How Did Lance Armstrong Get Away with Cheating for So Long?

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1:05quick change, and head to work. Meetings, workshops, one more Celsius, no slowing down, working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius, live, fit, go. Grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com. On one side of the table, sat Oprah Winfrey, the architect of the televised confession on the other was a man who claimed the pain, cancer, and cynics could all be defeated by just believing

2:08hard enough. How that work out for your lads. For more than a decade, Lans Armstrong has stared down reporters, rivals, and former friends. Anyone who dared suggest his seven to order France titles were chemically assisted. Oh wait, we're back in time. We're back in the moment when he was like, no, no, I never did anything wrong. He got all of them stripped away, right? He sued newspapers, he called whistleblowers liars, and he passed hundreds of drugstests. He always insisted there were no secrets, no prospects. Did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performance? There was a long pause. Yes. That single word destroyed a myth, built on miracle comebacks. Oh right, because he also got cancered in. He had like, testicular cancer. Wasn't it like, hadn't it, wasn't it like the rest of his body? Wasn't it quite far advanced? He's still around, Lans Armstrong still around, right? So I guess he beat that. It was pretty impressive. He already didn't beat his competitors in cycling, because he was cheating. But it also raised a more complicated question that the interview could

3:11not answer. Was Lans Armstrong just one more doper in a dirty sport? Or was he something much bigger and much worse? Let's find out. Just for you, I don't know much about Lans Armstrong's story. Did I do feel that wasn't the whole thing about cycling? It's like, yeah, I did. Everyone was dope it. If you weren't dope it, you weren't witted. And Lans Armstrong was just better at doping than the other people. He's just got it down to an art. Miracles, wristbands and yellow jersey. By the late 90s, professional cycling bit of a mess. The 1998 Tour de France had been dumped. The Tour of Shame, marred by police raids, arrests and the expulsion of the Fistina team. The systemic doping. The public was jaded. Sponsors were fleeing the sport and something had to change in in July 1999. It did. Like, I don't, I know it's a bad idea because then everyone's just going to get like ridiculous on steroids. But if everyone's cheating, just be like, okay, we don't just just tell us that you are. We'll just be like, okay, everyone can cheat. I just have like the Tour de France that we

4:15cycling are like 100 miles an hour on their little bikes because they got just quads the size of like an elephant. The race was branded, the Tour of Renewal. And the man standing on the podium in Paris seemed to be living proof that human grit could conquer just about anything. Human grit add drugs, right, Lans Armstrong was 27 years old, just three years earlier. He'd been coughing up blood. His body riddled with testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. I have to say, I really like this was in 1999. How old is Lans Armstrong? I know testicular cancer is like one of those ones that you this like moat, you know, almost entirely survivable. He's 54. So he's still. It's what I was that's entirely smileable. But I kind of thought like why the point like cancers in your brain, it's like, isn't it, isn't it brain cancer? Or is it still testicular cancer that's easily more easily treatable? I guess it is because Lans Armstrong is still very much alive. Now he wore the yellow jersey. This was a man who had cheated death. Surely he had no need to cheat in sports. He was the miracle that proved

5:19the bad days were over. He was the future. Over the next 70 years Armstrong absolutely dominated the sport in 2004. His foundation and Nike, as we said in the UK on Nike, if you're feeling particularly American and I know the correct pronunciation is Nike. But I am British alas. Not just a simple yellow, silicon bracelet. I remember these stamped with the word live strong. It cost a dollar and became a global phenomenon. You probably remember them indeed I do. The wristband, whoever wrote this, there's no name on this script and I don't remember. The wristbands appeared everywhere. They were worn by Hollywood celebrities by United States Presidents and most effectively by millions of ordinary people who had been touched by cancer. He didn't everyone wear these though. I don't know if I have a war one. There's never really a bracelet person. I'm wearing a bracelet now but it's one of these blood pressure ones. It keeps me alive. But I remember these being popular. I think it wasn't just a way to support cancer. I'm not sure. A charity that beats cancer, that bites cancer.

6:22They appeared on the arms of children in chemotherapy wards who looked at Armstrong and saw a future where they too could survive and thrive. The foundation raised more and half a billion dollars to support cancer patients. The yellow band became a tribal signifier that said you believed in hope in resilience and also in lots. Armstrong wrapped himself in the good will of the cancer community. When journalists or skeptics questioned his miraculous performance, he didn't just deny the allegations. He expressed moral outrage. He argued that a man who had stared into the abyss of a terminal diagnosis would never risk his second life on performance in fasting drugs. Wait, he had a terminal diagnosis? He's still alive. Well, Lance Armstrong's cancer terminal. I don't think so. It was extremely advanced in life threatening. Oh, maybe we're saying that he said that he stared into the abyss of a terminal. It doesn't matter whatever. Even though he had it in his brain and stuff, apparently it's just very advanced but not technically terminal. He said it never risked his second life on

