Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And there she is here, I am look at me.
Speaker 2: It's me Zeron Burnette.
Speaker 3: How you doing good? You're doing good?
Speaker 2: Yeah you.
Speaker 3: Let's skip past that and we'll get into my question,
Speaker 3: which is, do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I do. I do know it's ridiculous. It's a mashup,
Speaker 2: but a good one. Hannah on Instagram, founder of Folkways Press,
Speaker 2: just sent this to me. Uh, it's a mashup of
Speaker 2: this glass like eyeglasses company camp that they do. They're
Speaker 2: like teamed up with the US for service for Smokey Bear.
Speaker 3: Oh and I like him.
Speaker 2: I was like, well this is cool. And then I
Speaker 2: looked at all of them. I'm like, these kind of
Speaker 2: like the glasses already were so now I think I
Speaker 2: need some, Okay, And uh, it's a good mashup. What Yeah,
Speaker 2: So it's s hwood shop dot com and you go
Speaker 2: and they have the Smokey Bear what have you. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they're pretty dope looking glasses. Here. We look like they're
Speaker 2: made out of wood, but I think they're not.
Speaker 3: But New Year, New Elizabeth, like, what is this? Is
Speaker 3: it a mashup? I don't even hate.
Speaker 2: And you know what, I'm gonna stop right there. That's it.
Speaker 2: It's not going to drag on forever.
Speaker 3: No quotes from a PR person in the company.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm just gonna be like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 2: they make smokey bird glasses, and I love the Forest
Speaker 2: Service and the proceeds go to help fight wildfires. Wow,
Speaker 2: it just gets better and better.
Speaker 3: Twenty six. You're already looking up.
Speaker 2: I know you're welcome.
Speaker 3: Well, I got something ridiculous for you, girl. Yes, sir,
Speaker 3: imagine you're a world famous athlete and you're one of
Speaker 3: the fastest to ever do it.
Speaker 2: Right up, I don't have to imagine.
Speaker 3: I know you don't, but right up until your crimes
Speaker 3: eventually catch up to you. Oh, because, as you know, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: the past is never truly gone.
Speaker 2: That is true.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous. Ridiculous, Elizabeth, this is a story
Speaker 3: I've waited to tell you. Really, it's a favorite of mine.
Speaker 3: It's part one of a multi part story about doping
Speaker 3: in sports. The other parts I'll tell you at a
Speaker 3: later date, but for now, Part one is about the
Speaker 3: world's most famous cyclist, Lance Armstrong. Lance Lance. I've told
Speaker 3: you about my personal connection to Lance Armstrong. It's not
Speaker 3: really much of a connection. It's more like a long
Speaker 3: running bit. But my friend Derek and I had we
Speaker 3: had this little game we'd like to play when we
Speaker 3: weren't on our own bikes and we were just rolling
Speaker 3: around in cages, I mean cars, and anytime that we
Speaker 3: saw a cyclist in there, Likera gear, we'd both yell Lance.
Speaker 3: Why that made us laugh so hard? I can't tell you,
Speaker 3: but it did. My point is Lance Armstrong has been
Speaker 3: a joke to us for a long time. Yeah, mostly
Speaker 3: because every July we'd watched the Tour de France together
Speaker 3: and for years Lance dominated that multi stage race around
Speaker 3: for it. And Lance was so full of himself, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, which is saying a lot since he's a cyclist.
Speaker 2: He's living strong there, my kid, I.
Speaker 3: Kid cyclists, I'm one of you. But seriously, Lance Armstrong
Speaker 3: had a high opinion of Lance Armstrong, as this story
Speaker 3: will make evidence. So what's the story. Well, I'm glad
Speaker 3: you asked him.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: I think you already know the general shape and the
Speaker 3: contours of this one. I think you probably remember.
Speaker 2: It, Lance Strong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's caught doping. He loses everything. Right, that's not
Speaker 3: the full story, because, as you know, the devil is
Speaker 3: in the details always, So first step, who is Lance Armstrong?
Speaker 2: Good question, fantastic question. You asked that.
Speaker 3: Lance Gunderson was born in nineteen seventy one in the
Speaker 3: town of Richardson, Texas. It's a suburb of Dallas. He
Speaker 3: was born Lance Gunderson Gunderson. Yeah, so you know the
Speaker 3: calculator company, Texas Instruments. Yes, Well, in nineteen fifty six
Speaker 3: they set up shop at the border of Richardson, and
Speaker 3: after that the town grew in size and prestige. Suddenly
Speaker 3: the real estate's valuable. You could say, Richardson is the
Speaker 3: town that calculators built. Anyway, soon enough.
Speaker 2: After he was born, Richardson is the town that calculators built.
Speaker 2: You told me I could say it, I.
Speaker 3: Could say it. You did do it.
Speaker 2: It was horrible.
Speaker 3: Anyway, soon after he's born to Richardson, his parents get divorced.
Speaker 3: Little Lance was just two years old. His mother soon remarried,
Speaker 3: and little Lance took the name of his new stepfather,
Speaker 3: and that's how he became Lance Armstrong. Fast forward to
Speaker 3: his teenage years. We don't need to go over his
Speaker 3: whole childhood. By the age of sixteen, Lance Armstrong he
Speaker 3: shows this aptitude for athletics. His first success is as
Speaker 3: a triathlete, you know, running, swimming, and biking right.
Speaker 2: Within a tumbling.
Speaker 3: Within a few years he's a national champion triathlete. It
Speaker 3: feels like triathletes were much more of an eighties nineties thing,
Speaker 3: back when you'd hear about who won the annual iron
Speaker 3: Man competition. Yeah, you don't hear about that anymore.
Speaker 2: No, No, I got a bunch of friends that do triathlons too.
Speaker 3: Much like the national conversation. Yeah you don't hear about
Speaker 3: the who won the iron Man basically, yeah, I think
Speaker 3: in the nineties other extreme sports began to surpass that
Speaker 3: OJA ruling competition. Anyway, That's where Lance Armstrong first makes
Speaker 3: a name for himself swimming, cycling, the running. Then in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two he switches it up. He focuses solely
Speaker 3: on cycling and he turns pro as a cyclist. That
Speaker 3: same year he did not want to do the runs
Speaker 3: no more. The swim for him. So he joins the
Speaker 3: Motorola cycling team, which was like one of the best
Speaker 3: in the world at the time, and from the jump,
Speaker 3: he's damn good. In nineteen ninety three, he competes in
Speaker 3: the Tour de France. He wins the stage, which is shocking, right,
Speaker 3: first time out, totally. Now, later that same year, he
Speaker 3: wins the World Road Race Championship.
Speaker 2: I thought you're gonna say road rage.
Speaker 3: No, this is so excited. For a second. This starts
Speaker 3: a string of wins for Lance that culminates in him
Speaker 3: winning the Triple Crown in cycling. He won the Thrift
Speaker 3: Drug Classic in Pittsburgh. Oh, he won the Kmart West
Speaker 3: Virginia Classic, honey, And finally he won the Core States
Speaker 3: US Pro National Championships in Philly.
Speaker 2: Now that sounds like a legitimate race.
Speaker 3: So it's not exactly like, oh, Belmont, the Preakness and
Speaker 3: Kentucky Derby, but you get the idea that would have
Speaker 3: been amazing to beat the horses. So this is also
Speaker 3: Elizabeth when the first allegations of his cheating pops into
Speaker 3: this story.
Speaker 2: Okay that early, yes, because.
Speaker 3: Apparently one of the cyclists he was competing against in
Speaker 3: the national championship. Alleges that Lance bribed him to let
Speaker 3: Lance win so he could take the triple crown. That
Speaker 3: was just a bribe. But soon enough, by nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 3: Lance moved on to performance enhancing drugs. Anyway, the next year,
Speaker 3: Lance's his ascendant career, right, it continues its rise. He
Speaker 3: competes at the nineteen ninety six Summer Olympics in my
Speaker 3: hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. However, he didn't medal in the
Speaker 3: Olympics and said he finished twelfth in the road race.
Speaker 3: You know what that means, He's gonna need to dope
Speaker 3: even harder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but all.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, later on in that same year, tragedy struck Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: His cycling career had to be put on hold when
Speaker 3: Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3: It was bad, like his doctors didn't think he would live.
Speaker 2: Oh really.
Speaker 3: However, if there's one thing we can say about Lance Armstrong,
Speaker 3: he is committed to winning, and so he dedicates himself
Speaker 3: to beating cancer. It works. He defies the expectations of
Speaker 3: his doctors. He beats testicular cancer for him, right, and
Speaker 3: then after his cancer is in remission. He founds the
Speaker 3: Lance Armstrong Foundation in order to help other cancer survivors.
Speaker 3: That's a good thing, totally. It would later change its
Speaker 3: name to the Livestrong Foundation.
Speaker 2: With the yellow Yeah bracelets.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, you remember those. More on those later now.
Speaker 3: The next year, nineteen ninety seven, Lance Armstrong meets Kristin Richard.
Speaker 3: The two headed off. They get married. The following year,
Speaker 3: the couple gets right to work on having a family.
Speaker 3: They welcome a son in October of ninety nine, a
Speaker 3: pair of twin daughters in two thousand and one. Now
Speaker 3: you may be wondering, how does the testicular cancer survivor
Speaker 3: pull off this miracle?
Speaker 2: I wasn't wondering that his business.
Speaker 3: Well, he had his testicles removed, not both of them,
Speaker 3: the one. Yeah, But it was like he wasn't like
Speaker 3: it was the odds were against him. People were surprised.
Speaker 3: And it turns out Lance had foresight. He'd made some
Speaker 3: deposits at the sperm bank. Yeah, he created using his
Speaker 3: junk from before his he had surgery. Anyway, back to cycling.
Speaker 3: In ninety eight, Lance gets back on the saddle and
Speaker 3: launches this improbable comeback. Nobody thinks it's possible, but again
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm committed to winning. His first attempts though
Speaker 3: or met with failure. But that just shows Lance will
Speaker 3: need to work even harder if he wants to return
Speaker 3: to professional cycling. So in nineteen ninety eight, that same year,
Speaker 3: when many in cycling believe Lance will never get back
Speaker 3: to his championship status and they expect him to soon
Speaker 3: retire from the sport. Instead, he joins the US Postal
Speaker 3: Service team and he competes at the highest levels of cycling.
