Every Second Counts (16 page)

At last I pulled the yellow jersey over my shoulders. It was a relief to wear that garment I’d been chasing so hard.

Ullrich and I continued our epic battle through the rest of the
Pyrenees
, sweat pouring off our chins in the high heat of the mountains. On the last of the mountain stages, after we had mounted the massive 6,874-foot Col du Tourmalet, Ullrich slipped ahead of me across the finish line, to win the stage. As he did so, he dropped a hand and trailed it behind him, reaching out for mine. I grasped it.

I didn’t know exactly what he meant by it, but I guessed it had something to do with companionship. We had ridden hard together. He may have meant it as a kind of congratulations, too, because afterward, he conceded the race. I had a five-minute lead, which now seemed safe—all I had to do was stay upright until we reached
Paris
.

“I’m finished,” Jan said. “I had no chance this year against Lance. I’m not sure I did anything wrong. I left the other guys behind me.”

The victory was assured, but there was one last thing to do before I stepped onto the winner’s podium: address the doping suspicions. The topic had dogged me for months, and it had never waned throughout the race. A headline in
L’Equipe
said,
MUST WE BELIEVE IN ARMSTRONG?
The article said, “There are too many rumors, too many suspicions. He inspires both admiration and rejection.” Along the course, some French spectators had booed me.

It was traditional for the wearer of the yellow jersey to hold a press conference before arriving in
Paris
, and I was looking forward to it. I wanted to face the skeptics and the accusers and look them in the eye. I wanted to answer the charges, and I wanted to declare my innocence.

About 300 reporters showed up, and for over an hour, I fielded every inquiry they could fire at me.

“I’ve lived by the rules,” I said. I pointed out that I’d been tested no fewer than 30 times in the past
Tours
, and never once had I failed. “The proof is there,” I said to one reporter. “You just don’t want to believe that.”

I added that I would never take a substance like EPO or human growth hormone and jeopardize my health after what I’d been through.

“I give everything I’ve got,” I said. My performances were the result of hard work; of the fact that I had trained and been on the bike when no one else was riding, in the off-season and in all weather. I’d ridden the
Alps
in the snow. “And I didn’t see any other riders there,” I said.

The innocent, I said, could never prove their innocence. How could you prove a negative?

Another reporter rose and questioned me about an Italian doctor named Michele Ferrari, who had come under investigation for doping. He had also made an unfortunate and ill-considered remark back in 1994, when he said that EPO was “no more harmful than orange juice.” His files had been seized, and in them was a reference to me. Now my association with him was, to some people, further evidence that I was a doper.

I knew Michele Ferrari well; he was a friend and I went to him for occasional advice on training, I said. He wasn’t one of my major advisors, but he was one of the best minds in cycling, and sometimes I consulted him. He had instructed me in altitude training and advised me about my diet. (The fact was that Ferrari, no matter what else you thought of him, was an expert analyst. He understood the combination of technique and physiology as few people did, and he could discuss everything from chainrings to wattages with authority. He had a precision of knowledge that I appreciated.)

I refused to turn on Michele, or to apologize for knowing him, and as far as I could tell, there was no evidence against him. The investigation was based on the fact that, a few years earlier, he had treated a cyclist named Filippo Simeoni, who was later found to have doped. “He’s innocent until a trial proves otherwise,” I said.

The reporter asked me how I could square an anti-drug stance with maintaining a relationship with Ferrari. “It’s my choice,” I said. “I believe he’s an honest man, a fair man, and an innocent man. Let there be a trial. With what I’ve seen with my own two eyes and my experience, how can I prosecute a man whom I’ve never seen do anything guilty?”

I said that I knew the legitimacy of the entire sport of cycling was in question, and that I’d become the lightning rod for it. “Cycling is under the microscope and I have to answer for that, and I’m fine with it,” I said. But I found it sad that the Tour had become an event so permeated by suspicion.

“It’s a race; it shouldn’t become a trial,” I said.

Finally, I rose. I said all I had left to say: “I leave here an honest man, a happy man, and hopefully a winner.” And I left the room.

“I needed that,” I said to Bill on the way out.

There were no more challenges the rest of the way to
Paris
, on or off the bike. We simply rode and enjoyed the view, of those fields and fields and fields of sunflowers.

By the time we crossed the finish line on the Champs-Elysées, we’d ridden 2,150 miles—in 86 hours, 17 minutes, and 28 seconds, to be precise. I took deep satisfaction in the performance, because it had been a race won with tactics as well as strength, and Postal had become a more complete and mature team.

Ullrich’s team leader, Rudy Pevenage, paid us a funny compliment. “We keep waiting for Armstrong to have a bad day,” he said. “But the only bad day he has is the morning-after hangover in
Paris
.”

T
here was something
straightforward about the formula of training and racing: I worked hard and I won. A race was a simple undertaking, with a start and a finish line, and the outcome determined by skill. You either won or lost, and the concreteness of that answer was comforting. What else could you say that about?

Nothing—especially not after September 11.

I flew back to the States and stopped in
New York
for a couple of days. I disappeared for an afternoon, and no one could find me. Finally, I came back to the hotel.

I’d been riding my bike in
Central Park
.

I loved
New York
; it was a grand phosphorescent city, and it had been good to me personally. By now I knew it pretty well because I had to pass through all the time on my way to
Europe
. Walking or biking around town was like negotiating an obstacle course, and it gave me a sense of accomplishment. Once you learned to love
New York
, you loved it more, and more complicatedly, than other places.