7:26performance in fasting drugs. He told the world repeatedly that there were no secrets his success only hard work and the power of belief and steroids or whatever. He was taken. For a generation of fans, the yellow jersey and the yellow wristband became symbols of ultimate integrity, but as you probably already know, the tour of renewal was a lie. The miracle was actually the debut of the most sophisticated professionalised doping program, the sport had ever seen. From Texas Prodigy to Cancer Survivor. Long before he was a global icon, Lance was just a kid from Plano, Texas. Ooh, with a chip on his shoulder, he started in triathlons before moving to professional road racing, whereas style was less about refined tactics and more about brute force. Are people who ride bikes more likely to get testicular cancer? Because he's riding bikes for a long ass time. And I mean, your boys are like, it's a hard scene, you know? I used to ride mountain bikes a lot, occasionally a little up. His style was less about refined tactics and

8:29more about brute force. By the time he was 25, he had a contract with the French team, Coffittis worth millions, a lucrative deal with a knife and two stage wins at the Tour de France. He was young, rich, and in his own mind, simply unstoppable. But in October 1996, that invincibility shatters. It started with a swollen testicle that he tried to ignore, don't be ignoring a swollen testicle. Just go to the doctor, be like dog, what's that? Followed by headaches and coughing up blood. When he finally sought medical help, yep, it's about the time you cough it up blood, you go to the doctor. Is for you, you're probably fine, you probably just got a little cut in your throat or something, but you never know. Actually, I don't know, if you're coughing up blood, are you probably fine? I know most of the time, like, I don't know, I'm a bit of a icon, you know, I can go to the doctor and I'll be like, what's this dog, am I dying? And they're like, that's nothing. And you're like, okay, but coughing up blood, I feel like they'll be like, we need to get you to the hospital where you may never leave. He was diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer. The disease was an aggressive, choreocarcinoma that had already metastasized, spreading from

9:33the testicle into his abdomen, filling his lungs with tumors and eventually reaching his brain. But that, the treatment was brutal, surgeons removed the disease testicle, and he was transferred to the Indiana University Medical Center under the care of Dr. Lawrence Einhorn. Armstrong underwent multiple rounds of aggressive chemotherapy, a regimen that stripped him of his hair, his muscle mass, nearly killed him. At the start of the process, doctors had given him odds of survival of 50-50. Okay now, I mean, I know that's quite good for like, advanced cancer, I guess, but still that's a hell of a, that's a hell of a, I had a, I had a thing recently that was, I don't really want, I don't, yeah, I just had, I had to go for a scan to make sure that everything was all right, just put it that way. And it was like, if it wasn't all right, it would really, really bad news. And it was, everything was fine. But, fucking hell is that stressful. There's that quote, right? A person's got a hundred problems, it's all there, the health problem, and then they've got one problem. You know, yeah, fucking true. Like, everything else just seems so small when you're like, uh, guys,

10:33I like it, it'd be okay. Well, you're gonna get it, you need to get in that big machine and we'll work out. But he didn't just survive. He rebuilt everything. When he was declared cancer-free in February 1997, he returned to the bike, a different man, lighter, leaner, and fueled by a terrifying new intensity. When he lined up for the 1999 tour, he wasn't just a cyclist anymore. To the world watching, he was living proof that the killer inside could be beaten, provided you were willing to suffer enough to win, and Lax was always ready to suffer to win. So, to understand the fraud that goes on here, you first have to understand that in professional cycling, the limited factor is oxygen. Yeah, there was something about this rider, I'm taking his blood out of his body, or something, right? Muscles absolutely scream for it, and the heart pumps furiously to deliver it. In the early 90s, a new drug arrived, that changed how human endurance worked. It was called Erithropotin, or EPO. Medically synthetic EPO was a miracle

11:35for kidney patients and those with anemia, stimulating the bone marrow to churn out fresh red blood cells. But for cyclists, this was intense. A normal adult male has a hemocrit that's the percentage of blood volume made up of red blood cells, of roughly 41 to 45%. Okay, cool. Taking EPO could drive the number to 50, 55 or even 60%. Okay, so that's quite a jump, isn't it? 50% or than what a regular person is at. Now, this might not sound like much. I don't have 50% jumps pretty big. Is it a 50% jump? Yeah, it could be 41 to 60. Yeah. But this was transformative, a rider on EPO could sustain efforts that would crack a clean athlete in minutes. Biological limits, apparently now just suggestions. Ay, drugs. But as the blood thickened with extra cells, it turned into something resembling sludge. Uh-oh. The risk of stroke and heart failure skyrocketed, especially during sleep, when heart rate slowed. Young, healthy cyclists began dying in their sleep across Europe. Their hearts simply unable to push the thickened blood through their veins.

