#178 - Lance Armstrong: The rise, fall, and growth of a cycling legend
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 58 minutes
Words per Minute
197.32172
Summary
In this episode, we cover Lance Armstrong s story from his humble beginnings in Plano, Texas, to his meteoric rise to being arguably one of the most famous athletes in the world at the height of his career. Of course, this is all eclipsed by his equally accelerated fall from grace and the scandal that ensued. In this episode we go through all aspects of this in detail, including his cancer diagnosis and how that changed his life and all of the things that ultimately were a part of his sport and the era he competed in.
Transcript
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Hey, everyone. Welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,
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my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity
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into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health
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and wellness, full stop. And we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen.
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If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more
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in-depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of the space to the next level at
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the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now,
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head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay,
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here's today's episode. My guest this week is Lance Armstrong. This episode, we cover Lance's
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story from his humble beginnings in Plano, Texas, to his meteoric rise, to being arguably one of the
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most famous athletes in the world at the height of his career. Of course, this is all eclipsed by
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his equally accelerated fall from grace and the scandal that ensued. In this episode, we go through
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all aspects of this in detail, including his cancer diagnosis and how that changed his life and all of
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the things that ultimately were a part of his sport and the era that he competed in.
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I realize that many people listening to this might think they have their mind made up about Lance,
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and that's understandable. But I do suggest that it might be worth spending the time to listen to
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this episode, even if you feel like you have your mind made up about Lance. There are really a number
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of issues here, including the use of performance enhancing drugs during his time in the Tour de
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France. And then, of course, there's the lessons that Lance learned as an individual and what he
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learned about himself and how he treated other people during that time of his life and how he's
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emerged on the other end of that. So in some ways, it's a story about a redemption, a rise, a fall,
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and a rise again. So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Lance Armstrong.
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All right, Lance, thank you for making time today to swing by.
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It's pretty surreal. Having been here or having lived here for 30 years, I've seen the city change
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and I saw it change as a cyclist. So I think cyclists see more stuff than most people. And
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you're always covering ground, you're finding back roads, you get a sense for a town growing.
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Obviously, the roads get more crowded, but you see more construction trucks and you're like,
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wait, this place is getting built out. And then if you go down the rabbit hole of hearing these offers
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in the real estate market, it's just, this is a different city. Still a great city though.
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The only thing my wife and I could say after moving here is what took us so long.
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Before we get into kind of the details of all the stuff I want to talk about,
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I think it's just sometimes easier if we can get into some hard yes and no questions,
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just so that there's no ambiguity about some of the really important stuff.
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I think this is going to be familiar to you, but I want you to really limit yourself to a yes or no
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only, Lance. These are important questions. Is Dura-Ace better than Campy Super Record?
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Is the greatest innovation in time trialing the aerodynamic water bottle?
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Is Edgar Allan Poe the greatest poet of the 19th century?
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Are today's clinchers as high performing as tubulars?
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Is Alberto Contador the greatest cyclist of all time?
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Can you still ride up Alpe d'Huez in under 45 minutes?
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Is the 1985 Oakley Pilot big-ass sunglass the greatest shades of all time?
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Is George Hincapie the best lieutenant you've ever had?
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Was your grandfather the first man to ride his bike on the moon in 1969?
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Now that we've got that out of the way, talk to me about Plano.
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Another community like Austin that's drastically changed.
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When I was a kid growing up in Plano, leave the house and be out in the fields and I would head up into Allen and go around Lake LaVaughn or I would out to Frisco.
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I mean, now Frisco is one of the fastest growing communities in America.
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There was only one building out there and that was the global headquarters for EDS.
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People thought Ross Perot was nuts to build the EDS headquarters there.
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And now it's, you know, mom's still there, so just going back is crazy.
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A lot of times I'll always take my bike everywhere, but I'll just kind of ride around and go past Dooley Elementary where I went to middle school.
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And I'll go to, sorry, elementary school and middle school was Armstrong.
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I'll just go by these places and just look at them through a 50-year-old's eyes.
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Is it bittersweet, by the way, because like I hate seeing where I grew up.
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The last time I went back to look at my elementary school, I mean, it just upset me so much.
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I mean, I think most people have some level of that in their lives.
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You're allowed to sort of hate where you grew up, I think.
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I don't want to live there, but it's fine to go back, see mom.
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And from what I hear, he died of a spider bite.
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But I never had a desire to sort of reconnect with him for most of my life.
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After the first tour win in 99, people reached out to him.
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So a lot of the press and journalists, they wanted this story.
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I mean, his interviews were just totally inappropriate.
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You know, the comments about my mom that far down the road.
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Meaning he had disparaging things to say about your mom or...
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How old were you when she met and or married Terry Armstrong?
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And so that's where the name comes from, right?
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Funny thing is my initials would have been Leg if I would have stayed Lance Edward Gunderson.
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But yeah, she became obviously Linda Armstrong and I became Lance Armstrong.
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And I know you've spoken a bit publicly about Terry and kind of how strict he was.
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Did he feel that way to you in any way, shape or form?
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You know, as a five, six, seven-year-old kid, you don't know.
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And I knew he wasn't my biological father, but we had a roof over our heads and my mom
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And he wasn't, when you say violent, I mean, he was just strict.
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I mean, it was every little thing got you in trouble.
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And if I look at my kids' lives and they leave their drawer open, I walk by and I'm like,
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first of all, I don't care if they leave their drawer open.
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I know you've told the story before about, hey, you know, playing every Texas sport every
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kid does, you didn't shine in any of those things.
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And you're 12 years old, mom throws you into swimming, which you didn't really know how
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to do, but you obviously picked it up super fast, huh?
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She knew that she had a high energy kid that if that wasn't applied somewhere, directed
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But, and I sucked at sort of mainstream sports.
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Although you didn't have an issue with your phone a second ago, that phone came falling
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out and you, that was one of the most impressive one-handed catches I've seen in a long time.
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So very different, you know enough about swimming to be dangerous.
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And so it's, there's different categories, so to speak, right?
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Then you have sort of country club setups where it's a summer league and you swim some laps
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and you have some meets and all the parents are there.
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Which most of the time, at least for us, age group was the serious training for high school
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But yeah, I was 12 and I didn't know how to swim.
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I mean, I could have faked freestyle, but I couldn't have, I didn't know any strokes.
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You know, I showed up and man, the coach, they watch you for a while.
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And they, I mean, they stuck me in the six-year-old lane, six, seven-year-old lane.
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When I think back and I never even questioned it, I just stayed.
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I stayed swimming with these little, little kids.
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Meanwhile, all my buddies are over at the other end of the pool doing 3,100s on whatever.
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And I'm like, but I just hung in there and I swam the kids.
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And then after a month of that, then I moved over a lane and I was with the eight-year-olds.
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And then a month later, I was, I just kind of kept going across the pool until probably
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So by the time you get into high school, you're swimming both for the high school team and
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Yes and no, because I turned pro in triathlon when I was 15.
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And my swim coach at the time, who was just a total hard ass, but an amazing coach and
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Chris McCurdy, wonderful coach, one of the best coaches I've ever had, but man, he was
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Our age group team was COPS, City of Plano Swimmers, which was at the time, one of the
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And that was because McCurdy and, you know, I started traveling to triathlons and skipping
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So you gravitated to the mile in swimming, right?
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Well, I mean, I'm an endurance guy other than catching that phone.
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Do you think if you'd stayed with swimming and that was the only thing you pursued, you
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would have at least, you know, you would have swum in college, presumably.
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And if you ask McCurdy, he thinks I could have gone far, but I just, there was prize money.
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When did you realize you also had a knack to run and bike?
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I actually was running right around the same time.
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So at the same time I was swimming, I was running track and cross country in high school.
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Plano, I was city champ and the, wouldn't have been the, I was young enough that we ran
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City champ and that, back then the timing was primitive.
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You had these timers per athlete and you had stopwatches and you would come across the line,
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And so I came across the line and the timer says, what's your name?
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And he said, I didn't ask you what school you went to.
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And I said, I finally, I was like, after three or four go rounds, I was like, I'm Armstrong
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I mean, the most structured thing I had was swimming.
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I mean, McCurdy was, I mean, you should have seen the board.
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He must've laid awake every night and dreamed up these workouts.
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I would train a little with the cross country team that had structure.
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Uh, we had another great coach and track and cross country named James Mays.
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So James Mays was a world-class 800 meter runner.
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And this guy ended up being our high school track and cross country coach.
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He'd run with us and he like drove a Porsche and we're like, holy shit.
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And then cycling was more, yeah, I just go pedal around.
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When did it become clear to you that you had a knack for this at the level of, I mean,
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was it that one race that everybody talks about where you were right at the front with
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And at the time, Mark Allen must've been one of the top three professional triathletes in
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Cause I did the presidents in 86, which was out at Lake Le Bon.
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And then they moved it over to Las Colinas where the old Cowboys facility was in 87.
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I was training with some guys and they said, well, you should just turn pro and go try it.
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So I came out, I knew I was going to come out of the water with the leaders.
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So you're coming out of the water under 20 minutes.
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Although actually that might've been the year Andrew McNaughton flew away on the bike.
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He had the bars, the original Scott arrow bars.