Speaker 2: And again delivering the mail.
Speaker 3: He excels. He doesn't win, but he unexpectedly finishes fourth
Speaker 3: at the World Championships of Cycling that year.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: The next year, ninety nine, Lance roars back onto the
Speaker 3: professional cycling scene when he competes in the Tour de France,
Speaker 3: which is the coolest, biggest, exactly, it's the best race
Speaker 3: in the world. He stuns everybody. He wins the whole
Speaker 3: damn thing.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: No one saw that coming, no one but Lance Armstrong. However,
Speaker 3: there was an asterisk on his victory because he competed
Speaker 3: in a field of cyclists that was missing two of
Speaker 3: the best racers in the sport. So folks were like, well, sure,
Speaker 3: it's impressive that Lance beat cancer and he came back
Speaker 3: to win the Tour de France. But he didn't beat
Speaker 3: the best in the world.
Speaker 2: That's kind of rough, right, So.
Speaker 3: The next year in two thousand, the best were back
Speaker 3: in the saddle with him, all ready to challenge Lance
Speaker 3: in the Tour de France, and wouldn't you know it,
Speaker 3: Lance still wins the damn thing.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: In fact, he increases his pace and wins by six
Speaker 3: minutes over this other cyclist yng six minute. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: beats jan Ulrich, who many believe was the best in
Speaker 3: the world at the time. Yeah, and had been absent
Speaker 3: the year prior.
Speaker 2: Huge, it's a huge amount of time.
Speaker 3: Oh totally. He's normally winning like a minute and a half,
Speaker 3: two minutes, now six minutes.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the pictures from the like original
Speaker 2: Tour de France where they're like smoking siuts.
Speaker 3: Total and they stop and have wine breaks, wine and
Speaker 3: cheese breaks.
Speaker 2: Still do that?
Speaker 3: They really should now that same summer, Lance he competes
Speaker 3: in the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, where he finishes third,
Speaker 3: which means he medals and takes the bronze. Following year
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, Lance returns to the Tour de
Speaker 3: France and wouldn't you know it, Elizabeth, he wins again.
Speaker 3: Now he's won three times in a row. The world
Speaker 3: of cycling is a gog. Who is this guy? There was?
Speaker 2: Why didn't he win at the Olympics?
Speaker 3: That's weird, tough competition. So then the next year, two
Speaker 3: thousand and two, he does it again. Lance wins the
Speaker 3: Tour de France for a fourth time in a row.
Speaker 3: It's truly an exceptional victory. Yes, suddenly Lance Armstrong is
Speaker 3: considered the best cyclist in the world. However, I should
Speaker 3: point out something, he didn't do it alone. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you know how the Tour de France works entirely,
Speaker 3: but you race as part of a team, which means
Speaker 3: team members take turns as a lead racer for the team.
Speaker 3: This allows the other team members to ride in their
Speaker 3: lipstream back in the rest of the peloton, which means
Speaker 3: in they ride against reduced wind and they experience less drag,
Speaker 3: which keeps their legs like fresh for that final push
Speaker 3: at the end of the day stage. So although Lance
Speaker 3: wins the Tour de France, it's really a team victory. Sure,
Speaker 3: sure Anyway. The next year, two thousand and three, Lance
Speaker 3: wins the Tour de France again, stretching a streak of
Speaker 3: victories to five in a row. It's incredible. By this point,
Speaker 3: people who aren't even cycling fans, they know his name.
Speaker 3: Many are tuning in to watch the Tour de France
Speaker 3: just to see if Lance can do it again. Notably,
Speaker 3: in that year's Tour de France, in a late stage,
Speaker 3: Lance was leading when one of the race spectators who
Speaker 3: crowded the roadside, they collided with Lance and their handbag
Speaker 3: wraps around his handlebars and he nearly crashes, which is
Speaker 3: bad on a bike, especially when you have like you know,
Speaker 3: no hair nearly your legs. You go down. Well help
Speaker 3: with the crash, but it's like his main competitor, Jan Ulrich,
Speaker 3: the former best cyclist in the world. He decides not
Speaker 3: to take advantage of this mishap and he waits for
Speaker 3: Lance to get back on the race. This show of
Speaker 3: sportsmanship is heralded by the cycling world, especially when Lance
Speaker 3: goes on to win the tour yet again. Little did
Speaker 3: folks know that Lance was not so committed to fair
Speaker 3: play himself. Now at this point, Lance did suffer a
Speaker 3: major loss. That same year, his marriage falls apart. Turns
Speaker 3: out Lance was also cheating on his wife.
Speaker 2: You're kidding.
Speaker 3: Yes, tabloid stories come out that that celebrate the fact
Speaker 3: that the newly singled Lance is now dating the singer
Speaker 3: songwriter Cheryl Crow.
Speaker 2: It's like vague memories. Remember that moment three years old?
Speaker 3: Remember so the pair, they become the celebrity couple. They
Speaker 3: eventually announced their engagement to get married. In fact, Cheryl
Speaker 3: Crow puts her own career on hold to support her
Speaker 3: new boat. She even moves to her Hona, Spain, which
Speaker 3: is this major hub of cycling and a training ground.
Speaker 3: But then cheating pops back up and the couple never
Speaker 3: reaches the altar.
Speaker 2: Wait break up.
Speaker 3: The next year. No, in this case, well, I don't
Speaker 3: know if he on her, but I do know from
Speaker 3: her that the cheating wasn't necessarily inside the relationships. Why
Speaker 3: they broke up, it was that well, I'll just put
Speaker 3: it this way, Cheryl Crow said he lied to me too,
Speaker 3: And this was in reference to him as a professional cyclist.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're kidding.
Speaker 3: The allegations were starting to come out.
Speaker 2: That's integrity right there, right.
Speaker 3: And I respected her. Now, before we get into all
Speaker 3: of this, we have a couple more Tours de France
Speaker 3: to get through. So stepping back in time, in two
Speaker 3: thousand and four, Lance wins the Tour de France for
Speaker 3: the sixth time in our way in a row. Incredible.
Speaker 3: He follows that with a record seventh win in the
Speaker 3: Tour de France the next year, two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: He's also sets a record for the fastest pace in
Speaker 3: tour history. He averaged twenty six miles per hour at
Speaker 3: every moment of the race.
Speaker 2: Essentially, it's like superhuman.
Speaker 3: Totally, It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's Greg Lamont.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you bring him up. So after that record
Speaker 3: setting campaign, Lance announces that he plans to retire from
Speaker 3: professional cycling. Why, you may ask, you're at the top
Speaker 3: of your Yeah, why because does he put it at
Speaker 3: the time, he plans to quote spend more time with
Speaker 3: his family and his foundation.
Speaker 2: What family, like his wife does? I want nothing to
Speaker 2: do with you.
Speaker 3: I think he just means his kids, guys. But not
Speaker 3: only that, there's also talk that he might go into politics.
Speaker 3: It's like the reverse for most people, like they leave
Speaker 3: politics to spend time with their friend, their family and
Speaker 3: their kids. So he's like, no, I'm gonna go into politics.
Speaker 3: And so that's how popular and how famous he was.
Speaker 3: At this point, people thought Lance Armstrong could and should
Speaker 3: be the next governor of Texas.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a different timeline, right.
Speaker 3: And in fact President George W. Bush, the former governor
Speaker 3: of Texas, supported the idea because you see these two Texans.
Speaker 3: They used to go cycling together at the President's ranch
Speaker 3: in Texas.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were buddies, good buddies. Now, before he can
Speaker 3: announce his candidacy for governor of Texas, Lance goes on
Speaker 3: the Charlie Rose Show, the old Charlie Roashow Desk, Yeah,
Speaker 3: on PBS, and he confesses that he's decided to forego
Speaker 3: an entry into politics. I'll give you one guess why
Speaker 3: he decides politics is not for.
Speaker 2: Him, Citizens United Ruling.
Speaker 3: Good call. But it's actually by this point talk is
Speaker 3: all around that Lance is a cheater now, because you
Speaker 3: may recall, by this point Lance had been cheating since
Speaker 3: way back in the nineties. Yeah, and talk of him
Speaker 3: doping dated back to his first victory in the Tour
Speaker 3: de France in nineteen ninety nine. Yeah, despite the many
Speaker 3: whispers against him, Lance insists it's a smear campaign. He
Speaker 3: vociferously denies he's ever used any performance enhancing drugs. But then, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: the truth begins to come out, and when it does,
Speaker 3: it ruins everything. I'm talking all his hard work, his victories,
Speaker 3: his records, his celebrity status, even his cancer foundation.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a time when like op research in
Speaker 2: politics was so flawless. Oh yeah, and they would get
Speaker 2: absolutely everything and then it could tank campaigns.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that because it works anymore. But well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think these people believe that all the politicians are dirty.
Speaker 3: So now you don't have now exactly, but it used.
Speaker 2: To be like you knew, like, oh man, they're going
Speaker 2: to lock in and get everything on this person.
Speaker 3: He's gonna get Gary harted. Yes, before we get into
Speaker 3: all of his what he loses, let's take a little
Speaker 3: break and after these messages, we'll get into blood doping.
Speaker 4: It's so weird, and we're back, Elizabeth the area.
Speaker 3: So about those blood doping allegations. Blood doping, It turns
Speaker 3: out all during his seven year run of winds at
Speaker 3: the Tour de France, there was plenty of talk that
Speaker 3: Lance Armstrong was cheating, and this was helped along by
Speaker 3: his tendency to attack his fellow professional cyclists who spoke
Speaker 3: out against doping and cycling.
Speaker 2: Wait, it's not just against him, but just in general
Speaker 2: in general.
Speaker 3: You see, back in nineteen ninety nine, when Lance won
Speaker 3: his first Tour de France, there was something called the
Speaker 3: Festina affair, which sounds far more risky than.
Speaker 2: It was sounds fun.
Speaker 3: There's this cyclist named Christoph Bessons who rides for Team Festina.