12:40This, of course, is very dangerous. No shit, like sludgy blood. You don't want that. And also very illegal. When EPO testing finally arrived around 2000, women did the start. In the early 1990s, had they just get the testing around 2000. It's just a game of staying ahead of the tests, right? Is that still... I guess we're going to find out. Is that still how it works? Riders switched to blood doping at that point. This was, this involved drawing their own blood months before race, storing it and re-infusing it mid-competition to get the same oxygen boost without the synthetic drug. It's fucking weird, but I get it. For most of the 90s, however, there was no test. The sport became an arms race, where the, okay, so you had EPO throughout the 90s, and then they had to switch when the test finally arrived. The sport became an arms race, like I said, where the science of cheating outpaced the science of detection. There we go. This was the dirty peloton, Lance Armstrong returned to. Building the US Postal doping machine. Later, the US ADA did not mince words.

13:43What is the US ADA? Is that the defence attorneys? No, no, no, district attorneys? The prosecutor people? They labelled the US Postal Service team, run by Lance Armstrong, and team director John Brunel, as quote, the most sophisticated professionalised and successful doping programme that the sport has ever seen. Wait, why is he running? Is the Postal Service just like the sponsor of the team? The Postal Service sponsors a team? Are they like a government entity? Why does the post office need to advertise? Oh, I just realised something. Is he going to gain extra trouble? Because he's like cheating the government. I think you remember this. There's like something tingling in my mind about that. This was a top-down corporate enterprise designed to wing the world's biggest race and then vanish without a trace. At the intellectual centre of this was Dr. Michelle Ferrari, an Italian physician with a genius with physiology and a complete lack of ethical constraint. It's pretty useful in this situation. He viewed a cyclist's blood values not as biological

14:47limits but as variables to be optimised. Under his guidance, the team moved to be on simple EPO used into a calibrated regimen of testosterone, human growth hormone, cortisone and blood transfusions. Armstrong later admitted to Oprah that his cocktail included all of these, but the true sophistication of the programme was in the evasion. The team operated basically like spies, witnesses like... soignia. Oh, that's the team assistant. It's got fancy French word. Emma O'Reilly described a clandestine supply chain where drugs were smuggled across European borders in unmarked containers. The team employed a motoman, a motorcycle courier, to deliver EPO directly to riders during the Tour de France weaving through traffic to keep the supply fresh and the paper trail non-existence. That's own proof of this but it is kind of cool. To beat the tests, they mastered the science of micro-dosing, taking small amounts of EPO late at night, so the drug would clear the system by the time test is arrived in the morning.

15:47This was known as the Glow Time. If the test is arrived unexpectedly, the team had protocols, riders described hiding from officials or emergencies, infusing saline solution to rapidly dilute their blood and drop the hemicrit levels, black below the suspicious 50% thresholds. They're coming, they're coming, lots! Get the IV in your arm now! According to a latest sworn affidavits from teammates like Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis, Armstrong held ultimate control over all of this. Oh shit, he was like, okay, I thought he was just like part of it and whoever liked the team boss? I don't know. Formula 1, you got the team boss, right, and he's like making all the decisions. The drivers get a say, but I assumed that there was like a boss, but Armstrong's in the driver's seat, huh? He pressured teammates to get on the program, allegedly warning them that if they wanted to ride the Tour de France, they had to do what was necessary. For years, this industrial scale fraud was hidden in plain sight, when Oprah Winfrey asked him about the doping scheme years later, Armstrong didn't speak of it with shame or complexity,

16:47he describes it as banal. It wasn't his words. Part of the job. Nothing more. Is that because just basically everyone was doing it? They're just doing it better. Bullying the doubters into silence. The USADA investigation revealed that the US Postal Service team was not just held together by contracts, but a rigid code of omurter, a meta like the Sicilian gangster, Italian gangster, code of silence like you don't talk. Again, according to the sworn testimony of team Mason staff, he operated as the sports enforcer. If you were on the team, you were expected to get on the program. If you were outside the team and spoke up, well, you got destroyed. The first casualty was the truth. The second casualty was Christophe Bassons. He was a French rider who was vocal about competing clean. Bassons rode a column during the 1999 Tour de France, questioning the sudden speed of the peloton. In the middle of the stage, Armstrong rode up alongside him,

17:48grabbed his shoulder, and told him that if he couldn't stop talking, he should go home. The message was clear. The yellow jersey runs this sport. Bassons quit the race days later and eventually left professional cycling entirely. Is that true? Is that what he says, or is that like, I'm going to say allegedly to that, because that seems insane. He's just like gangster. But the intimidation went far beyond the tarmac. MRO Riley admitted to investigators that should ferry drugs across borders and used makeup to cover the needle marks and Armstrong's arms before press appearances. When a Riley later spoke to journalist David Walsh about what she'd seen, Armstrong did not merely deny her story. He went to war. He sued O'Reilly in the Sunday Times for label. In the press, I mean, you got to. You got to. Like, you got to, you got your story and you stick it to it. Although it's quite risky if they come out with actual proof. The ultimate defense to label is proof that you did what they're saying you did. But it's just her word against his, right? In the press, he branded her a liar,

18:50an alcoholic smearing a reputation to protect his own. O'Reilly later described the experience as having a life turned into a living hell by a man with unlimited resources and a huge public reach. Not to mention unlimited resources is a huge public reach and fucking everything to lose. And I think that last was probably more important there. And then there was Betsy and Frankie Andrew. Frankie was a former teammate and captain. Betsy was his wife. The years they testified about a moment in an Indiana hospital room in 1996 where they allegedly heard a doctor asking Armstrong if it ever used performing and enhancing drugs and heard Armstrong list them one by one. Armstrong has always disputed this account and refused to confirm it even after his confession. But for more than a decade, the Andrews were ostracized from the cycling world and subjected to a campaign of character assassination for refusing to recant their story. Oh my god. There's a gangster. Armstrong's defense was a scorched earth policy. He used power, fame in his legal team to bankrupt and humiliate anyone who threatened the narrative.