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And then I rode with Alan the whole time on the bike.
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And I'm sure he was, you know, those, they all race each other every weekend.
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I rode with Alan, but I'm sure he's looking at me going, who the fuck is this person?
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This guy, this kid, guy like Mark Allen, get off and run 32.
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I think I ended up fifth or six and I was like, okay, I can do this.
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Was the bike different compared to swimming and running for you?
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Like, was there a gear that you felt you had there that you didn't have in the other two?
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I don't know about a gear, but it was, the experience was certainly different.
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I mean, I know it is, but what did you feel that was different?
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Well, it's just like I said at the top being outside.
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I mean, think about the life of a full-time, essentially professional swimmer.
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I don't think people really appreciate how much time swimmers devote to their sport and
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I mean, when we were 13, 14, 15, we were swimming, you know, there'd be days we'd swim 10
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Like if somebody said they run 10 miles a day, I would say, you're a fucking badass.
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morning practice for an hour and two hours in the afternoon, you're covering some ground
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and you're staring at a black line the whole time.
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Well, and the funny thing is most people don't appreciate that the swim to run ratio is about
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So when you say somebody swims 10 miles a day, that's comparable metabolically to running
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I mean, the thing I love about swimming is you can swim your whole life.
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Like swimming, if you put a gun to my head and said, okay, dude, you got one sport to choose
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So I've heard you say in a previous interview that triathlons were awesome, but at some point
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Well, at some point you realize, look, my quickest path there is probably going to be
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I started to transition to full-time cycling in 89, still doing tri.
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Went to the junior world championships in Moscow in 1989.
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In my mind, I just assumed triathlon would be an Olympic sport.
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The best sports in the Olympics are swimming and cycling and running.
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Like, why wouldn't we combine them and make this an Olympic sport?
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Well, this is in the late eighties, early nineties.
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But yeah, so I switched over basically full-time in 1991, 1990 or 91.
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Which is kind of amazing to now fast forward to 93.
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What expectations did you have going into Oslo, into that road race for the world championship?
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The one thing that did happen is I went to the Olympics.
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I fulfilled that dream going to the Barcelona games.
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And I want to say, I think we had team time trial.
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But this was back in the day when you didn't have pros there, right?
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And then, you know, the international guy, the Italians were amazing.
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But, you know, a lot of, you know, Eric Decker was on the Dutch team.
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So what was that like there competing against the best amateur cyclists in the world?
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Tactically, I was still trying to figure out cycling.
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I didn't know how to move through the peloton and gauge and judge the peloton and the tactics
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That's very hard for people who watch cycling to understand.
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Now you could throw me in any bike race and I could absolutely find my way around.
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I'm sure there are some people who'd have a better feel for it than others.
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Gally George, he started, he was racing in Central Park against adult men when he was 12 years old.
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And you should never be able to draft in a triathlon.
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Well, no, all the sort of the ITU guys, the Olympic guys.
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You know, I got in a bunch of grief once because I called, you know, the part of triathlon a shampoo,
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But that's amazing that your cycling career as a cyclist begins two years before the Olympics
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because all of the stuff you're doing as a triathlete is preparing your cardiovascular system
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and your fitness, but not your bike handling skills, not your tactics, not any of those other things.
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Now, the handling I had down, I rode enough that I was comfortable in the peloton,
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but just understanding the movements of the race and positioning and the peloton,
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it's just a big organism and you've got to be at the right place at the right time.
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When I got on Motorola, we were sponsored by Polar.
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And so we had some of the earliest heart rate monitors.
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These things were as, I'm sure you could still find them.
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I mean, and that was sort of the first, no power meters, no testing.
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I mean, we just, yeah, he just looked at the heart rate.
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So did you have any metrics or insights into your physiology being unique at the time?
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I mean, did you figure out what your maximum heart rate was?
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I mean, we'll get to it later, but I remember you telling me during,
00:20:40.980
You were telling me about in one of your tours that you were able to hold a heart rate of
00:20:47.980
I think the first time I really thought I had an engine, so to speak,
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they were doing a study at the Cooper clinic in Dallas.
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Forget what the original study was, but it's got a funny ending to the story.
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And the guy was like, Oh, I mean, it was, I killed this thing.
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But the guy was like, okay, this kid's special.
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And then they said, well, look, we'd like you to come back next week because we're doing
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And this time you're going to have to do it with some sort of probe in the,
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And this guy says, he's going to shove something up my ass.
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So to this day, we have no idea what your core temperature response would have been under
00:22:01.100
By the way, Steve Bauer is why a kid growing up in Canada, like me, was obsessed with cycling
00:22:06.280
So I was one of like 12 people in North America that loved cycling, followed it because Bauer
00:22:15.440
That puts cycling on the map as something that's like awesome.
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And then of course, Lamond was, I mean, forget about it.
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Some would argue the greatest ending to a tour.
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You could argue maybe second greatest after what happened last year that let the scholars
00:22:35.860
But I want to talk about the 93 season because you've got a guy named Miguel Enduran who's
00:22:43.740
And at this point, Enduran has now won three consecutive tours.
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There's no sign he's going to slow down, right?
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This is one of the guys you're now racing against for the world championship in the road
00:23:02.020
The way the season was structured then, and I actually much preferred it.
00:23:11.040
Well, no, back then the Vuelta was in early in the season.
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And the Vuelta was minimized, but we had a true world cup.
00:23:20.940
So you had all the monuments, all the big spring classics.
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And then every week after the tour, we went St. Sebastian.
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So I loved the rhythm of that calendar after the tour in 93.
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I won a stage into Verdun in the national champions jersey.
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I mean, I was looking around going, yeah, of course I'm here.
00:24:07.000
And then, of course, it was absolutely pissing work.
00:24:23.580
I mean, Northern Europe, with weather like that, it's going to be cold.
00:24:28.460
Explain to people what it means to win that race, to be the world champion.
00:24:32.620
You get to wear a special jersey that nobody else gets to wear for a year.
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And then for the rest of your career, you have some representation on your jerseys or
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shorts, the rainbows on the sleeves, the collar.
00:24:48.140
Thinking back to that year in the tour, we're going to talk a lot about, obviously, performance
00:24:54.400
You've in the past said that was in the era where you and your team were still in the low
00:25:04.040
But it was the pre-EPO era, even though EPO was around.
00:25:14.140
There was buzz of EPO, but it was not dinner table conversation like it became.
00:25:20.520
There was obviously speculation, but there was scientific articles about it.
00:25:24.000
People knew that that substance, as great as it is to treat certain disorders or issues,
00:25:31.100
it could also be hugely beneficial for endurance sport.
00:25:39.260
At the time, obviously, when I was just a kid following cycling, I was always surprised
00:25:45.840
And years later, of course, we would all speculate.
00:25:48.060
Was that not just the passing of the torch between two great cyclists, LeMond and Indoran,
00:25:53.060
but was it also the passing of the torch of an era?
00:25:55.060
Do you believe that that was when high-octane products became the mainstay in 91?
00:26:00.820
Or do you think that, no, it would not be probably until either the end of Indoran?
00:26:05.360
Because clearly by the time Reese came along in 96, I mean, that might have been the most
00:26:10.700
People, most that really have a deep understanding, they'll tell you that it, I mean, it was in
00:26:15.960
the Peloton in the late 80s, but that's really going far back and nobody from back then is
00:26:23.700
Pedro Delgado, I think there were definitely rumors because he won in what?
00:26:28.000
Didn't he win the year that LeMond was out, which was 87?
00:26:38.840
And honestly, Greg still could have, towards the end of his career, and it was well-documented.
00:26:45.040
I'm not saying this as a knock on him, but he was starting to let himself go in the off
00:26:51.300
I mean, he would show up to the early season races and I mean, you could see it.
00:26:54.360
You're like, has this guy been training or not?
00:27:09.160
So I think another thing that most people don't understand about cycling or certainly
00:27:13.120
about the tour is that because of how grueling it is, which again, I can't tell you I understand
00:27:21.700
But as much as somebody who's never done it, I feel like I at least have some appreciation
00:27:28.980
Like there's nothing about doing that that is physiologically appropriate or in any way,
00:27:37.040
A rider at the end of the tour is probably the least healthy they could ever be.
00:27:41.400
And as a result of that, there's no era in the history of this bike race where cyclists
00:27:48.940
And whether they're banned or not banned is really a semantic point.
00:27:52.160
But in the earliest renditions of this race, riders were using alcohol to numb pain or traditional
00:27:57.740
painkillers, cocaine, more sophisticated amphetamines.
00:28:09.640
Not that you were there, but you overlapped with guys that were there in the 80s.
00:28:14.080
Was there an environment of testing of anything?
00:28:17.080
Like were people looking at hematocrit to see if people actually blood doped, let alone using EPO?
00:28:22.660
Were they testing for cortisone or testosterone or other hormones?
00:28:27.020
For example, in 93, when I won a stage in the tour and won the world, I was tested.
00:28:32.440
Now you acknowledge that back then you were using things like cortisone.
00:28:36.220
Were you worried that those things would show up or were you just making sure that they
00:28:39.220
were out of your system by the time you were racing?
00:28:42.060
The way to go about that in the day was just a TUE.
