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Armstrong Was Central Figure in Doping Ring, Officials Say Armstrong Was Central Figure in Doping Ring, Officials Say
(35 minutes later)
The United States Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday released details of its investigation of Lance Armstrong, calling it the most sophisticated doping program in recent sports history — a program in which it said Armstrong played a key role by doping, supplying doping products and demanding that his top teammates dope so he could be successful. To start what was deemed a new and better doping strategy, Lance Armstrong and two of his teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling squad flew on a private jet to Valencia, Spain, in June 2000, en route to have blood extracted. In a hotel room there, two doctors and the team’s manager stood by to see their plan unfold, watching the blood of their best riders drip into plastic bags.
A 202-page account of the agency’s case against Armstrong included sworn testimony from 26 people, including nearly a dozen former teammates on Armstrong’s United States Postal Service and Discovery Channel squads who said they were aware Armstrong doped to help him win every one of his record seven Tour de France titles. The following month, during the Tour de France, the cyclists lay on beds with those blood bags affixed to the wall. They shivered as the cool blood re-entered their bodies. The reinfused blood would boost the riders’ oxygen-carrying capacity and improve stamina during Armstrong’s second of his seven Tour victories.
The file was the most extensive, groundbreaking layout of Armstrong’s alleged doping, bolstered by new interviews, financial statements and laboratory results. The next day, Armstrong extended his overall lead with a swift ascent of the unforgiving and seemingly unending route up Mount Ventoux.
The agency said that witnesses’ testimony was so damning that it did not need any corroborating evidence to make its case, though its report included financial payments, e-mail messages, laboratory results and scientific data that the agency said proved Armstrong cheated by using banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions. At a race in Spain that same year, Armstrong told a teammate that he had taken testosterone, a banned substance he called “oil.” The teammate warned Armstrong that drug-testing officials were at the team hotel, prompting Armstrong to drop out of the race to avoid being caught.
In 2002, Armstrong summoned a teammate to his apartment in Girona, Spain. He told his teammate that if he wanted to continue riding for the team he would have to follow the doping program outlined by Armstrong’s doctor, a known proponent of doping.
The rider said that the conversation confirmed that “Lance called the shots on the team,” and that “what Lance said went.”
Those accounts were revealed Wednesday in hundreds of pages of eyewitness testimony from teammates, e-mail correspondence, financial records and laboratory analyses released by the United States Anti-Doping agency  — the quasi-governmental group charged with policing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports.
During all that time, Armstrong was a hero on two wheels, a cancer survivor who was making his mark as perhaps the most dominant cyclist in history. But the evidence put forth by the antidoping agency drew a picture of Armstrong as an infamous cheat, a defiant liar and a bully who pushed others to cheat with him so he could succeed, or be vanquished.
“The U.S.P.S. Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices,” the agency said. “A program organized by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today.”“The U.S.P.S. Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices,” the agency said. “A program organized by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today.”
Armstrong has repeatedly denied doping. Timothy J. Herman, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, said in an e-mail message that the 202-page report “will be a one-sided hatchet job — a taxpayer-funded tabloid piece rehashing old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories.” Armstrong has repeatedly denied doping. On Wednesday, his spokesman said Armstrong had no comment.
The teammates who came forward and submitted sworn affidavits included some of the best cyclists of Armstrong’s generation: Levi Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie, one of the most respected American riders in recent history. Other teammates who came forward with information were Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Floyd Landis, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie. When Armstrong decided in August not to contest the agency’s charges that he doped, administered doping products and encouraged doping on his Tour-winning teams, he agreed to forgo an arbitration hearing at which the evidence against him would have been aired, possibly publicly. But that evidence, which the antidoping agency called overwhelming and proof of the most sophisticated sports doping program in history, came out anyway.
Their testimony was the most widespread effort to break the code of silence in cycling that has existed for decades and perpetuated the pervasive doping in the sport. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, the antidoping agency was required to submit its evidence against Armstrong to the International Cycling Union, which has 21 days from the receipt of the case file to appeal the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Once it makes its decision, the World Anti-Doping Agency has 21 days in which to appeal.
The agency said the evidence revealed “conclusive and undeniable proof that brings to the light of day for the first time this systemic, sustained and highly professionalized team-run doping conspiracy.” The teammates who submitted sworn affidavits — admitting their own doping and detailing Armstrong’s involvement in it — included some of the best cyclists of Armstrong’s generation: Levi Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie, one of the most respected American riders in recent history. Other teammates who came forward with information were Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Floyd Landis, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie.