19:50Years later, when Oprah Winfrey asked him if it sued people he knew were telling the truth and if he had bullied them into silence, the answer was once again, yes. He's like, allegedly, yes, yes, no I am. Yeah, no, I am a piece of shit. Yeah, no, I am. God damn, is this a despicable behavior, my dude? In my opinion. The journalist who wouldn't shut up. In the middle of the global applause, it was a small corner of the press room that remained rather stubborn. Chief among them was Irish sports writer David Walsh. Walsh covered the Tour de France for the Sunday Dimes and he had a simple problem with the Lance Armstrong story. The maths just didn't work out. He saw a peloton that was faster than ever before yet supposedly cleaner than ever before. In 2000, a money published in article with the headline Champort Cheat. It was the first crack in the facade. Yeah, I guess one of the most obvious things is if they've really cleaned up the sport, suddenly it's going to be a lot slower because they're not on superhuman performance enhancing drugs. How's it now? Is it clean? Are they cleaner now?

20:55Another time slower because they're not all jacked up on drugs and injecting their own blood back into themselves. I know nothing about cycling, I have to say. I mean, if you ask me to name a cyclist, I could name Lance Armstrong and I think there's a British dude called Bradley Wiggles or something. Wiggins, something like this. From a few years ago, who was very, very successful, but I haven't heard anything about him in a while, but it's probably because I don't follow cycling. So good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on rag and bone made well. Vince, all scenes and more of your favorites. How did I let no rack as a deed is? Why do we rack for the hottest feel? There's so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Hi everyone, I'm Charlie Cox. Join us on Disney Plus as we talk with the cast and crew of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. What happened to you gotten to do as

21:57Daredevil? Being the Avengers? Charlie and Vincent came to play. I get emotional when I think about it. One of the great finales of any episode we've ever done. We are going to play Truth or Daredevil. What? No boy. Fantastic. You guys go hard, man. Daredevil Born Again, official podcast Tuesdays and stream season two of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again on Disney Plus. Anyway, whilst teamed up with French journalist Pierre Ballersteier out to write LA Confidential, LA Confidential. Okay, published in 2004, the book was a forensic dismantling of the myth.

22:58You're a light heavily on the testimony of Emma O'Reilly. You are. This is a dangerous thing, dude. He's definitely going to see you unless you've got some proof to bag this up. Although, her word, she says it's her word. She gets sued for libel. Risky business. You already got sued, and others who saw the doping first hand. But in the mid-2000s, telling the truth was an expensive business. Because the book was published in France and the allegations were repeated in the UK, Armstrong was able to leverage strict libel laws to silence the reporting. He sued the Sunday times in one. At this time, especially, I don't know if it's got better now. It was really bad for a while. Injunctions and super-injunctions, freedom of the press in the UK was really weak. I think it still is quite weak. I remember the example I always think of is the golfer. Tiger Woods, who had many affairs or something like that. He was like, I just don't want this coming out in the press. So he got an injunction in the UK. You could go to CNN.com and it'd be like, Tiger Woods says many affairs or whatever he's up to. I can't quite remember what the story was.

23:59He did something scandalous. I think it was affairs, like several affairs, I think, and in the UK press, it was just nothing. Because he managed to keep it out of the press, like he got an injunction to stop it being published, which is insane. The paper was forced to settle, print an apology, and pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the journalists had something Armstrong didn't expect. They had his frozen piss. Okay. In 2005, the French sports newspaper gained access to Armstrong's stored samples from the 1999 tour, so-called Miracle Tour. What, six years later, they stole his piss samples? Okay. Armstrong's response was immediate and furious. He went on television and denounced the reporters of witch hunt, lacking any chain of custody or scientific integrity. The UCI, the sports governing body, which had a vested interest in keeping their superstar shining, sided with Armstrong. The investigation was dismissed as inconclusive. For a moment, it seemed Armstrong had won again. It beaten the cancer, beaten the peloton, beaten the press. But Walsh and his colleagues didn't stop. They knew what was in those

