#178 - Lance Armstrong: The rise, fall, and growth of a cycling legend

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop. And we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe Now without further delay, here's today's episode.

My guest this week is Lance Armstrong. In this episode, we cover Lance's story, from his humble beginnings in plain Plano, Texas, to his meteoric rise to being arguably one of the most famous athletes in the world at the height of his career. Of course, this is all eclipsed by his equally accelerated fall from grace and the scandal that ensued. In this episode, we go through all aspects of this in detail, including his cancer diagnosis and how that changed his life and all of the things that that ultimately were a part of his sport and the era that he competed in. I realize that many people listening to this might think they have their mind made up about Lance, and that's understandable. I do suggest that it might be worth spending the time to listen to this episode, even if you feel like you have your mind made up about Lance. There are really a number of issues here, including the use of performance enhancing drugs during his time in the Tour de France. And then, of course, there's the lessons that Lance learned as an individual and what he learned about himself and how he treated other people during that time of his life and how he's emerged on the other end of that. So in some ways, it's a story about a redemption, a rise, a fall, and a rise again. So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Lance Armstrong. All right, Lance, thank you for making time today to swing by. Absolutely. How does it feel to be back in Austin?

It's pretty surreal having been here or having lived here for 30 years. I've seen the city change and I saw it change as a cyclist. So I think cyclists see more stuff than most people. And you're always covering ground. You're finding back roads, you get a sense for a town growing. Obviously the roads get more crowded, but you see more construction trucks and you're like, wait, this place is getting built out. And then if you go down the rabbit hole of hearing these offers in the real estate market, it's just this is a different city. Still a great city, though.

The only thing my wife and I could say after moving here is what took us so long before we get into kind of the details of all the stuff I want to talk about. I think it's just sometimes easier if we can get into some hard yes and no questions just so that there's no ambiguity about some of the really important stuff.

Okay, I've been here before.

I think this is going to be familiar to you, but I want you to really limit yourself to a yes or no only. Lance, these are important questions. Is Dura Ace better than Campy super record?

Yes.

Is the greatest innovation in time trialing the aerodynamic water bottle?

No.

Is Edgar Allan Poe the greatest poet of the 19th century?

Sure.

Are today's clinchers as high performing as tubulars? Yes. Is Alberto Contador the greatest cyclist of all time?

Absolutely not.

Can you still ride up Alpe d' Huez in under 45 minutes?

Probably not.

Is the 1985 Oakley Pilot big ass sunglass the greatest shades of all time?

No.

But just yes or no?

No.

Is Pinarello the best bike on the market?

No.

Is George Hincapi the best lieutenant you've ever had?

Absolutely.

Was your grandfather the first man to ride his bike on the moon in 1969?

No.

All right, now that we've got that out of the way, talk to me about Plano. Northeast suburb of Dallas, pretty much straight north.

It lives up to its name. Plano is Spanish for flat. Plano, very flat, very windy. Another community like Austin that's drastically changed. When I was a kid growing up in Plano, leave the house and be out in the fields. And I would head up into Allen and I'd go around Lake Lavon or I would out to Frisco. I mean, now Frisco is one of the fastest growing communities in America. There was only one building out there, and that was the global headquarters for eds. People thought Ross Perot was nuts to build the EDS headquarters there. And now it's, you know, mom's still there, so just going back is crazy. A lot of times I'll always take my bike everywhere, but I'll just kind of ride around and go past Dooley elementary where I went to middle school, and I'll go to. Sorry, elementary school and middle school was Armstrong. I'll just go by these places and just. And look at them through a 50 year old's eyes.

Is it bittersweet, by the way? Because, like, I hate seeing where I grew up. I hate it with a passion. The last time I went back to look at my elementary school, I mean, it just upset me so much.

No, no, no, no. I mean, I think most people have some level of that in their lives. You're allowed to sort of hate where you grew up, I think. I don't want to live there, but it's fine to go back.

See, mom, your birth father is Eddie Gunderson, right?

Mm.

He left you guys when you were 2. Did you ever see him again after that?

Never saw him again.

Did you ever want to?

Well, he's now passed away.

Yeah, he passed away in 2012, if I'm.

No. Maybe around there. And from what I hear, he died of a spider bite. Maybe that led to some other complications, but I never had a desire to sort of reconnect with him for most of my life. And even, of course, now it would be too late. But I might have a different view of that now.

Did he ever reach out to you?

Not directly after the first tour, when in 99, people reached out to him. So a lot of the press and journalists, they wanted this story. I mean, his interviews were just totally inappropriate. You know, the comments about my mom that far down the road, meaning he.

Had disparaging things to say about your mom or.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think Eddie was a Rhodes scholar.

How old were you when she met and or married Terry Armstrong?

So I would have been three or four.

Okay.

Yeah. Right. And so that's where the name comes from. Right. I wasn't born Lance Armstrong. Funny thing is my initials would have been leg if I would have stayed Lance Edward Gunderson. But yeah, she became obviously Linda Armstrong and I became Lance Armstrong.

You've told me stories in the past, and I know you've spoken a bit publicly about Terry and kind of how strict he was and did you ever think of him as a father? Did he feel that way to you in any way, shape or form?

Oh, sure. You know, as a five, six, seven year old kid, you don't know you have your mother. And I knew he wasn't my biological father, but we had a roof over our heads and my mom seemed happy and yeah, at a young age. And he wasn't. When you say violent, I mean he was just strict. I mean, it was. Every little thing got you in trouble. And if I look at my kids lives and they leave their drawer open, I walk by and I'm like, first of all, I don't care if they leave their drawer open. That would have been a big deal to him.

I know you've told the story before about, hey, playing every Texas sport. Every kid does. You didn't shine in any of those things. And you're 12 years old, mom throws you into swimming, which you didn't really know how to do, but you obviously picked it up super fast. Huh?

You're right, I didn't know how to swim. And she didn't necessarily suggest swimming. She knew that she had a high energy kid that if that wasn't applied somewhere or directed somewhere, it was going to go somewhere toxic. And so she was right about that. But. And I sucked at sort of mainstream sports. I've had an issue with balls my whole life.

Although you didn't have an issue with your phone a second ago. That phone came falling out and you. That was one of the most impressive one handed catches I've seen in a long catch.

That was. Yeah, but I had a few friends on the swim team so I thought, well, I'll try that. Problem is, I was 12, they were all 12.

And was this an age group team?

This was an age group team. So very different. You know enough about swimming to be dangerous. And so it's, there's different categories, so to speak, right? The most serious is age group swimming. That's where Michael Phelps grew up swimming. That's where everybody grew up swimming. Then you have sort of country club setups where it's a summer league and you swim some laps and you have some meets and all the parents are there. And then you have kind of high school, right? Which most of the time, at least for us, age group was the, the serious training for high school swimming. But Yeah, I was 12 and I didn't know how to swim. I certainly didn't know how to swim. I mean I could have faked freestyle, but I couldn't have. I didn't know any strokes. You know, I showed up and man, the coach, they watch you for a while and I mean they stuck me in the six year old lane, six seven year old lane. When I think back. And I never even questioned it, I just stayed, I stayed swimming with these little, little kids. Meanwhile, all my buddies are over at the other end of the pool doing 3001 hundreds on whatever and I'm like, but I just hung in there and I swam the kids. And then after a month of that, then I moved over a lane and I was with the 8 year olds. And then a month later I just kind of kept going across the pool until probably less than a year later. I was a legit swimmer, still one of my great loves.

So by the time you get into high school, you're swimming both for the high school team and the age group?

Yes and no, because I turned pro in triathlon when I was 15. My swim coach at the time, who was just a total hard ass, but an amazing coach named Chris McCurdy. Wonderful coach. One of the best coaches I've ever had. But, man, he was tough. You did not miss a workout. You didn't skip a workout. There were no excuses. I mean, holidays, family, doesn't matter. Our age group team was cops, City of Plano swimmers, which was at the time one of the best age group teams in the country. And that was because of McCurdy. And, you know, I started traveling to triathlons and skipping workouts because I was on a ride or a run, and he was just. He wasn't having it at all.

So you gravitated to the mile in swimming, right?

Well, I mean, I'm an endurance guy. Other than catching that phone. I don't have great fast twitch muscle. My 100 free. The miles, 16 and a half of those.

What was your best mile?

I'd have to go back and look. State championships one year. I got third. It was decent. I wasn't going to the Olympics.

Do you think if you'd stayed with swimming and that was the only thing you pursued, you would have at least, you know, you would have swam in college, presumably?

I would have swam in college. And if you ask McCurdy, he thinks I could have gone far. But I just. There was prize money, there was travel. I was like, hey, this is way cooler.

When did you realize you also had a knack to run and bike?

I actually was running right around the same time. So at the same time, I was swimming. I was running track and cross country in high school Plano. I was city champ. And the wouldn't have been the. I was young enough that we ran the 1200 city champ in that. Back then, the timing was primitive. These timers per athlete. And you had stopwatches. And you would come across the line. It's a funny story. And they'd ask you your name. And so I came across the line, and the timer says, what's your name? And I was going to Armstrong Middle School. And I said, armstrong. And he said, I didn't ask you what school you went to. I said, what's your name? And I said, finally. I was like, after Three or four go rounds. I was like, I'm Armstrong from Armstrong, but I was a decent runner.

How much did you enjoy training at that age?

I loved it. I mean, the most structured thing I had was swimming. I mean, McCurdy was. I mean, you should have seen the board. I mean, this dude, I don't know, he must have laid awake every night and dreamed up these workouts. It was so detailed. I loved that. And that was the most structure I had running. I would train a little with the cross country team. That had structure. We had another great coach in track and cross country named James Mays. So James Mays was a world class 800 meter runner. He was actually the rabbit for the dream mile. And this guy ended up being our high school track and cross country coach. And he was awesome. He'd run with us and he, like, drove a Porsche. And we're like, holy shit. Our teacher, who's this dude? He was awesome. And then cycling was more, you know, I just go pedal around, no structure. Group rides.

When did it become clear to you that you had a knack for this at the level of. I mean, was it that one race that everybody talks about where you were right at the front with Mark Allen, and you're 15 years old, and at the time, Mark Allen must have been one of the top three professional triathletes in the world.

Well, that was my first pro race. That was the President's Triathlon in Dallas.

That was 80.

That would have been 87. 87, because I did the presidents in 86, which was out at Lake Le Bon. It was a longer format or longer distance. And then they moved it over to Las Colinas, where the old Cowboys facility was in 87. And they made it an Olympic distance. I was training with some guys, and they said, you should just turn pro and go try it. I was 15 years old, but I was swimming my ass off. And I was a great swimmer. So I came out. I knew I was gonna come out of the water with the leaders.

So this is Olympic distance. So you're coming out of the water under 20 minutes.

Oh, easy. Yeah, yeah.

And then you hop on the bike.

Hop on the bike.

You're going under an hour. You're going, what, 55?

Well, this is pre arrow bars. Although actually, that might have been the year Andrew McNaughton flew away on the bike. He had the bars, the original Scott Aero bars. And then I rode with Alan the whole time on the bike. And I'm sure he was, you know, those. They all race each other Every weekend, they know.

Was Dave Scott there too?

I don't know if Dave was there.

Mike Pig would have been there.

Pig might have been there. I rode with Alan, but I'm sure he's looking at me going, who the fuck is this person? This guy, this kid, guy like Mark Allen. Get off and run 32.

And you would run what, a 36 after that?

No, no, probably more, right? 38 or 39, I think I ended up fifth or sixth. And I was like, okay, I can do this.

Was the bike different compared to swimming and running for you? Like, was there a gear that you felt you had there that you didn't have in the other two?

I don't know about a gear, but it was. The experience was certainly different.

How so? I mean, I know it is, but what did you feel that was different?

Well, it's just like I said at the top, being outside. I mean, think about the life of a full time, essentially professional swimmer. I don't think people really appreciate how much time swimmers devote to their sport and how much distance they cover. I mean, when we were 13, 14, 15, we were swimming. There'd be days we'd swim 10 miles a day. Like, if somebody said they run 10 miles a day, I would say you're a fucking badass. Swimming, that's two a day. So 5:30am, morning practice for an hour and two hours in the afternoon, you're covering some ground and you're staring at a black line the whole time. That's why swimmers are crazy.

