Every Second Counts (11 page)

It didn’t matter; nothing worked. Michael Specter of
The New Yorker
magazine would eventually write that the French didn’t love me for two reasons: they resented that my drug tests were clean when French cyclists had tested positive, and I was too robotic on the bike. French spectators loved the faces of pain going up the mountainside, and there was a whole lore to suffering. They recited certain stories over and over, such as the one about the guy who had to weld his frame together in the 1910 Tour. Those things they never forgot. But I didn’t give them enough of those moments; I wasn’t expressive, and I very often saw no reason to comment, and I tried to look impassive on the bike.

It wasn’t my job to satisfy the French sensibility, to dramatize, to attack in the first kilometer and maybe lose the whole race just to make the French feel good. I loved
France
, but I didn’t love the French press, or the fanatics, and now I didn’t love the French bureaucracy, either.

The investigation gathered momentum in December, and so did the press reports. Their focus was a mysterious substance called Actovegin, an empty box of which had been found in our roadside garbage. Almost all of the reports were sensational and erroneous: Actovegin was variously described as an experimental Norwegian medication and as calf’s blood, and, according to one especially silly report in the
Times
of
London
,
it had never been used on humans before.

I had never heard of it.

I’d never used it, and to this day I still haven’t. On checking, none of my teammates had heard of it, either. Still, the press chattered on: it was a red-blood booster (it wasn’t), it was banned (it wasn’t), it emulated the effects of the banned erythropoietin (it didn’t).

I’ve since been forced to learn about it. In fact, Actovegin had been around and in use since the 1960s. It was a calf’s-blood extract, and there was a good deal of debate in the medical community as to what it was good for, if anything. It was mainly used in European countries to treat diabetes, but it was also used for bad scrapes and cuts, rashes, acne, ulcers, burns, tendinitis, open wounds, eye problems, circulation disorders, and senility. There was nothing to suggest it was performance-enhancing, and it wasn’t on anybody’s banned list. I want to say that again. It was legal. It was not banned.

Our team doctor had included Actovegin in his medical kit before the race. He kept it on hand because one of our team assistants was diabetic, and also in case of traumatic skin injury—the kind that can happen when you fall off a bicycle onto an asphalt road while traveling at 50 miles per hour.

The head of the French Sports Ministry, Marie-George Buffet, announced that all of our Postal team’s urine samples from the 2000 Tour would be turned over to the French judicial investigators and submitted to forensic testing by law enforcement, and so would the garbage that we had thrown away during the 2000 Tour.

That was actually good news. I
wanted
all the tests, because I knew they would come back pure. They were my only means of vindication. “It’s the best news in a long time,” I said. “Because I know I’m clean.”

More good news came when the International Cycling Union announced it would conduct its own tests. The ICU had quietly decided to preserve 91 frozen urine samples taken from the 2000 race, without the cyclists’ knowledge, in hopes of eventually submitting them to a brand-new test for EPO.

Prior to that, there was no real way to tell if an athlete was using the drug. EPO is an artificial hormone originally developed for patients on kidney dialysis, but athletes desperate to win had discovered that it could be performance-enhancing, especially in cycling, swimming, rowing, and running. EPO was the most helpful drug to a cyclist because it boosted hemoglobin, allowing more oxygen to flow to the muscles. It was the drug that had caused the 1998 Tour scandal.

The new EPO test could detect whether you had used the substance within the past 72 hours, by testing blood viscosity, counting red blood cells. More red cells make your blood thicker and give you more hemoglobin. The test was designed to compare an athlete’s blood viscosity to that of an average person; if the test result exceeded certain parameters, it was considered an indication of EPO use.

The blood-thickening side effect of EPO was considered extremely dangerous in the long term, and some even speculated that it could cause strokes. About two dozen cyclists were suspected of having died from its effects, according to the
New York Times
. Anyone who thought I would go through four cycles of chemo just to risk my life by taking EPO was crazy. It was one thing to seek to maximize performance, or explore a pharmacological gray zone. It was another to court death.

I practiced another, more natural way to oxygenate my blood, and that was to train or live at altitude. I stressed altitude training—it was a big part of my regimen, and it was safe, but it was no fun. It was lung-searing, and dizzying, and inconvenient, but it was legal and it worked.

Here’s how: with less oxygen intake, your body becomes more competent and efficient and produces more red blood cells. I went to
St. Moritz
for a month out of every year to train, and when I wasn’t in the mountains, I spent a lot of nights sleeping in an altitude tent.

An altitude tent, as you can imagine, is not the most romantic thing you can bring to a marriage. It’s a regular tent, but it’s got a device attached to it that’s essentially a filter to suction some of the oxygen out of the air to simulate high altitude. I used it in
Europe
a lot, and I kept one at home that I sometimes used too, though it meant sleeping without Kik, and with a humming machine noise. Sometimes Luke played in it and I’d find it filled with toys and broken goldfish crackers.

One night, Kik and I tried sleeping in it together. Kik said, “This is so romantic, let’s go camping.”

We lasted about three hours before the alarm went off—signaling serious oxygen depletion. We woke up gasping, and with splitting headaches.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it wasn’t meant for two.”

“You better get a double,” she said.

The vague, distant nature of the investigation in
France
still frustrated me, but now that there were specific tests, I felt better. If I was a cheater, then it would be apparent when they unfroze the samples I’d given in the 2000 Tour, before the EPO test existed, and when I had no idea they’d been kept and frozen.

Three forensic doctors would conduct tests for French law enforcement. Every drop of my urine and every trace of my blood, and those of my teammates, would be put through exhaustive analysis. Until now, we’d been in a position where we couldn’t defend ourselves. But according to the authorities, the tests should be completed by January, and that meant I would be cleared, soon. I looked forward to the big moment: total exoneration.

