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2 Ex-Teammates of Cycling Star Admit Drug Use
By JULIET MACUR
Published: September 12, 2006
Two of Lance Armstrong’s eight teammates from the 1999 Tour de France have admitted for the first time that they used the banned endurance-boosting drug EPO in preparing for the race that year, when they helped Armstrong capture the first of his record seven titles.
Their disclosures, in interviews with The New York Times, are rare examples of candor in a sport protected by a powerful code of silence. The confessions come as cycling is reeling from doping scandals, including Floyd Landis’s fall in July from Tour champion to suspected cheat.
One of the two teammates who admitted using EPO while on Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team is Frankie Andreu, a 39-year-old retired team captain who had been part of Armstrong’s inner circle for more than a decade. In an interview at his home in Dearborn, Mich., Andreu said that he took EPO for only a few races and that he was acknowledging his use now because he thought doping was damaging his sport. Continued doping and denial by riders may scare away fans and sponsors for good, he said.
“There are two levels of guys,” Andreu said. “You got the guys that cheat and guys that are just trying to survive.”
The other rider who said he used EPO spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he did not want to jeopardize his job in cycling.
“The environment was certainly one of, to be accepted, you had to use doping products,” he said. “There was very high pressure to be one of the cool kids.”
Neither rider ever tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but both said they felt as if they had to take EPO to make the Tour team in 1999. Andreu would not say specifically when he took the drug, and the second rider said he did not use EPO during the Tour. Anti-doping experts say the benefits of taking EPO, the synthetic hormone erythropoietin, which boosts stamina by bolstering the body’s production of oxygen-rich red blood cells, can last several weeks or more.
Both of Armstrong’s former teammates also said they never saw Armstrong take any banned substances.
Armstrong, who turns 35 next week, has long been dogged by accusations that he doped before and after his remarkable recovery from cancer, a comeback that made him a transcendent cultural figure and a symbol to cancer patients and survivors worldwide. He has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has aggressively defended himself in interviews and through lawsuits, even more than a year into his retirement.
Multiple attempts to interview Armstrong for this article — through his lawyers, his agent and a spokesman — were unsuccessful. His agent, Bill Stapleton, wrote in an e-mail message yesterday that Armstrong would not comment because he was attending a meeting of the President’s Cancer Panel in Minneapolis.
Armstrong once said that cycling had no secrets and that hard work was the key to winning. Recent events and disclosures, however, demonstrate that cycling does, indeed, have secrets.
Dozens of interviews with people in the sport as well as court documents in a contract dispute between Armstrong and a company called SCA Promotions reveal the protective silence shared by those in professional cycling. A new picture of the sport emerges: a murky world of clandestine meetings, mysterious pills and thermoses that clink with the sound of drug vials rattling inside them.
This year’s Tour began with a doping investigation that implicated nearly 60 riders and ended with Landis’s testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He became the third of Armstrong’s former lieutenants to fail a drug test after setting off on his own career as a lead rider.
“There’s no doubt that cyclists have bought into the institutional culture of cheating, and that’s a big, big problem for the sport,” said Steven Ungerleider, a research psychologist, antidoping expert and consultant for college,
By JULIET MACUR
Published: September 12, 2006
Two of Lance Armstrong’s eight teammates from the 1999 Tour de France have admitted for the first time that they used the banned endurance-boosting drug EPO in preparing for the race that year, when they helped Armstrong capture the first of his record seven titles.
Their disclosures, in interviews with The New York Times, are rare examples of candor in a sport protected by a powerful code of silence. The confessions come as cycling is reeling from doping scandals, including Floyd Landis’s fall in July from Tour champion to suspected cheat.
One of the two teammates who admitted using EPO while on Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team is Frankie Andreu, a 39-year-old retired team captain who had been part of Armstrong’s inner circle for more than a decade. In an interview at his home in Dearborn, Mich., Andreu said that he took EPO for only a few races and that he was acknowledging his use now because he thought doping was damaging his sport. Continued doping and denial by riders may scare away fans and sponsors for good, he said.
“There are two levels of guys,” Andreu said. “You got the guys that cheat and guys that are just trying to survive.”
The other rider who said he used EPO spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he did not want to jeopardize his job in cycling.
“The environment was certainly one of, to be accepted, you had to use doping products,” he said. “There was very high pressure to be one of the cool kids.”
Neither rider ever tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but both said they felt as if they had to take EPO to make the Tour team in 1999. Andreu would not say specifically when he took the drug, and the second rider said he did not use EPO during the Tour. Anti-doping experts say the benefits of taking EPO, the synthetic hormone erythropoietin, which boosts stamina by bolstering the body’s production of oxygen-rich red blood cells, can last several weeks or more.
Both of Armstrong’s former teammates also said they never saw Armstrong take any banned substances.
Armstrong, who turns 35 next week, has long been dogged by accusations that he doped before and after his remarkable recovery from cancer, a comeback that made him a transcendent cultural figure and a symbol to cancer patients and survivors worldwide. He has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has aggressively defended himself in interviews and through lawsuits, even more than a year into his retirement.
Multiple attempts to interview Armstrong for this article — through his lawyers, his agent and a spokesman — were unsuccessful. His agent, Bill Stapleton, wrote in an e-mail message yesterday that Armstrong would not comment because he was attending a meeting of the President’s Cancer Panel in Minneapolis.
Armstrong once said that cycling had no secrets and that hard work was the key to winning. Recent events and disclosures, however, demonstrate that cycling does, indeed, have secrets.
Dozens of interviews with people in the sport as well as court documents in a contract dispute between Armstrong and a company called SCA Promotions reveal the protective silence shared by those in professional cycling. A new picture of the sport emerges: a murky world of clandestine meetings, mysterious pills and thermoses that clink with the sound of drug vials rattling inside them.
This year’s Tour began with a doping investigation that implicated nearly 60 riders and ended with Landis’s testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He became the third of Armstrong’s former lieutenants to fail a drug test after setting off on his own career as a lead rider.
“There’s no doubt that cyclists have bought into the institutional culture of cheating, and that’s a big, big problem for the sport,” said Steven Ungerleider, a research psychologist, antidoping expert and consultant for college,
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