Well, the funny thing is most people don't appreciate that the swim to run ratio is about 4 to 1. So when you say somebody swims 10 miles a day, that's comparable metabolically to running 40 miles a day.

There's no impact.

Yeah, without the impact, which is what.

Makes it a great sport, as you get to be my age or even older. I mean, the thing I love about swimming is you can swim your whole life. You can't necessarily ride your whole life. You certainly can't run your whole life like swimming. If you put a gun to my head and said, okay, dude, you got one sport to choose for the rest of your life, there is no question it would be swimming. No question.

So I've heard you say in a previous interview that triathlons were awesome, but at some point you got this desire to go to the Olympics.

What kid doesn't want to go to the Olympics?

Yeah, well, at some point you realize, look, my quickest path there is probably going to be on the bike. And I'M guessing that was the late 80s. You kind of had that realization.

I started to transition to full time cycling in 89, still doing tri. So I did them also in 89 and 90. Went to the Junior World Championships in Moscow in 1989. In my mind, I just assumed triathlon would be an Olympic sport. It is the ultimate. The best sports in the Olympics are swimming and cycling and running. Like, why wouldn't we combine them and make this an Olympic sport? Well, this is in late 80s, early 90s.

Right. It wouldn't be till 2000. Right.

2000 in Sydney was the first time. Nobody knew that, but yeah. So I switched over basically full time in 1991. 1990 or 91, which is kind of.

Amazing to now Fast forward to 93. What expectations did you have going into Oslo, into that road race for the World Championship?

The one thing that did happen is I went to the Olympics, so I fulfilled that dream going to the Barcelona Games.

You did road race or time trial, what did you do?

They didn't have the time trial back then. And I want to say I think we had team time trial. I did the road race. I don't think I did the TTT.

How many cyclists went for the U.S.

Boy, you're making me think a lot. I mean, this is a long time ago, Peter. This is 30 years ago. So I don't know, three or four.

But this was back in the day when you didn't have pros there, right?

No pros, yeah. They added the pros in 96.

So who were the best amateurs then? Bobby Julick, you?

Yeah. And then the international guy. The Italians were amazing. Cassertilli, we lost in 95.

He won.

He won the Olympic Games. Davide Rebellin was on the Italian team. But, you know, a lot of, you know, Eric Decker was on the Dutch team. Szabel was on the German team.

So what was that like there? Competing against the best amateur cyclists in the world? I mean, it was great tactically.

Tactically, I was still trying to figure out cycling. I didn't know how to move through the peloton and gauge and judge the peloton and the tactics and the flow of the race.

That's very hard for people who watch cycling to understand. You take it for granted now. Yeah.

Now you could throw me in any bike race and I could absolutely find my way around.

Nobody's born with that skill. Right. I'm sure there are some people who'd have a better feel for it than.

Others when they start. Young guy like George, he started he was racing in Central park against adult men when he was 12 years old.

Could you draft at the time in 90, 91. All right, so you go from a sport where bikes.

You should never be able to draft in a triathlon. This pisses off all the.

Yeah, all the purists.

Well, no, all the. Sort of. The ITU guys, the Olympic guys. You know, I got in a bunch of grief once. Cause I called, you know, the part of triathlon a shampoo, a blow dry and a 10K. And I mean, it was. It was. People were. Oh. But anyways, it's an individual sport.

But that's amazing that your cycling career as a cyclist begins two years before the Olympics. Because all of the stuff you're doing as a triathlete is preparing your cardiovascular system and your fitness, but not your bike handling skills. Not your tactics. Tactics. Not any of those other things.

No, the handling I had down. I rode enough that I was comfortable in the peloton, but just understanding the movements of the race and positioning and the peloton, it's just a big organism and you got to be at the right place at the right time. And, yeah, it took me a few years.

What metrics were you guys looking at then? Were you mostly just relying on heart rate?

Not even when I got on Motorola. We were sponsored by Polar. And so we had some of the earliest heart rate monitors. These things were, as. I'm sure you could still find them. They were massive, these things were.

They look like bricks, legitimately. Component of weight.

Yeah. And that was it. I mean, that was sort of the first. No power meters, no testing. I mean, we just. Yeah, you just looked at the heart rate.

So did you have any metrics or insights into your physiology being unique at the time? I mean, did you figure out what your maximum heart rate was? I mean, we'll get to it later. But I remember you telling me during, I don't remember which time trial it was, you were telling me about in one of your Tours that you were able to hold a heart rate of 200 beats per minute for the entire TT.

Yeah, that was later. I think the first time I really thought I had an engine, so to speak. They were doing a study at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, and of course, I was living in Plano, so. And it was a treadmill test. Forget what the original study was, but it's got a funny ending to the story. It was all about core tempo. And so I went down and did a running VO2 test and the guy was like, oh, I mean, it Was I killed this thing.

Do you Remember what your VO2 Max was now?

No, but the guy was like, okay, this kid's special. And then they said, well, look, we'd like you to come back next week because we're doing this whole core temp study, and this time you're going to have to do it with some sort.

Of probe in the.

Exactly. And I'm 15, and this guy says he's going to shove something up my ass. And I am terrified. I'm like, I never went back.

So to this day, we have no idea what your core temperature response would have been under that aerobic load. Well, you want to do that test? We can do it again.

I know enough to know that I run hot. I'm going to leave it at that.

So Motorola was 93.

I went to Motorola in. Actually in 92. I was the only amateur on the team.

Steve Bauer was on that team.

Bauer was there. Phil Anderson, Andy Hampsten.

By the way, Steve Bauer is why a kid growing up in Canada, like me, was obsessed with cycling growing up. So I was one of, like, 12 people in North America that loved cycling, followed it, because Bauer won a silver in 84 at the Olympics. So basically, I'm 10, 11 years old. That puts cycling on the map as something that's, like, awesome. And then, of course, Le Monde was. I mean, forget about it. Like, the most exciting thing in all of sports.

1989 was the 89 comeback. Got me hooked.

Unbelievable. Some would argue the greatest ending to a Tour. You could argue maybe second greatest after what happened last year that let the scholars debate that. But I want to talk about the 93 season because you've got a guy named Miguel Induran who's come along and dethrone Greg. Right. And at this point, Induran has now won three consecutive Tours. There's no sign he's going to slow down. Right. He wins 91, 92, 93. He looks like an absolute machine. This is one of the guys you're now racing against for the world Championship in the road race.

Yep.

What's your thought going into that race?

The way the season was structured then, and I actually much preferred it, the Worlds was much earlier. It was four or five weeks after the Tours.

Before the Vuelta.

Well, no, back then, the Vuelta was in early in the season.

The Vuelta was before the Giro. Yeah, okay.

And the Vuelta was minimized. But we had a true World Cup. So you had all the monuments, all the big spring classics. And then every week after the Tour, we went Sebastian, we Went Zurich, we went Leeds in England. You know, it was like boom, boom, boom. I loved the rhythm of that calendar. After the Tour 93, which you won a stage. I won a stage into Verdun in the National Champions jersey. They pulled me out because I was young. My form just kept coming up and up and up. And in all the World Cups, I was right there. All the prep races, I was. I knew I was going to be in the front group and I was shit. I didn't. I mean, look around in that group. I mean, you had. You had Olaf Ludwig, you had Induran, you had Kia Pucci, you had Shmeil, you had Museu, you had Reese. I mean, I was looking around going, yeah, of course I'm here. And then, of course, it was absolutely.

The worst day I've ever seen.

People crashing. I mean, I crashed twice. People crashing everywhere.

How cold was it?

It's funny, I never really felt that cold.

It was cold. It looked cold.

Yeah, yeah. It was probably in the 50s. I mean, northern Europe, with weather like that, it's going to be cold no matter what time of year.

Explain to people what it means to win that race to be the World champion. You get to wear a special jersey that nobody else gets to wear for a year.

Yep. You wear the rainbow jersey for a year, and then for the rest of your career, you have some representation on your jerseys or shorts. Rainbows on the sleeves, the collar hits a cool. Win to win.

Thinking back to that year in the Tour, we're gonna talk a lot about, obviously, performance enhancing drugs. You've in the past said that was in the era where you and your team were still in the low octane phase of things. Right, the cortisones, things like that. But it was the pre EPO era. Even though EPO was around, it was.

Around, but this was before the real shootout.

What were you aware of in that year's Tour?

There was buzz of epo, but it was not dinner table conversation like it became. There was obviously speculation, but there was scientific articles about it. People knew that that substance, as graded as it is to treat certain disorders or issues, it could also be hugely beneficial for endurance sport. In 92, 93, it was not. It wasn't an obsession at the time.

Obviously. When I was just a kid following cycling, I was always surprised in the 91 tour how quickly Greg fell off. And years later, of course, we would all speculate, was that not just the passing of the torch between two great cyclists, Le Monde and Induran, but was it also the Passing of the torch of an era. Do you believe that that was when high octane products became the mainstay in 91, or do you think that, no, it would not be probably until either the end of Induran or. Because clearly by the time Reese came along in 96, I mean, that might have been the most overt use.

People most that really have a deep understanding will tell you that. I mean, it was in the Peloton in the late 80s, but that's really going far back. And nobody from back then is talking for sure.

Yeah, Pedro Delgado, I think there were definitely rumors because he won in what didn't he win? The year that Le Monde was out, which was 87.

You know way too much about this sport. You know a lot more than me.

I peg it to the jerseys I had as a kid.

And honestly, Greg still could have towards the end of his career, and it was well documented. I'm not saying this as a knock on him, but he was starting to let himself go in the off season. I mean, he would show up to the early season races and I mean, you get to see it. You're like, has this guy been training or not? And Inderian was a machine. Inderian was a beast. I mean, this guy trained 365 days a year.

So it's not clear what that transition.

Was, but into Ryan was. He could do it all.

So I think another thing that most people don't understand about cycling or certainly about the Tour, is that because of how grueling it is, which, again, I can't tell you I understand because obviously I've never done it. But as much as somebody who's never done it, I feel like I at least have some appreciation for it because I understand physiology. There's nothing about it that's reasonable. Like, there's nothing about doing that that is physiologically appropriate or in any way, shape or form promotes a person's health. A rider at the end of the Tour is probably the least healthy they could ever be. And as a result of that, there's no era in the history of this bike race where cyclists haven't turned to substances. And whether they're banned or not banned is really a semantic point. But in the earliest renditions of this race, riders were using alcohol to numb pain, or traditional painkillers, cocaine, more sophisticated amphetamines.

Or hopping on trains.

Yeah, exactly. Grabbing cars, literally just getting yanked up mountains. What was the environment like? Not that you were there, but you overlapped with guys that were there in the 80s. Was there an environment of testing of anything. Like were people looking at hematocrit to see if people actually blood doped, let alone using epo, Were they testing for cortisone or testosterone or other hormones?

For example, in 93, when I won a stage in the Tour, I won the world's. I was tested.

You were tested, okay. Now you acknowledge that back then you were using things like cortisone. Were you worried that those things would show up or were you just making sure that they were out of your system by the time you were racing?

The way to go about that in the day was just a tue, so a therapeutic use exemption. And you know, a lot of these compounds come in different forms and different form factors and different administrations. And so you could say, well, got tendonitis in the knee. And so the TUE was sort of the. Which I think they'd cut back on.

A lot of that.

But in competition testing for, certainly for something like epo, which has a five hour half life, not going to work, they started doing the out of competition testing and the whereabouts. But the biggest hammers that have dropped in cycling in and around drugs like that were not through testing. They were through the police. Like, look at Festina. I mean, nobody tested positive in the Festina affair. You have a dumbass one year crossing a border, gets pulled over, lo and behold, a car full of stuff. That's how that happened. The agencies had nothing to do with that.

So coming into the 94 season, you've got to be optimistic. You're the world champion. Do you remember what your expectations and your goals were for that season with respect to either single day classics or Grand Tours?

That was an interesting period in time though, because that is when you basically.

Got your ass kicked that year. But I want to know what you thought coming in.