It’s said that September 11 happened to everyone, and it did. But it happened to New Yorkers, first, and foremost, and worst.

That morning, I was at home in Austin, just another father watching

Shortly after September 11, the Red Cross called, wondering if I would come to
New York
and help boost the morale of the firefighters and rescue workers, as a way to thank them. I accepted immediately—I wasn’t sure a goodwill visit from me meant much, but I hated just sitting and watching at home in
Texas
, and it would give me a chance to do something. I said I would like to go unannounced, with one rule: no press.

I asked Bart Knaggs to come with me, and together we flew to
New York
on the evening of September 20. All the major airports were still closed, so we landed at a private airport in
White Plains
. I remember that as we flew over the city, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” was playing on the plane’s sound system, and it seemed appropriately dark. A friend from Nike, Dave Mingey, met us when we landed, along with representatives from the Red Cross; they had worked together to set up my tour of the city.

We went straight to a pier on the
Hudson River
that had been transformed into a makeshift command center. It resembled the active floor of a business convention, with hundreds of people, from the fire department to the Coast Guard to the steelworkers’ union to the FBI, running around in a state of organized confusion as they directed the rescue and recovery efforts.

I met with some people from the Red Cross, and I stared at a wall of pictures. Everywhere, pictures of the missing were posted: friends, family members, husbands, sons, cousins.
Please Call
. I’d never seen anything like it. One flyer showed a picture of four kids, with a scratched crayon plea—
Daddy, please come home, we miss you
. I’d never expected to see such a thing, and I never want to again.

But what struck me most was the wishfulness of it. Even in the midst of that destruction, people were in a kind of determined denial, able to hope that a husband, or a wife, or a daughter would come walking through the door. In the face of the awful question—
If they’re not at home and they’re not in the hospital, then where are they?
—people chose to deny the worst and hope for the best.

The next morning was a Saturday, and it began early with a Red Cross rep taking us on a tour of firehouses. We started on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and as I walked up to the first firehouse, I felt like a fool. I was an unannounced visitor, and maybe the firefighters didn’t need one; maybe they had enough visitors. In front of the station there was a constant stream of well-wishers bringing food and gifts, leaving candles and murals behind. I worried that when I walked up, they’d say, “What the hell are you doing here? Get out of here.”

I stepped inside the firehouse of Bowery Station 33, where they had lost 11 men from their unit. I stood there for a moment, not certain what to do. But then a firefighter recognized me. He said, “Fucking Lance Armstrong,” like a true New Yorker, and then he hugged me, and he started to cry. Some more firefighters gathered around and we shook hands. “Nobody told us you were coming,” they said.

One of them turned around and yelled to a guy who was sitting in the kitchen. He came out, and shook my hand, and I could tell he was heavily affected, maybe by the loss of his friends, or by what he had seen, or both. We talked for a bit, about what had happened, and what they had seen. They told me stories of the stench and the heat and the body parts everywhere.

The most troubled-seeming firefighter was a real cycling nut. One of his buddies said, “You guys should race.” It turned out every station house kept a couple of bikes, old junkers, for errands. The firefighters spent long hours together in the firehouse kitchen, cooking and eating together, and whenever they needed more groceries, somebody jumped on the bike and went down to the store, threw all the stuff in the front basket and then pedaled back.

Somebody handed me a bike with big fat tires. I laughed and got on. The cycling nut jumped on his bike and started riding up and down the street, wanting to race, saying, “Come on,
come
on.” One of his buddies said, “Look, he’s having a really hard time. We’re all having a hard time, but that guy is having a really hard one.”

My friend the firefighter took off down the block, pedaling hard. He seemed so serious. It must have been a welcome escape, to get out there and sprint around on that bike. So I rode after him.

We were in the middle of a downtown street in
New York City
, surrounded by people and cars, but he was possessed. He mashed the pedals, while I chased him. We rounded a corner and headed back to the firehouse, and he beat me handily. All of the other firefighters whooped and clapped him on the back, and he broke into a huge grin.

I hung around for another thirty minutes or so, and then shook hands and went to the next firehouse.

We visited ten firehouses in all. Every one was the same, and I told Bart, “I could do this all day.” They had big kitchens with long tables where firefighters and devastated family members sat around, mess-hall style. The chalk duty boards hadn’t been changed: the date still read 9/11, and the names of the men were still posted. I don’t know if they’ve changed them even yet. Outside, the firehouses were decorated with memorial candles, posters, and
flowers,
and crowds stood around thanking the firefighters, or just gazing, quiet and reverential, as if they were in a museum.

Some people think heroism is a reflex, an anti-death knee jerk. Some people think heroism is a desire to matter, to be of use. Then there is the quieter heroism of “going to work every day and making a living for one’s family,” as
New York
mayor Rudolph Giuliani said of the people who died in those buildings. By the end of that trip I decided it was some combination of the three. But whatever it was, these guys had it.

Later that afternoon I was invited to meet with Giuliani. I was ushered into a command post, and he stood up and gave me a hug. Lying face-down on his table was a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Giuliani was exhausted, and deeply affected, but he was totally in control, obviously the perfect man for the job at that time. The mayor turned to another gentleman in the room, and introduced me: Bill Clinton. They invited me to ride with them in a helicopter tour of Ground Zero.