25:03bottles, and they knew that sooner or later, the science would out him. That's the thing, right? Sorry, I know I'm interrupting today's episode a lot. It's just going to feel like I've got a lot to say about it. Like, if they- the chain of custody could be shut, but that applies to court or whatever, or, you know, proof. A journalist would be like, yo dude, I know it's your piss. You know it's your piss. You're just not getting any trouble because there's no chain of custody. But I know. And that means I'm going to keep on digging until I find something else which proves it. So you didn't win. You just shoved the disaster down the road a little bit. What's that, euphemism? Whistleblowers and a federal grand jury. When Lance Armstrong retired in 2005, he likely believed that his legacy was sealed. He had exited the stage as a hero, but the world wasn't finished with him. The first domino was Floyd Landis, former US Postal teammate, Landis won the 2006 Tour de France, only to be stripped of his title days later, after testing positive for synthetic tennis testosterone. The year's landis

26:06denied everything soliciting money from bans for his legal defense, France, but by 2010, broken, broken bitter. The three b's, he decided to burn the entire house down. He sent a series of emails to cycling officials, confessing to his own doping and detailing the systemic cheating he had witnessed on Armstrong's team. Jesus Christ. This guy's like, yeah, fuck it. Fuck it. He probably got drunk one night. He's like, my life's a mess. Fuck it. I'm going to burn everything down. He wakes up in the morning. He's like, oh, my head. Oh, fuck. Fuck. This time though, the allegations didn't just attract journalists. They attracted the United States government. Yeah, right. Because it's the postal service, the US postal service. I remember this. The investigation was led by Jeff Novitsky, a special agent with the FDA had already taken down the biggest names in baseball during the Balco steroids scandal. The Vitsky was a bulldog. He convened a federal grand jury in Los Angeles to investigate whether

27:08Armstrong and his team owners have defrauded the US postal service. There we go, a government agency by using tax dollars to fund a drug ring. When you put it like that, it sells a whole lot of fucking serious that you cheated in sports, doesn't it? It's like, you're using government, you're using taxpayers money to fund a drug ring. That sounds like you're going to go to prison sort of situation, allegedly. Things were getting rather serious to put it mildly, indeed. Suddenly, the emergency cracks under the threat of perjury, former teammates like Tyler Hamilton and George Hinkapy began to talk. They testified about the injections, the blood bags, the pressure. Landers even agreed to wear a hidden wire to record conversations. This looked like the end of the road. Then on Super Bowl Weekend, in February 2012, I think it's Super Bowl Weekend this weekend. I was watching a YouTube video this morning with an American. And they were like, Super Bowl Weekends this weekend. And I'm like, oh, is it now? Why is it February? It feels like aren't they outside? Why don't sports normally happen in summer? I know America's got some places that are like nice all year round, but I don't know, doing the summer like a normal place. So as Super Bowl Weekend

28:12February 2012, the US Attorney in Los Angeles, Andre Barot, Jr. issued a press release that stunned the world. The criminal investigation was closed with no charges filed. And no explanation given. Why? Armstrong released a statement declaring he was gratified and ready to move on. It seemed he'd pulled off his greatest escape yet. He'd stared down the federal government and won. But while the criminal case was dead, the sworn testimony in the evidence, and the evidence Novitsky collected didn't vanish. It was just waiting for someone to pick it up. USADA lowers the boom. And it was picked up down the street in the offices of the United States Anti-Doping Agency or USADA. Oh, okay, these are the guys from earlier. I thought it was like the, not doping agency, but district attorneys or whatever, you know, like the, I just know this from that TV show Billions, where God damn, what's his name? The actor who's not Bobby Axelrod. Daniel Lewis is the other guy. He's much more famous. What's his name? From sideways. God damn it.

29:17Paul Giamati. Paul Giamati. Why are we talking about Paul Giamati? Oh yeah, because he's a district attorney, but he's a district attorney. Why are we talking about this? Get the f***ing with the script Simon. The charge sheet included use, possession and trafficking of van substances, naming him alongside team director Joanne Braneel and the darker figures of the team's medical staff, including Dr. Michelle Ferrari. Armstrong's response was immediate aggression. If I had a federal lawsuit in Texas to block the agency, calling the process a constitutional violation and a witch hunt led by a vendetta driven regulator. Bro, a vendetta driven regulator. They don't have a vendetta against you. They just want to, they're the doping agency. They're doing their f***ing job. For a moment, he looked like another legal stalemate, but a federal judge was critical of the US ADA's aggressive tactics, ultimately ruled that the arbitration process was valid. The court tossed out Armstrong's suit. He was cornered. He only really had two choices. Go to arbitration, whereas closest friends and teammates, George Hinkapy, Christian Vonde Veldé, Levy,

30:21Leipheimer, who would be forced to testify against him in public under oath, or surrender. On the 23rd of August 2012, Armstrong issued a statement. There comes a point in every man's life, when he has to say, enough is enough. He announced he would no longer contest the charges. He likely hoped this would be seen as a noble refusal to dignify the accusations, instead, under the world's anti-doping code. His refusal to fight was treated as an admission of guilt. I mean, yes, because if you are innocent, you'd be likely to fight this, right? It's not like he's taken a plea. The consequences were total. US ADA stripped him of every competitive result from the first of August 1998 onward, the seven Tour de France titles. The defining achievements of his life were erased from the record books. The UCI, Cycling's governing body accepted the decision. They chose not to reallocate the wins to the runners-up. Acknowledging the era was so dirty. There was no clear winner to elevate. They should go back, test all their fists from like 9098 and find the guy who