I mean, I thought I'd be competitive in every one day race I started.

And did you think I'm gonna be on the podium in the Tour in the next three years?

No, no. At that time I was fully resigned or committed to the fact that I was a classic rider. I was a one day rider.

What did you weigh at that point?

I probably weighed. I was big my whole career. I was big just because as a swimmer, you never lose a swimmer never loses a swimmer's body, the back, the chest, the shoulders, you can lean it out, but you're going to be big. So I was probably 175.

Yeah. Which is tough to be a climber.

At 175 when in the Tours. I was between 160, 165.

Still big.

Yeah. I mean, racing Pintani was 125.

So when do you realize in 94, like, something's wrong?

I think we realized that something had changed. It was overnight between 93 and 94. Even though I'm sure 93 there was. I mean, that's the great thing about a one day race is it is, in a way, a race of chance. You can play your cards, you can play tactics. You obviously have to be fit enough to be in the front group. But when I made my move in 93, I mean, that was a bit of a Hail Mary. I went early, I got a gap. They were disorganized behind. And you stay away. So the big tours were the race of truth in the time trial or the hardest climbs. Those are individual competitions. And so there was a tectonic shift from 93 to 94.

How long did it take you to understand this is exactly what's happening? This is not about more cortisone. This is not about more testosterone, more growth hormone.

It was all over the press. I mean, in 1994, you had, in fleche wallon, you had three gewist riders go up the road. And then the press went crazy after that because here you have an Italian team. Ferrari's the trainer. The press also back then was more beat writers. So they were friends with the riders, they were writers, and they were friends with the writers, they were friends with the directors. So they were all kind of buddies. And they wouldn't write about what they would hear until then. And then they got on it. And so people got to Ferrari. And of course, the famous quote about trying to compare EPO to orange juice, and at least that's the way that it was printed. But after that, yeah, it was everywhere, in the press and in the peloton.

Remind me what happened in the 94 Tour for you?

94? I got sick halfway through and dropped out.

Okay. And then in the 95 tour.

Finished.

You finished. And that's a tragic tour. So Fabio is killed.

Yep. He was on our team. This is the same guy that won the Olympics.

He won the Olympics in 92. Is that a wake up call to you in any way? Do you realize how dangerous your sport is when you watch your teammates heads smashed open on the side of the road?

Yeah, that was. Helmets were certainly not required and very few people wore them. I'm not sure it would have helped Fabio. He really hit his face and basically died right there. But. And just surreal, you know, it was A tough mountain day, and we were in the Grupetto, and I mean, we were out there forever. And we actually got news of his death in the race, and so it was just. That's so rare. But to have it happen to us on our team, you know, you have breakfast with the guy, but he's not at the dinner table. The whole story is tragic. Young wife, new baby boy. Fabio was interesting. He wasn't your normal Italian. They were all super serious, not really jokesters. He was a jokester. He obviously had huge talent and potential, won the Olympic gold. He wasn't adjusting to pro cycling. And so we picked him up in 95, and ironically, for the ninth spot, it was down to him and George. And George was actually there at the start because we would always take 10 guys. And then literally the day before, the team would decide who the ninth guy was. And they decided. George was young, but they decided to take Casartelli. Yeah, I was bad.

It was the 18th stage that you won in his honor. Three days later. When did you realize you were going to win that race?

That stage, rather, at the end of the Tour. They're just custom made for breakaways, right. The GC is set. Those days are for the opportunist. And I went away in a group, ironically, Johan Bruneil was in that group too, but it was a huge group. And that group stays away. They never get caught. And then they basically race amongst themselves. And I just took a huge flyer. I think it was 30, 40k to go. Just went away. Like, a lot of times they can't get organized. And when I went, man, I was fucking flying. In fact, our director at the time, Henny Kuiper, who's a legendary Dutch cyclist, he kept coming up and giving me time splits.

You were gaining on the gap.

Yeah. And finally I said, henny, don't come up here anymore. I said, I'm not getting caught. Just stay back there. I knew it. And I was just flying.

Did you feel a sense of this was for Fabio, you felt a little extra strength that day. I mean, I've heard so many athletes talk about that when they're Damon Hill talking about racing after Senna died later in that season, feeling like he couldn't just make that car go fast enough. And it's almost like he looked up to the skies and just asked for some bit of help from him.

You're just floating. I don't want to oversell our relationship or our friendship. I didn't really know Fabio. We were on our team together. He didn't speak English. I didn't speak Italian. But he died in our colors and it just doesn't happen. I mean, it's extraordinary that it happened to us that day. I mean, I was just possessed.

So going into the 96 season, that's the year you decided it was time to start moving into the high octane world, correct?

No, we made that decision in 95.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. Okay. I joined Ferrari. So that was.

So in 95 you were sort of doing freestyle EPO, managing it on your own.

I think that would be a bad idea to just go off and do that on your own. There was some oversight.

And would you manage it to a certain hematocrit? Is that effectively what was being done?

They started doing the sort of morning hematocrite tests while I was out of the sport. In 95 and 96 they didn't.

No, no, I don't mean the race organizers. I mean where the doctor is using hematocrit as a way to guide your.

EPO level and your dose and hemoglobin.

Yeah, yeah. So what is your normal hemoglobin?

Since we live in Aspen now, I'm sure it's probably 45 or 46, but if I lived here in Austin, it would be in the low 40s.

Do you remember when you started doing EPO in 95? Presumably they gave you enough EPO to bring your hematocrit up to 50, I would guess is where they kind of wanted you to.

50 was not.

I know that there was no ceiling, but did they have concern about blood clotting and things like that?

Not at 50 and maybe not even at 60. People on Everest better than me that have a hematocrit of 70.

So do you know how high they were pushing your crit back in 95?

The answer is no. I would remember if it had been 60 or sort of the stories you hear from some folks. But enough is enough, right? At some point you're competitive, you're at the front of the why do you need to do more?

Did you feel a difference? Did you notice a difference from 94?

Oh, yeah. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. It's a very effective substance.

Do you have the sense that it was being used as often in the one day races as it was in the Grand Tours?

Absolutely, yeah.

Again, there's no reason it wouldn't help you in Paris Roubaix just as much as it helps you on.

Absolutely. Watts or watts. I mean, you're getting 10% more hemoglobin or hematocrit however you want to describe it, you are also Getting at threshold, 10% more power.

Were you using a power meter yet at that point?

98 was when I first started using the SRM. The SRM, yeah. It was so good.

Do you remember off the top of your head what your functional threshold power was in 98?

I remember what it was in 99. Before the tour, in 99, I tested on the Madone, which was your go to test.

Right.

I wasn't the first to use it. Tony Romenger used it. He had the fastest time.

How many kilometers is Madone?

Well, it's about 30 minutes.

30 minutes. And what's the grade?

It's about 7, 8%.

So it's a straight in the saddle, pound away for 30 minutes. And what did you average for 30 minutes in 99?

500 watts.

Are you freaking kidding me? 500 watts for 30 minutes and at that point you were 165 pounds?

Yep. Yeah. 7 watts a kilo.

We got a few things to cover before we get to 7 watts per kilo. 96. You should be in top form and you're sick as hell in the tour, you pull out.

Yep. I thought I was just sick, and I was definitely sick of being there. It was just shit weather that year and I wasn't riding that well and I was ready to go home.

When did you notice the testicular pain?

Certainly then, but I just, you know, soreness, that was the first symptom. Right. Just enlarged testicle, sore on every level, sore to the touch, sore to sit on a seat, cross your legs in an awkward way, it would hurt. And I just thought it had to do with sitting on a bike seat all the time.

You know, I've heard you say that before and I've always thought it's kind of funny because you've been sitting on a bike for 10 years at that point.

I know, but then you also, I.

Mean, you're rationalizing it to yourself growing up.

And just. Even to this day, I just rarely get sick. And I certainly didn't think that I would ever be in that position. But it was ignore after ignore. Even as the symptoms became more and more drastically significant, it just kept going. I had an excuse for all of them.

Did you have any headaches?

I had one big episode that was right before diagnosis. Massive headache, massive headache, massive.

Any visual changes the next day?

Yeah, so the visual. I was here in Austin, actually. They used to have a venue south of town. I forget. But I went to a Jimmy Buffett concert and I got A huge headache at the concert. Next day, woke up, blurry vision. Even then I'm pushing through. I'm like, okay, headache. Because I was at a concert, maybe had a couple beers. You're not supposed to have the headache while you're having the beers. Supposed to be the next day. Then the blurry vision. Well, I'm get some glasses. And then probably a week after that was the one that sent me to.

The doc, just coughing up blood everywhere.

Everywhere.

That's October 2nd.

I mean, it would have been maybe October 1st, because the blood episode happened. You know, coughing up the blood, spitting it out. Called my buddy who was a neighbor who's a doctor, said, hey, I know we're here coughing up blood. Can you come look at it? And cosmetic surgeon, not a oncologist, not a, you know, sort of looked in my nose and my. Down my throat. And I had rinsed out the sink.

So he didn't see how much was there.

He didn't see how much blood there was there.

Did it scare you?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Obviously didn't do a good enough job telling him how much blood was in the sink. So he thought it was a sinus thing. Your sinus, your dry. The crack, you cough up a little bit.

And you weren't putting two and two together. Of course, this thing in my testes, the headache, the blood. There's no way in your mind these are all related?

Nope. And then the next day, which was October 2nd, I called him back. This pain at this point was so bad, and the testicle was so swollen. I said, listen, there's this one other thing that just embarrassed or I just haven't talked about that this is going on. And that's when he said, okay, we got to get that checked out. That's when I drove to Jim Reeves's office on the second.

People talk often about when a diagnosis like this is levied on them. They're not even able to process what's being said. Like, you hear some things, but you don't hear other things. I remember experiencing this as the one delivering this news where you sort of try to talk as slowly as possible, you pause as much as possible, but you realize at the end of that, they probably heard a tenth of what you said. What is your recollection of the very first time? Because by this point, they probably had a chest X ray.

Well, it's one of the first things Jim Reeves did. They also did another little shot. I'll never forget this. They gave me a little shot under the skin where they were Going to test a reaction or something. I said, what are you doing? What's this for? And they said, oh, we want to rule out tuberculosis. And I remember thinking, God, please give me tuberculosis. And then he wanted a chest X ray. And I'm like, what do you need a chest X ray for? And then they sent me to the ultrasound. They had a young lady in there. It was the tech. She just took forever. And I thought, does she not know what she's doing? Then the actual doctor came in and repeated the test.

This was an ultrasound of your testes in your abdomen, I'm guessing.

And then they walked in and they handed me the file, which had the chest X ray, had the scan report. And they said, go back to Dr. Reeves office. He's waiting for you. By this point, it's like, I don't know, 6 or 7pm I'm like, this is not good. I can remember most of what he said because he didn't say very much.

Now, at the time, did they know that it was not seminomatous? There was still a window of opportunity that this was going to be a very curable form of testicular cancer.

I think with the chest. I mean, the chest X ray was riddled. It was more white than it was gray.

Pretty good indication how long until you had the orchiectomy next morning?

Because that's what I said to Reeves. I said, I feel like I should get a second opinion. And he said, you have surgery at 7am tomorrow morning. And keep in mind, this is in 1996. The way people would process this news today, they would say, okay, I'm going to go home. I'm going to open my computer. I'm going to Google everything I can about whatever my doctor just told me, and I'm going to start to learn and get a bunch of information and figure out options. And none of that existed. We did not have the Internet in 1996.

When did you call your mom?

Oh, right away. Yeah, right when I got home.

How was she?

My mom's always. And this is, I think, what makes her great and strong. She would never show weakness, although I know she had moments where she would be sad and upset and worried. On the surface, she just had this shield, like, let's fucking go. We got this. You could do this. Anything that I ever saw, she was totally confident.

Did you understand what the prognosis was at that time?

Not really. I mean, I know it was as advanced as it was.

Well, it wasn't just that it was advanced. Right. It was the Histology of it. It was not a seminomatous tumor, which is, at that point really the only testicular cancer that's curable. Right. You had a much more histologically advanced cancer, that choriocarcinoma, which was wildly metastatic. What was your alpha feta protein level that was elevated?