Speaker 3: He's the only member of the team who was not doping,
Speaker 3: and that same year ninety nine, Christoph writes a series
Speaker 3: of articles for the French press about the prevalence of
Speaker 3: doping and cycling and he says it's rampant.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: Well, Lance Armstrong don't like that, so he confronts Christoph
Speaker 3: and he does it during the ninety nine Tour de.
Speaker 2: France, like while they're both on bike riding.
Speaker 3: Literally, according to baston Hitting, Armstrong rides up alongside him
Speaker 3: and confronts him about his whistleblowing in the French press. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like they got time to talk. So apparently Armstrong tells
Speaker 3: Bessans and I quote, it was a mistake to speak
Speaker 3: out the way I do, And he asked why I
Speaker 3: was doing it. I told him that I'm thinking of
Speaker 3: the next generation of riders, and then he said, why
Speaker 3: don't you leave? Then? What? Yes, it wasn't even that
Speaker 3: he was mentioning Lance's name. He was just talking about how.
Speaker 2: Prevalent it is, yeah, in general, and just disappointment with it. Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 3: So when word of their mid race conflicts emerges, Armstrong
Speaker 3: then tells a reporter from a French TV station that
Speaker 3: and I quote, his accusations aren't good for cycling, for
Speaker 3: his team, for me, for anybody. If he thinks cycling
Speaker 3: works like that, he's wrong and he'd be better off
Speaker 3: going home. There's a heavy emphasis on his accusations aren't
Speaker 3: good for me, Lance arms stage.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. It's one of those things where it's like
Speaker 2: there shouldn't be a question of you get out there
Speaker 2: and you say doping's bad, you know, just like if
Speaker 2: you were to say, like, don't don't do illegal things. Sure,
Speaker 2: you know, okay, well that's you know, that's a statement
Speaker 2: that shouldn't have blowback.
Speaker 3: I just but if you come out and you say
Speaker 3: everyone in Cleveland is doing illegal things. Someone in Cleveland
Speaker 3: might get mad well, just as a counterpoint. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: really Lance's concern was I don't need people poking around
Speaker 3: asking a bunch of questions and coming up with new
Speaker 3: drug tests. True, because I'm just beating the ones they
Speaker 3: have and they don't have, so don't ask for no.
Speaker 2: One should have been like, yeah, don't dope. That's terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they didn't want the best cyclist in the
Speaker 3: world to agree that it's occurring, because then that gives gravitas.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden they got new tests
Speaker 3: and everyone's got a pe in a jar at before
Speaker 3: and after races what happened.
Speaker 2: So at this point in a jar every day.
Speaker 3: I know, and I want to talk to you about that.
Speaker 3: This is Howard Hughes over here. I need introduce you
Speaker 3: now to a key figure in this story. Enter Michelle Ferrari. Hello,
Speaker 3: what a great name, right, A very sleazy guy. Michelle Ferrari,
Speaker 3: as you might guess, is an Italian. He's technically doctor Ferrari. Doctor,
Speaker 3: he's a physician. He's also a cycling coach. So doctor
Speaker 3: Ferrari first met Lance back in ninety five. He was
Speaker 3: a known figure in cycling, a doctor who was rumored
Speaker 3: to be this dark force in the sport. You see,
Speaker 3: when he was training as a physician, he studied anaerobic thresholds,
Speaker 3: as in like how a human body maximizes its oxygen usee. Sure,
Speaker 3: so the whispers were he was helping cyclists to beat
Speaker 3: the many drug tests that they had to take. In fact,
Speaker 3: when he heard that Lance was working with doctor Ferrari,
Speaker 3: the organizer of the Tour de France, Jean Marie LeBlanc, said,
Speaker 3: I am not happy that tune names are mixed. Yees.
Speaker 3: So it was no big secret that doctor it's dirty. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Trouble was, it wasn't easy to prove that. Said doctor
Speaker 3: Ferrari had been banned from practicing medicine to aid cyclists
Speaker 3: by the Italian Cycling Federation. His own people were onto them, However,
Speaker 3: the French had yet to take such a bold step. Okay, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: I got asked, do you know what EPO is?
Speaker 2: EPO?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Not many do. EPO is a slang term for
Speaker 3: a group of glycoprotein cytokines such as erythropoietine, hemo topopoetine,
Speaker 3: and Hemopoietin those three mouthfuls are substances that the kidneys secrete. Okay, naturally, right,
Speaker 3: it's the body's way of dealing with hypoxia when you
Speaker 3: have too little oxygen in the blood, which is you know,
Speaker 3: so EPO causes the body to create more red blood
Speaker 3: cells from deep inside your bone marrow because that's where
Speaker 3: you create red blood cells. And then obviously, if you're
Speaker 3: competing in a grueling road race, the more oxygenated your
Speaker 3: blood is, the more red blood cells you have that
Speaker 3: can carry oxygen to your spent muscles, the better a cyclist, Well,
Speaker 3: do you need.
Speaker 2: To be oxygenated so you can have conversations mid race?
Speaker 2: Like most people are, like, hold on a second, we
Speaker 2: get to this downhill part. I'll tell you, really need
Speaker 2: to tell you.
Speaker 3: Fall back in the peloton with me, so were you
Speaker 3: can talk. So the talk was Doctor Ferrari was known
Speaker 3: to inject Lance with doses of EPO. And I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that. One of Lance Armstrong's teammates said that just okay,
Speaker 3: does Elizabeth meet George Henkapee hen Cappy Hi George. So
Speaker 3: he rode for the Motorola cycling team back in the
Speaker 3: early nineties and alongside Lance Armstrong. So according to his deposition,
Speaker 3: I'll get to that later. Hen Caappy said that quote.
Speaker 3: Prior to joining Motorola, I knew that Lance Armstrong was
Speaker 3: on the team, as I had met him several years
Speaker 3: prior when we had raced on the national team together.
Speaker 3: Lance and I were friends from the start, right. So
Speaker 3: he was also stated for the record that around that
Speaker 3: same time and I quote during the nineteen ninety four
Speaker 3: I was given injections by the team's Belgian massage therapist
Speaker 3: stop it. I asked what was in the injections and
Speaker 3: was told that the substances were legal products such as
Speaker 3: vitamin C, vitamin B twelve, and liver cleanser. Elizabeth, if
Speaker 3: you ever find yourself being given a subcutaneous injection of
Speaker 3: something called liver cleaner by a Belgian massage.
Speaker 2: Therapist, I've made it this.
Speaker 3: Things have already gotten out of control.
Speaker 2: Then I'm like a like Kardashian level influence. That's when
Speaker 2: you know it doesn't get any better than this.
Speaker 3: So back to George Henkepy and his death position, he
Speaker 3: recalled that and I quote. In nineteen ninety five, there
Speaker 3: appeared to be a major change in the peloton. It
Speaker 3: was becoming very difficult to keep up, and I learned
Speaker 3: that the reason was, Well, Elizabeth, you want to guess
Speaker 3: what it was, please, that's right, it was epo. So
Speaker 3: this is when EPO emerges as the substance of choice
Speaker 3: for cheating. So back to George Henkpy the widespread uses
Speaker 3: of a erythro protein, a band of blood oxygen booster
Speaker 3: for which there was at the time no effective doping test.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's like naturally occurring.
Speaker 3: Exactly in the body. How would you be able to
Speaker 3: test for, like how much glucose do you have in
Speaker 3: your blood versus how much you should have? So, as
Speaker 3: Hinkapee puts it, there's obvious pressure to keep up with
Speaker 3: the other racers in the peloton, and I quote, as
Speaker 3: the speed of the peloton increased, we seem to be
Speaker 3: confronted with the choice of using EPO or not performing
Speaker 3: well in races. At this point in time, people in
Speaker 3: the peloton were talking about EPO quite openly.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, yeah, I mean that's the problem is
Speaker 2: that you're in this group and you got to keep up.
Speaker 3: You want to be a professional, if you want to
Speaker 3: stay on the teams.
Speaker 2: Everyone else is like speeding along afful oxygen.
Speaker 3: So just like his teammate Lance Armstrong, hin Kepi was
Speaker 3: also quite familiar with doctor Ferrari. So now around the
Speaker 3: same time as EPO becomes this trade secret in cycling
Speaker 3: and changes the sport, hin Kapy takes notice of what
Speaker 3: Lance is thinking and feeling about this advanced performance enhancing drug.
Speaker 3: You see at the Milan San Remo race, their team
Speaker 3: gets crushed and it pisses off An. I bet I
Speaker 3: think Kpie puts it, and I quote Lance Armstrong was
Speaker 3: very upset. As we drove home. Lance said in substance
Speaker 3: that this is people are using stuff and we are
Speaker 3: getting killed. He said in substance that he did not
Speaker 3: want to get crushed anymore and something needed to be done.
Speaker 3: So what needs to be done? Great question, Elizabeth. Back
Speaker 3: to hink Ape, I understood that he meant the team
Speaker 3: needed to get on EPO. Yeah, so the team leader
Speaker 3: is saying we all need to EPO up. Everyone's gonna write.
Speaker 2: He's like got needles dangling out of his skins, like
Speaker 2: I just want all the time.
Speaker 3: So, being a good teammate, Hinkappy finds where he can
Speaker 3: get his hands on some EPO it's for sale at
Speaker 3: pharmacies in Switzerland.
Speaker 2: CVS.
Speaker 3: No, but in Switzerland the CVS yes.
Speaker 2: Hey, they just sell it at a pharmacy. This sounds
Speaker 2: like something that like you'd have to tinker in a
Speaker 2: lab totally like isolate and yeah, what other who else
Speaker 2: is getting it? Other medical application?
Speaker 3: I wish I had a good answer for that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I could guess, but I don't know. Probably is perhaps
Speaker 3: people who are having like a bone marror issues, bone cancer,
Speaker 3: interesting things of that nature. Perhaps some of exactly things
Speaker 3: of that nature. So that's where he goes. He goes
Speaker 3: to a pharmacy in Switzerland. He picks himself up some EPO.