00:28:46.360
And a lot of these compounds come in different forms and different form factors and different
00:28:52.720
And so you could say, well, got tendonitis in the knee.
00:28:55.440
And so the TUE was sort of the, which I think they've cut back on a lot of that.
00:28:59.180
But in competition testing for certainly for something like EPO, which has a five hour
00:29:06.080
They started doing the out of competition testing and the whereabouts.
00:29:10.200
But the biggest hammers that have dropped in cycling in and around drugs like that were
00:29:19.540
I mean, nobody tested positive in the Festina fair.
00:29:31.800
So coming into the 94 season, you've got to be optimistic.
00:29:35.860
Do you remember what your expectations and your goals were for that season with respect
00:29:41.980
That was an interesting period in time though, because that is when...
00:29:50.020
I mean, I thought I'd be competitive in every one day race I started.
00:29:53.480
And did you think I'm going to be on the podium in the tour in the next three years?
00:29:59.060
At that time, I was fully resigned or committed to the fact that I was a classic rider.
00:30:10.340
My whole career, I was big just because as a swimmer, you never...
00:30:18.800
You can lean it out, but you're going to be big.
00:30:34.700
So when do you realize in 94, like something's wrong?
00:30:38.900
I think we realized that something had changed.
00:30:43.660
Between 93 and 94, even though I'm sure 93 there was...
00:30:46.760
I mean, that's the great thing about a one day race is it is, in a way, a race of chance.
00:30:55.280
You obviously have to be fit enough to be in the front group.
00:30:57.320
But when I made my move in 93, I mean, that was a bit of a Hail Mary.
00:31:06.220
So the big tours were the Race of Truth and the Time Trial or the Hardest Climbs.
00:31:12.880
And so there was a tectonic shift from 93 to 94.
00:31:17.280
How long did it take you to understand this is exactly what's happening?
00:31:21.960
This is not about more testosterone, more growth hormone.
00:31:25.800
I mean, in 1994, you had in Fleshful Own, you had three Gewiss riders go up the road.
00:31:31.720
And then the press went crazy after that because here you have an Italian team.
00:31:44.120
They were writers and they were friends with the riders.
00:31:47.780
So they were all kind of buddies and they wouldn't write about what they would hear until then.
00:31:54.560
And so people got to Ferrari and of course, the famous quote about trying to compare Ippo to orange juice.
00:32:01.100
And at least that's the way that it was printed.
00:32:04.020
But after that, yeah, it was everywhere in the press and in the Peloton.
00:32:08.720
Remind me what happened in the 94 tour for you.
00:32:10.860
94, I got sick halfway through and dropped out.
00:32:28.760
Do you realize how dangerous your sport is when you watch your teammates head smashed open on the side of the road?
00:32:33.520
Yeah, that was a helmets were certainly not required and very few people wore them.
00:32:42.820
He hit really hit his face and basically died right there.
00:32:49.120
It was a tough mountain day and we were in the gruppetto.
00:32:54.940
And we actually got news of his death in the race.
00:33:02.120
But to have it happen to us on our team, you know, you have breakfast with the guy, but he's not at the dinner table.
00:33:16.440
They were all super serious, not really jokesters.
00:33:21.640
He obviously had huge talent and potential, won the Olympic gold.
00:33:30.740
And ironically, for the ninth spot, it was down to him and George.
00:33:34.880
And George was actually there at the start because we would always take 10 guys.
00:33:38.600
And then literally the day before, the team would decide who the ninth guy was.
00:33:43.060
And they decided, George was young, but they decided to take Castortelli.
00:33:48.360
It was the 18th stage that you won in his honor three days later.
00:33:51.900
When did you realize you were going to win that race, that stage rather?
00:33:54.880
At the end of the tour, they're just custom made for breakaways, right?
00:34:03.900
And ironically, Johan Berniel was in that group too, but it was a huge group.
00:34:10.800
And then they basically race amongst themselves.
00:34:25.720
In fact, our director at the time, Henny Kuyper, who's a legendary Dutch cyclist,
00:34:34.720
And finally, I said, Henny, don't come up here anymore.
00:34:45.900
Did you feel a sense of, this was for Fabio, you felt a little extra strength that day?
00:34:50.200
I mean, I've heard, I've heard so many athletes talk about that when they're Damon Hill talking
00:34:54.400
about racing after Senna died later in that season, feeling like he couldn't just make
00:35:00.600
And it's almost like he looked up to the skies and just asked for some bit of help from him.
00:35:05.540
I don't want to oversell our relationship or our friendship.
00:35:12.880
But he died in our colors and it just doesn't happen.
00:35:17.620
I mean, it's extraordinary that it happened to us that day.
00:35:24.700
So going into the 96 season, that's the year you decided it was time to start moving into
00:35:36.620
So in 95, you were sort of doing freestyle EPO, managing it on your own?
00:35:40.980
I think that would be a bad idea to just go off and do that on your own.
00:35:46.680
And would you manage it to a certain hematocrit?
00:35:50.440
They started doing the sort of morning hematocrit tests while I was out of the sport.
00:35:59.940
I mean, were the doctors using hematocrit as a way to guide your EPO level and your dose?
00:36:09.380
And since we live in Aspen now, I'm sure it's probably 45 or 46.
00:36:13.920
But if I lived here in Austin, it would be in the low 40s.
00:36:17.540
Do you remember when you started doing EPO in 95?
00:36:21.340
Presumably, they gave you enough EPO to bring your hematocrit up to 50, I would guess, is
00:36:30.720
But did they have concern about blood clotting and things like that?
00:36:37.000
People on Everest better than me that have a hematocrit of 70.
00:36:40.800
So do you know how high they were pushing your crit back in 95?
00:36:45.860
I would remember if it had been 60 or sort of the stories you hear from some folks.
00:37:06.860
Do you have the sense that it was being used as often in the one-day races as it was in
00:37:15.820
Again, there's no reason it wouldn't help you in Paris-Roubaix just as much as it helps
00:37:21.800
I mean, you're getting 10% more hemoglobin or hematocrit, however you want to describe
00:37:26.040
it, you are also getting at threshold 10% more power.
00:37:31.020
Were you using a power meter yet at that point?
00:37:38.780
Do you remember off the top of your head what your functional threshold power was in 98?
00:38:03.700
So it's a straight in the saddle pound away for 30 minutes.
00:38:21.640
We got a few things to cover before we get to 7 watts per kilo.
00:38:51.380
Just enlarged testicle, sore on every level, sore to the touch, sore to sit on a seat, cross your legs in an awkward way.
00:39:01.420
And I just thought it had to do with sitting on a bike seat all the time.
00:39:05.840
And I've always thought it's kind of funny because you've been sitting on a bike for 10 years at that point.
00:39:13.320
Growing up and just even to this day, I just rarely get sick.
00:39:16.920
And I certainly didn't think that I would ever be in that position.
00:39:22.560
Even as the symptoms became more and more drastically significant, it just kept going.
00:39:57.640
I'm like, okay, headache because I was at a concert, maybe had a couple beers.
00:40:01.640
You're not supposed to have the headache while you're having the beers.
00:40:09.800
And then probably a week after that was the one that sent me to the doc.
00:40:18.360
I mean, it would have been maybe October 1st because the blood episode happened.
00:40:23.460
You know, coughing up the blood, spitting it out.
00:40:25.180
Called my buddy who was a neighbor as a doctor.
00:40:27.420
I said, man, I'm not aware you're coughing up blood.
00:40:30.020
And cosmetic surgeon, not an oncologist, not a, you know, sort of looked in my nose and
00:40:46.420
Obviously, didn't do a good enough job telling him how much blood was in the sink.
00:40:52.020
Your sinus, you dry the crack, you cough up a little blood.
00:40:53.900
And you weren't putting two and two together, of course.
00:40:55.780
This thing in my testes, the headache, the blood, there's no way in your mind these are
00:41:00.980
And then the next day, which was October 2nd, I called him back.
00:41:05.160
This pain at this point was so bad and the testicle was so swollen.
00:41:09.700
I said, listen, there's just one other thing that I'm just embarrassed or I just, you know,
00:41:16.140
And that's when he said, okay, this, we got to get that checked out.
00:41:20.480
That's when I drove to Jim Reeves' office on the 2nd.
00:41:24.940
People talk often about when a diagnosis like this is levied on them, they're not even able
00:41:31.540
Like you hear some things, but you don't hear other things.
00:41:34.400
I remember experiencing this as the one delivering this news where you sort of try to talk as
00:41:41.580
You pause as much as possible, but you realize at the end of that, they probably heard a 10th
00:41:47.960
What is your recollection of the very first time?
00:41:50.700
Because by this point, they probably had a chest X-ray.
00:41:53.420
Well, it's one of the first things Jim Reeves did.
00:41:58.800
They gave me a little shot under the skin where they were going to test a reaction or something.
00:42:04.780
And they said, oh, we want to rule out tuberculosis.
00:42:07.860
And I remember thinking, God, please give me tuberculosis.
00:42:12.920
And I'm like, what do you need a chest X-ray for?
00:42:21.980
And I thought, does she not know what she's doing?
00:42:23.560
Then the actual doctor came in and repeated the test.