The one we monitored the closest was Beta HCG.

How high was that?

100,000.

So you were pregnant.

I know. Well, anything? Yeah, I was very pregnant. I mean, if you come in with 500, you got a problem. Anything above two, you have a problem.

So you had the orchiectomy. They also took out lymph nodes.

Nope. Didn't touch the lymph nodes, didn't touch the lungs.

When did you know you had brain mets? When did they do the CT scan?

When I got to Indiana.

So you mean you went through all of this and they still didn't know you had.

Right. I originally was treated. I did my first cycle of chemotherapy here in Austin.

What was the chemo you did here?

That was traditional bep. So I did do one. We were talking about one with Blio. Yeah, I did one cycle with bleo. Could have won eight if I didn't do that one cycle.

Yeah. So bleomycin is a really, really toxic chemo.

Yep.

We'll talk about it in a second when we get to Indiana. Why they decided to have a little faith and play the long game. What led you to Indiana? Because again, in a pre Internet era, it wouldn't have been as clear that that was a place that was really on the cusp of doing something.

Yeah, but even, even, I mean, they.

Had done the work.

My local oncologist knew. I mean, maybe even pre Internet, they still knew where the centers of excellence were.

In other words, it came from the docs here. You didn't have to go and make that decision.

He had mentioned that Dr. Larry Einhorn in Indianapolis was the king when it came to testicular cancer. In fact, a lot of his work really led to platinum based therapies really being as effective as they are. And he was in Australia at the time. He was lecturing in Australia. And when I heard his name, I said, I gotta find this guy. And then we tried to call him and he was off in Australia, but did four cycles in total. The first cycle was done here in Austin. So you go one week on, two weeks off. One week on, two weeks off. So I had two weeks. And that's when I first went to Houston to visit MD Anderson. And then I ended up Did MD.

Anderson also recommend BLIO standards?

No. Well, they had a whole different approach. It was not traditional therapy, which is interesting. Much more chemotherapy, a lot more compounds. It just didn't feel right. I left.

So when you got to Indiana, did they do the CT scan first? They figure out you've got brain mets as well. Is that another. What the hell is going on here? How much worse can this get moment?

I mean, yes, and the answer is yes, but also a bit of a relief. You're like, okay, that's explains. This has got to be the worst part of it. So, like, now that this is my line in the sand, it's not getting worse.

It's really, really bad, but it's not.

Going to get worse.

Right. So I'm just trying to understand Lance. Like, at what point were you thinking, I might not live here?

God. I mean, certainly crossed my mind, but I didn't have days where I would sit there and go, I am going to. Like, I just kept. And we were doing so much with the blood work. Like, we were measuring the hcg, it was coming down. What do you want to see? Like, what's. This is the scoreboard, which.

What's my metric?

Yeah, what is my metric that says I'm ahead in this game? And they said, a log drop. Drop off every cycle, man. We were hitting it. Bam, bam. It just kept coming down. And I was like, I'm kicking this thing's ass. Like, yeah, I can turn around and the cancer can pivot and chemo doesn't work. Whatever work, whatever happens. But I just felt like I got on top of it and I didn't sit around.

They went with this other protocol, right? They went with.

They went with. Well, that was the first thing they asked me. They said, you're a professional cyclist. I said, do you ever want to race bikes again? I said, I mean, yeah, if I can live. Yeah, prefer to live, that would be cool. And they said, well, you can't keep doing blio.

Yeah, it's just. It's so pulmonary toxic. It's so cardiotoxic.

People ask, like, why wouldn't everybody be treated the way you were treated with a protocol called vip? Which doesn't indicate that you're a vip. It's just the.

Yeah, it's vincristine and cisplatin and blah, blah, blah.

And so the downside to being treated with VIP is you have to stay as an inpatient. So blio, you can go home. Like, you go into the chemo clinic for three or four hours, get Your chemo and you go home VIP one of those, and I forget which one is so toxic. Not on the lungs, but on the body that you have to have 24,7 hydration. So you have to be in the hospital. People want to go home.

Chemo was bad for you.

Chemo was bad at the end. And I still talk to people about this because they about to start chemo. They asked me. And cycle one, I was like, you sure you did this right? Like, I don't feel anything. Cycle two, get sick a few times. Like, ooh, okay, I think they got it right this time. Cycle three, just sick as shit. Cycle four, you just want to sleep. It just compounds and compounds. It got much, much worse.

What was the recovery like from the neurosurgery?

There were big cuts. I mean, they were probably tennis ball size. The easiest way to describe it for people listening or have never been there is. It's like doing the pumpkin for Halloween. Like, you literally just cut the hole, pull off the thing, dig out the seeds, and put the thing back on. And there were two of them. There was one on the top, one on the back, right on the surface. Dr. Shapiro was my neurosurgeon. He saw him and he pulled that skull off and right there. And they were dead.

Oh, this was done after most of the chemo?

No, it was done before halfway.

The response was amazing.

But with the whole. And I don't know how, the blood, brain barrier, this barrier that prevents super toxic stuff from getting to the brain, they should not have been dead. That's why they go in there and take them out. I'm not a surgeon or a scientist, but they take them out and they walk them over and look at them immediately in the microscope, and they were.

Dead at that point in time. Is there anybody you remember meeting in the hospital that made you feel like you were having a shared experience with another patient? Was there any patient that sticks out to you?

No, I was kept pretty isolated. I never shared a room. I did chemo in my room. I didn't, you know, a lot of hospitals or centers, it's like a big room with lazy boys everywhere, and you sit beside the. You know, I'm Lance with testicular cancer, and you're Gina with breast cancer and Joe with colon. I was always alone in my room.

Which is interesting because it seems like very early on you latched on to an important idea, right? Which was people need help navigating this system. You obviously felt moved at a very early point in your disease and recovery to create a Foundation that you ultimately would. What do you think was part of the impetus for that in your experience?

Even as modest as the expectations were, it was like. And you could think about it a lot of different ways. It wasn't so much about navigation at the time. It was more about here you have a disease or a type of cancer with a huge stigma around it. You have young men that, like me, that are swelling or pain. They're not going to go out and advertise that and most likely not seek help until it's a problem. So just trying to bring awareness to that. And we thought we'd started a bike ride here in Austin. We thought we'd get a few people out there, donate some money. We had no plan, but it just felt like the time to do something.

Was it sort of a pay it forward thing? Like you were just so happy to be alive that you were like, I just have to share some of this?

Well, we start. Yeah, well, we started it before. I should say we started it during. Wasn't entirely sure that there was going to be a forward.

But it's interesting. Obviously the foundation would grow to over half a billion dollar in money raised. And I think what a lot of people don't appreciate, but I always appreciated was that that money was very specific and that it wasn't directed towards research. And you might say, well, God, that doesn't make sense. Shouldn't all money in cancer be towards research? But I always thought it was a really great thing that the money wasn't directed towards research because there are a lot of dollars directed towards research and there are not a lot of dollars directed towards the other things. Research is imperative, it must be, and it should be by far the largest allocation of resources within a portfolio that's trying to address cancer. But it's this other stuff, this softer stuff of how do you help a family that can't afford the travel for the child with cancer? How do you provide the resources for somebody? You inspired a lot of other people like fertility, hope and other people to come along and address other problems that just probably didn't get enough attention.

And on the advocacy side, I agree with everything you said. You have to raise billions and billions, maybe even trillions to properly. I mean, there's only one person that can fund that. Those are federal governments. But on the advocacy side, because we ended up gaining so much power just with the story and the brand of Livestrong, I mean, we advocated here in the state of Texas for a bond initiative that created what we called Cepra at the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas. It's a $3 billion bond initiative. We at the time, Livestrong, spent about 600 grand on that initiative. So picking the best lobbyists, all the strategy. Right. I see the 600, but I view that as we just funded.

That's an Archimedes lever. Right.

Like we funded $3 billion in research and prevention. So otherwise you could never go out and you can't sell enough yellow bands to do that.

So when did you decide, yeah, not only am I well enough to come back, did you already have the contract with Cofidis prior to getting sick, Motorola had already folded. You're already officially on Cofidis, and then you come back and what are they thinking?

I mean, before they even. There was no. I mean, they sent a representative over and it's crazy that they're still in the sport. They sent somebody to the US to basically say, listen, this is probably best. He just.

They sent somebody to evaluate you, to come and lay eyes on you.

He lay eyes on me, but then have a conversation with my agent and say, look, we should probably just part ways.

And your contract was a big contract, right? I mean this was like a million dollar contract.

Yep, yep. Yeah, we didn't let them part ways.

So you were officially with that team for a year?

Yeah, yeah. So 97, did you ride? Nope.

Okay. So they don't renew your contract obviously at the end of 97.

The other interesting thing, which I don't think has been talked about much, I had a disability policy which typically is for injuries, crashes, anything that makes you disabled enough, you can't turn the crank. But cancer in a way fell under that. So I took the disability policy or started to take it. And the deal was if you go back and race again, then it avoids it.

Yeah.

And so I think it was a three year payout. And I thought, God, this might be a good off ramp. Right. I'll just. Until it wasn't. Then I decided to stay on the highway.

But it wasn't easy. Right, because it wasn't like anyone was clamoring at your door. In 98, when we went back out.

To shop, me to teams, zero, zero interest. Postal was really not that interested.

What do you think changed their mind?

You have to go follow it backwards. But I mean, Postal, the team Postal, which was owned by Tom Wisel, had been around. I was on Wisel's team before Motorola, so I had history there. I had relationships. I had obviously a relationship with him. So maybe it was that, but it wasn't A cold call. Like, I was essentially going back to Wisel's team because I left Subaru Montgomery to go to Motorola.

They gave you 200k or something like that as a base.

Yeah.

And then a bunch of performance bonuses, right? Yeah.

I negotiated, like, thousand bucks back then. Again, I loved the way the sport was structured. The world Cups, UCI points. You had a number one ranked rider in the world. That's a fucking cool deal. Like, when I watch golf or tennis.

Or, you know, who's the best.

Yeah. Djokovic is the number one player. Well, yeah, duh. Lewis Hamilton is the number one driver in F1 because he has all the most points and wins. No shit. We had that in cycling. They don't have that anymore. I pinned it to a thousand bucks per point.

And realistically, back then, how many points would the top rider have?

Thousands.

Millions of dollars, potentially.

And that's what I went out and did. In 98.

In 98, because you did Paris. Nice. Right.

Then I quit, came home, said, fuck this, I'm out of here. I'm not cut out for this. I'm not.

Yeah. I want to talk about that race.

Yeah.

What went wrong?

Oh, just weather. And I sort of had this idea in my mind that if I did the Olympics in 1996, you didn't know.

It at the time, but you were riddled with tumors.

One flesh alone. And then looking back on it, I was like, wait, if I was that good then, and I was that sick, like, all this shit's gone now, I'm going to be like 10 times as strong. Of course, I wasn't. I was strong, and it was good to have it out of my body, but just caught me on a day, man, it was fucking crosswind. Back of the peloton. The peloton split, and I'm just like, I am going home. Literally. Pulled over, got in the car, went to the hotel, called Kristen. I said, we're going home.

What did she say?

She was supportive. She didn't necessarily agree, but she was supportive.

It's been so long since I read your book. I mean, I read it when it came out. It's not about the bike, which probably came out in 2000. So I vaguely remember in that era, you kind of vacillated back and forth between, I want to ride, I don't want to ride. I want to sit around and eat tacos all day and Tex Mex. And yet somewhere in there. Didn't you come in fourth in the Vuelta that year?

Well, that was at the end of the Year.

So was the Tex Mex beer drinking in the spring.

That was Pyrenees in March, April. That was probably six weeks around the April timeframe. It was almost like a. An intervention. Group of friends that were like, look, man, I get it, you don't want to do it anymore, but just finish the season. Like just start riding, start training. Just don't go out like that. Finish the season. I said, okay, I'll do that. So I just started riding. No structure, just riding. I'd go out here in Austin.

I just.

And I rode a lot. Four, five, six hours every day. Just riding. No, winter.