Speaker 3: He then begins to perform subcutaneous injections of EPO on
Speaker 3: his own. No, like Belgian massage therapist. You just I
Speaker 3: got this one.
Speaker 2: Jabb it is there? Or what if they like sell
Speaker 2: it like in a can like Monster energy drink, like
Speaker 2: crack it over, drink, chugging that epo.
Speaker 3: Keep that thought in mind. No, as a Hincapy recalls,
Speaker 3: I had made up my mind if I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a professional cyclist, I had to do this.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I remember professional cycling and events like the Tour de
Speaker 3: France is a team sport. If you're not doing what
Speaker 3: all you can to win well, the team will find
Speaker 3: someone who will. You don't want to be have like
Speaker 3: Lance mad at you because you're not willing to inject
Speaker 3: an experimental drug. Also, it seemed to Hincapy that all
Speaker 3: the teams were doing it. So how could that be
Speaker 3: cheating per se if they're all doing it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like a baseline for it.
Speaker 3: There's a fun aspect of EPO is that you need
Speaker 3: to keep it cold, which meant that starting in ninety
Speaker 3: five ninety six, suddenly everyone in cycling is beginning to
Speaker 3: carry thermises with them.
Speaker 2: No, no, like Stanley cups.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's exactly end and not just that. They also
Speaker 3: had full on coolers like some of them were dragging.
Speaker 3: Answered by yeah, exactly so, as Hincapi explains, guys began
Speaker 3: carrying around coolers and coffee thermiss with ice in them.
Speaker 3: I generally recall it, almost everyone on our team had
Speaker 3: a thermis. That's incredible, right, So thanks to EPO. Hincapi
Speaker 3: also noted that our performance began to improve. Lance started
Speaker 3: to do better. So now team leader Lance isn't going
Speaker 3: to be pissed at him on the van back to
Speaker 3: the hotel, and hin Kapi isn't going to get replaced
Speaker 3: right now. Remember when I mentioned the Festina affair. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: well it comes back into play because even if it
Speaker 3: felt like everyone's using EPO, it's still illegal. So back
Speaker 3: to Hincapy and I quote, I recall that in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight at the Tour de Front, the team staff
Speaker 3: was very afraid of police attention given to doping as
Speaker 3: a result of the Festina team having been caught with
Speaker 3: doping substances. So what does that mean in real world.
Speaker 2: The practical terms speaking to English.
Speaker 3: Well, as Hincapy tells it, drugs were dumped overboard when
Speaker 3: the ferry carrying the team was making the passage from Ireland,
Speaker 3: where a portion of the tour had been run.
Speaker 2: Yes, so no, they're just jettisoning it.
Speaker 3: Yes, knowing that there were other incidents such as when
Speaker 3: and I quote later during that tour, I was in
Speaker 3: the team camper when team staff flushed drugs down the
Speaker 3: toilet of the team camper.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not going to go very far, well it is.
Speaker 3: It's like liquid, so they can just pour it in and.
Speaker 2: Flush in the tank to now they have to Now
Speaker 2: they have to shoot up everything in the poop tank.
Speaker 3: So they're like teens trying to get rid of flushing
Speaker 3: it in the toilet. So clearly everyone involved knows what
Speaker 3: they're doing. Not only violates the rules of cycling, but
Speaker 3: it's also illegal, as in they have to hide it
Speaker 3: from the police, but they keep right on doping. Elizabeth. Now,
Speaker 3: at this point, both Lance and George Hinkepi are riding
Speaker 3: for the US Postal Service cycling team, which is known
Speaker 3: to be the best team in the world at this point.
Speaker 3: And it isn't just EPO that the team is injecting.
Speaker 3: As Hincapy tells it, I recall using testosterone pills and
Speaker 3: HGH to recover after stages of the race and using EPO,
Speaker 3: so there's everything. Yeah, they're just a little like pharmacies
Speaker 3: on wheels. So if you are, you know, into knowing
Speaker 3: what all these acronyms are. HGH is short for human
Speaker 3: growth hormone, So these cyclists are using a cocktail of
Speaker 3: human growth hormone, testosterone, and red blood stimulant aka EPO. Now,
Speaker 3: the testosterone they were using is nicknamed the oil because
Speaker 3: of this. The steroid andreol, which came in these red
Speaker 3: gel caps, gets mixed with olive oil so that the
Speaker 3: riders can swallow it and have it be absorbed by
Speaker 3: the body. So as Hincapy puts it, many on the
Speaker 3: team carried around little vials or bottles with this testosterone
Speaker 3: olive oil mixture. So now they got like thermoces of EPO.
Speaker 3: They got vials and bottles of olive oil mixture with
Speaker 3: the testosterone. Oh man. So the way that the cycling
Speaker 3: world tests for blood doping cheaters is to check a
Speaker 3: writer's amadecriate level sir okay. So this is a medical
Speaker 3: term for the percentage of red blood cells in the blood.
Speaker 3: So this means doctor Ferrari and others like him had
Speaker 3: to keep track of the writer's red blood cell count
Speaker 3: and know what their baseline was, and then they had
Speaker 3: to ensure that the red blood cell count stayed below
Speaker 3: a certain threshold, and if they got close to that threshold,
Speaker 3: the writers would inject saline infusions to bring it down.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, percentage wise. So you add that to
Speaker 3: the list that are also injecting saline, which is just saltwater.
Speaker 3: Yeah the blood, Yeah exactly. So they got another substance
Speaker 3: they got to keep on the van anyway, now that
Speaker 3: the performance enhancing drugs had become rife and professional cycling.
Speaker 3: This is the same time when in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 3: Lance wins his first of seven in a row tour
Speaker 3: de Front's Championships.
Speaker 2: Oh so this is so he started way okay. I
Speaker 2: thought in my mind he was like doing the doping
Speaker 2: like a couple wins in no.
Speaker 3: Ramping up into it. So you better believe Lance is
Speaker 3: now downing all the EPO and the oil he could
Speaker 3: get his hands on. Because back to George Hincapy and
Speaker 3: a race in Spain in two thousand, Lance indicated to
Speaker 3: me he had taken testosterone. Lance told me he was
Speaker 3: feeling good and recovered that he had just taken some oil.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Also, being that their teammates, Hincapy helped Lance to avoid
Speaker 3: the drug testers that would come around and ask for
Speaker 3: blood work from the riders for testing. He tells this
Speaker 3: one story and I quote when I heard that drug
Speaker 3: testing of officials were at the hotel, I texted Lance
Speaker 3: to warn him to avoid the place. As a result,
Speaker 3: Lance dropped out of the race.
Speaker 2: Dropped out in order to avoid this wasn't.
Speaker 3: So it was Lance who first put his teammate Hincapy
Speaker 3: in touch with old doctor Ferrari, who then turned him
Speaker 3: onto the new practice of blood doping via blood replacement,
Speaker 3: wherein blood would be taken out of the body and
Speaker 3: then reinfused just right before the race. So exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: instead of having to put EPO, you're creating more blood
Speaker 3: cells in your bone marrow and have that come out
Speaker 3: into the blood. They're just taking blood out and then
Speaker 3: putting it back in. And so now you got extra blood,
Speaker 3: extra oxygen, carrying red blood cells, and it's all yours,
Speaker 3: so good luck finding it.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, yes, and this is.
Speaker 3: All under the direction of doctor Ferrari. His program of
Speaker 3: blood extraction and replacement cost about fifteen thousand dollars for
Speaker 3: the entire racing season. Now, if you multiplied it's affordable. No,
Speaker 3: not bad. But if you multiply that fifteen grand by
Speaker 3: several riders, possibly you know, dozens and dozens, doctor Ferrari
Speaker 3: was making a pretty penny off for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the best part about blood doping versus performance and
Speaker 3: nanting drugs like EPO and testosteron HGH is there's no
Speaker 3: test for your own drawn blood so you can just
Speaker 3: replace it. And also the costs are really low. He's
Speaker 3: just buying some syringes and a couple of blood bags.
Speaker 3: It's not like he has to go and like buy
Speaker 3: EPO at the pharmacy in Switzerland. So now this is
Speaker 3: where Lance Armstrong's blood doping scandal gets its name. Over time,
Speaker 3: he graduates from performance and enancing drugs to hot swapping
Speaker 3: his own blood. Nuts. Okay, now it's time to dive
Speaker 3: deeper into the scandal and see how it all comes
Speaker 3: crashing down. But first, let's check some ads and when
Speaker 3: we're back we'll get to Lance and his blood doping ways.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, we're back, Elizabeth, Yes we are. Now.
Speaker 2: First, I have a confession, mate, I was doping before
Speaker 2: this recording.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering why you had that bag hanging in.
Speaker 2: No, I went I took three Adsville.
Speaker 3: Oh that kind of blood doping.
Speaker 2: Now, granted, I would much rather prefer like dead stock kuludes. However,
Speaker 2: you may do with what you have. Sure, so I
Speaker 2: am on. I'm on ibuprofen right now.
Speaker 3: Would you be slur your words if you had like
Speaker 3: the quailude you want? But I have to like rouse
Speaker 3: you a couple of times.
Speaker 2: I know you'd be like Elizabeth, why are you so amazing?
Speaker 2: Everything you say is perfect? Sparkling badger, Oh yeah, sparkle
Speaker 2: neely sparkle, Oh my god, yeah that would be amazing. Okay,
Speaker 2: well I feel like I would be at like my
Speaker 2: optimal form on kulud.
Speaker 3: Really Okay, I'll take your word for it. I'm just like,
Speaker 3: give me a peanutut and jelly sandwich. We got to go.
Speaker 3: You're like, I want dead stock.
Speaker 2: They don't make him anymore. I never had a chance
Speaker 2: to try ump, Sarah.
Speaker 3: So how do you know good for just know in
Speaker 3: my bone, in my blood trust from your reincarnated form.
Speaker 3: You're just like once you know what's on, you know,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like you know, just like I know that
Speaker 2: I would probably be like a total badass in like
Speaker 2: renis like mid Renaissance Italy. So I think I would
Speaker 2: just like I'd be bossing everyone around. I would dominate you.
Speaker 3: You project yourself in a position of power, are Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're not like a peasident.