00:42:27.000
This was an ultrasound of your testes and your abdomen, I'm guessing.
00:42:29.700
And then they walked in and they handed me the file, which had the chest X-ray, had the scan report.
00:42:39.940
And at this point, it's like, I don't know, 6 or 7 p.m.
00:42:47.200
I can remember most of what he said because he didn't say very much.
00:42:50.760
Now, at the time, did they know that it was not seminomatous?
00:42:54.420
There was still a window of opportunity that this was going to be a very curable form of testicular cancer.
00:42:59.320
I think with the chest, I mean, the chest X-ray was riddled.
00:43:11.380
I said, I feel like I should get a second opinion.
00:43:14.080
And he said, you have surgery at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning.
00:43:20.380
The way people would process this news today, they would say, okay, I'm going to go home.
00:43:25.700
I'm going to Google everything I can about whatever my doctor just told me.
00:43:29.640
And I'm going to start to learn and get a bunch of information and figure out options.
00:43:44.220
My mom's always, and this is, I think, what makes her great and strong.
00:43:50.620
Although I know she had moments where she would be sad and upset and worried.
00:44:02.840
Anything that I ever saw, she was totally confident.
00:44:06.320
Did you understand what the prognosis was at that time?
00:44:13.180
Well, it wasn't just that it was advanced, right?
00:44:16.000
It was not a seminomatous tumor, which is, at that point, really the only testicular cancer that's curable, right?
00:44:21.560
You had a much more histologically advanced cancer that...
00:44:42.420
I mean, if you come in with 500, you got a problem.
00:45:01.960
So you mean you went through all of this and they still didn't know you had...
00:45:07.700
I did my first cycle of chemotherapy here in Austin.
00:45:17.880
Could have won eight if I didn't do that one cycle.
00:45:25.260
We'll talk about it in a second when we get to Indiana, why they decided to have a little
00:45:32.900
Because again, in a pre-internet era, it wouldn't have been as clear that that was a place that
00:45:43.020
Like my local oncologist knew, I mean, maybe even pre-internet, they still knew where the
00:45:54.280
He had mentioned that Dr. Larry Einhorn in Indianapolis was the king when it came to testicular
00:46:01.680
In fact, a lot of his work really led to platinum-based therapies really being as effective as they
00:46:12.760
And when I heard his name, I said, I got to find this guy.
00:46:16.020
And then we tried to call him and he was off in Australia.
00:46:19.100
But the four cycles in total, the first cycle was done here in Austin.
00:46:23.140
So you go one week on, two weeks off, one week on, two weeks off.
00:46:26.140
So I had two weeks and that's when I first went to Houston to visit MD Anderson.
00:46:32.880
Did MD Anderson also recommend BLEO in the standards?
00:46:37.740
It was not traditional therapy, which is interesting.
00:46:46.800
So when you got to Indiana, did they do the CT scan first?
00:46:52.000
Is that another, what the hell is going on here?
00:47:03.280
So like now that this is my line in the sand, it's not getting worse.
00:47:08.900
It's really, really bad, but it's not going to get worse.
00:47:11.700
So I'm just trying to understand, Lance, like at what point were you thinking I might
00:47:17.380
God, I mean, it certainly crossed my mind, but I didn't have days where I would sit there
00:47:23.480
Like I just kept, and we were doing so much with the blood work.
00:47:34.160
What is my metric that says I'm ahead in this game?
00:47:44.540
Like, yeah, I can turn around and the cancer can pivot and the chemo doesn't work, whatever
00:47:50.040
But I just felt like I got on top of it and I didn't sit around-
00:47:55.980
They went with, well, that was the first thing they asked me.
00:48:02.320
And I said, I mean, if I can live, yeah, they prefer to live.
00:48:08.560
And they said, well, you can't keep doing blio.
00:48:14.140
People ask like, why wouldn't everybody be treated the way you were treated with a protocol
00:48:19.000
called VIP, which doesn't indicate that you're a VIP.
00:48:22.880
It's vincristine and cisplatin and blah, blah, blah.
00:48:25.160
And so the downside to being treated with VIP is you have to stay as an inpatient.
00:48:31.940
Like you go into the chemo clinic for three or four hours, get your chemo and you go home.
00:48:35.740
VIP, one of those, and I don't, I forget which one is so toxic, not on the lungs, but on the
00:48:51.720
And I still talk to people about this because they about to start chemo.
00:48:54.880
They asked me and, you know, cycle one, I was like, you sure you did this right?
00:49:13.800
What was the recovery like from the neurosurgery?
00:49:22.140
The easiest way to describe it for people listening or have never been there is it's like doing
00:49:28.680
Like you literally just cut the hole, pull off the thing, dig out the seeds and put the
00:49:36.260
There was one on the top, one on the back, right on the surface.
00:49:41.860
He saw him and he pulled that skull off and right there.
00:49:56.200
I don't know how, you know, the blood brain barrier, this barrier that prevents super toxic
00:50:06.760
I'm not a surgeon or a scientist, but they take them out and they walk them over and look
00:50:10.680
at them immediately in the microscope and they were dead.
00:50:15.100
At that point in time, is there anybody you remember meeting in the hospital that made
00:50:20.160
you feel like you were having a shared experience with another patient?
00:50:33.220
I didn't, you know, a lot of hospitals or centers.
00:50:36.080
It's like a big room with lazy boys everywhere.
00:50:38.700
And you sit beside the, you know, I'm Lance with testicular cancer and you're Gina with breast
00:50:47.600
Which is interesting because it seems like very early on you latched on to an important
00:50:54.040
Which was people need help navigating this system.
00:50:57.680
You obviously felt moved at a very early point in your disease and recovery to create a foundation
00:51:05.140
What do you think was part of the impetus for that in your experience?
00:51:08.320
Even as modest as the expectations were, it was like, and you could think about it a lot
00:51:13.260
It wasn't so much about navigation at the time.
00:51:15.180
It was more about here you have a disease or a type of cancer with a huge stigma around
00:51:19.680
You have young men that like me that are swelling or pain.
00:51:23.420
And they're not going to go out and advertise that and most likely not seek help until it's
00:51:32.440
And we thought we'd started a bike ride here in Austin.
00:51:35.280
We thought we'd get a few people out there, donate some money.
00:51:38.240
We had no plan, but it just felt like the time to do something.
00:51:44.300
Like you were just so happy to be alive that you were like, I just have to share some of this.
00:51:50.320
Well, we started, yeah, well, we started it before.
00:51:54.660
Wasn't entirely sure that there was going to be a forward, but.
00:51:58.320
Obviously the foundation would grow to over half a billion dollar in money raised.
00:52:03.300
And I think what a lot of people don't appreciate, but I always appreciated was that that money
00:52:08.680
was very specific and that it wasn't directed towards research.
00:52:11.560
And you might say, well, God, that doesn't make sense.
00:52:13.540
Shouldn't all money in cancer be towards research?
00:52:15.860
But I always thought it was a really great thing that the money wasn't directed towards research
00:52:19.760
because there are a lot of dollars directed towards research and there are not a lot of
00:52:28.320
And it should be by far the largest allocation of resources within a portfolio that's trying
00:52:34.100
But it's this other stuff, this softer stuff of how do you help a family that can't afford
00:52:46.240
You inspired a lot of other people like Fertility Hope and other people to come along and address
00:52:49.920
other problems that just probably didn't get enough attention.
00:52:53.920
And on the advocacy side, I agree with everything you said.
00:52:56.840
And you have to raise billions and billions, maybe even trillions to properly.
00:53:02.140
I mean, there's only one person that can fund that.
00:53:05.540
And but on the advocacy side, because we ended up gaining so much power just with the story
00:53:12.780
I mean, we advocated here in the state of Texas for a bond initiative that created what we
00:53:17.700
called CEPRA, the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas.
00:53:22.480
We, at the time, Livestrong spent about $600,000 on that initiative.
00:53:28.620
So picking the best lobbyists, all the strategy, right?
00:53:32.300
I see the $600,000, but I view that as we just funded.
00:53:38.140
We funded $3 billion in research and prevention.
00:53:41.400
So otherwise, you could never go out and you can't sell enough yellow bands to do that.
00:53:46.820
So when did you decide, yeah, not only am I well enough to come back,
00:53:50.480
did you already have the contract with Cofidis prior to getting sick?
00:53:59.920
And then you come back and what are they thinking?
00:54:05.500
I mean, they sent a representative over and it's crazy that they're still in the sport.
00:54:10.120
They sent somebody to the US to basically say, listen, this is probably best.
00:54:15.760
They sent somebody to evaluate you, to come and lay eyes on you?
00:54:18.380
He lay eyes on me, but then have a conversation with my agent and say, look,
00:54:25.480
I mean, this was like a million dollar contract?
00:54:30.500
So you were officially with that team for a year?
00:54:39.420
So they don't renew your contract, obviously, at the end of 97.
00:54:43.120
The other interesting thing, which I don't think has been talked about much, I had a disability
00:54:47.060
policy, which typically is for injuries, crashes, anything that makes you disabled enough,
00:54:58.640
So I took the disability policy or started to take it.
00:55:02.240
And the deal was, if you go back and race again, then it stops.