This is the season. So what are your teammates doing at this point?

They're out racing.

They're out racing?

Yeah, they're racing.

And the team doesn't care that you're not there because they're not paying you anything anyway.

Basically, I believe I went to the US Pro, the core states in Philly, and then I flew to Europe and did my first race back, was Tour Luxembourg.

You win that?

Won that. Went to Germany, did another race and won that. These are stage races, short stage races.

You've reintroduced EPO at this point? Yep. I forgot to ask you this. Post orchiectomy, wouldn't you have had a medical exemption for testosterone at that point?

I don't think you can in any sport. Could you get that?

But didn't you have to start taking more testosterone after you had your testicle removed?

Not necessarily.

Do you know if you were producing.

Normal amounts, always on the lower end, but nothing that was problematic or something that you said, listen, this is going to cause further issues down the line.

And the other thing I meant to ask you, Lance, did you at some point during the period of your cancer recovery, think, man, did that growth hormone amplify this in any way, shape or form or any of the other anabolic agents particularly? I mean, there's no way EPO would have. But what was your thought on some of the other drugs you'd used?

Well, you certainly crossed your mind. Pre diagnosis. There was very little of that anyways. Only in 96, which is, of course, the year that I got sick, but.

Which, by the way, seems to me the least performance enhancing drug for a cyclist.

We never went back. I mean, Ferrari was like, don't eat it. Never went back.

So really the mainstay of drug when you came back was epo.

Yep. And cortisone.

And it's amazing that cortisone helped that much, huh? Yeah. You know, how would you guys administer it? Intramuscularly?

Yeah, it's helpful to shed weight primarily, and especially as a bulkier guy trying to shed upper body muscle.

Yeah, very helpful. Unbelievable. So 98 comes to an end. You finish unbelievably.

I was fourth in everything. Fourth at the Vuelta, fourth at the world's TT, fourth at the world's road race. I just was like, shit, I'm fourth in everything. But I got a thousand plus UCI points that Tom Wisel had to pay.

Well, not only that, but you've done it not at your best. Right? You really only came back into shape for nine months. You decide at the end of 98. No, I'm coming back in 99. Like now it's. I'm all in.

Yep.

At that point, hired Brunill. Okay. Who was the director of Sportif.

Johnny Weltz was the director of sport thief in 98. Peter, when I say this team was unorganized, like, you cannot believe it. It was such a shit show.

I remember 98. So I remember because I was in my second year of medical school and I just remember there was a group of guys, we would go riding every Saturday and Sunday morning and we would. First of all, I was so excited that you were back. But we would joke about, like, go Postal. Having the two meanings. Like, you're cheering for Postal team and you're going crazy because it's just so disheveled. And.

Yeah, well, we had. And I'll never forget this. I mean, Johnny was so disorganized and he would, like, wouldn't pay the soigneurs. And then that Vuelta that I ended up getting fourth in, we walked down one day at breakfast table, and everybody's no soigneurs. I said, where's the fucking soigneurs? And I said, they walked out. I said, wait a minute, we're in the middle of a Grand Tour. We have to have mechanics, soigneurs. Like, what the fuck is going on?

They just walked out because they weren't getting paid.

So sketchy. And I'm sitting there going, okay, I think I'm back. I said, but I'm not gonna put up with this shit. Like, this is ridiculous. This is just amateur hour. And Johan was retiring. I got his number. Marcel Busio, German guy, gave me his number.

He wore the yellow jersey for a day back in. Maybe he was.

Those trainers, they win the early stages, they get the jersey. I just called him and we didn't really like each other. We always just sort of butted heads and he was always at the front of the race. Going back to what I was saying, earlier about knowing the race, like, knowing where to be, knowing just the energy of this thing. He knew it, and he spoke all these languages and thought that would be good. And I just called him and I said, what are you going to do now, now that you're retiring? And he was actually either wanting to start or somebody asked him to be a part of a cycling union, which that would have been a great use of his time. And I said, listen, I got an idea. Why don't you come be the director? He was like, are you kidding me?

No, because the travel, like, it's basically just. It's not retiring.

I mean, that's just not what he thought he would be doing. But I convinced him.

So this is a topic that gets. It's such a controversial topic, but I just. I really want to understand this. Right. People consistently say, look, yes, we know everybody doped during that era, but US Postal was different because they did it at an industrial level. It was much more systemic. Let's kind of unpack what that means. So you had already been working with Ferrari, and I've never met Ferrari. He's actually a guy I would always want to meet because I think, despite how much he's been demonized, I just think he's probably a very smart physiologic wizard.

He's incredibly smart.

And, like, how much of your training was he actually guiding?

All of it.

So did Carmichael, who gained fame being associated with you and being your coach, did he do anything?

Not at that stage. He was the Olympic coach in 92. But once I started seeing Ferrari, Chris was just a advisor, friend. We are talking about two very different skill sets here. And I'm not talking about doping. I mean, Micheli Ferrari, you can say what you want. And you and I calling him intelligent or bright or smart or even genius just drives people crazy.

But I've heard him in interviews talk about the nuanced level of physiology.

I mean, he's top three of all time. So we're talking about two different types of people.

You said earlier, look, you had no aspiration of winning the Tour. Did that change when you placed fourth in the course? Was that the first aha moment that says I could win this thing?

Yep. And when Johan finally decided to come take me up on my offer, he said it, and I'll never forget, he said, you are going to finish on.

The podium in 99.

In 99. I said, you're crazy.

There's no way you didn't think so with your confidence. Yeah.

Nah, I mean, that's first of all, the Vuelta is not the Tour. I understand, but so getting fourth in the Vuelta, yeah, to me that sort of equates to maybe top 10, which, by the way, would have been a great result.

But he was 100% sure at that point in time. So in 98, Pentani had won. In 97, Ulrich had won. How much time had you spent riding alongside those two?

Well, in the grand scheme, not much.

Do you have a sense of how you'd stack up against them?

I mean, I had never been in a Grand Tour at my peak form. Their peak form. I mean, I was just guessing and I don't remember.

Why were they not there in 99.

The thing at the Giro, got the hematocrite test. I want to say Jan. He also had, of course, you and I, offline, have talked a lot about Jan Ulrich. But, yeah, I think he had another thing. Maybe he tested positive. Something happened. Like he just. He wasn't there.

So you show up at 99 and the two best Tour riders are not there.

That's right. The previous two winners.

The previous two winners. I still remember my couch where I sat and watched the prologue that July day and explain to people why the prologue matters. Like, it's not a long stage. Let's get an 8 1/2 kilometer time trial. Right. But what's the importance of it?

First and foremost. And they don't always do it anymore, which I completely disagree with. I think it's.

It's the baddest thing in the world.

Of course, it's the only way to start a tourist. It allows the rider, especially the GC guys, to really test their condition, not just their own, but against the other guys. And you can put 30 seconds in a climber. 30 seconds is 30 seconds. And that was a tough one. It had a serious climb, sort of halfway through. It was enough that you could make some separation. So there are certain things that the Tour de France should always have. It should always have a prologue. It should always have a team time trial. It should always. And they've really gone away from that for some reason. Some reason, but thankfully not.

Then you win the prologue.

Win the prologue easily.

Your first yellow jersey.

Yeah. We thought we were in a dream.

Now, remind me, in that Tour, you were not using blood transfusions. It was all epo. You didn't microdose. You were just giving straight, regular doses. This is before they had a test for epo?

Yep. The only thing they had was the hematocrit test.

Do you remember where you kept your hematocrit at that Tour. This is when you were having to stay at about 50.

No, 50 would be too close. You had to stay around 46, 47. You know this. I mean, 47, you're dehydrated or you get sick, and they show up like you're done.

So something people don't realize is, in 1996, Rhys won the Tour. So finally, Unseeds Indoran, his hematocrit was somewhere between 60 and 66 during that race.

That's what they say. I mean, we were. Yeah, we weren't there with the spinner, but, yeah. The nickname Mr. 60%.

Yeah, his nickname is Mr. 60. So what changed so much? Was it Festina in 98 that basically brought the hammer down and said, we're done with these guys? Walking around with hematocrits in the 60s?

Yep.

Is it that much of a difference if you're walking around Hematocritus 42, 44, and you're racing 46, 47? Because this has always been my take on it. It's not so much how you're functioning on the beginning of the Tour, it's that at the end of the Tour, you could keep your hematocrit there when ordinarily it would really start to dwindle as you.

Well, yeah, but when the tests came around, then, yeah, you just knew that it would drop. The GC guys at least found ways around that, and that's where transfusions came in, which is effectively the same thing.

Yeah. Was there anybody on the Postal team that year that was not doing epo?

Not that I'm aware of.

How much were you guys commingling information? So you were seeing Ferrari, but I assume everyone wasn't seeing Ferrari, right?

No, a lot of them were. A lot of them were. But the team also had trainers and doctors and, you know, had its own setup.

Was that the year Moto man was going around?

Yeah, it was 99.

It was 99. Yeah.

I thought that was a great idea. Looking back on it, it's like. It's just like.

Well, it's a movie.

I mean, it's fucking crazy. Like, what? Oh, God. Yeah, that was 99.

I don't know if this is still the case, but I believe at the time you won in 99, you were the only person to not only win the Tour, but win each of the three individual time trials as well.

Yep. Well, yeah, the prologue and the two.

Long prologue and then the Tour.

We had long time trials back then.

60K at least, right?

55. Yeah. So if you're the best and it's that long, you're going to win.

You win that year. Do you think to yourself, ulrich wasn't here, Pentani wasn't here. Can I win this thing? When they're both there?

Not to mention, I mean, that big crash early in the race. I mean, Zula lost seven minutes. I mean, Zula was close in the race. If you back out, that accident, the.

Huge crash, he was within about a minute.

Yeah. It would have been close. Even if by saying Pantani and Ulrich aren't there, I mean, you still had Zula Escortin Olano. I mean, you had. Can't minimize those guys.

We almost take it for granted now, but at the time, how much scrutiny was there over your performance that year?

A lot.

That was the year of the cortisone. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, it started and it was the year after Festina. The Pope could have won the Tour and they would have questioned it.

Prior to this, you'd never really been on the hot seat. Right. So you'd been using the drug, but nobody really cared because you weren't winning the race. So now you're winning the race.

I wasn't in the crosshairs, so where.

Do you think the posture came of? This is how my denial is going to be in retrospect, was there another way to deny without attacking? Because I got to be honest with you, I don't really remember what the attack Mode was like in 99 versus 05. There's a spectrum of attack.

You would have to be in the press conferences. You'd have questions about the race and questions about whatever, and then somebody in the corner would. They were just asking a question at the time, felt like an attack on me. I said, excuse me, what the fuck are you talking about? I mean, literally, like that, like, just, let's go.

What did your teammate say? Did anybody pull you aside and say, lance, you gotta back this down, man?

No, but they wouldn't have done that. There are others.

Johan.

Johan. No, we are like brothers. He would do the same thing. It might have been better. Somebody here, locally, where my whole operation was run out of, to go. You know what? Feels like we may want to back this down a little bit. Just let it go.

How many other people in your life knew at the time? Obviously, your wife must have known.

It wasn't something that I offered up.

Did your mom know?

Nope.

Did she ever ask?

Nope.

What did your wife say?

Very little. I mean, I think she just assumed that level of the sport and that level of doping you cannot keep that. If you live with a person, that is not going to be a secret.

But did she ever say something like, lance, is this worth it? You know, like, if we're playing the long game?

I've never had this conversation with her. But and this is my point, is that if you have no ability to keep this a secret from your spouse or whoever you're living with. I have my teammates. They have the wives clubs. I think the wives. The conversation was like, this is just part of the job. Because they certainly all knew.

So in 2000, you come back. I want to ask you about Ventu. What was going on between you and Pentani there? Were you guys talking? What was.

I was trying to tell him that he. Yeah, I was gonna give him the win, which is one of the biggest regrets of my career. Why not on the Ventu? Merckx called me when I was on the car ride down. He said, you don't ever gift the Ventu, ever.

Why did you want to gift it to him?

