Inside Lance Armstrong’s Stunning Voyage to Darkness

If your only plausible ticket to success were in a crooked business, would you participate or walk away? Though Wall Street Journal reporters Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O’Connell, the co-authors of WheelMen, don’t pose this precise question, it is the conundrum that runs through their new book about Lance Armstrong’s voyage to darkness.

Ever since, after 15 years of adamant denials, Armstrong finally admitted to doping in his bleak, televised confession to Oprah Winfrey the broad outlines of his passage through life have been known. Wheelmen lays out the twists and turns of this descent into oblivion and the moral choices made along the way. It is easy to be critical of Armstrong (especially as he is portrayed here as a cruel, selfish, philandering, vain, unsympathetic bully bereft of an ounce of humility) but what would we have done if – as teenagers – we had been clipped into his pedals?

Imagine if you had come from an unhappy home: a mother who was deserted by her husband when her only child was a toddler and who subsequently remarried several times. Imagine if you had struggled in the classroom and barely managed – though not for want of wit or native smarts – to obtain a high school certificate. Imagine if you had discovered an innate talent for athletic pursuits (Armstrong was a gifted swimmer and runner before he became a cyclist). Finally, imagine that you had gradually discovered that athleticism brought sponsors and prize money. At age 16, would you have entered the priesthood or chosen to support yourself with the $1,000 a month you earned from pro-triathlons?

For Armstrong the pursuit of victory (and its attendant glories) became an addiction and, as with all addicts, he had his gateway drugs. In his case, these were the cortisone and testosterone that he was using as early as 1993 – the HGH and EPO came later. Armstrong’s chosen sport, particularly in Europe, was a chemistry lab on wheels. Cyclists had long used stimulants to help them through the Continent’s peaks and cols. The British cyclist Tommy Simpson had expired, amphetamines and alcohol coursing through his veins, in the 1967 Tour de France long before dope tests were de rigeur. When dope tests were introduced, the UCI, cycling’s governing federation, turned a blind eye to anything that threatened their spectacle. Again, if we had been in Armstrong’s position and known that faster riders were using banned substances, would we have retired or signed up for the circus?

Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in January. A new book lays out previously unreported details of his downfall. (Photo: Getty Images.)

While we know the plotlines of the rest of the story – Armstrong’s comeback from testicular cancer, the formation of the cancer charity Livestrong, and his seven Tour de France victories – the seamy details of his synthetically concocted triumphs are absorbing. Not are there just the tales of drugs smuggled across borders, but there are other telling vignettes. Picture Armstrong doping aboard a private plane in the company of Sheryl Crow. Watch him lying on the floor of a darkened team bus with the rest of his team-mates – all of whom have needles stuck in their arms – while, outside, their driver simulates an engine problem to throw the bloodhounds off the scent.

Meantime, as the depositions from other riders that were made public last year showed, Armstrong acted like a mobster. His handlers promulgated the idea that he was endowed with a physique that gave him super-human abilities; that he had never failed any of hundreds of drug tests; and that he was the victim of a witch- hunt conducted by the French. Armstrong rubbished journalists, especially David Walsh of the London Sunday Times, who had the temerity to publish stories alleging drug use.

It’s what Armstrong did to those around him that makes for tougher reading. He instructed team riders to get on ‘le jus’ or face losing their livelihood. He systematically destroyed the lives and reputations of anyone who stood in his way – female masseurs, wives of teammates and fellow riders like Floyd Landis. It’s a sordid pit and Armstrong stood at its center.

All along we too, as fans, were co-conspirators – part of the sporting industrial complex that includes all those sponsors, race organizers and broadcasting companies who have a vested interest in the creation of myths. We were eager not to believe the rumors and innuendo that surrounded Armstrong anymore than we wanted to hear about the habits of other fallen sport stars (Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, Mark McGuire) or the lubricants that oil many other sports. Bear in mind stars in sports as tiny as water polo and bob sledding have also been disbarred for drug abuse. It’s just so much more alluring for all of us to witness greater heroics: faster times, longer jumps, heavier weights and more home-runs.

After the noose began to tighten, it’s easy to conclude that Armstrong made poor choices. Instead of making a public admission and negotiating a settlement he chose, say Albergotti and O’Connell, to see whether he could brazen it out – convinced that his popularity and all those millions of Twitter followers would somehow protect him. Perhaps he was afraid of legal liabilities, surrendering his millions, the public humiliation or confronting his demons. Who knows?

Cyclist and entrepreneur Greg LeMond won three Tours de France before becoming an anti-doping advocate. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images.)

Before we give up hope of ever finding a cycling hero, there is one man, an American to boot, who made a different choice. Greg LeMond, whose name is no longer well known outside cycling circles, won three Tours de France between 1986 and 1990 without the aid of ‘le jus.’ His reward for voicing early doubts about Armstrong was lawsuits and personal ruin.If there were any justice in the world, the cycling authorities would present LeMond with seven honorary yellow jerseys.