Speaker 2: Maybe I start as one that I don't end up
Speaker 2: as if I also.
Speaker 3: One of those poison rings. You're just getting rid of
Speaker 3: the people. Okay, well, you'll want to know how we
Speaker 3: know that Lance Armstrong cheated and he used this EPO
Speaker 3: and the testacer on the HGH and finally went to
Speaker 3: blood doping to win his records Tour de Front's victories.
Speaker 3: These are great questions, Elizabeth. Well, we have obviously eyewitness accounts,
Speaker 3: because namely his teammates, they all know what he's doing,
Speaker 3: especially a man named that's right, George Hinkepie. So in
Speaker 3: his deposition he recalls how he traveled to Belgium and
Speaker 3: to Spain to begin a program of blood doping under
Speaker 3: medical supervision. And he'd meet in a hotel room like
Speaker 3: he was having like a secret affair, only instead of
Speaker 3: meeting a paramore, he'd meet a doctor, a man named
Speaker 3: doctor del Morale, and one day, in a Spanish apartment
Speaker 3: he rented while he was.
Speaker 2: Training doctor dem he witnessed pretty.
Speaker 3: Much he witnessed Lance do the exact same thing, the
Speaker 3: blood doping. However, rather than let me read you another
Speaker 3: quote from Hankapy, Elizabeth, close your eyes.
Speaker 2: My ass closed.
Speaker 3: I'd like you to picture it. The year is two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. You are professional cyclist George Hankeappy at
Speaker 3: the moment. You are in a hotel room in Herona, Spain.
Speaker 3: You've come back to this famous hub for professional cycling training.
Speaker 3: It's been a long and tiring day. You're now lying
Speaker 3: down and you're rented apartment, allowing your body the time
Speaker 3: it needs for recovery. And then you hear your phone ring.
Speaker 3: You wonder who could it possibly be calling you. You
Speaker 3: reach over with your weary muscles to answer the phone.
Speaker 3: On the other end is your teammate, Lance Armstrong. You
Speaker 3: greet him and ask what's up. Lance gets right to
Speaker 3: the point. He tells you he needs to ask a favor,
Speaker 3: and then, in hushed tones, he tells you that he
Speaker 3: has guests in his apartment. He wants to know if
Speaker 3: he can slip out come over to yours to do
Speaker 3: something that he says is private. You're quick to say,
Speaker 3: of course, Lance, come on over. Before he gets to
Speaker 3: your apartment, you quickly tidy up. You pull your d
Speaker 3: jerseys and bike shorts off the shower bar in your bathroom.
Speaker 3: You tuck them away in a drawer in a bureau.
Speaker 3: You clean up your old pizza boxes. You're empty protein
Speaker 3: bar wrappers. You toss all that in the trash. You
Speaker 3: also straighten up your cycling magazines and the one stray
Speaker 3: magazine on fly fishing that you picked up at the airport.
Speaker 3: You get the place in order just before you hear
Speaker 3: a knock at the door. You open the door and
Speaker 3: are surprised to see it's not just Lance. He's brought
Speaker 3: someone with him. It's a doctor. You recognize, doctor del Morale,
Speaker 3: a physician you've worked with in the past to do
Speaker 3: some blood doping. The odd thing is that not that
Speaker 3: he's there on your doorstep, but rather that he's holding
Speaker 3: a blood bag, as in a bag of fresh human blood,
Speaker 3: and based on his sheepish grin, you assume it's a
Speaker 3: bag of Lance's blood. You tell them both please come in.
Speaker 3: Once they step inside, the two men are all business.
Speaker 3: Lance asks if you have a coat hanger he can borrow.
Speaker 3: You say, of course, and you go to your bedroom
Speaker 3: to grab one. You slide open the closet and retrieve
Speaker 3: a coat hanger. You don't need to wonder what the
Speaker 3: hangar is for, because you know so it's not for
Speaker 3: the doctor to hang up his coat. You know it's
Speaker 3: for the blood bag. Once you hand over the coat
Speaker 3: hanger to Lance, he grins at you, and he says,
Speaker 3: thanks buddy. Then he gives a head nod to the doctor,
Speaker 3: indicating for the physician to follow him, which he does.
Speaker 3: Lance and the doctor step into your bedroom and shut
Speaker 3: the door behind them, And then for the next forty
Speaker 3: five minutes, you sit on the couch in your living room.
Speaker 3: You turn on the radio, You flip through the magazine
Speaker 3: on fly fishing. You note the slow passage of time,
Speaker 3: but you also know that around forty five minutes they
Speaker 3: should be done, since you know that's how long it
Speaker 3: takes to reinfuse a human body with a blood bag.
Speaker 3: You know that because you've done it. You also know
Speaker 3: that behind that closed bedroom door, if you were to
Speaker 3: open it, you'd find the coat hanger with the suspended
Speaker 3: blood bag taped to a wall as it drains Lance's
Speaker 3: blood back into his body. You don't need to wonder,
Speaker 3: You know exactly what's going down. After the forty five
Speaker 3: minutes pass, you hear the door to your bedroom open,
Speaker 3: and outsteps the doctor and a refreshed looking Lance, flush
Speaker 3: with his own blood. No one says anything about what
Speaker 3: just went down behind the closed bedroom door, because everyone knows.
Speaker 3: Lance gives you a wide smile and thanks you for
Speaker 3: the use of your apartment. He hands you back to
Speaker 3: the coat hanger. He says he'll see you later, buddy,
Speaker 3: and with that they leave. Meanwhile, you stare at the
Speaker 3: coat hanger in your hands, wondering if you should keep
Speaker 3: it somewhere special. I mean, that coat hanger once held
Speaker 3: Lance Armstrong's blood bag. So there you go, Elizabeth, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the vampire blood doping.
Speaker 2: I love him, just showing up at the door holding
Speaker 2: like it's not even in like a cooler.
Speaker 3: No, he's just like, here's the blood, strutting around with
Speaker 3: the bag of blood, and no one will ask questions
Speaker 3: about this doctor. This is the eyewitness evidence of Lance
Speaker 3: Armstrong's blood doping program. But that wasn't the only time you,
Speaker 3: I mean, George witnessed his teammate's blood doping. In two
Speaker 3: thousand and four at the Tour de France. He watched
Speaker 3: as his teammates on the team bus received blood transfusions.
Speaker 3: They're like, are these windows tinted?
Speaker 2: Just chugging along down the highway.
Speaker 3: It was like a bring your own coat hanger party.
Speaker 3: The next year, in two thousand and five, at Lance's
Speaker 3: final victorious Tour de France, his teammate George Incipe told
Speaker 3: Lance he needed some fresh cool EPO, and Lance replied
Speaker 3: that he could help him out with some from his
Speaker 3: own personal supply. He then handed over two chilled vials
Speaker 3: of EPO. So he was well aware about Lance's use
Speaker 3: of EPO and the blood doping via blood bags. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not all, Elizabeth. He was also aware of his
Speaker 3: teammates using cortizone, and he recalled that back in ninety nine,
Speaker 3: Lance had tested positive for a cordico steroid at the
Speaker 3: Tour de France, but that Lance excused it away by
Speaker 3: explaining that he used a cortizone cream to treat saddle sores,
Speaker 3: which he assumed was an excuse that he had hid
Speaker 3: the fact he actually received courtesan ejections, which were frequently
Speaker 3: given by the team doctors to assist writers with their performance.
Speaker 3: So all the performance enhancing methods of cheating were so
Speaker 3: common for Lance's team that the next year the Tour
Speaker 3: de France. In two thousand, as Hinkulpee reported and I quote,
Speaker 3: French law enforcement had commenced an investigation regarding medical waste
Speaker 3: dumped by the US Postal Service team staff.
Speaker 2: The medical taste French cops.
Speaker 3: Were following around looking through their trash, going dore any
Speaker 3: blood bags in here.
Speaker 2: What's crazy is it's like did you get a cortisone shot?
Speaker 2: But then it's like you see like in American football,
Speaker 2: they put him in a tent and god knows what
Speaker 2: they show up with like their legs half off and
Speaker 2: they you can do it. Yeah, it's like you can
Speaker 2: play on a broken shin.
Speaker 3: You've ever been to a racetrack when a horse goes
Speaker 3: down and they bring out that white tent and then
Speaker 3: they like in the horse when they first got the
Speaker 3: blue tents. That's what I kept thinking of.
Speaker 2: I was just like, this is King Charles was like
Speaker 2: his corent. They put him in the tent and toof
Speaker 2: and anointed him with oil and touched it.
Speaker 3: When the French police did find evidence of the substance,
Speaker 3: called active virgin or active vegan UH, it's used to
Speaker 3: increase circulation of blood in dustin and enhance writer's performance,
Speaker 3: Lance and his team claimed that it was used to
Speaker 3: treat saddle rash, which, as Hincapie recalled, was a false
Speaker 3: claim that was quote made to the media and others
Speaker 3: during the course of the French investigation. So he's just
Speaker 3: telling all this.
Speaker 2: This is all about my saddlebag.
Speaker 3: Seriously. There are other teammates who also recalled Lance's commitment
Speaker 3: to performance enhanced excellence, such as Levy Leipheimer, who said
Speaker 3: in a deposition that he remembered a time when in
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine or twenty ten, after Lance came
Speaker 3: back to the sport and I quote discussing with Lance
Speaker 3: a theoretical new drug being discussed in the media. I
Speaker 3: asked him if he knew anything about it. His response was,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm always down for it, at which I
Speaker 3: understood him to be saying that he was always willing
Speaker 3: to try a new doping product.
Speaker 2: That's like me with vaccines.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm always down for whatever you have back there.
Speaker 3: I'll tax me up. The Elizabeth Tutton story tax to
Speaker 3: the max. Okay, So, how does this carnival of organized
Speaker 3: cheating and professional cycling finally come to an end?
Speaker 2: How does it?