00:55:09.800
And I thought, God, this might be a good off-ramp, right?
00:55:16.800
Because it wasn't like anyone was clamoring at your door in 98.
00:55:20.820
When we went back out to shop, me, to teams, zero.
00:55:34.680
But I mean, Postal, the team Postal, which was owned by Tom Weisel, had been around.
00:55:48.660
So maybe it was that, but it wasn't a cold call.
00:55:52.040
Like, I was essentially going back to Weisel's team because I left Subaru Montgomery to go to
00:55:57.760
They gave you 200K or something like that as a base.
00:56:01.800
And then a bunch of performance bonuses, right?
00:56:06.600
Back then, again, I loved the way the sport was structured, the World Cups, UCI points.
00:56:12.060
You had a number one ranked rider in the world.
00:56:23.620
Lewis Hamilton is the number one driver in F1 because he has the most points and wins.
00:56:35.180
And realistically back then, how many points would the top rider have?
00:56:56.820
And I sort of had this idea in my mind that if I did the Olympics in 1996-
00:57:02.280
You didn't know it at the time, but you were riddled with tumors.
00:57:06.400
And then looking back on it, I was like, wait, if I was that good then, and I was that sick,
00:57:18.520
I was strong and it was good to have it out of my body, but just caught me on a day, man.
00:57:29.760
Literally pulled over, got in the car, went to the hotel, called Kristen.
00:57:38.180
She didn't necessarily agree, but she was supportive.
00:57:43.840
It's not about the bike, which probably came out in 2000.
00:57:46.440
So I vaguely remember in that era, you kind of vacillated back and forth between, I want
00:57:52.740
I want to sit around and eat tacos all day and Tex-Mex.
00:57:56.220
And yet somewhere in there, didn't you come in fourth in the Vuelta that year?
00:58:01.120
So was the Tex-Mex beer drinking in the spring?
00:58:06.440
That was probably six weeks around the April timeframe.
00:58:09.820
It was almost like an intervention, a group of friends that were like, look, man, I get
00:58:16.320
You don't want to do it anymore, but just finish the season.
00:58:30.840
I'd just, and I rode a lot, four, five, six hours every day.
00:58:37.800
So what are your teammates doing at this point?
00:58:41.760
And the team doesn't care that you're not there because they're not paying you anything
00:58:45.820
I believe I went to the US Pro, the core states in Philly, and then I flew to Europe and did
00:58:55.680
Went to Germany, did another race and won that.
00:59:03.960
Post-orchiectomy, wouldn't you have had a medical exemption for testosterone at that
00:59:08.980
I don't think you can, in any sport, could you get that?
00:59:12.580
But didn't you have to start taking more testosterone after you had your testicle removed?
00:59:19.140
Do you know if you were producing normal amounts?
00:59:22.080
Always on the lower end, but nothing that was problematic or something that you said,
00:59:27.180
listen, this is going to cause further issues down the line.
00:59:31.300
And the other thing I meant to ask you, Lance, did you, at some point during the period of
00:59:36.400
your cancer recovery, think, man, did that growth hormone amplify this in any way, shape
00:59:42.140
or form or any of the other anabolic agents particularly?
00:59:45.200
I mean, there's no way EPO would have, but what was your thought on some of the other drugs
00:59:51.780
And pre-diagnosis, there was very little of that anyways, only in 96, which was, of
00:59:58.660
But by the way, it seems to me the least performance enhancing drug for a cyclist.
01:00:07.300
So really the mainstay of drug when you came back was EPO?
01:00:11.820
And it's amazing that cortisone helped that much, huh?
01:00:21.620
And especially as a bulkier guy trying to shed upper body muscle.
01:00:36.560
Fourth at the Welta, fourth at the World's TT, fourth at the World's Road Race.
01:00:41.380
I just was like, shit, I'm fourth in everything.
01:00:44.140
But I got a thousand plus UCI points that Tom Weisel had to pay.
01:00:47.820
Well, not only that, but you've done it not at your best, right?
01:00:51.180
You really only came back into shape for nine months.
01:00:54.640
You decide at the end of 98, no, I'm coming back in 99.
01:01:06.980
Peter, when I say this team was unorganized, like you cannot believe it.
01:01:15.440
So I remember, cause I was in my second year of medical school.
01:01:18.440
And I just remember there was a group of guys, we would go riding every Saturday and
01:01:22.120
And we would, first of all, I was so excited that you were back, but we would joke about
01:01:29.520
Like you're cheering for postal team and you're going crazy.
01:01:36.960
I mean, Johnny was so disorganized and he would like, they wouldn't pay this one yours
01:01:41.320
and the mechanic, that Vuelta that I ended up getting fourth and I'll walk down one day
01:01:45.320
a breakfast table and everybody's no swan yours.
01:02:04.300
And I'm sitting there going, okay, I think I'm back.
01:02:07.660
I said, but I'm not going to put up with this shit.
01:02:17.700
Marcel Wuss, the old German guy gave me his number.
01:02:20.060
He wore the yellow Jersey for a day back in 96.
01:02:25.780
I just called him and we didn't really like each other.
01:02:28.720
We always just sort of butted heads and he was always at the front of the race.
01:02:33.780
And going back to what I was saying earlier about knowing the race, like knowing where
01:02:41.860
And he spoke all these languages and thought that would be good.
01:02:44.920
And I just called him and I said, what are you going to do now?
01:02:49.220
And he was actually either wanting to start or somebody asked him to be a part of a cycling
01:02:54.040
union, which that would have been a great use of his time.
01:03:02.720
No, because the travel, like it's basically like it's not retiring.
01:03:07.700
I mean, that's just not what he thought he would be doing, but I convinced him.
01:03:13.400
So this is a topic that gets, it's such a controversial topic, but I just, I really want
01:03:18.760
People consistently say, look, yes, we know everybody doped during that era, but U S postal
01:03:26.480
was different because they did it at an industrial level.
01:03:33.660
So you had already been working with Ferrari and I've never met Ferrari.
01:03:37.820
He's actually a guy I would always want to meet because I think despite how much he's
01:03:41.320
been demonized, I just think he's probably a very smart physiologic wizard.
01:03:46.260
And like how much of your training was he actually guiding?
01:03:51.640
So did Carmichael who gained fame being associated with you and being your coach, did he do anything?
01:04:00.180
And, but once I started seeing Ferrari, you know, Chris was just a advisor friend.
01:04:06.640
We are talking about two very different skill sets here.
01:04:11.380
I mean, Michele Ferrari, you can say what you want and you and I calling him intelligent
01:04:15.900
or bright or smart or even genius just drives people crazy.
01:04:22.120
No, he's talk about the nuanced level of physiology.
01:04:28.280
So we're talking about two different types of people.
01:04:31.020
You said earlier, look, you had no aspiration of winning the tour.
01:04:34.880
Did that change when you placed fourth in the Vuelta?
01:04:37.680
Was that the first aha moment that says I could win this thing?
01:04:40.900
And when Johan finally decided to come take me up on my offer, he said it and I'll never forget.
01:04:46.980
He said, you are going to finish on the podium.
01:04:57.020
I mean, that's, first of all, the Vuelta is not the tour.
01:05:01.180
So getting fourth in the Vuelta, yeah, to me, that sort of equates to maybe top 10,
01:05:06.900
which by the way, would have been a great result.
01:05:17.140
And how much time had you spent riding alongside those two?
01:05:23.720
Do you have a sense of how you'd stack up against them?
01:05:26.420
I mean, I had never been in a grand tour at my peak form, their peak form.
01:05:42.980
He also had, of course, you and I offline have talked a lot about Jan Ulrich.
01:05:54.900
So you show up at 99 and the two best tour riders are not there.
01:06:03.080
I still remember my couch where I sat and watched the prologue that July day.
01:06:11.380
And explain to people why the prologue matters.
01:06:15.440
Let's get an eight and a half kilometer time trial, right?
01:06:19.020
First and foremost, and they don't always do it anymore, which I completely disagree with.
01:06:26.860
It allows the rider, especially the GC guys to really test their condition, not just their
01:06:39.960
It had a serious climb sort of halfway through.
01:06:42.580
It was enough that you could make some separation.
01:06:45.600
So there are certain things that the Tour de France should always have.
01:06:51.100
And they've really gone away from that for some reason, but thankfully not then.
01:07:02.560
Now remind me, in that tour, you were not using blood transfusions.
01:07:13.860
The only thing they had was the hematocrit test.
01:07:15.800
Do you remember where you kept your hematocrit at that tour?
01:07:18.160
This is when you were having to stay at about 50.
01:07:26.060
I mean, at 47, you're dehydrated or you get sick and they show up like you're done.
01:07:32.460
So something people don't realize is in 1996, Reese won the Tour.
01:07:41.980
His hematocrit was somewhere between 60 and 66 during that race.
01:07:47.600
We weren't there with the spinner, but I mean, the nickname, Mr. 60%.
01:07:55.360
Was it Fistina in 98 that basically brought the hammer down and said, we're done with these
01:08:00.000
guys walking around with hematocrits in the 60s?
01:08:03.280
Is it that much of a difference if you're walking around hematocrit is 42, 44 and you're
01:08:11.540
It's not so much how you're functioning on the beginning of the tour.