I was gonna win the Tour. I knew I was gonna win the Tour. I was actually trying to be gracious and be sort of the patron of the peloton. Like, look, I don't need to win everything. Here you go. Win the Ventu. But in hindsight, God and may he rest in peace. I mean, I'm not talking about Pantani. I'm just talking about the Ventou.

Right.

Which is just. You just don't give that one away.

And Merckx called you on the car ride.

Yeah. This is huge mistake. You never gift the Ventu.

Is Merckx the greatest cyclist of all time?

Of course. Different sport.

Different sport.

Different sport, different sport.

But if Mercs were riding today, with the sport being so much more specialized, where would he choose to focus his energy? Would he be on the Grand Tours?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Very different sport now, though.

Half Man, Half Bike is a biography of Merck's that I love. And you gave me one of the most amazing gifts ever, which is that book that sits on my coffee.

Coffee table. I was psyched, dude. I saw it and I was like, oh, Peter has one of those too. And I was like, wait, you dumbass, you gave it to him?

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a cool book.

It's unbelievable. I would recommend anybody who's interested in cycling reading Half Man, Half Bike, because you can't really understand what he did. What does it mean to win five giros, five tours every single day classic? The one hour record, like, it just doesn't make any Sense. Who was second that year? Was that Beloki? Was he? Or was that Ulrich that year?

No, 2000. Jan. Jan gets second, I believe.

Is that when you guys began? You've said before that of all the guys you've ever raced, you've never respected anyone more than Jan? Obviously. We're going to talk about Jan a little later. Your respect and your love for Jan post cycling is he's a brother to you. Did it begin in that tour in 2000?

It was more intense. I viewed him as a real enemy and a rival. Fuck this guy. But when I talk about Jan and what he drove in me was just. I had. I was fully convinced that he was the most talented, that he was the biggest fear. If anything, every morning got you up and it was pissing rain outside and you had five hours on the schedule. Like, you better get out there. It was Yon Rourke that got me out. None of these other guys, they're all good, they're all, I'm sure, nice guys, but none of them inspired me like him.

Yeah. You probably didn't know it at the time, but how much you guys had in common. Right, in terms of your upbringing.

Yeah, Jan's had a complicated upbringing.

What's your biggest memory from 01 and 02, which was the year you began having suffered a broken collarbone. Didn't you fall in brain? No.

In Dauphine? That was 03.

So going into 03, 01 was probably.

Physically my best tour. I mean, 01, everybody refers to it as the look.

What was your time or what was your wattage up Madone all Those years were 500 watts. 500 watts for 30 minutes?

Yeah. And loving it.

What do you think your wattage would have been without EPO?

It would have been 450. Telling you it is 10%.

You think it's a full 10%?

Yeah. Yeah, 10%.

Seven watts per kilo.

450 is still pretty good, by the way.

Yeah, I mean, look, Bradley Wiggins probably put out 450, 440 to 450 during his one hour record, which was.

That's more impressive. That's flat.

Yeah. And you're kinked. So it's really hard because you're bent over the look. How deliberate was that?

I wasn't looking at Yan.

What were you looking at?

I knew I was about to send it and I thought, I feel good, but if this doesn't work, I'm gonna need somebody to bail me out, so I'm gonna need a teammate. And Chechu was the last guy with me and So I was looking back just to make sure that Chetu. And it was just the angle of the photo, but I was looking back to make sure that he was.

That he was gonna come with you.

Well, that he was close, still had him in sight. But just the way the photo was captured, it looked like I was looking directly at Jan, which I wasn't.

Oh, three, you've gotta be a little worried going into that, right? Cause you're pretty depleted on red blood cells, aren't you?

That's when I had a pretty big crash in the dolphin. A right before huge crash, actually.

And that's when you couldn't just give yourself willy nilly. I think by then we had an EPO test, right?

Yeah. Out of competition, you couldn't.

Yes. What was your hematocrit at the beginning of 03? Didn't you come in at like a 42 or something?

38 at the start. Pre race check. 38. 38 after 99. We never did EPO on the tour.

You did it out of competition still?

Yeah. And then Ferrari had to switch to transfusion.

Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought that happened in 02. So you're saying from 2000 on it was two bags during the race?

No, first year was 2000. We had one bag.

One bag at what stage?

Halfway through. So that first day at Hatakam, where that was with nothing, that was before the bag.

How are they not catching the jump in hematocrit that comes. You were not worried about? Hey, one day my hematocrit's 41, and the next day it's 47, right?

Yeah.

How close were you to understanding the UCI's algorithm for testing? I mean, at this point you're becoming. One of the things that people have always said is, hey, Lance had the UCI in his pocketbook.

Yeah, we can go down all these rabbit holes, all the stuff. I'm sort of done with that part of my life where I have to contest everything. It's like. But in its totality, if I just put them all on a whiteboard and said, they said this and this, and I mean, you cannot believe. This is where I just don't need to go one by one. But if you look at it in total, you cannot believe how much bullshit was out there. I mean, yes, the pillars are true, but most of it is just total bullshit.

I mean, I think the point is it's turning a blind eye.

By the way, Peter, a month ago they had a 30 minute program on French TV convincing themselves that they had Figured out that I had an engine in my bike. I'm not kidding. They figured out where the switch was. I'm not joking. I am dead serious. I'm like, what are you people? What are you doing? I don't know if you ever noticed this, but I would always grab my chamois, like, I would always, like, kind of adjust it. Adjust my shammy. I had this whole theory that the ass and the chamois and the seat have to line up. That's peak power. Like it's perfect balance and all this shit. This is on network television. The switch was in the shorts. This is a really dumb example. Although it's a true story that they aired this. Most of it just. I'm just like. And fortunately, I've gotten myself to a point in life where it's like, whatever.

Going into that last time trial in 03, you and Jan were really close.

Well, yeah.

You were not that far ahead of him, right? You were. Inside a minute, maybe.

Yeah, inside a minute. It might have been less. The fear or the stress around. It was not so much.

It was the checkpoint. How much did he take out of you?

The bigger stressor was how much he took out of me in the first time trial. I think he took two minutes out of me. You're thinking, okay, you got 45 seconds.

What stage was that?

The first one?

Yeah.

I don't know. It was early cap to covert.

It was right. So that's when your hematocrit's 38.

Yeah. So you're going, well, you've got 45 second lead. He took two minutes out of you in the first. I mean, everybody said, it's over, he's going to catch him.

I remember that like it was yesterday. Raining day, pouring rain.

He put six seconds on me in the first kilometer.

How many K was the time trial?

Long? 50.50ish.

So what went through your mind at that point?

Johan didn't tell me that.

He didn't tell you how much? Okay.

Six seconds in one kilometer.

That's unbelievable.

You fucking get off the bike. Yeah, like I'm done.

Did you feel you were redlined?

Oh, yeah, it was terrible.

And were you using your power meter at that point or mostly heart rate?

We didn't race with power. Meters trained 100% of the time with them, but not in the races, just heart rate.

When did they tell you that he fell?

Right away. I mean, Johan's watching the race on TV in the car as he's driving. And then I knew. I knew it was over.

The other thing about 03 was Baloki right below key. I still don't understand how you avoided that.

Well, of all the things that ever happened to me in the tour, I get asked about that. It's not even close. The ride through the field, that's the one. Even people that don't follow it, like, man, remember that one time, like, he fucking rode across that field. I was like, yeah, I do remember. But incredibly lucky. Very unlucky for Joseva. But if you go back and re watch, of course, there's 100 versions of it on YouTube, but if you go back and re watch exactly what happened. So he's leading, flying downhill. It's 100 degree day. It's bad roads with patch, whatever, with tar. The tar was literally boiling. Tire caught some hot tar and just hindsighted him and ruined his career. Ended his career. I mean, I had a choice. I said, I either lay this thing down or go left.

How many miles an hour were you going?

Oh, we were going 40 miles an hour. And I said, I'm gonna go left. Keep in mind, the story ends with me not just riding through the field, but having to get off my bike and jump down on the road. Well, that whole field was. You can go back and watch it on YouTube. So the split second that I said, I'm going left, there was a path. What are the chances? There was a path into the field where the farmer would go in and out with his tractor. What are the chances? I mean, five feet to the right, five feet to the left at 40 miles an hour is like that. And I go straight into the side of the ditch. So what are the chances that that path is there and I get in this field and it just dry. I don't. I'm no farmer, but it was like, dry crop. I was like, man, this shit is sharp. Like, I better not get a flat. And I'm just like looking down going, come on, man. And I got to the other side and I could see that it was way down. I was like. I was like, I better get off this thing. I was just, what are the chances?

Well, the other one that you must get asked about a lot, and I don't remember which year it was, was when your handlebar got caught.

Same year.

Was that also 03? A comedy of errors.

I know.

And by that point, clearly you and Jan had established an amazing respect, because that's when he waited.

Yep, yep. He's a total gentleman. I hit the kid's bag and just straight down. Bike was broken, which we didn't know at the time, but that's. The whole chainstay was snapped. But, yeah, Jan waited up.

So let's fast forward to the end of 05, right? You've won seven. You at the time said, look, I want to spend more time on the foundation. I want to spend more time with the family. I assume those were the real reasons you wanted to retire.

I think that's right.

When you came back, LeBlanc wrote an open letter basically telling you not to. Right. What was that about?

Jean Marie leblanc was an icon. He was a director, Director general of the Tour. He'll go down as being viewed as one of the greatest directors ever. And very, very tough guy was his way or the highway. And you just didn't cross Chaumrie. I retire. Landis wins. Landis test positive. So it was a Festina esque moment in time in cycling and yet another shift to like, guys looking around going, wait a minute, we might be extinct here if we don't fucking clean this up. And so the sport was shifting to a better place. Jean Murray's point was, look, you are a bridge to the past, right? So this sport has evolved. You are part of the old culture, and it's not good for this. And you know what? He's exactly right. I remember when he wrote it, and I think they printed it. The two big political papers are Le Monde and Le Figaro. I think it was in Le Figaro. And it was interesting because I was. I was in West Texas with Anna out in Marfa, one of my favorite places.

Where you just went recently?

Yep. And we had just gotten together. She wasn't with me when I raced before, and we were out there and we went to this. This is so crazy. We were in Fort Davis outside of Marfa, and went to this lunch spot and I said, this is a mistake coming back. Yeah. I said, I shouldn't do this.

By the way, did LeBlanc actually call you as well to follow up?

Not that I remember.

Do you think he would have been more persuasive?

No.

Why did you do it?

The wheels were in motion. Like, I felt a ton of responsibility or.

To the Foundation?

Yeah, all of it. I mean, all the sponsors were excited, the foundation was excited, and it felt like quitting. You can call me a lot of things. You cannot call me a quitter. I don't quit at anything. But it would have been easy to say, you know, we routine. He shot on some bullshit and just got out. And you would have been three days of press where it's like, oh, what happened?

And your view at that point is the sport's clean, so there's no risk to me because I don't need to use anything because no one else is using anything. Was that kind of your view?

The best I could tell? Yeah. I mean, I knew I wasn't phase two or phase whatever. The comeback years was clean. And ironically, Ferrari was the one who was adamant. He's like, they are coming for you. We just didn't cross the line.

So 09 is kind of close. You're third. And then.

No, but it wasn't close. It wasn't close at all. But third is third.

I mean, meaning you're on the podium.

Yeah.

I remember reading an article in the fall of 2009, and I think it was like an ESPN magazine that was comparing your 09 tour to Jordan's comeback. His second comeback the year they didn't win. Right. Because remember, he came back for the last part of the season in 95, and then they're like, well, wait till you see Lance in 10, because that's going to be Jordan's 90, or whatever it was when they went. So what did you think after 2009? Do you ever think, you know what, I gave this a great go. It would be totally respectable to just retire right now, to be off the sport for three years, four years, come back, be on the podium. Now I can retire. What made you stay back? Especially when it meant building a new team.

That was a big part of it. I mean, being able to not be on a team from Kazakhstan, literally, Team Borat, and build a whole new team.

But at this point, Lance, you're 30.

Yeah, I'm old. I mean, I was old in 05. That was 34 years old when I won.

Yeah. Like, wasn't it getting a bit old in terms of the training?