The evidence against Armstrong features financial payments, e-mails, scientific analyses and laboratory test results that show Armstrong doped and was the kingpin of the doping conspiracy, the agency said. Several years of Armstrong’s blood values showed evidence of doping, the report said. Their accounts painted an eerie and complete picture of the doping on Armstrong’s teams, squads that dominated the sport of cycling for nearly a decade.
“It’s shocking, it’s disappointing,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive of the antidoping agency. “But we did our job.” “His goal led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his teammates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own,” the agency said in its 202-page report.
When Armstrong decided in August not to contest Usada’s charges, he agreed to forgo an arbitration hearing at which the evidence against him would have been aired, possibly publicly. Drug use was casual among the top riders, and some shared EPO — the banned blood booster erythropoietin — as if borrowing cups of sugar from a neighbor. In 2005, Hincapie on two different occasions asked Armstrong, “Any EPO I could borrow?” and Armstrong obliged without question. In 2003, Armstrong showed up at Hincapie’s apartment in Spain and had his blood drawn for a future banned blood transfusion. Hincapie said he was aware that Armstrong used blood transfusions from 2001 to 2005.
Under the World Anti-Doping Code, the antidoping agency was required to submit its evidence against Armstrong to the International Cycling Union, which has 21 days from the receipt of the case file to appeal the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Once it makes its decision, the World Anti-Doping Agency will then have 21 days in which to appeal. Kristin Armstrong, Armstrong’s former wife, handed out cortisone tablets wrapped tightly in foil to the team at the 1998 world championships.
The cycling union and the World Anti-Doping Agency were expected to receive the Armstrong file Wednesday. Riders were given water bottles containing EPO as if they were boxed lunches. Jonathan Vaughters said the bottles were carefully labeled for them: “Jonathan — 5x2” meant five vials of 2,000 international units of EPO were tucked inside.
The antidoping agency has been gathering evidence on Armstrong for the past several years, with its efforts increasing after Landis, the 2006 Tour winner who was stripped of the title for doping, contacted Tygart in 2010. Landis told Tygart that he, Armstrong and others on the Postal Service team were involved in systematic doping supported by the team. Landis was asked to baby-sit the blood inside the refrigerator of Armstrong’s apartment, just to make sure the electricity did not go out and the blood did not spoil.
At the same time, Armstrong became the target of a federal investigation into his doping and doping-related crimes, including defrauding the government, drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy. In particular, investigators from the Food and Drug Administration, the F.B.I. and the United States Postal Service were looking into whether Armstrong and his associates had used government money to finance doping practices. Zabriskie, a national time-trial champion, recalled serenading Johan Bruyneel, the longtime team manager, with a song about EPO, to the tune of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.”
But last February, André Birotte Jr., the United States attorney in Los Angeles, announced that his office was dropping the investigation into Armstrong. He gave no reason for abandoning the inquiry, which lasted nearly two years and involved extensive travel, including to Europe, where antidoping agency and law enforcement officials met with their counterparts from Italy and France. “EPO all in my veins; Lately things just don’t seem the same; Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why; ’Scuse me while I pass this guy.”
While the criminal investigation is no more, an inquiry by the Department of Justice is continuing, sparked by Landis’s filing a federal whistle-blower lawsuit charging that Armstrong and the team management defrauded the government by using taxpayer dollars to finance the squad’s doping program. Tyler Hamilton, another teammate, said Armstrong squirted a mixture of testosterone and olive oil into Hamilton’s mouth after one stage of the 1999 Tour.
He claimed that Armstrong and the team management were aware of the widespread doping on the team when the squad’s contract with the Postal Service clearly stated that any doping would constitute default of their agreement, said two people with knowledge of the case. Those people did not want their names published because the case is still under seal. At the same time the drug use was nonchalant, it also was carefully orchestrated by Armstrong, team management and team staff, the antidoping agency said.
Landis filed the lawsuit under the False Claims Act, the people with knowledge of the matter said, and those suits give citizens the right and financial incentive to bring lawsuits on the government’s behalf. “Mr. Armstrong did not act alone,” the agency said in its report. “He acted with the help of a small army of enablers, including doping doctors, drug smugglers, and others within and outside the sport and on his team.”
If the government decides to join the lawsuit and recovers any money because of it, Landis will be eligible to receive a percentage of the money. Armstrong relied on the Italian doctor Michele Ferrari for both training and doping plans, several riders said. Armstrong continued to use Ferrari even after he publicly claimed in 2004 — and testified under oath in an insurance claims case — that he severed all business ties with Ferrari.