01:08:14.440
However, it's that at the end of the tour, you could keep your hematocrit there when
01:08:18.300
ordinarily it would really start to dwindle as you...
01:08:22.240
But when the tests came around, then yeah, you just knew that it would drop.
01:08:30.020
And that's where, you know, transfusions came in and which is effectively the same thing.
01:08:34.180
Was there anybody on the postal team that year that was not doing EPO?
01:08:39.300
How much were you guys co-mingling information?
01:08:42.480
So you were seeing Ferrari, but I assume everyone wasn't seeing Ferrari, right?
01:08:49.180
But the team also had trainers and doctors and, you know, had its own setup.
01:09:00.120
Looking back on it, it's like, it's just like...
01:09:10.020
I don't know if this is still the case, but I believe at the time you won in 99, you were
01:09:13.340
the only person to not only win the tour, but win each of the three individual time trials
01:09:19.160
Well, you had the prologue and then the two long ones.
01:09:26.600
So if you're the best and it's that long, you're going to win.
01:09:31.660
Do you think to yourself, Ulrich wasn't here, Pantani wasn't here, can I win this thing
01:09:37.320
Not to mention, I mean, that big crash early in the race.
01:09:46.040
If you back out that accident, the huge crash...
01:09:51.880
Even if by saying Pantani and Ulrich aren't there, I mean, you still had Zula, Escortin,
01:09:59.840
We almost take it for granted now, but at the time, how much scrutiny was there over
01:10:10.700
Yeah, it started and it was the year after Festina.
01:10:13.440
The Pope could have won the tour and they would have questioned it.
01:10:16.360
Prior to this, you'd never really been on the hot seat, right?
01:10:18.780
So you'd been using the drug, but nobody really cared because you weren't winning the
01:10:23.980
So where do you think the posture came of, this is how my denial is going to be?
01:10:30.080
In retrospect, was there another way to deny without attacking?
01:10:35.540
Because I've got to be honest with you, I don't really remember what the attack mode was
01:10:43.940
You'd have questions about the race and questions about whatever.
01:10:48.420
And then somebody in the corner would, they were just asking a question.
01:11:02.740
Did anybody pull you aside and say, Lance, you got to back this down, man?
01:11:15.600
It might've been better somebody here locally where my whole operation was run out of to go,
01:11:21.380
It feels like we may want to back this down a little bit.
01:11:25.540
How many other people in your life knew at the time?
01:11:36.260
I mean, I think she just assumed that level of the sport and that level of doping.
01:11:42.900
If you live with a person, that is not going to be a secret.
01:11:45.900
But did she ever say something like, Lance, is this worth it?
01:11:52.060
I've never had this conversation with her, but, and this is my point is that if you have
01:11:56.320
no ability to keep this a secret from your spouse or whoever you're living with, I have
01:12:03.420
I think the wives, the conversation was like, this is just part of the job because they certainly
01:12:08.980
So when 2000, you come back, I want to ask you about Vontu.
01:12:13.300
What was going on between you and Pentani there?
01:12:16.620
I was trying to tell him that he, yeah, I was going to give him the win, which is one
01:12:24.320
Merck's called me when I was on the car ride down.
01:12:32.880
I was actually trying to be gracious and be sort of the patron of the peloton.
01:12:38.320
Like, look, I don't need to win everything here.
01:12:41.480
But in hindsight, God, and may he rest in peace.
01:12:47.960
Which is just, you just don't give that one away.
01:13:00.980
But if Merck's were riding today with the sport being so much more specialized,
01:13:14.020
Half man, half bike is a biography of Merck's that I love.
01:13:17.900
And you gave me one of the most amazing gifts ever, which is that book that sits on my coffee
01:13:25.320
I saw it and I was like, oh, Peter has one of those too.
01:13:32.840
I would recommend anybody who's interested in cycling reading half man, half bike, because
01:13:40.420
What does it mean to win five gyros, five tours, every single day classic, the one hour
01:13:58.360
You've said before that of all the guys you've ever raced, you've never respected anyone more
01:14:03.300
Obviously, we're going to talk about Jan a little later.
01:14:05.060
Your respect and your love for Jan post cycling is he's a brother to you.
01:14:18.420
And I'm like, you know, but when I talk about Jan and what he drove in me was just, I had,
01:14:25.240
I was fully convinced that he was the most talented, that he was the biggest fear.
01:14:31.480
If anything, every morning got you up and it was pissing rain outside and you had five
01:14:35.640
hours on the schedule, like you better get out there.
01:14:41.180
They're all, I'm sure, nice guys, but none of them inspired me like him.
01:14:45.280
You probably didn't know it at the time, but how much you guys had in common, right?
01:14:56.860
Which was the year you began having suffered a broken collarbone?
01:15:08.300
I mean, 01, it was, everybody refers to it as the look.
01:15:11.600
What was your time or what was your wattage up in Madone?
01:15:21.480
What do you think your wattage would have been without EPO?
01:15:34.960
I mean, look, Bradley Wiggins probably put out 450, 440 to 450 during his one-hour record,
01:15:59.360
But if this doesn't work, I'm going to need somebody to bail me out.
01:16:07.200
And so I was looking back just to make sure that Chechu, and it was just the angle of
01:16:12.220
the photo, but I was looking back to make sure that he was-
01:16:20.460
But just the way the photo was captured, it looked like I was looking directly at Jan,
01:16:28.180
You've got to be a little worried going into that, right?
01:16:29.880
Because you're pretty depleted on red blood cells, aren't you?
01:16:32.360
That's when I had a pretty big crash in the Dauphiné right before.
01:16:36.840
And that's when you couldn't just give yourself Ipoh willy-nilly.
01:16:46.360
What was your hematocrit at the beginning of 03?
01:16:58.320
Yeah, and then Ferrari had to switch to transfusion.
01:17:02.840
So you're saying from 2000 on, it was two bags during the race?
01:17:11.560
So that first day at Haltakam, that was with nothing.
01:17:17.760
How are they not catching the jump in hematocrit that comes?
01:17:22.500
You were not worried about, hey, one day my hematocrit's 41,
01:17:28.000
How close were you to understanding the UCI's algorithm for testing?
01:17:33.880
one of the things that people have always said is,
01:17:40.420
We can go down all these rabbit holes, all the stuff.
01:17:43.520
I'm sort of done with that part of my life where I have to contest everything.
01:17:47.380
It's like, but in its totality, if I just put them all on a whiteboard and said,
01:17:52.080
they said this and this and, I mean, you cannot believe this is where I just don't need to go one
01:17:58.400
But if you look at it in total, you cannot believe how much bullshit was out there.
01:18:03.120
I mean, yes, the pillars are true, but most of it is just total bullshit.
01:18:10.960
I mean, I think the point is, it's turning a blind eye.
01:18:13.820
By the way, Peter, a month ago, they had a 30-minute program on French TV convincing
01:18:20.900
themselves that they had figured out that I had an engine in my bike.
01:18:34.500
I'm like, what are you people, what are you doing?
01:18:37.760
I don't know if you ever noticed this, but I would always grab my chamois.
01:18:41.880
Like, I would always, like, kind of adjust it, adjust my chamois.
01:18:44.980
I had this whole theory that the ass and the chamois and the seat have to line up.
01:18:56.780
This is a really dumb example, although it's a true story that they aired this.
01:19:00.820
Most of it just, I'm just like, and fortunately, I've gotten myself to a point in life where
01:19:07.100
Going into that last time trial in 03, you and Jan were really close.
01:19:19.860
The fear or the stress around it was not so much.
01:19:25.720
The bigger stressor was how much he took out of me in the first time trial.
01:19:40.060
So you're going, well, you've got 45 second lead.
01:19:49.060
He put six seconds on me in the first kilometer.
01:20:08.620
And were you using your power meter at that point or mostly heart rate?
01:20:13.940
Trained 100% of the time with them, but not in the races.
01:20:20.700
I mean, Johan's watching the race on TV in the car as he's driving.
01:20:33.160
Well, of all the things that ever happened to me in the tour, I get asked about that.
01:20:52.900
But if you go back and re-watch, of course, there's 100 versions of it on YouTube.
01:20:58.800
But if you go back and re-watch exactly what happened.
01:21:11.520
Tire caught some hot tar and just hindsighted him and ruined his career, ended his career.
01:21:18.480
I said, I either lay this thing down or go left.
01:21:27.900
Keep in mind, the story ends with me not just riding through the field, but having to get
01:21:34.420
Well, that whole field was, you can go back and watch it on YouTube.
01:21:37.680
So the split second that I said, I'm going left, there was a path.
01:21:43.520
There was a path into the field where the farmer would go in and out with his tractor.
01:21:49.220
I mean, five feet to the right, five feet to the left at 40 miles an hour is like that.
01:21:59.640
So I mean, what are the chances that that path is there?
01:22:14.480
And I'm just like looking down going, come on, man.
01:22:18.080
And I got to the other side and I could see that it was way down.
01:22:21.680
I was like, I was like, I better get off this thing.