31:22came like 40th. And be like, brah, you were the first one who wasn't doping. Congratulations, JAP. In the span of 24 hours, the greatest resume in cycling history was simply deleted. Lance Armstrong was banned from all Olympic sports for life. Did they have to ban him from all of them? Just in case he was going to come back as a shot putter. The OPRES and Partial Confession. In January 2013, five months after being erased from the history books, Lance Armstrong sat down in a hotel room in Austin, Texas to try and write a new chapter. We opened today's episode with a flat, yes, that confirmed the EPO, the testosterone, the cortisol, the human growth hormone, the blood transfusions. He admitted that he doped during all seven of his daughter-in-law victories, he admitted that for years he had been a bully and a liar. But as the interview ends on the confession, it became a bit complicated. When OPRES asked if he felt like he was cheating his answer, revealed the depth of his delusion. No, he said, he explained that he viewed the doping culture as simply the state of play. He didn't invent it,

32:25he just played the game better than anyone else. I don't think that's delusional to say no. I think it's obviously and legally wrong, but it's not delusional. You look around to be like, well, can everyone else is cheating? What am I supposed to do? Not fucking cheat. I guess the answer is that it's supposed to be, yes, but I don't know, I get it loves. He compared taking drugs to putting air in the tires or watering the bottles, just another necessary component of the job. And I don't agree with it, but I do see how he gets there logically. It's not even hard to see how he gets there logically, it's logical. Crucially, there were lines he refused to cross. While the USADA described him as the ringleader who pressured young riders into doping, Armstrong denied it. He insisted he never forced anyone to do anything, portraying the team culture as don't ask, don't tell, rather than a dictatorship. Yeah, but look, these drugs are obviously incredible, they're drugs, they're going to make you awesome. That's their whole point. And if someone in the team isn't going to do them, they're not going to be good enough, are they? So pressure or no pressure, like implicit pressure, explicit, explicit, sorry, there's no explicit pressure, maybe,

33:32but there's absolutely implicit pressure. You're the boss, you're on the team. And if you don't take the drugs, you're not going to be able to keep up. He also flatly denied doping during his comeback in 2009 and 2010. This directly contradicted the USADA's biological passport data, which showed a one in a million probability that his blood values were natural during that period. So you're saying there's a chance. He also refused to address the alleged hospital room confession from 1996, leaving the undressors' testimony in strange limbo. To the millions watching, the performance was polarising. For some, it was the start of healing. But for others, including the cycling community and cancer survivors, it felt like one last manipulation. And man, sorry he got caught, but not sorry he won. This is the worst apologies. It's like, I'm sorry you're offended. You know, I'm sorry that you feel that way. There's not a fucking apology, lads. Lawsuits, settlements and the money trail. The confession to Oprah stopped the lies,

34:34but it did start the lawsuits. For Lance Armstrong, every contract, every but whole god, every bonus, every sponsorship deal was signed with an explicit or implicit guarantee that he was a clean athlete. Brut, are you going to have to pay all that back? Because that's basically your life's earnings. Which I imagine you've spent quite a bit of. With that guarantee evaporated, the bill came due. How much do you get for winning the Tour de France as well? Surely they're going to want that back? The first to come knocking was SCA Promotions, a Dallas-based insurance company. Years earlier, they'd agreed to pay Armstrong a $5billion bonus if he won the Tour de France. When allegations of doping surfaced in 2005, they withheld the money. Armstrong took them to arbitration, swore under oath they'd never doped and forced them to pay. After the confession, that sworn testimony looked a lot like perjury. I mean, allegedly because it eases. I think that's what perjury is, isn't it? SCA sued to get their money back plus interest and penalties. Armstrong eventually settled, reportedly paying the back $10 million, basically paying double for the lie. Good. But the real threat came from the government. Uh-oh, government's a lot more

35:37serious. Between 2000 and 2004, the US Postal Service had paid over $30 million to sponsor Armstrong's team. What's the poster? Why? Postal Service. They did this under a contract that specifically prohibited the use of banned substances. In 2010, Floyd Landis, a former teammate turned whistleblower foiled a lawsuit under the Federal False Claims Act. The legal theory was simple, but pretty devastating. By doping, Armstrong and his team management had defrauded the government. Oh, they're taking those tax dollars for a clean team and a little bit of drug ring. Yeah, boy, it really doesn't sound good when you put it like that. The Department of Justice eventually joined the suit. Under the False Claims Act, the government can seek trebled images, three times the amount of the fraud. Armstrong was staring down a liability of nearly $100 billion at God. Damn, is that a lot of money? That's a ridiculous level of money. For years, the case hung over him. Finally, in April 2018, just as the trial was about to begin, Armstrong blinked. He agreed to pay $5 million to the Federal

