Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has brought charges against Lance Armstrong and five of his former team members. As a result, Armstrong has been barred from competing in Ironman triathalons, which he took up after retiring from cycling, and could potentially be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong has denied the charges that he used performance-enhancing drugs. (In February, the Justice Department dropped a criminal investigation of Armstrong after determining that they had insufficient evidence to support a doping charge.) A decade ago, when Armstrong was in the midst of his Tour victories, he was the subject of a Profile by Michael Specter. Specter wrote about Armstrong’s recovery from testicular cancer, his training regimen, and the accusations of doping that surrounded him even then:
Because Armstrong is the best cyclist in the world, there is an assumption among some of those who follow the sport that he, too, must use drugs. Armstrong has never failed a drug test, however, and he may well be the most frequently examined athlete in the history of sports. Whenever he wins a day’s stage, or finishes as one of the top cyclists in a longer race, he is required to provide a urine sample. Like other professionals, Armstrong is also tested randomly throughout the year. (The World Anti-Doping Agency, which regularly tests athletes, has even appeared at his home, in Austin, Texas, at dawn, to demand a urine sample.) Nobody questions Armstrong’s excellence. And yet doubts remain: is he really so gifted that, like Secretariat, he easily dominates even his most talented competitors?
Last year, when Armstrong’s former teammate, Tyler Hamilton told “60 Minutes” that he’d seen Armstrong inject the performance-enhancing drug EPO, Specter wrote a Sporting Scene post reconsidering his view of the champion cyclist:
I can’t help feeling a bit like that credulous (and perhaps apocryphal) kid standing on the courthouse steps in Chicago on the day in 1920 when Shoeless Joe Jackson was forever damned by the Black Sox scandal. Lance Armstrong has always denied accusations that he used performance-enhancing drugs in pursuit of his astonishing streak of seven straight victories in the Tour de France. I have always wanted to believe him. But after watching … “60 Minutes” Sunday evening, my support is starting to seem a little silly, even to me.
Many of Armstrong’s fans are surely feeling the same way today.
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Photograph by Martin Schoeller.