Speaker 3: Great question, Lizie So. And also there's the other question
Speaker 3: of how did the authorities finally gather enough evidence to
Speaker 3: prove Lance was using performance dancing drugs for his record
Speaker 3: seven straight victories? Another great question, elizabe Bank it. So
Speaker 3: the story goes after years and years of talk around
Speaker 3: the cycling world and the people who spent time near it,
Speaker 3: the story really breaks when finally some journalists put all
Speaker 3: the talk together and they write this whole last book
Speaker 3: about the widespread doping scandal and professional cycling. In two
Speaker 3: thousand and four, David Walsh and Pierre Balistaire, they published
Speaker 3: this book La Confidential, Lay secrets de Lance Armstrong. You
Speaker 3: get it, lance Armstrong Confidential. So their book featured a
Speaker 3: former insider to Lance Armstrong's world. This woman named Emma O'Reilly.
Speaker 3: Now Emma was Lance Armstrong's soner and she claimed that
Speaker 3: when Lance tested positive for cordico steroids in ninety nine
Speaker 3: at the Tour de France, his first win, the team
Speaker 3: created this backdated prescription for saddle sore treatment. So he
Speaker 3: was lying about lesions on his taint to pass a
Speaker 3: drug test, essentially. So that's just one of those moments
Speaker 3: where you have to know you've crossed over another line.
Speaker 3: If like me, you're wondering what's the soneer, I'm glad
Speaker 3: you asked Elizabeth. It's French and it means one who
Speaker 3: provides care. So in the cycling world is like a
Speaker 3: personal assistant or kind of like a squire for a
Speaker 3: knight in armor. Right, they attend to all their needs.
Speaker 3: But the Sogner like not only do they totally take
Speaker 3: care of a professional cyclist, I mean they prepare their
Speaker 3: special foods. They feed them sometimes like hand feed them,
Speaker 3: like they're doing other baby. Yeah. They lay out their
Speaker 3: little clean spandex fun suits for biking a bird. When
Speaker 3: the cyclist is done for the day, they would also
Speaker 3: take their sweaty likeer leotards and wash them for them,
Speaker 3: and then they would massage their sore bodies and prepare
Speaker 3: them for the next day. It's an intimate.
Speaker 2: Relationship, Tiger, That's exactly what it is. He's like, I've
Speaker 2: got a rash on my bingo.
Speaker 3: Wing rubbed me. So when is son Emma O'Reilly says something.
Speaker 3: It's coming from a place of trusted intimacy and proximity.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, she's seen a lot, right, basically, she saw.
Speaker 3: It hurt just about everything but the bloodbags so only
Speaker 3: because that came later. Yeah, but she did dispose of
Speaker 3: syringes for Lance, and she saw his saddle sores, and
Speaker 3: she knew if Lance actually needed treatment for his taint
Speaker 3: or not. And when he said he did, he did not.
Speaker 3: And in fact, according to her, once the business about
Speaker 3: the whole backdated prescription thing happened, Lance told her, now, Emma,
Speaker 3: you know enough to bring me down. Oh god, So
Speaker 3: he knew that. She knew as well.
Speaker 2: She's like, I'm gonna hold you to it.
Speaker 3: So this book with its insider accounts, but there was
Speaker 3: others too that I'm not gonna get into. But there's
Speaker 3: other people who are also like, oh, I've seen him
Speaker 3: do stuff. You don't want to know about it.
Speaker 4: He was like, I hope you never have to tell
Speaker 4: anyone about this little ruin man.
Speaker 3: So these shocking allegations start to scandal in the cycling world.
Speaker 3: Newspapers start commissioning articles to look into the claims of
Speaker 3: widespread drug use and experimental substances being injective and professional
Speaker 3: athletes and all the cutting edge performance and anting drugs,
Speaker 3: especially the ones the out Let's in Europe and for instance,
Speaker 3: the Sunday Times in the UK. They published sections of
Speaker 3: the book and most like the most scandalous allegations about Lance,
Speaker 3: and he then sued the newspaper for libel and he won.
Speaker 3: They settled out of court la. Oh yeah, but not
Speaker 3: only that these lawyers or embarrassars, I guess in the
Speaker 3: legal counsel right for the newspaper. They eventually put out
Speaker 3: a statement apologizing to Lance. The statement was, and I
Speaker 3: quote the Sunday Times is confirmed to mister Armstrong that
Speaker 3: it never intended to accuse him of being guilty of
Speaker 3: taking any performance in dancing drugs and sincerely apologized for
Speaker 3: any such impression.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, the authors of the book La Confidentially Secrets
Speaker 3: Day Lance Armstrong, they doubled down. They're like down with
Speaker 3: this raynom fraid to you sus in France. So the reporters,
Speaker 3: David Walsh and Pierre Batista, they published a second book
Speaker 3: with fresh allegations about Lance Armstrong's cheating the experimental drug use. Yeah,
Speaker 3: their first book was still having an effect on the world.
Speaker 3: Because there's this company in Dallas, Lance's hometown. They didn't
Speaker 3: want to have to pay Lance the five million dollars
Speaker 3: that they owed him, so the company SCA Promotions, had
Speaker 3: agreed to pay a bonus if Lance Armstrong won his
Speaker 3: sixth Tour de France in a row, which he did
Speaker 3: in two thousand and four. However, the president of SCA
Speaker 3: Promotions read La Confidential and he used the claims in
Speaker 3: the book to get out of paying the five million dollars.
Speaker 3: So then they start fighting over his five million dollars
Speaker 3: and he goes to an arbitration panel. Depositions get taken
Speaker 3: and recorded. The final ruling was SCA had to pony
Speaker 3: up the five mil. Really, but get this, Elizabeth, All
Speaker 3: of this was just an initial feint, like a headfake
Speaker 3: by the president of SCA Promotions, this cat named Bob Hammond.
Speaker 3: He didn't really care if he won or lost before
Speaker 3: the arbitration panel. What he really wanted to do was
Speaker 3: to trigger an investigation by some bigger authorities who would
Speaker 3: then ultimately investigate discover Lance was indeed doping using all
Speaker 3: the performance ancing drug he'd get his hands on, and
Speaker 3: then Lance would be banned professional cycling, he would lose
Speaker 3: his Tour de France victories, he would lose his records,
Speaker 3: and once he was no longer a six time winner
Speaker 3: of the Tour de France, then Bob Hammond of SCA
Speaker 3: Promotions wouldn't have to pay him the contested five million dollars.
Speaker 3: He was playing that.
Speaker 2: Long day long that's what I call it, like.
Speaker 3: A world class chess masterman in the world of cheapskate chess.
Speaker 3: And it works because soon enough there's this growing body
Speaker 3: of evidence Lance Armstrong is no wonder boy. For instance,
Speaker 3: the depositions from the SCA Promotions arbitration become public such
Speaker 3: that the French newspaper Lamonde they publish allegations from Frankie Andrew,
Speaker 3: who was Lance Armstrong's teammate, and not only that, he
Speaker 3: was the team captain for US Postal Service cycling team
Speaker 3: for three years ninety eight, ninety nine and two thousand
Speaker 3: and Andrew he had also raced against Lance in the
Speaker 3: ninety six Summer Olympics, so he knew him well, and
Speaker 3: he claimed that after the Lance had had brain surgery
Speaker 3: back in ninety six, Lance admitted that he'd taken performance
Speaker 3: in handsOn rug surgery. Yeah, so according to Andrew, the
Speaker 3: captain of Lance's cycling team, he said, and I quote,
Speaker 3: the doctor asked him a few questions, nothing, and then
Speaker 3: one of the questions he asked was have you ever
Speaker 3: used any performance enhancing drugs? And Lance said yes. And
Speaker 3: the doctor asked, okay, what are they? And Lance said
Speaker 3: human growth hormone, cortozon, EPO, steroids, testosterone, So boom. Now
Speaker 3: Lance has a real problem. People keep saying that the
Speaker 3: seven time winner of the Tour de France is a
Speaker 3: star attraction and the dope show. And it's not just people,
Speaker 3: it's the people closest to him, it's his suner, it's
Speaker 3: the team captain, his teammates. So in two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: another book is published about the doping allegations against Lance Armstrong.
Speaker 3: It's this guy, an author named Dan Coyle, and he
Speaker 3: writes the book with the title and I'm gonna need
Speaker 3: a breath for this Lance Armstrong's War, one man's battle
Speaker 3: against fate, fame, love, death, scandal, and a few other
Speaker 3: rivals on the road to the Tour de France.
Speaker 2: Oh, I feel like I could get cut down.
Speaker 3: Right, Like that is what you call it?
Speaker 2: Title right, call it lamp in thermal lambs.
Speaker 3: In his book. As he explained to MPR in two
Speaker 3: thousand and five, the allegations against Lance were still not
Speaker 3: quite conclusive. So however, Coyle's big new reveal was that
Speaker 3: the French authorities who sanctioned professional cyclists for the Tour
Speaker 3: de France, they went back to an old urine sample
Speaker 3: from ninety nine, and they tested it with the new
Speaker 3: latest testing that they had in two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: and wouldn't you know it, Elizabeth Lance's urine sample tested
Speaker 3: positive for EPO and this was curious because EPO was
Speaker 3: never tested four back in ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Wait, so they keep all the far back to the urine.
Speaker 2: It has to work in that warehouse, obtain.
Speaker 3: The samples their electricity bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like all climate control goes back to the sixties. One.
Speaker 3: That's a good point because there were questions about their paperwork.
Speaker 3: Was this even his urine sample? Can you prove this? Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you know, like the chain of custody right.
Speaker 2: So through to the poison trait.
Speaker 3: So Lance Armstrong posted on his website that this was
Speaker 3: a witch hunt and that this was quote tabloid journalism.
Speaker 3: This is because the term fake news did not exist yet.
Speaker 3: Otherwise I'm sure he would have just said that all
Speaker 3: about it, because he also said, in no uncertain terms,
Speaker 3: I will simply restate what I've said many times. I
Speaker 3: have never taken performance enhancing drugs. So he's kind of
Speaker 3: like a mixture of like Clinton and Trump at this
Speaker 3: point where he's like, I have never had sexual relations
Speaker 3: with that woman. It's fake news. So Lance didn't denies it. Right.
