.
01:46:21.000And they rallied around that, and that's...
01:46:24.000You know, that's why that fall came swift and hard, man.
01:46:29.000Well, there's parallels in life when it comes to this story in a lot of ways because everything is kind of messy.
01:46:34.000You know, the reality versus the narrative, it's always messy.
01:46:40.000And there's so many variables that don't get discussed and there's so many aspects of it that they're flexible and they move around and that's...
01:46:51.000I mean, the transparency we see in our society today, whether it's politicians or politics or sports or entertainment, I mean, dude, imagine, like I always say, like, you know, if I give you three names that were alive today, like Sinatra, we just, you know, just had celebrated his 100th birthday.
01:47:09.000If you took Sinatra, JFK, and Michael Jordan, and they were at their peak today, TMZ alone.
01:47:33.000Well, I think what's going on with technology, too, is we're seeing this very obvious trend that the boundaries between people and thoughts and ideas and reality and facts, they're getting smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where they're going to be erased.
01:47:46.000And I don't know how that's going to happen, but I think it's going to happen with something that connects us in a much more personal way than peripheral devices like laptops or phones.
01:47:55.000I think there's going to be some technology that connects us Body to body, whether it's some sort of a neural implant or something along those lines.
01:48:20.000I mean, I dropped it, so I did drop my phone, but I'm like fucking scratching myself because I haven't had the phone for like two or three hours.
01:48:29.000I leave my phone sometimes in the car when I go do the podcast, and I don't realize that I left it, and I'll be in the middle of a great podcast, but like, fuck, my phone's not here.
01:48:40.000But the fact that it's not physically, like, I want it right there.
01:48:43.000Dude, imagine if, like, you know, you're on here, and you just start, like, you know, you got some guests on, and you're, like, texting them, and the guests would be like, what the fuck?
01:48:51.000I come all the way over here, this godforsaken valley, And that LA traffic, and the guy's on his phone?
01:48:57.000Yeah, well, I have had people that are guests that start checking their Twitter.
01:49:00.000Like, Neil Brennan will start checking his Twitter in the middle of the pocket.
01:49:20.000If I wanted that kind of a show, I would do an all-call-in show, which I think would be fine.
01:49:24.000I did a talk a couple months ago in Denver, and it was 600 people, and it was kind of a moderated Q&A, and then the audience was allowed to ask questions.
01:49:34.000They were asking questions, and the moderator says...
01:49:37.000And there's a line to get to the mic desk questions.
01:49:39.000And the guy says, not that this lady, I'm not calling her a troll, but the guy says, is anybody in line really pissed at Lance and want to ask a question?
01:49:49.000This lady in the back, she's like, me!
01:51:54.000Well, there have been some fucking ridiculous people that were that wound up killing themselves, like preachers and shit like that, that it was found out.
01:52:02.000But how dumb do you have to be to think that that's going to be secure?
01:52:06.000You're going to go on some dating site.