But again, this machine was rolling. Like, I wasn't going to be the guy to say, I'm getting off the.

Wave here, but what part of the machine at this point? Because from a personal wealth standpoint, at that point, you're going to get those sponsors even if you're not riding, aren't you? What I'm trying to get at is how much of this was filling a void that said, I don't like sitting around and not being an athlete.

That's not the point. The point is, every day of that comeback, I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Anna and I had this conversation the other night. I was like, somebody asked or came up and I was like, God, it's like, in my life, I am never going back to that place where you're looking around going, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? You're not gonna win the Tour. Like, what the fuck are you doing? And then as, of course, as it led down, the investigation started. And you're trying to do both. You're trying to defend your reputation, defend your livelihood, defend everything. And having to do one of the hardest sports in the world, it was like, get me out of here.

When did you realize that you had to tell the truth?

Either interviewed George or George went to the grand jury.

So fall of 12, basically.

It might have been earlier. Yeah.

This is going to sound incredibly naive. I actually believed you guys were not on PEDs at the time. My view was either you all are or you are not. Meaning the GC contenders. I don't necessarily mean everybody in the race, but my view was either all the GC contenders are or they are not. And I truly believed that post 98 that you guys were off. I was absolutely wrong. But the moment I realized how wrong I was was not with Landis, it was actually with Tyler. Landis didn't come across as very believable. Tyler did. And so I've lost track of time. But Tyler's book that he wrote with Dan Coyle, did that come out in like, 2011? Does that sound about right?

Maybe 2010?

Yeah. Yeah. It was when I read Tyler's book that I was like, this guy's way too freaking believable. And if he's saying this and he's saying that this is what they were all doing, I believe it.

He had a different version in his deposition in the postal case, but I.

Don'T know what his deposition said.

When anybody's deposed and they've written a book, they're just going to read you the book.

Yeah.

Did you say this? And is this true? Did they just read. They go page by page.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure if it was in any way sort of contradictory towards him or somebody he cared about, then he would blame Dan. I will never forget.

Oh, that's right. Because co author.

That's a danism. I was like, wait a minute.

Anyways, yeah, it's late 11 or whatever, and you're basically like, I gotta come clean.

12.

1112 or 12 12. Yeah. You've talked about your reasons for doing the interview with Oprah, which I think make a lot of sense. Right. Which is if you're going to give a deposition, you might as well do it on your terms.

Right. Yeah. And even that, I mean, looking back. Well, you can look back all you want. I did what I did. I was convinced that it was the right thing to do. The lawyers hated it. Whether it was Oprah or Tom Brokaw who was my other option, it wasn't going to help.

What was that period like when you went. Because I think you went to Hawaii right after. Right.

We still traveled a lot just to kind of get away.

And did any of the sponsors call you to quietly thank you for what you had done over the past 15 years? No, I know they can't publicly, but did someone at Trek say, hey Lance, I hope you understand we've got to dump you like a hot potato, but you did turn us into a billion dollar company.

No.

No sponsor in any one of your relationships ever thanked you for what you'd done.

I mean, I think there is a general use tracks as an example. So the answer is no. But if you asked Mike Senyard from Specialized, he would say thank you. All the ships rose.

Luke was obviously old enough to know what was going on. Were the twins?

Yeah, they were young, but they were. Yeah.

So what was the discussion like with them?

Basically just an open door policy, certainly if anything comes up at school. But if you ever have any questions about my life and the decisions I've made and or you hear something like we're not going to have one conversation about this, we're going to have as many as you want to have. Like it is just totally open door.

And what have they asked you about?

Not very much. What are they going to ask? Like they're not going to ask questions like you're asking because you know the sport so well. And I feel like we stayed, all of us certainly a lot of credit to Kristen as well. We've stayed very close as a family. When I say family, I mean myself, my kids, Anna and Kristen and now Anna and I's kids. It is, if you can imagine that Brady Bunch setup. We are a very close family.

So after the Oprah interview, which I guess is early 2013, who was the first person you reached out to apologize to?

Actually before the interview was, you know, I reached out because I knew that it would, they would see it, you know, the Andreus Lamond and Kathy and Greg wouldn't take my call.

Have they?

To this day we did meet up. You met with Greg and Kathy? Yep.

How long ago?

Oh God, it's been years.

How was that meeting?

It went better than I thought it would go. I was sincere, I said what I felt like I needed to say they accepted the apology.

What about Emma?

Emma and I met up in Florida. Emma's great. Her mission was to try to talk about the sport, to fix the sport.

Maybe not everybody listening knows who Emma is.

Emma was our soigneur. Was my soigneur in 99 and left the team and was a person that I went after.

And she got mixed up in this because of the LA Confidential book. She was quoted in it, as you said, it ended up being really about you. But my understanding is the reason she agreed to talk with David Walsh was really to make a broader statement about how corrupt the sport was.

I've enjoyed reforming that friendship and I wrote the foreword for her book and she's a cool lady.

What about any of your former teammates? Have you reconnected with Tyler? I know you have strong feelings about Floyd.

Those are the two names that stick out. The reality is 95% of that former what was known as the Blue Train, we'd still all go. I mean, we'd go all jump back into war together. Like brothers. Floyd and Tyler, they were never our brothers. Yeah. There won't be any future dinners.

You know, I remember a while ago your Twitter bio was different than it is now. Do you remember what it used to say?

No, what did it say? I don't even know what it says now.

Today it says, like, something boring, like everybody else's. But it used to say there's a reason the windshield's bigger than the rear view mirror.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, I've always found that. I don't know who that quote is attributed to. I'm sure it appears in many formats, but I always found it to be very poignant because it's not saying you should only have a windshield and no rear view mirror. And it's not saying you should have no windshield and only a rear view mirror. It's saying you need both. But one's bigger than the other. But in my own life, I've always felt like I have to have a rear view mirror. I never want to lose sight of my sins because they kind of ground me. Of course, you've had both the luxury and the inconvenience of living all of your sins on the world's most public stage. So most of us make all of our mistakes behind closed doors and nobody really gets to see the horrible things we've done. I remember when I hit the one year anniversary of doing something so awful I couldn't stand my existence for it. And I remember talking to my therapist about it. And she said, I actually don't want you to ever forget this. Like, I want you to remember what you did. You have to remember that the monster that did that thing, he's never going to die. He'll sit in the corner, he'll be small, but he's never going to die.

If you have the tools in place to.

You can keep him in a box.

Keep him in the corner.

Right. Are there moments that you look back at, like, do you look at that SCA deposition in October of 05 and think, I need that video playing over and over again, just quietly?

Yeah, it's totally embarrassing. I mean, a lot of that shit. And I was forced to rewatch a ton of that. Not because I wanted to or I thought it would be a good idea, but legal settings and depositions and trials, and they just hammer you with this. But it's. Yeah, you look at that and you're like, that is a pathetic person. I ain't never going back there. Those sort of things is unfortunate and is embarrassing. And as tough as they are to watch, for me, those are good. I mean, I don't want to do it every day, but it's like, that guy needed to die and a new guy needed to come around, and that's where you get stuck. You know, you say, oh, wouldn't change a thing. And all these things that I would say that would actually. I mean, you would change things. I mean, I love the spot that I've been able to get to. So you sort of think in your mind, like, well, these were all events that shaped the person sitting here today, but there would have been a better way to go about it.

It's funny, I was watching a video of an interview you did a while ago, and I normally don't read comments on YouTube because they're so incredibly uninteresting and ridiculous. And I don't know why, but for some reason, I read a couple, and I came across one that I thought was so interesting, I actually copied it down. I want to read it to you. So it was an interview. I don't even remember what interview it was. But not surprisingly, a lot of the comments were like, this guy's a horrible human being. What a ridiculous person. Oh, I know. It must have been the interview where you said and you tried to offer a nuanced explanation for why you wish you didn't have to hurt people, but you also wouldn't have done it different in the sense that you needed to learn the lessons you learned. Do you remember this interview? I think it was on NBC.

These were all the ones that.

So not surprisingly, every commenter is like, ripping you apart, of course. And this one guy writes something I'm just going to read to you verbatim. I was really moved by it. He says I was not a good person and it took losing everything to realize it. I'm not yet at the point where I would not change a thing, but I do get the. I can't change a thing, so it's useless to feel as much regret and shame as I do. I really believe him when he says that he values the lessons he learned because I do, too. I might not be a good person yet. I'm learning, but I'm no longer a bad one.

Yeah, those are few and far between. I mean, it takes a lot of. I mean, I don't read comments. I used to read comments, but I don't.

Something about the last line of this. I might not be a good person yet, but I'm no longer a bad one. I mean, I remember feeling like when I went through that transition of, okay, like, you're not the worst human in the world, you're not perfect and you're never going to be. But I still don't understand a couple of things about the sport. We could explain all day long why you ended up where you ended up. Once it became clear how widespread EPO use was in the peloton and blood transfusing and all that stuff, it became very difficult to say, well, Lance is a bad guy because he did these performance enhancing drugs, because to a first order, you did them no more or no less than anybody else. So then it turned into, well, he treated people so badly and that's why Lance is the worst person. But that doesn't explain to me why Ivan Basso did everything that Pantani did, is loved and Pantani was completely vilified and I mean effectively killed himself. It doesn't explain why pick your favorite German rider who's loved and Ulrich was rejected, why Votters is loved and Tyler gets rejected or whomever. Right. So if we're take Lance out of it for a moment. Right, because you're radioactive. What explains that difference between those other guys? Jan wasn't beating anybody up. Pentani wasn't screaming at anybody.

And same in Spain with Jimenez. You have a handful of examples here with characters who had problems so they could not handle. You know, this is. And I speak, I've talked about this before, but looking at the whole situation, nothing infuriates me more than that. It has more to do with society and the pressure and the organizers and the politicians in the sport, how they will. Jan Ulrich is not welcome at the start of the Tour. Meanwhile, Eric Szabel's up there shaking hands with the guy in the yellow chair. You know, it's like, wait a minute. This is fucking stupid. I don't understand.

Do you have any idea why that hypocrisy exists?

The ones who rose the highest, I mean, Pantani was the biggest athlete in Italy at the time, soccer, whatever sport, F1. Pantani was the biggest athlete in Italy. Jan was the biggest athlete in Germany. I was the biggest athlete here on and on. And so, you know, maybe it has to do with those heights. And the only place you can end up is the complete opposite, like, the bottom of the pool. We're not talking about me again with these stories. I mean, Pantani dead, Jimenez dead, Vandenbruck dead, Belgium, Gamont dead in France. I mean, all guys that were at the top of the game and couldn't handle with their own demons, they couldn't handle that fall from grace. So they turned to other things. But nobody reached out. In many ways, the press just sort of chased that story. I mean, look at Vanden Brook. I mean, Frank Vanderbrook was arguably one of the most talented of all time. He was the next Merckx. He was the next da da da da. And the press just let it go and just hammered this guy. And he died in a hotel room in Senegal. Pentani dies at a dirty hotel room in Milan. Fucking Jan almost dies. I mean, it's like, when did you.

Realize Jan was in trouble? I remember you and I talking about this in the summer of 18. You sent me a picture, and I'll never forget it. I was like, that can't be Jan.

Well, Jan has always liked to have fun.

Yeah, but this didn't look like having fun.

No, no, no. The other interesting thing is one of Jan's closest lieutenants when we were competing head to head was Andreas Cloden. Yes. Who ended up being on Astana with us and Radio Shack. And so I ended up getting to know Cloden and really, really getting to love him. So I had heard that a lot of these guys, so Clodin Szabel, Danilo Hondo, they had tried to reach out to him, and it was in the press. He got in a fight with his neighbor. Like, these are no secrets. Like, this shit was out there. He turned everybody away. And not just turned them away, but just flat out erased them from his life because he didn't want to hear it. But he had two guys, Frank and Mike Baldinger. So the German brothers from where he's from, they're normal guys. Like, they're not professional cyclists. They're not rich, they're not famous. They're just regular dudes. They're good dudes. They contacted me and they said, he's told everybody else to just leave him alone. And then he's turned on. They said, you're our last call. And I didn't know these guys. And so that's when I made the trip to Switzerland or German place. And that was. It was a mess.