B
ut it never
came. January came and went, with no test results, and the investigators refused to clear me, or to say why.

The winter wore on, uncharacteristically dreary. I called it “the winter of discontent.” One setback seemed to follow another. I was beginning to feel harassed: our trash had been picked over, and my blood and urine microscopically examined, and now, the French government started looking at my tax returns as well.

That spring, Johan Bruyneel was ordered to
Paris
for questioning and found the police station surrounded by press. Every journalist in town was there with a microphone or camera. Inside, he was questioned for three hours. “I felt like a criminal,” he said later.

When his interview was finished, Johan asked one of the officers why the investigation was taking so long. Johan said, “All the tests have been done, everything has been done, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing.”

The police investigator was sympathetic, almost apologetic. He told Johan, “The scientific expert who does the tests thinks he has overlooked something. He says it’s not possible that there is nothing.”

Johan was incredulous. “
What?
”

“He says the performance is on such a high level that it’s not normal. This guy wants to find something.”

So there was our problem. We weren’t guilty, but that wasn’t necessarily good enough for the French scientist who wanted us to be guilty. All we could do was try to forget about it and go on about our business. But it felt like they were trying to make life difficult in every way they could. Finally, I’d had it. I decided to leave, and I began to scout for a new home, in
Spain
.

Life in
France
had in some ways been peaceful, with the Mediterranean pace and the metronomic routine of training, and I’d miss the baguettes, the flowers, the friends, and the view of the mountains against the sea. I’d miss sitting on our terrace and watching the sunsets over the city lights. But I wouldn’t miss the trash scavengers and the prosecutors.

Meanwhile, the investigation threatened to seriously mess with my reputation. Bill Stapleton was finding it difficult to conduct business. Coca-Cola was running scared of me, and so were other sponsors.

Bill finally said to them, “Look, he doesn’t take drugs, okay? I will stake my entire career on it.”

We wrote in anti-drug out-clauses in our contracts: if I tested positive, I’d give the money back.

Bill had also begun trying to negotiate a new four-year deal with the U.S. Postal Service, the contract that was my chief income. But now Postal was wary of re-signing the entire team, and even briefly considered not renewing its team sponsorship.
All because of a French fishing expedition.
It was hard not to take that personally.

But another, far more personal blow came when Kevin Livingston, one of my closest friends, left the U.S. Postal squad. He wanted more money and independence, and decided he was tired of cycling on my behalf. So he defected. He accepted a larger contract offer, first from a team sponsored by the Linda McCartney food company. But that team proved short-lived and failed financially, so he accepted an offer from Deutsche Telekom, to work for my archrival, Jan Ullrich.

I couldn’t believe it. Kevin and I had spent almost a decade cycling together. I’d ridden next to him, trained with him, climbed mountains with him. As a cyclist I felt I’d done a lot to help him, and as a friend I’d have killed for him, and I envisioned riding with him together to the ends of our careers. I felt totally betrayed: I was of the belief that when you had been friends for a decade, you didn’t do what he did. “Colin Powell might as well have signed on to help the Chinese,” I said.

Kevin and I stopped speaking, and the silence lasted for a while. Finally, we began to chat a little bit on the bike or when we ran into each other. Finally, through mutual friends acting as intermediaries, we sat down together and talked, finally cleared the air over an out-of-season bender. A couple of beers greased the skids to get two friends back together. The problem, perhaps, was that my expectations for Kevin weren’t his own. It wasn’t my right to determine what was best for his career.

But we have never cycled together again as teammates, and I still believe he never should have left. He ultimately fell out of love with the bike, and he quit the sport. (In fact, his retirement led to a kind of revenge on the drug testers. Early one morning in the fall of 2002, they showed up at his house, knocking on the door with their piece of paper. Kevin obliged them by peeing in a cup, and handed it over. “Here,” he said. “I really hope you find something in it. I’m retired.”)

We still hadn’t hit the low point of the winter. That came when Kik and I failed in our attempt to have another child. In February, Kik underwent in-vitro fertilization, unsuccessfully.

It’s hard to describe for the uninitiated how arduous the process was, the pills and self-administered shots and exams, with Kik cringing at the needles, only to hear that it hadn’t worked. We’d assumed it would be as easy as when we had Luke. Nothing happened.

I took the call. Kik was looking right at me as I got the news, and she knew the answer was no. She could tell by my face and my tone. I said, as plainly as I could, “Okay, all right, thanks.”

I hung up. “It’s not the answer that we wanted,” I said.

Kik teared up. “It’s going to be okay,” I said. But we were both crushed. “Well, look,” I said. “We’ll just try it again.”

But trying again meant Kik would face constant needles, pills, sonograms. It meant she would have to stay home while I traveled, because she would have so many medical appointments. It meant longer separations, and all for another potential disappointment.

For a few days, we considered waiting another year. But that was doubly depressing, so we decided to start the cycle all over again.

The timing was hard: I was scheduled to go to an annual series of Postal training camps in preparation for the 2001 Tour, and in combination with Kik’s IVF that meant more time apart from my family than ever. Luke was changing all the time, and I missed things. He chattered away about “Da DEE this, and Da DEE that,” and pointed to bicycles and said, “Da DEE?” And then finally, stated morosely, “Da DEE bye-bye.”

I went to camp in
Spain
, and on my days off I looked for a new place to live. I finally found it, an ancient apartment in the town of
Girona
, a popular cycling haven. One of Kik’s oldest friends, José Alvarez-Villar, lived 45 minutes away, and he helped with everything from finding a realtor to closing the deal with translators and attorneys.