Speaker 3: This makes it a nationalistic question of belief because Europeans, French,
Speaker 3: the Italians, the British, they tended to believe the allegations
Speaker 3: were true. But not over here in America. As the
Speaker 3: author Coyle told NPR in two thousand and five, he
Speaker 3: cited this recent poll that seventy two percent of Americans
Speaker 3: believed Lancet Ormstrong was innocent of these allegations against him
Speaker 3: by Europeans.
Speaker 2: Good gun.
Speaker 3: So at this point people start calling for more tests,
Speaker 3: new fresh tests, more facts to settle things, which means
Speaker 3: more investigations, bigger, more public investigations. Enter the World Anti
Speaker 3: Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee. They said, test
Speaker 3: is but in more polite terms, So do to this.
Speaker 3: To this building pressure, the Union cyclist Internacionale aka the UCI,
Speaker 3: which is the international governing body for cycling, they launch
Speaker 3: an investigation under pressure from the IOC and the WADA,
Speaker 3: World Anti Doping Agency. So get this, Elizabeth. The investigators
Speaker 3: for the UCI, they determined that the charges against Lance
Speaker 3: should be dropped due to poor handling of his urine samples,
Speaker 3: improper labeling and testing, et cetera. The governing body decides
Speaker 3: to look the other way when it comes to their
Speaker 3: biggest star in cycling history. Oh yeah, So instead, the
Speaker 3: International Olympics Committee, their ethics commission, they publicly censured the
Speaker 3: president of the World Anti Doping Agency, this man named
Speaker 3: Dick Pound. They punished him for leveling the allegations of
Speaker 3: wrongdoing against Lance. He's right, but they punish him. Take that,
Speaker 3: Dick Pound. So this was the end of two thousand
Speaker 3: and five. Now this is where fate with a capital
Speaker 3: left gets kind of funny because the very next year,
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, Lance is retired. It's the first
Speaker 3: Tour de France without Lance, and so his former teammate,
Speaker 3: the cyclist Floyd Landis, decides to cheat and use epodes
Speaker 3: like everybody's doing it right, And I mean, can you
Speaker 3: blame him? I mean, Lance has just gotten away from
Speaker 3: watching the governing body is clearly sweeping it under the rug.
Speaker 3: So floyd Landis he goes and he's he's doing great.
Speaker 3: He wins the seventeenth stage of the two thousand and
Speaker 3: six Tour de France and then oh no, his urine
Speaker 3: tests positive for synthetic testosterone, so he has to leave
Speaker 3: the race, and this launches a series of investigations and
Speaker 3: denials and counter accusations and even some criminal computer hacking
Speaker 3: by Floyd Landis. We won't get into all that because
Speaker 3: it ain't his story. But finally, in twenty ten, Landis
Speaker 3: confesses in a bunch of emails to his sponsors and
Speaker 3: of the cycling authorities that it's all true. He and
Speaker 3: Lance and many other cyclists had all been doping and
Speaker 3: taking synthetic testosterone, experimental drugs.
Speaker 2: You name it, right.
Speaker 3: Then Floyd Landis turns around and filed his own lawsuit
Speaker 3: against Lance, citing the False Claims Act, which I didn't
Speaker 3: know about this, but it's a wild move because he's
Speaker 3: claiming that, as a taxpayer in the United States, his
Speaker 3: fellow citizen has wilfully defrauded the federal government and he's
Speaker 3: suing on behalf of the government.
Speaker 2: Wow. Right, that's some legal maneuvering totally.
Speaker 3: So the Wall Street Journal is all over this one.
Speaker 3: The newspaper reports on the originally sealed lawsuit in which
Speaker 3: Floyd Landis sued Lance Armstrong for defrauding the US Postal Service,
Speaker 3: their former sponsor yes, right.
Speaker 2: So shouldn't cross the postal service?
Speaker 3: You know this, Elizabeth. He basically accused Lance of mail
Speaker 3: fraud and you know what that means. We know he's
Speaker 3: in for it now, so they're gonna get you from
Speaker 3: mail fraud. And the FEDS did indeed come after Lance,
Speaker 3: So the Just Department now launches their own investigation, like,
Speaker 3: get out of the way, cyclists, we're on this, but
Speaker 3: not only them, it's also the Food and Drug Administration
Speaker 3: they get in because of all the experimental drugs Lance
Speaker 3: is allegedly taking and.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ferrari stargling with samples exactly.
Speaker 3: At this point, Lance rightly begins to panic because the
Speaker 3: Justice Department was not making millions and billions off of Lance, so,
Speaker 3: unlike the governing body of professional cycling, the Feds were
Speaker 3: unlikely to turn their head or sweep anything under a rug,
Speaker 3: especially when he's cheating and taking their money. So his
Speaker 3: teammate George Hincapee remembers running into Lance at the twenty
Speaker 3: ten Tour de France and his federal investigation came up, like, hey,
Speaker 3: how's that going. Yeah, So Hinkupe told Lance that the
Speaker 3: FEDS had approached him and wanted him to tell all
Speaker 3: he knew, which would be bad for Lance. It would
Speaker 3: be bad for both of them. As hink Apee remembers it, quote,
Speaker 3: Lance said that maybe I should stay in Europe a
Speaker 3: little longer. I understood by this that he wanted me
Speaker 3: to stay off the government's radar and was asking me
Speaker 3: to avoid testifying as long as I could. Still exactly,
Speaker 3: I'll pay for I got to you to nice, nice
Speaker 3: yetto so. His other teammate, Levy Lee Pimer, was also
Speaker 3: subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury for testimony, and
Speaker 3: he did appear, and he didn't lie. He told the truth,
Speaker 3: the whole truth of nothing but the truth. And then,
Speaker 3: wouldn't you know it, Just after he testified before the
Speaker 3: grand jury, he went to dinner with Lance and he
Speaker 3: ended up sitting next to him. At this point, Lance Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: he basically turns into like Tupac as Bishop and Juice,
Speaker 3: because when he shows up, you're like, oh, everything's about
Speaker 3: to get real intense. So, as Levi lap Peimer recalls it,
Speaker 3: Lance was very cold towards me, and I figured that
Speaker 3: he had learned of my grand jury testimony during the
Speaker 3: course of that dinner. Although he did not speak to me.
Speaker 3: Lance sent a text to my wife Odessa that said run,
Speaker 3: don't walk. What Yes? And it wasn't like Lance was
Speaker 3: texting his wife often. He never texted her, not for years.
Speaker 3: He just happened to still have her number. So when
Speaker 3: she gets this text out of the she felt appropriately threatened. Yeah,
Speaker 3: at this point, Lance can't stop what's coming. He's gonna try, though,
Speaker 3: So there were too many people who knew his secrets.
Speaker 3: There were his teammates, people who knew the truth about
Speaker 3: his saddle sores, people who'd loaned him a coat hanger
Speaker 3: for a blood bag, people who had taken some thermost
Speaker 3: chilled EPO from him.
Speaker 2: All right, people.
Speaker 3: The federal investigation it last for two years, and the
Speaker 3: guy running it was this guy named Jeff Novitzky, who'd
Speaker 3: already had success investigating Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and
Speaker 3: their performance enhancing drug use in baseball and why they're
Speaker 3: not in the Hall of Fame. And then would you
Speaker 3: believe it? Elizabeth? In February twenty twelve, the Feds dropped
Speaker 3: their investigation to make matters even more hanky. The Department
Speaker 3: of Justice offered no explanation for their choice to drop
Speaker 3: the investigation and to drop any related charges. When the
Speaker 3: press went to Novitzky and said, hey man, what happened,
Speaker 3: He's like, no comment, no comments.
Speaker 2: So this is one in those run, don't walk, because.
Speaker 3: They'd already taken out two the biggest stars in baseball.
Speaker 3: Cycling was not a big sport in America. But they're
Speaker 3: like the US Postal Service, we don't need this kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2: They were all wearing live strong bracelets from the embarrassed.
Speaker 3: They pulled their sleeves hiding so inter Now, the US
Speaker 3: Anti Doping Agency, right, which is not related to the
Speaker 3: FEDS at all. The us ADA is a quote nonprofit,
Speaker 3: non governmental five oh one C three organization and the
Speaker 3: national anti doping organization for the United States, so similar
Speaker 3: to the World Anti Doping Agency, just us so. In
Speaker 3: June of twenty twelve, after the FEDS dropped their investigation,
Speaker 3: they announced that they're launching their own investigation, and then
Speaker 3: they went and deposed his former teammates George Incapee and
Speaker 3: Levi Leipheimer, which is what I've been quoting from. Is
Speaker 3: this anyway? When Lance hears that Levi had just testified
Speaker 3: before the us ADA, Lance texted Levi Leipheimer's wife again.
Speaker 3: He's like, he, Odessa, you up? Is not that fun?
Speaker 3: This time he asked are you in California? Oh? This
Speaker 3: was rather terrifying for her because she was in California. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she was home alone while her her husband was traveling
Speaker 3: overseas for cycling. As he put it, the text made
Speaker 3: her feel very vulnerable and there was no legitimate reason
Speaker 3: for Lance to communicate with Odessa. Meanwhile, in retaliation for
Speaker 3: the investigation, Lance sued the us ADA and demanded a
Speaker 3: court to stop them from testing and stop their investigation
Speaker 3: into him. Judge ruled against him and the investigation was
Speaker 3: allowed to proceed. So this is his first loss. Wait,
Speaker 3: the USADA publicly announces that unless Lance cooperates with their investigation,
Speaker 3: he would be banned from cycling and he'd be stripped
Speaker 3: of his record seven straight Tour de France's victories. In response,
Speaker 3: Lance accused the USADA of quote an unconstitutional witch hunt.
Speaker 2: A witch hunt, right.
