Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong by Juliet Macur Read Free Book Online Page A

Australian teammate, Phil Anderson. By the time the Coors Light riders left the room, the deal had been done.
    If Armstrong won the million, both teams would benefit. Armstrong would receive the prize money—$600,000 taken in a lump sum—and would walk away with $200,000 while the balance would be distributed to his team and other cyclists who had helped him win. Each rider on Coors Light would be given $3,000 to $5,000, according to Stephen Swart, a Coors Light rider in on the discussions.
    As long as America had no idea how it happened, Armstrong’s $1 million jackpot would also give cycling the positive publicity it needed to grow. It was a win-win all around.
    The practice of throwing races had existed for decades, and was as much a part of the sport as doping. Joe Parkin, an American who raced in Europe, said so in his book, A Dog in a Hat . He wrote that selling victories was a common and accepted practice in Europe in the late 1980s. A rider racing in his hometown might shell out several thousand dollars to win. The losers would get guaranteed, easy money. Everybody left happy, pockets stuffed with cash.
    Parkin wrote, “My experience as a pro cyclist in Europe has left me with a somewhat altered moral code, such that many of the things that bother normal people are invisible to me.”
    With the Coors Light team on his side, Armstrong won the second race in the million-dollar race series. Then, in the last moments of the Philadelphia race—the final race in the series—Armstrong was in a breakaway of six riders when he took off toward an impossibly steep climb called the Manayunk Wall. None of the other riders in the breakaway chased him, leaving him to win the race in what seemed like a heroic solo effort.
    Before the race, Neal thought Armstrong would win because he was the strongest rider. Only after the event did he learn that Armstrong had paid his way onto the top of the winner’s podium. The Coors Light riders had kept their end of the deal. They did not attack Armstrong during the Philadelphia race, making it easier for him to win. But Armstrong had taken an extra step to guarantee his victory.
    Armstrong had told Neal that in the race’s waning miles he bribed Italian rider Roberto Gaggioli to ensure the victory. He offered Gaggioli, who had been one of the cyclists in the final breakaway, $10,000 to hold back when Armstrong took off on his solo breakaway. Gaggioli took him up on the offer and later said Armstrong had given him $100,000 in the deal, though that large amount seems improbable. Several other Italian riders in that breakaway also said they had accepted Armstrong’s bribes.
    Neal, uncomfortable with the shameless dishonesty, chastised Armstrong for cheating.
    “For God’s sake,” he told Armstrong, “stop bragging about it.”
    Neal also was upset with Ochowicz, who he thought was in on the deal. He didn’t like Ochowicz very much anyway. He complained that the team manager knew little about cycling tactics and that the only thing he did was gorge himself on the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches that were kept for him in the team car. He felt that Ochowicz was a bad influence on Armstrong, a kid who didn’t need much prodding to break the rules. It was now evident to Neal that Armstrong’s moral code would be forever altered. Armstrong, according a person with direct knowledge of the situation, would later win the Clásica de San Sebastián race in 1995 only after bribing another rider in the final few miles, but that he was just following the sport’s well-established customs.
    If Armstrong ever had a conscience, his bosses had convinced him it didn’t matter. According to Armstrong, Ochowicz had okayed the bribe to win the million dollars and had made the final call. It worked.
    In the television broadcast of the prize ceremony, Armstrong summed up the victory with an ironic hint at the fact of the race: “Everybody won today.”
     
    The year of the bribe, 1993, Armstrong’s