01:22:27.940
Well, the other one that you must get asked about a lot, and I don't remember which year
01:22:36.680
And by that point, clearly you and Jan had established an amazing respect because that's
01:22:48.920
Bike was broken, which we didn't know at the time, but that's the whole chainstay was snapped.
01:23:00.880
You at the time said, look, I want to spend more time on the foundation.
01:23:04.940
I assume those were the real reasons you wanted to retire.
01:23:08.240
When you came back, LeBlanc wrote an open letter basically telling you not to, right?
01:23:17.000
I mean, he was a director, director general of the tour.
01:23:21.200
He'll go down as being viewed as one of the greatest directors ever.
01:23:24.720
And a very, very tough guy was his way or the highway.
01:23:34.840
So it was a Festina-esque moment in time in cycling.
01:23:39.840
And yet another shift to like guys looking around going, wait a minute.
01:23:44.020
We might be extinct here if we don't fucking clean this up.
01:23:47.820
And so the sport was shifting to a better place.
01:23:51.620
Jean-Marie's point was, look, you are a bridge to the past, right?
01:24:08.460
The two big political papers are Le Monde and Le Figaro.
01:24:12.360
And it was interesting because I was in West Texas with Anna on a Marfa, one of my favorite
01:24:28.680
I went to this lunch spot and I said, this is a mistake.
01:24:35.540
By the way, did Le Bonk actually call you as well to follow up?
01:24:39.880
Do you think he would have been more persuasive?
01:25:00.840
But it would have been easy to say, you know, routine.
01:25:06.000
And you would have been three days of press where it's like, oh, what happened?
01:25:09.960
And your view at that point is the sport's clean.
01:25:12.540
So there's no risk to me because I don't need to use anything because no one else is using anything.
01:25:20.840
I mean, I knew I wasn't phase two or phase whatever.
01:25:25.220
And ironically, Ferrari was the one who was adamant.
01:25:42.280
I remember reading an article in the fall of 2009, and I think it was like an ESPN magazine
01:25:47.980
that was comparing your 09 tour to Jordan's comeback, his second comeback, the year they
01:25:57.720
Because remember, he came back for the last part of the season in 95.
01:26:02.740
And then they're like, well, wait till you see Lance in 10, because that's going to be
01:26:14.920
It would be totally respectable to just retire right now, to be off the sport for three years,
01:26:27.580
I mean, being able to not be on a team from Kazakhstan, literally.
01:26:42.580
Like, wasn't it getting a bit old in terms of the training?
01:26:48.040
Like, I wasn't going to be the guy to say, I'm getting off the wave here.
01:26:53.840
Because from a personal wealth standpoint at that point, you're going to get those sponsors
01:26:59.420
What I'm trying to get at is how much of this was filling a void that said, I don't like
01:27:07.360
The point is, every day of that comeback, I was like, what the fuck am I doing?
01:27:11.560
Ann and I had this conversation the other night.
01:27:16.460
It's like, in my life, I am never going back to that place where you're looking around going,
01:27:25.820
And then, of course, as it led down, the investigation started.
01:27:31.680
You're trying to defend your reputation, defend your livelihood, defend everything, and having
01:27:41.600
When did you realize that you had to tell the truth?
01:27:46.260
Either interviewed George or George went to the grand jury.
01:27:55.380
I actually believed you guys were not on PEDs at the time.
01:28:05.920
I don't necessarily mean everybody in the race.
01:28:07.660
But my view was either all the GC contenders are or they are not.
01:28:11.020
And I truly believed that post-98 that you guys were off.
01:28:17.920
But the moment I realized how wrong I was was not with Landis.
01:28:29.520
But Tyler's book that he wrote with Dan Coyle, did that come out in like 2011?
01:28:37.380
It was when I read Tyler's book that I was like, this guy is way too freaking believable.
01:28:42.860
And if he's saying this and he's saying that this is what they were all doing, like, I believe it.
01:28:47.380
He had a different version in his deposition in the postal case.
01:28:52.740
When anybody's deposed and they've written a book, they're just going to read you the book.
01:29:01.620
If it was in any way sort of contradictory towards him or somebody he cared about, then he would blame Dan.
01:29:18.120
And you're basically like, I got to come clean.
01:29:22.900
You've talked about your reasons for doing the interview with Oprah, which I think make a lot of sense, right?
01:29:28.140
Which is if you're going to give a deposition, you might as well do it on your terms.
01:29:32.300
And even that, I mean, looking back, well, you can look back all you want.
01:29:37.520
I was convinced that it was the right thing to do.
01:29:40.540
Whether it was Oprah or Tom Brokaw, who was my other option, it wasn't going to help.
01:29:51.820
We still traveled a lot just to kind of get away.
01:29:54.880
Did any of the sponsors call you to quietly thank you for what you had done over the past 15 years?
01:30:01.260
I know they can't publicly, but did someone at Trek say, hey, Lance, I hope you understand we've got to dump you like a hot potato, but you did turn us into a billion dollar company.
01:30:11.340
No sponsor in any one of your relationships ever thanked you for what you'd done?
01:30:16.500
I mean, I think there is a general use Trek as an example.
01:30:22.080
But if you asked Mike Senyard from Specialized, he would say thank you.
01:30:28.520
Luke was obviously old enough to know what was going on.
01:30:42.820
But if you ever have any questions about my life and the decisions I've made and you hear something like, we're not going to have one conversation about this.
01:30:50.740
We're going to have as many as you want to have.
01:30:59.600
Like they're going to ask questions like you're asking because you'd know the sport so well.
01:31:03.500
And I feel like we stayed, all of us, certainly a lot of credit to Kristen as well.
01:31:11.240
When I say family, I mean myself, my kids, Anna and Kristen, and now Anna and I's kids.
01:31:18.280
It is, if you can imagine that Brady Bunch setup, we are a very close family.
01:31:23.140
So after the Oprah interview, which I guess is early 2013, who was the first person you reached out to apologize to?
01:31:31.560
Actually, before the interview was, you know, I reached out because I knew that it would, they would see it.
01:31:36.980
You know, so the Andreas, Lamont, and Kathy and Greg wouldn't take my call.
01:31:54.420
I said, but I felt like I needed to say they accepted the apology.
01:32:07.180
Maybe not everybody listening knows who Emma is.
01:32:09.300
Emma was our soignure, was my soignure in 99 and left the team and was a person that I went after.
01:32:17.020
And she got mixed up in this because of the LA Confidential book.
01:32:22.020
As you said, it ended up being really about you.
01:32:25.160
But my understanding is the reason she agreed to talk with David Walsh was really to make a broader statement about how corrupt the sport was.
01:32:32.160
I've enjoyed reforming that friendship and I wrote the foreword for her book and she's a cool lady.
01:32:49.800
And the reality is 95% of that former, what was known as the blue train, we'd still all go.
01:32:57.040
I mean, we'd go all jump back into war together.
01:33:06.240
You know, I remember a while ago, your Twitter bio was different than it is now.
01:33:14.080
Today it says like something boring like everybody else's.
01:33:17.120
But it used to say, there's a reason the windshield's bigger than the rear view mirror.
01:33:30.780
But I always found it to be very poignant because it's not saying you should only have a windshield and no rear view mirror.
01:33:37.160
And it's not saying you should have no windshield and only a rear view mirror.
01:33:40.860
It's saying you need both, but one's bigger than the other.
01:33:43.720
But in my own life, I've always felt like I have to have a rear view mirror.
01:33:47.240
I never want to lose sight of my sins because they kind of ground me.
01:33:51.980
You've had the, both the luxury and the inconvenience of living all of your sins on the world's most public stage.
01:33:59.500
So most of us make all of our mistakes behind closed doors and nobody really gets to see the horrible things we've done.
01:34:06.080
I remember when I hit the one year anniversary of doing something so awful, I couldn't stand my existence for it.
01:34:13.120
And I remember talking to my therapist about it and she said, I actually don't want you to ever forget this.
01:34:21.760
You have to remember that the monster that did that thing, he's never going to die.
01:34:30.100
If you have the tools in place to keep him in the corner.
01:34:35.460
Like, do you look at that SCA deposition in October of 05 and think, I need that video playing over and over again, just quietly?
01:34:50.760
Not because I wanted to, or I thought it would be a good idea, but legal settings and depositions and trials.
01:34:58.320
But it's, yeah, you look at that and you're like, that is a pathetic person.
01:35:04.500
Those sort of things is unfortunate and is embarrassing and as tough as they are to watch.
01:35:11.340
I mean, I don't want to do it every day, but it's like that guy needed to die.
01:35:22.600
And all these things that I would say that would, yeah, actually, I mean, you would change things.
01:35:26.860
I mean, I love the spot that I've been able to get to.
01:35:29.120
So you sort of think in your mind, like, well, these were all events that shaped the person sitting here today.
01:35:33.840
But there would have been a better way to go about it.
01:35:37.160
I was watching a video of an interview you did a while ago.
01:35:40.180
And I normally don't read comments on YouTube because they're so incredibly uninteresting and ridiculous.
01:35:45.900
And I don't know why, but for some reason, I read a couple.
01:35:48.440
And I came across one that I thought was so interesting.
01:35:55.780
But not surprisingly, a lot of the comments were like, this guy's a horrible human being.