36:38government to settle the case. Bro, you're facing down $100,000? I'll be like, why did you finally blink? I'll be like, $5 million? I'll fucking take it. Yes, yes, now please. Can we sign the check right now? Please, they'd be allowed. It was a fraction of what he might have lost in court, but it was still historic penalty for any individual athlete. And because the lawsuit was initiated by a whistleblower, Floyd Landis got a cut. Nice. He's probably over the hundred mill, isn't he? The man who burned the house down walked away with roughly $1.1 million of the settlement, plus another $1.65 million for his legal fees. Very, very nice. The financial bleeding didn't stop in the courtroom. Within days of the USADA report, his corporate sponsors Nike, Oakley, Track, and Heiser Bush abandoned him. According to estimates, Armstrong lost $75 million in future earnings, almost overnight. Oh, that's going to hurt. It's like, when I lose a sponsor for something, I'm like, ah, no, that really sucks. But, uh, yes, $75 million, it's a lot more than I get paid.

37:42Livestrong without lance. Oh, Livestrong, the bands, sorry. No, it's been the first five minutes of today's episode talking about his Ivan. What's up with your brain? But the most tragic casualty of Armstrong's fraud wasn't his reputation or even the sport of cycling. It was the organization that he built to save lives. For 15 years, the Lance Armstrong Foundation was a juggernaut. Before the yellow wristband, Cance was often discussed in Hush Tones. After the wristband which launched in 2004 and sold over 80 million units, it was a badge of defiance. The foundation provided free navigation services, fertility preservation in patients, and a sense of community for millions who felt alone in their diagnosis. This is a fantastic thing. I, I, great. But the brand was the man, and when the man fell, the foundation had problems. In October 2012, just days after the USADA report detailed the Doping Conspiracy Armstrong step down as chairman. A month later, he resigned from the board entirely. The organization frantically rebranded, dropping his name to become simply the Livestrong Foundation. I was the Lance Armstrong Foundation, sorry, with Livestrong

38:46abandoned underneath it, that makes sense. They were trying to tell the world the mission was bigger than the founder, but the market disagreed. In 2011, the year before the crash, the foundation's revenue sat at nearly $47 million. By 2013, the year of the outbreak confession, that number plummeted to $23 million. Major court responses, like Nike, who had helped turn Livestrong into a global lifestyle brand cut ties. To nations from the public dried up, people who had proudly worn the yellow wristband, Melfelt Foolish or Betrayed. The foundation survived, but it was a shadow of its former self. It was forced to lay off staff and narrow its focus, shifting from a global powerhouse to a quieter, service-orientated, non-profit. So, was everyone cheating? Or was it just him? In the years since his confession, Lance Armstrong is retreated to a single stubborn line of defense. It's the argument he made to Oprah, and the argument he made to the federal government during his fraud trial. He claimed he didn't cheat. He just leveled the playing field. You did, you couldn't, they're not mutually exclusive. You cheated to level the playing field.

39:48Everyone was cheating, right? Allegedly. In a 2013 interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he stated flatly that it was impossible to win the Tour de France without doping in his era. His logic was cold and transactional. If the entire paladin is using EPO, then using EPO isn't just a advantage. It's just the cost of racing. Yeah, I'm like, I get it. And if you look at the numbers he really does have a point. From 1999 to 2005, it was all wasteland. Of the 21 riders who stood on the podium during Armstrong's seven-year reign, 20 have been linked to doping, either through positive tests, confessions or official sanctions. Give that last guy, but the other guy, the 21st guy, give him all of the prizes. Give him like seven yellow jackets, or whatever they get. Great champions of the era like Jan Ulrich, Marco, Pantani, and Ivan Basso were all implicated in the culture of needles and blood bags. So if everyone was doing it, why is Lance the villain? Why is he the biggest cheat in history while others are just footnotes? And they answer lies in the distinction between a participant and a kingpin. Yeah, because I have

40:50to say starting this, I didn't realize that he was allegedly... I'm going to say allegedly, because I don't think this has been like gone through courts that he was like the kingpin, right? Right. I didn't realize that he was allegedly kind of organizing this. I just thought he was like, a boss told me to put this in my arms. I put it in my arm, you know? So I do. I work for my boss. According to the US ADA, okay, cool. Not according to me. According to the US ADA and the witnesses who testified against him, while other riders doped to survive the grueling pace, Armstrong and his team professionalized the practice. They had the best doctors, the best spumbling routes and the most money. But more importantly, Armstrong weaponized his power. He bullied teammates into doping threatened rivals who spoke out and used his cancer advocacy as a shield to deflect criticism. Other riders cheated the sport. Armstrong cheated the public. Three time tour winner Greg Lamont saw this dichotomy before anyone else. Years before the confession, when the world was still uploading the miracle, Lamont offered a prophetic warning. If Lance is clean, it's the greatest comeback in the history of sports. If he isn't,