Yeah. What was that like? To see him like that, unrecognizable.

It was like an alien had entered his body. I've seen some crazy shit. I have never seen anything like this. But, you know, Jan, two years sober, he's got his kids back in his life. He's on the bike. It's fucking. Fucking love that guy.

It is amazing to me how our society, I can't understand it, why we sometimes lift people up and then find such joy in watching them crash.

Yeah, we're not going to figure that out. I get very frustrated and straight up mad when I see the differences between Ulrich and Szabel and Pintani and Basso and on and on and on. And guys that were just not equipped to handle that downfall. That was the one, man, I was. The one thing I said to myself, I said, just whatever you do, just do not. I mean, you can go have fun and do some crazy, but don't you ever lose contact with your health, your wellness, your fitness, your family? Like, don't ever lose sight of that.

Did you go through a period in 2013 where you were pretty reclusive? And so this is meaning right after kind of the whole confession, I'm trying to think, like, when did you start Your podcast? In 1617.

I'd have to go back and look.

It's been like there was a period of time when you were really off the radar.

Well, yeah, I mean, had no choice. Radar didn't pick you up either. I mean, there was nothing to do.

What was it like when you walked into a restaurant? I mean, you've told one story a number of times about walking across the street and a bunch of people.

Yeah, that bars once.

But what was the normal reaction? Like, perfectly fine indifference.

Yeah, that's why I don't read comments, because I walk through my day, you know, I see guys on the golf course, I see people on bike rides, I see people in restaurants. I Go to meetings. That is not an accurate snapshot of what my life is like at all, even in 13.

Because, remember, the other thing that was going on at that point in time is the foundation is crumbling and you're getting kicked out.

Yep.

You've told me before that that hurt as much as anything else.

It was surreal.

And what did the people at the foundation tell you unofficially? Not the board, but the people who work there. The people who were doing the actual heavy lifting.

Now, those folks I have a ton of regret about, because they were doing the Lord's work and they were not privy.

Yeah. They weren't decision makers here.

Yeah. And they believed the dream. They believed the story. And so that's. And as a byproduct of that, you know, they in many ways felt complicit in the scheme. That's tough for me to hear. And I'll spend the rest of my days trying to make that okay for them. And I wasn't part of these discussions, so I don't know what the board room discussions were like or which consultants were hired or I don't know how it all went down. And I just knew it was the wrong thing. I knew that. Timeout. Yes. Space. But some agreement here that we will both reemerge. That was the right thing to do. I mean, and I don't need somebody to sit here and say, well, you're right. But if I look at where Livestrong has ultimately ended up, If I look at my audience now, well, they're very different. And one of them is not doing very well, and the other one's back, so to speak.

What interaction do you have these days with the cancer community?

Very little. Just one on one. And by the way, that's fine. I don't need to be asked to speak at a gala or get some award or all the stuff I did in the past. Somebody's got a friend that's just been diagnosed and, hey, Lance, can you reach out to him 100%. Let's go right now. That's enough for me.

I don't know if you've been asked this question before. I'm sure you have. And so I apologize in advance, but when the story's done, what do you think your legacy's gonna be?

Too early to say.

Too early.

I know what it would have said in January of 2013, but I don't like to brag about myself, but I gotta say, I'm really fucking proud.

What are you most proud of?

I am proud of the fact that I didn't quit.

Which time? Because you had a number of times to.

Well, just through this whole thing that I was able to keep it together without really any support. And thank God we live in 20, 21, 20, whatever, where you can reinvent yourself on your own. You don't need network television, you don't need the New York Times, you don't need any of that. What we're doing right here, right now. You did this on your own. You bought the cameras, you got the mics, you're asking the questions. You're the smart guy. Millions of people are listening. You did that on your own. Couldn't have done that 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I've chosen to go that path and I'm proud of that. So who knows what to your original question, like, I'm 50 years old, I'll live another 40 or 50 years. There's a lot left to be told.

Yeah, I was going to say that's the amazing part here. Right.

I don't need any more puff pieces in my life. Like, I'm really beholden to a few things. One, my family. So that's my first checkpoint and that's amazing. I really feel beholden and loyal to the audience of our podcast. And then as a byproduct of the success of the podcast, the fund, the LP base, the people that have entrusted me, the guy that the whole world thought could never be trusted again, have trusted me with their hard earned money. I'm beholden to them and that's all I care about. I don't need to be on the COVID of Forbes. I'm totally cool to keep that private. Also, at the end of the day, it is going to contain a lot of the rearview mirror, but I'm okay with that. That's the way society is. That's the way legacies are. Mine especially. It will mostly be that if you.

Could go back in time to 15 year old Lance, oh, God, you've got a week with him. What kind of lessons would you try to impart on him?

There would have been a lot. Well, I was a pro athlete and it was when my mom kicked out Terry Armstrong.

Okay, so I didn't know that was 15.

Yeah, that was 15. So that was the point in time where it was her and I against the world. Fuck everybody else. We're going to get these people. Like, he's gone, we're together, let's go.

So the chip on your shoulder, which I'm guessing exists subconsciously now, became pretty conscious.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that chip on your shoulder Did a lot of good for you and obviously a lot of bad for you.

Yeah.

So do you think that again, in this thought experiment, if you had a week to coach that kid, could you have figured out a way to extract the value from that complex and soften some of the damage that it was going to ultimately cause you via the damage it would cause to others?

Yeah. 15 year olds don't realize that, but the amount of trauma that I had already had in my life, which just got actually worse and worse and worse. I mean, cancer was hugely traumatic, and then the fall was traumatic. There's a lot to unpack there. Never meeting your father and having somebody around, it was just never having that figure in your life. And the figure that was there was wildly defective. It would have been in and around that. If somebody would have come up to me when I was 15 and said, you know, I feel like you've had some crazy shit in your 15 years, you should just do a little bit once a month, I would have said, you know what, why don't you go fuck yourself? I ain't doing therapy for nothing. Like, I embrace that stuff now. But there would have been a lot of work to do even then.

What could you have told him though? Like, again, if he's not willing to go to therapy, which I can understand, that's a pretty hard sell to a really, really cocky 15 year old. What else can you tell him? Or was he too far gone at that point? One of the things I've learned about myself over time is that so many of the character traits that were both positive and negative and they tend to cluster like right on top of each other. Right. It's like two genes that sit right next to each other in the chromosome, one good, one bad. A lot of those traits come about long before we're consciously aware of what led to them. I think your case is really obvious sometimes, like some of those traumas are so obvious. The dad, the stepdad, the growing up without this. And then of course, that says nothing about cancer. Which do you feel you've gone back and unpacked that PTSD through all of those layers now as an adult?

Well, I don't know that any of us can ever unpack it all. In the last year, I've certainly done more unpacking than in the previous 49. Way more. I should have started that process a lot earlier. Going back to the question though, on the, you know, I was just. Even then at 15, I drove a fast car and every green light was a competition, and every Thing was like, slow down, kid. Like, it was just everything was a fight. Not even a competition. It was a fight. But you said it. I mean, it would have been impossible to get just like that 15 year old, the 25 year old, the 35 year old, even the 45 year old, you would not have gotten through.

I think that's something that very few people can understand. I can relate to Atlantz because I've had my own total, total destruction. I've played the game in my head a hundred times. God, I just wish I could take that all back. I wish I could undo all of that stuff. But I realize if I were to undo all of that stuff, I wouldn't have fallen down. And if I didn't fall down and lose it.

All right, but this is when you say, well, I wouldn't change a thing because these series of events happened and boom, it caused. Whether it's deep work or introspection or realignment, whatever you want to call it, then that wouldn't happen. That's just hard. That's a hard answer. I mean, that answer has never worked for me because people. Oh, but what? But they analyze so much of the stuff. But I mean, in many ways it's true.

So how do you keep fit these days? I mean, you talked about swimming. Is that the mainstay of your training now?

We're in the summer. The Aspen is completely thawed out. The mountain bike trails are open.

What's your fastest time up Mount Evans?

I've only done Mount Evans once. I did it in 1990.

That's at your doorstep.

No, no, that's not that close.

It's close to Aspen, isn't it? It's like a couple hours away.

Well, that's not close. I don't get in a car to ride my bike. That's kind of a rule.

All right. What was your fastest time at Palomar?

Don't know. That was a long time ago.

Do you care anymore? Do you still care how fast you can ride up the mountain?

No. I find myself being happier and happier just riding.

Do you use a power meter still?

Nope. No heart rate, no power meter, none of that bullshit.

Do you have any idea what you would ride up Madone in today? How many watts you could average if we stuck a power meter on you?

I have no idea.

Like 350?

No, I doubt I could do that.

I bet you could.

You give me a week or two to train. I could. I don't know. I find myself just ride easier as opposed to harder.

Do you enjoy A group ride or do you still enjoy just kind of going out on your own doing a four hour ride?

I like it. I like being all alone.

How much on a mountain bike versus road bike?

Mostly mountain bike.

Just because of the risk of cars.

Cars. I like staying away and it's where we live. You get out in the mountains on a mountain bike all by yourself. Come on.

You're running much?

I haven't run. I keep getting hurt running. I think I'm too old to run. If I did yoga three days a week or was serious about stretching and pliability and things that I should be thinking about at 50, I could run. But my dumb ass is just like, put the shoes on, don't stretch a bit, let's go. That doesn't work when you're 50.

And what's the tightest interval? You'd swim 101 hundreds on what would be your touch and go interval for 10 1/ hundreds with sea level?

Like if I went right now?

Yeah. Would you be 105? Touch and go?

No, I couldn't do that right now.

110.

110. I'd be really touching and going at the end.

So 115. You could bring them in at 110, no problem. So you're still a fit guy.

I'm fitter than most 50 year olds.

What's the biggest liability to your fitness? What's your biggest vice? Food, alcohol. What gets in the way of. Because what do you weigh right now?

180.

Okay, so you're £15 above your tour weight, which is actually not a lot, given most retired cyclists. So is that a struggle to maintain your weight?

No. I seem to have a balance between consumption, whether you're consuming food or alcohol or whatever. That's consumption. I have to exercise not because I want to stay a certain weight or.

I want to look a certain weight. Yes, you need it for your mental health.

It's my own sanity. Like it's the only reason.

That's interesting, by the way, isn't it? There are a lot of former pro athletes that I know who once it's no longer their job, they just do not want to do it anymore.

I will ride for as long as this body will allow it to ride. Absolutely.

Well, man, it's been great sitting down. Yeah.

Been a long time coming.

I know. And I've got an amazing salmon and okra dish waiting.

Oh, God. You gotta tell that story right quick. You can't tease them out with that. This is. I'll tell the story, I'll tell the Story. So there's and every people that, like Anna, who cooks for me all the time, she knows that I just don't like salmon. And like, growing up, we would eat okra and I just don't like okra. So I come over. This has been six months, six, seven months ago. And I walk in, I'm like, that smells like salmon. I'm like, hey, what's for dinner, Peter? He's like, oh, I got you grilling this amazing salmon.

I was like, oh, I was on the Traeger, my special marinade.

I was like, oh, okay. And then I was like, what are we having with it? And you're like, oh, I got some fresh okra. And I was like, this is not.

Couldn't make this happen.

This isn't happening. This is a fucking joke. Like, I'm getting punked.

It's like Anna called me to tell me this before and.

And I was like sitting there, just like getting to the meal, and we were. We had a wonderful time. And then I don't know why I was. But when I was stepping out, I was like, I was like, I have to be honest with you guys, like, there are two things in this world that I just really can't stand to eat salmon and okra.

But you had a brave face, man. I wouldn't have known you put it down. As far as salmon and okra go, I hope it was good salmon and good okra.

So we had the Japanese whiskey too.

Ah, that. That definitely lubricated it. All right, my friend.

Oh, man.

You ready to go get your butt.

Kicked in the sim?

Yeah.

Well, you don't know that I'm going to get my butt kicked, so it's not fair for you to say that. But I'm ready to go see what happens.

Okay, Very well.

I can drive.

I'm sure you can, but I just think I'm excited to see this.

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