01:36:02.960
It must have been the interview where you said, and you tried to offer a nuanced explanation for why you wish you didn't have to hurt people.
01:36:11.120
But you also wouldn't have done it different in the sense that you needed to learn the lessons you learned.
01:36:19.020
So not surprisingly, every commenter is like ripping you apart.
01:36:27.740
He says, I was not a good person, and it took losing everything to realize it.
01:36:32.300
I'm not yet at the point where I would not change a thing.
01:36:35.860
But I do get the, I can't change a thing, so it's useless to feel as much regret and shame as I do.
01:36:42.580
I really believe him when he says that he values the lessons he learned, because I do too.
01:36:56.980
I mean, it takes a lot of, I mean, I don't read comments.
01:37:03.220
I might not be a good person yet, but I'm no longer a bad one.
01:37:06.220
I mean, I remember feeling like when I went through that transition of, okay, like you're not the worst human in the world.
01:37:13.200
You're not perfect and you're never going to be.
01:37:14.740
But I still don't understand a couple of things about the sport.
01:37:18.020
We could explain all day long why you ended up where you ended up.
01:37:21.440
Once it became clear how widespread EPO use was in the Peloton and blood transfusing and all that stuff, it became very difficult to say, well, Lance is a bad guy because he did these performance enhancing drugs because to a first order, you did them no more or no less than anybody else.
01:37:35.560
So then it turned into, well, he treated people so badly and that's why Lance is the worst person.
01:37:41.080
But that doesn't explain to me why Ivan Basso did everything that Pantani did, is loved, and Pantani was completely vilified and, I mean, effectively killed himself.
01:37:54.480
It doesn't explain why, well, pick your favorite German rider who's loved and Ulrich was rejected.
01:38:02.200
Why Vaters is loved and Tyler gets rejected or whomever, right?
01:38:09.400
So if we're just taking Lance out of it for a moment, right, because you're radioactive, what explains that difference between those other guys?
01:38:22.240
You have a handful of examples here with characters who had problems so they could not handle, you know, this is, and I speak, I've talked about this before, but looking at the whole situation, nothing infuriates me more than that.
01:38:35.840
It has more to do with society and the press and the organizers and the politicians in the sport, how they will, and Jan Ulrich is not welcome at the start of the tour.
01:38:46.440
I mean, while Eric Zabel's up there shaking hands with the guy in the yellow chair, you know, it's like, wait a minute, this is fucking stupid.
01:38:54.040
Do you have any idea why that hypocrisy exists?
01:38:57.020
The ones who rose the highest, I mean, Pantani was the biggest athlete in Italy at the time.
01:39:04.200
Soccer, whatever sport, F1, Pantani was the biggest athlete in Italy.
01:39:13.620
And so, you know, maybe it has to do with those heights and the only place you can end up is the complete opposite, like the bottom of the pool.
01:39:21.100
Well, we're not talking about me, again, with these stories, I mean, Pantani dead, Jimenez dead, Vandenbroek dead, Belgium, Gaumont dead in France.
01:39:30.200
I mean, all guys that were at the top of the game and couldn't handle, with their own demons, they couldn't handle that fall from grace.
01:39:41.660
In many ways, the press just sort of chased that story.
01:39:45.420
I mean, Frank Vandenbroek was arguably one of the most talented of all time.
01:39:51.180
And the press just let it go and just hammered this guy.
01:40:03.900
I remember you and I talking about this in the summer of 18.
01:40:06.600
You sent me a picture, and I'll never forget it.
01:40:15.840
The other interesting thing is one of Jan's closest lieutenants,
01:40:18.720
when we were competing head-to-head, was Andreas Clodin.
01:40:22.060
Who ended up being on Astana with us and Radio Shack.
01:40:24.980
And so I ended up getting to know Clodin and really, really getting to love him.
01:40:29.580
So I had heard that a lot of these guys, so Clodin, Zabel, Danilo Hondo,
01:40:36.240
And when it was in the press, he got in a fight with his neighbor.
01:40:44.580
And not just turned them away, but just flat out erased them from his life
01:40:52.960
So they're German brothers from where he's from.
01:41:04.460
he's told everybody else to just leave him alone.
01:41:12.580
And so that's when I made the trip to Switzerland,
01:43:48.620
they in many ways felt complicit in the scheme.
01:44:01.100
so I don't know what the board room discussions were like
01:44:17.120
but some agreement here that we will both reemerge.
01:44:48.520
or get some award or all the stuff I did in the past.
01:44:51.260
Somebody's got a friend that's just been diagnosed
01:44:59.040
I don't know if you've been asked this question before.
01:45:09.120
I know what it would have said in January of 2013,
01:45:51.160
Couldn't have done that 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
01:46:24.220
And then as a byproduct of the success of the podcast,
01:46:45.500
it is going to contain a lot of the rearview mirror.
01:46:57.520
If you can go back in time to 15-year-old Lance.
01:47:04.460
What kind of lessons would you try to impart on him?
01:47:09.240
and it was when my mom kicked out Terry Armstrong.
01:47:20.180
We're going to get these people like he's gone.
01:47:34.160
And that chip on your shoulder did a lot of good for you
01:47:38.900
So do you think that, again, in this thought experiment,
01:47:46.060
could you have figured out a way to extract the value
01:47:49.700
from that complex and soften some of the damage
01:47:59.780
Nobody, I mean, 15-year-olds don't realize that,
01:48:01.780
but the amount of trauma that I had already had in my life,
01:48:05.340
which just got actually worse and worse and worse.
01:48:14.420
Never meeting your father and having this way around.
01:48:21.900
and the figure that was there was wildly defective.
01:48:29.320
If somebody would have come up to me when I was 15 and said,
01:48:31.440
you know, I feel like you've had some crazy shit
01:48:42.800
but there would have been a lot of work to do even then.
01:48:46.960
Like, again, if he's not willing to go to therapy,
01:48:56.160
One of the things I've learned about myself over time
01:49:06.060
It's like two genes that sit right next to each other
01:49:11.900
long before we're consciously aware of what led to them.
01:49:20.080
The dad, the stepdad, the growing up without this.
01:49:24.240
And then, of course, that says nothing about cancer,
01:49:29.440
and unpacked that PTSD through all of those layers now
01:49:34.240
Well, I don't know that any of us can ever unpack it all.
01:49:37.620
In the last year, I've certainly done more unpacking
01:49:45.180
I should have started that process a lot earlier.
01:49:52.900
I drove a fast car and every green light was a competition
01:50:13.140
I think that's something that very few people can understand.
01:50:15.420
I can relate to it, Lance, because I've had my own total,
01:50:20.840
I've played the game in my head a hundred times.
01:50:29.640
But I realize if I were to undo all of that stuff,
01:50:37.860
But this is when you say, well, I wouldn't change a thing
01:50:40.360
because these series of events happened and boom,
01:50:44.200
it caused, whether it's deep work or introspection
01:51:32.180
Do you still care how fast you can ride up the mountain?
01:51:33.920
No, I find myself being happier and happier just riding.
01:51:40.940
No heart rate, no power meter, none of that bullshit.
01:51:43.400
Do you have any idea what you would ride up Madone in today?
01:51:45.960
How many watts you could average if we stuck a power meter on you?
01:51:55.200
If you give me a week or two to train, I could, I don't know.
01:51:57.780
I find myself just ride easier as opposed to harder.
01:52:01.300
Do you enjoy a group ride or do you still enjoy just kind of going out on your own, doing a four hour ride?
01:52:14.500
You get out in the mountains on a mountain bike all by yourself.
01:52:24.000
If I did yoga three days a week or was serious about stretching and pliability and things that I should be thinking about at 50, I could run.
01:52:31.140
But my dumb ass is just like, put the shoes on, don't stretch a bit, let's go.
01:52:39.880
And what's the tightest interval you'd swim 10 100s on?
01:52:43.720
What would be your touch and go interval for 10 100s?
01:53:13.060
So you're 15 pounds above your tour weight, which is actually not a lot given most retired cyclists.
01:53:22.460
I seem to have a balance between consumption, whether you're consuming food or alcohol or whatever.
01:53:32.520
Not because I want to stay a certain weight or I want to look a certain...
01:53:40.080
There are a lot of former pro athletes that I know who once it's no longer their job,
01:53:49.740
I will ride for as long as this body will allow it to ride.
01:54:00.920
And I've got an amazing salmon and okra dish waiting for you.
01:54:12.500
Like Anna, who cooks for me all the time, she knows that I just don't like salmon.
01:54:16.080
And like growing up, we would eat okra and I just don't like okra.
01:54:29.080
He's like, oh, I got some grilling this amazing salmon.
01:54:36.400
And then I was like, what are we having with it?
01:54:47.180
It's like Anna called me to tell me this before.
01:54:49.780
And I was like sitting there just like getting to the meal.
01:54:56.060
But when I was stepping out, I was like, I was like, I have to be honest with you guys.
01:54:59.040
Like, there are two things in this world that I just really can't stand to eat.
01:55:07.740
As far as salmon and okra go, I hope it was good salmon and good okra, so.
01:55:23.440
Well, you don't know that I'm going to get my butt kicked.
01:55:32.660
I'm sure you can, but I just think I'm excited to see this.
01:55:37.220
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