41:51it would be the greatest fraud. Indeed, prophetic. Armstrong proved that Lamont was right on both counts. He was the greatest cyclist of a generation, not because he was the only one doping, but because he was the best at doping. He turned a dirty sport into a massive organized conspiracy, and that is the difference between a cheater and a fraud allegedly. Armstrong after the fall. In the immediate aftermath of the man, Lance Armstrong went pretty quiet. Probably quite sensibly. Stripped of his titles and dispenses, he retreated from the public guy. He split his time between a home in Aston and a compound in Austin, Texas living a strange kind of exile. Wealthy. Free. The professional he did. So he did keep to get to keep a bunch of his money then. It seems. I kind of thought that you know, that we kind of bankrupts you. I mean, this is that everyone wants their money back. It was in the contrary that you were supposed to be clean and you weren't clean. He reinvented himself as a broadcaster. He has two podcasts. The move and the forward. On the move, he provided commentary on the very races that had erased his name from

42:54their history books. It was a real pivot. The sport's greatest outcast became one of its most popular pundits. Pretty cool to be honest. I think that's a nice place to go after doing sports, to sit in the booth and talk about them. It's got to be pretty nice. He analyzed tactics, criticized riders and monetized his expertise. Proving that millions of fans were willing to separate the sinner from the analytics. In his personal life, he found a stability that had eluded him during his glory years. He settled down with his longtime partner Anna Hanson, who stood by him through the investigation and the confession. In August 2022, they married a vineyard in France, the country that had spent a decade trying to destroy his life. Together, they raised a blended family of five children attempting to build a normal life in the shadow of a global scandal. Hanson also began to speak about the psychological toll of his downfall. It interviews and ton reality television shows like stars on Mars. Never heard of it. He described seeking intense therapy to process the collapse of his world. He even used the term PTSD to describe the condition, a claim that drew skepticism from critics who noted that his trauma was entirely

43:55self afflicted. I don't know. He could still have it, though. He does. Like, there'd be like, oh, well, no, you joined the army, didn't you? You joined the infantry. You joined the artillery, it's your fault. And I'm not saying this is the same, but that just because someone did something that gave them a problem doesn't mean they don't have that problem. Yet he never fully softened into a repentant figure. He continued to bristle at the way he was treated by anti-doping authorities, frequently casting himself as the scapegoat for an entire area of dirty sport. In 2023, he waited into the controversy surrounding transgender athletes, questioning the fairness of inclusion in sports. A move that sparked a fresh wave of irony-laden backlash. Not even going to comment on that as a f***ing minefield. Even in retirement, Armstrong remained incapable of staying out of the fight. He had lost his 7 yellow jerseys, but it kept his need to be the center of the story. Ultimately, the story of Lance Armstrong isn't about a man who cheated at a bike race. It's about why we let him. I don't know. He's also just about a man who cheated. He's cheating at sports.

44:58That's, that's what happened. The scoundrel force professional sport to finally grow up. In 2008, cycling introduced the biological passport, a system that tracks an athlete's blood values over time, rather than just hunting for specific drugs. It was very tool that flagged Armstrong's 2009 comeback as suspicious. Even Armstrong himself in a rare moment of cancer admitted to Oprah that the passport system really worked, creating a hurdle that the Wild West of the 90s never had to clear. It really works, does it Lance? I don't know. But I don't know anything about this, but it seems like they're always one step ahead. Today, while no one is naive enough to claim cycling is perfectly clean, right? The industrial scale team-wide doping programs of the post-delirror are far harder to hide now. But the reforms came with a price tag. The Armstrong era left a scar on the psyche of the sport. It vindicated the cynics and punished the believers. For a generation of fans, the simple joy of watching miraculous performance is now permanently paired with a reflex of suspicion we no longer ask, how did he do that without whispering, what is he on? The fallout also reframed how we view

45:59the whistleblowers. People like David Walsh, Betsy Andrew and Emero Riley were right. But being right doesn't make their lives any easier, does it? They proved that institutions, whether they are sports governing bodies or corporate sponsors, will almost always protect the profitable lie over the inconvenient truth. Yeah, because money. That is until the evidence becomes too overwhelming to ignore. And then there's the charity, the Livestrong Foundation, Survive the Fall of Its Founder, which is perhaps the only genuine miracle in this entire story. It survived because its mission was real, even if its figurehead wasn't. In the end, the question isn't when the Lance Armstrong was the only cheater. We know he wasn't. The harder question is about us. We believe the lie because we wanted it to be true. We wanted the cancer survivor to be a superhuman. We wanted the fairytale so badly that we ignored everything else. Lance Armstrong was a test case of how far winning at all costs can go, but he was also a test case for Hero Wershid. He proved that if a story is good enough, we'll wear the wristband by the book, shout down the doubters, right up until the

47:01moment the confession is. Even still, some people will be like, no, he's bad. That's been an episode to go to the unknown. Thank you so much for being here. Leave it a review if you enjoy it, and I'll see you next time.