Armstrong, who retired from cycling last year, has said Landis made up the story of doping on the team because he had not been hired by Armstrong after Landis ended his two-year suspension from the sport for doping. The antidoping agency noted that Armstrong had sent payments of more than $1 million to Ferrari from 1996 through 2006, based on financial documents discovered in an Italian doping investigation.
When the antidoping agency announced this summer that it would file charges against Armstrong, he immediately denounced the agency’s claims and called its process of sanctioning athletes “a kangaroo court.” He filed a federal lawsuit in August, saying the antidoping agency was depriving him of his constitutional right for due process and asking the court to stop the antidoping agency from moving forward with its case. A judge dismissed the lawsuit. Ferrari was a master at reducing the riders’ chances of testing positive, several cyclists said, so much so that Hincapie said he was not fearful he would test positive in 2000 because of Ferrari’s tricks.
In a statement by his lawyer on Wednesday, Hincapie, the only rider who was at Armstrong’s side for his seven Tour victories, acknowledged doping and apologized to his family, teammates and fans for his dishonesty. The doctor suggested that the riders inject EPO directly into their veins instead of under their skin, which would lessen the possibility that the drug would be picked up by tests. He pushed the use of hypoxic chambers, which he said also reduced the effectiveness of the EPO test. He told riders to use their drugs at night, after drug testers might come, so the substances would clear their bodies by the morning.
“Early in my professional career, it became clear to me that, given the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by cyclists at the top of the profession, it was not possible to compete at the highest level without them,” said Hincapie, who retired from cycling this year after riding in a record 17th Tour. “I deeply regret that choice.” Bruyneel, Armstrong’s longtime team manager, and team doctors played a key role in the doping scheme. They would often indoctrinate young riders into the doping program, the riders said.
Hincapie, the five-time Olympian and three-time national road race champion, said that he had been approached by federal investigators in the spring of 2010 and they asked him to divulge his experience with doping. That summer, he sat down with them and admitted he had cheated with drugs — but also reluctantly spoke about the other cyclists involved in doping because he felt “obligated to tell the truth about everything he knew,” he said. In his affidavit, Vande Velde recalled Bruyneel taking over as team director after the 1998 season and bringing in Luis Garcia del Moral as the new team doctor who was fond of giving riders injections.
He told investigators that he had not used performance-enhancing drugs or processes since 2006, a point when he was accomplished enough to ride clean and respected enough to start persuading other riders, particularly young ones, to avoid doping. “He would run into the room and you would quickly find a needle in your arm,” Vande Velde said, adding that when he would ask questions about the treatment, del Moral “would say things like I was “bloated” or “blocked” and needed vitamins.” Vande Velde added that “whatever he injected was always described as vitamins.”
Since stopping his drug use, Hincapie said he has been “working hard within the sport of cycling to rid it of banned substances.” In 1999, del Moral offered Vande Velde testosterone and Vande Velde knowingly doped for the first time, using testosterone mixed in olive oil. The cyclist then discussed the program with Bruyneel because he was nervous about it. “He said not to worry if I felt bad at first that I would feel good at the end,” he said.
“Thankfully, the use of performance-enhancing drugs is no longer embedded in the culture of our sport, and younger riders are not faced with the same choice we had,” he said. Eventually, Armstrong confronted Vande Velde for not closely following Ferrari’s training program. Armstrong said his good standing on the team would be jeopardized, Vande Velde said. Feeling threatened, Vande Velde stepped up his drug use.
He said the antidoping agency had reached out to him more recently to ask him about his doping past. Zabriskie was also anxious about using drugs and began to ask Bruyneel how safe it was to use them.
He had a slew of questions: Would he be able to have children? Would it cause any physical changes? Would he grow larger ears? The questions continued. Bruyneel responded, “everyone is doing it,” he said.
The team’s doctors came up with fake maladies, so riders could receive an exemption to use drugs like cortisone, several riders said. When Armstrong tested positive for cortisone during the 1999 Tour, Armstrong produced a backdated prescription for it, for saddle sores. Hamilton said he knew that was a lie.
Riders said they felt that they needed to dope to stay at the top of the sport and stay on the team. Armstrong was instrumental in the hiring and firing of team personnel and pressured riders to stay on a doping program, the antidoping agency said.
The evidence made clear, the agency said, that Armstrong’s drug use was extensive, and that he also was the linchpin holding the team’s doping program together. It said that is why it barred him from Olympic sports for life and stripped him of his record seven Tour victories.
“It was not enough that his teammates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping program outlined for them or be replaced,” the antidoping agency said in its report. “He was not just a part of the doping culture on his team, he enforced and reinforced it.”