Speaker 3: So in October of that same year, the USADA they
Speaker 3: published their findings in a two hundred page report, another
Speaker 3: one thousand pages of evidence like you can see exhibiting
Speaker 3: exhibit we needed to come up with new letters.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yes. So in the end, the US Eightya, they came
Speaker 3: right out and they called Lance Armstrong an international drug
Speaker 3: trafficker and a blood doping cheater. Whoa, yeah, they had
Speaker 3: the receipts, though, what are you gonna do? Because and
Speaker 3: then they also they knew all about doctor Ferrari. They
Speaker 3: knew that Lance had given doctor Ferrari more than a
Speaker 3: million dollars over the year. They had the receipts, and
Speaker 3: so Lance insisted he was innocent of all charges against him,
Speaker 3: despite the now overwhelming evidence against him. Didn't matter. Lance
Speaker 3: was summarily banned from international cycling. He was also stripped
Speaker 3: of all of his titles and his victories. Lance swore
Speaker 3: to take it up with the UCI, the governing body
Speaker 3: of international cycling. You're just the US. I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: to the top. Right That same month, though, Lance resigned
Speaker 3: from his charity, Lance Armstrong Foundation, and they were so
Speaker 3: embarrassed they changed their name to Live Strong so that
Speaker 3: no one would associate them with Lance Armstrong. Yeah. The
Speaker 3: Lance at this point also lost all of his sponsors.
Speaker 3: So hours after he resigned from his charity, people were
Speaker 3: like Okay, we see what's going on. Nike dropped him,
Speaker 3: Anheuser Busch dropped him, Radio Shack dropped him, Oakley twenty
Speaker 3: four Hour Fitness. The list went on and on. He
Speaker 3: lost millions upon millions in one day. Wow, Elizabeth. It
Speaker 3: got so bad that Lance was stripped of the key
Speaker 3: to the city of Adelaide in Australia.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I love that they got in on it. Good for them.
Speaker 3: Not only that. PBS is like, let us get a
Speaker 3: kick in too. So there was an episode of Arthur,
Speaker 3: the children's show that he was an animated character. They
Speaker 3: removed the episodes beautiful, I love it all during the
Speaker 3: month of October twenty twelve. Then came November. Sports Illustrated
Speaker 3: had they decided to name him the Anti Sportsman of
Speaker 3: the Year because they have an annual sports sportsman in
Speaker 3: the air. He's the anti sportsman. Lance Armstrong's name was
Speaker 3: now mud. He was a pariah. The hero had fallen
Speaker 3: from grace. The haters emerged to stop on his legend.
Speaker 3: Then the FEDS, the US Justice Department, came back around
Speaker 3: and were like, hey, remember that defrauding of the postal service.
Speaker 3: We're gonna need our money back. So that's how January
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen starts. For him. To get some mercy, maybe
Speaker 3: like get the Feds off his back, or get this
Speaker 3: new federal lawsuit to be killed, Lance turned to the
Speaker 3: one person strong enough to scare off the US Department
Speaker 3: of Justice. He turned to Oprah. Oh, Oprah, So Lance
Speaker 3: goes on her show, and he tells his sad, sob
Speaker 3: story of cheating and defrauding the postal service and about
Speaker 3: all the experimental drugs, the synthetic testosterone, the blood bags
Speaker 3: on coat hangers. Lance said his quote mythic perfect story
Speaker 3: was quote one big lie. Oprah, ate it up right.
Speaker 3: Oprah asked, did you ever take banned substances to enhance
Speaker 3: your cycling performance? Lance answered yes. This was the first
Speaker 3: time Lance publicly admitted he'd use performance enhancing substances. Yeah.
Speaker 3: When Oprah asked him about EPO, he said, yes, blood
Speaker 3: doping another, yes, human growth hormone, yes, testosterone yes. Did
Speaker 3: you use blood doping to win the Tour de France
Speaker 3: in all seven victories? Also? We so? He yeah, unmasked now.
Speaker 3: Oprah asked if it was the testimony of George Hinkapee
Speaker 3: that sealed his fate and Lance told Oprah, my fate
Speaker 3: was sealed by George. If George didn't say it, then
Speaker 3: people would say, I'm sticking with Lance. George is the
Speaker 3: most credible voice in all of this. We're still great friends.
Speaker 3: I don't fault George. George knows the story better than anybody. Now.
Speaker 3: I find that fascinating because it all came down to
Speaker 3: one person, All those hundreds of millions of dollars at risk,
Speaker 3: all those powerful figures willing to look the other way,
Speaker 3: all those folks who were forced to apologize forever alleging
Speaker 3: that Lance had cheated, and it all comes crashing down
Speaker 3: when one person, one teammate, comes clean. And George gained
Speaker 3: nothing by telling the truth. He wasn't trying to get
Speaker 3: out of trouble. He just told the truth, and as
Speaker 3: a result, the whole machine grinds to a painful, costly halt.
Speaker 2: It's a painful, costly right.
Speaker 3: But the Department of Justice did not drop the charges.
Speaker 3: They're like, we don't watch Oprah. They were like about
Speaker 3: that money you owe us? And Lance settled then with
Speaker 3: them for five million dollars that he paid against the
Speaker 3: thirty one million dollars he'd been paid by US Postal Service.
Speaker 2: Now thirty one million.
Speaker 3: There was one other thing I found fascinating. I should
Speaker 3: bring this up to. Yeah, twenty fifteen, the BBC asked
Speaker 3: Lance about his fall from grace and he said that
Speaker 3: if it was nineteen ninety five right now he was
Speaker 3: just starting out, quote, he would probably do it again.
Speaker 2: Wow, because he knows he couldn't otherwise.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get it. I was like, was it just
Speaker 3: because like you got the taste of the seven victories,
Speaker 3: you got that window of basically seven years or however
Speaker 3: you want to count it, like eight nine years of glory.
Speaker 3: So what's a ridiculous takeaway here? Elizabeth?
Speaker 2: You know what It's supposed to be a pure thing,
Speaker 2: cycling m hm, And a lot of things are supposed
Speaker 2: to be pure, but they're not. But it's this idea
Speaker 2: that he would have done it all over again is
Speaker 2: really disappointing. But I guess he knows that he's not
Speaker 2: as great as he thought he was.
Speaker 3: He also knows he's a man. I'm willing to cheat
Speaker 3: for the screens and the applause.
Speaker 2: What about you? What's your takeaway away? Is?
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 3: And I don't mean to make this about me. But
Speaker 3: I'm just making it more about instinct. My instinct was
Speaker 3: I never liked him. I always thought he was a liar.
Speaker 3: I always thought he was a cheater. I don't know
Speaker 3: why I didn't have reason to think that. I wasn't
Speaker 3: around the cycling world in nineteen ninety nine, I could
Speaker 3: just tell yeah, and almost I would say ninety nine
Speaker 3: times out of one hundred, when I have a feeling
Speaker 3: about a person, I'm right, and I've just learned that
Speaker 3: I need to wait for evidence. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: go around telling other people like what I think. But
Speaker 3: if I have the feeling that a person is bs,
Speaker 3: if they are, like, you know, not up to snuff,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna trust it entirely. Because looking back now
Speaker 3: over the numerous celebrities and even personal like you know,
Speaker 3: relationships I have, I'm very rarely wrong about that feeling.
Speaker 3: I'm like, nah, that dudes ain't right. I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is. I don't know if it's just like
Speaker 3: some like old southern boy thing of like that dog
Speaker 3: don't hunt. But I just do like I knew. And
Speaker 3: that's why we had the lass, because I wanted to
Speaker 3: mock him even when he was at the zenith of
Speaker 3: his right. So my dick is takeaway here is listen
Speaker 3: to the little hateration voice inside of you. So true,
Speaker 3: because it's probably right, so true. So you in the
Speaker 3: mood for talkback, we can let this one ride away.
Speaker 2: I am always in the mood for a talkback.
Speaker 3: Oh, oh my god, I love get.
Speaker 5: Hi, Elizabeth Hiseron, It's Keit, your favorite ridiculous ursuitmaker. Never
Speaker 5: thought I'd have a personal ridiculous crime. But Thanksgiving night,
Speaker 5: my stepdad's TCG store got broken into and they stole
Speaker 5: thirty thousand plus dollars of Pokemon and magic card. And
Speaker 5: then later that week another local store get broken into,
Speaker 5: and now the local news is calling him the Pokemon bandit.
Speaker 5: So I really hope they catch him so you can
Speaker 5: cover it, because I feel like it's right up your
Speaker 5: alley anyways, Love you.
Speaker 3: We love you. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I want to hunt this person down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I want to mock him derisively. Yes, that's horrible.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry to hear that.
Speaker 3: He's I'm not a fan of him, like boo that,
Speaker 3: but hey, I'm glad to hear from you. I hope
Speaker 3: all is well. I hope the first kitts are going
Speaker 3: well and you're keeping that thimble on your exactly exactly,
Speaker 3: so Elizabeth, Yeah, do you know where you can find
Speaker 3: us online at Ridiculous Crime on social media? Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: You go to blue Sky, Twitter or Instagram to forget Twitter,
Speaker 3: you know, look around you can find us now. We
Speaker 3: do also have our account Ridiculous Crime pod pod on YouTube.
Speaker 3: That's worth a listen and if you like taking your
Speaker 3: podcast there. We also have our website ridiculous Crime dot com.
Speaker 3: No podcasts there, but plenty of merch merch out the
Speaker 3: wazoo and then also a bunch of fun artwork for you.
Speaker 3: It is been nominated for the Ryan Heisker Boat and
Speaker 3: Best Ale of the Year.
Speaker 2: You're kidding.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they know it's a website, but
Speaker 3: whatever you know. Now, we do love your talkbacks obviously,
Speaker 3: so please go to your heart app download it, leave
Speaker 3: a talkback and maybe you'll hear your voice here. We'd
Speaker 3: love to hear it. Also emails if you want to
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening and
Speaker 3: we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
Speaker 3: by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by
Speaker 3: our own doctor Ferrari Mister Dave Kustin and starring Annalys
Speaker 3: Rutger as Judith. Research is by George Hankape's fan club,
Speaker 3: Marissa Brown and Jabbari Davis. Our theme song is by
Speaker 3: our house band, blood Bag and the Coat Haangers aka
Speaker 3: Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The hosts wardrobe provided by
Speaker 3: Botany five hundred, guest Haarn, makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre.
Speaker 3: Executive producers are the former co directors of the Livestrong Foundation,
Speaker 3: Ben Bolden and Nolan Brown.
Speaker 2: CUI Say It One More Time Crime.
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