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

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Lance Armstrong is a legendary figure in professional cycling having won seven consecutive Tour de France titles but also a controversial figure facing scrutiny for the use of performance enhancing drugs. In this episode, Lance takes us through his meteoric rise to one of the most famous athletes in the world and his equally accelerated fall from grace. Lance describes how he persevered through his brutal diagnosis of testicular cancer before rattling off a historic run of seven consecutive Tour de France titles all while facing tremendous scrutiny for his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs such as EPO and cortisone. Lance opens up about his decision to come clean about his use of performance enhancing drugs, the remorse for how he treated other people during that time in his life, and the personal growth that’s helped him emerge on the other end of that. Finally, Lance recounts some of favorite stories from his cycling career, reflects on his legacy, and explains how he stays fit at age 50. We discuss: What everyone wants to know—yes and no questions [2:15]; Lance’s childhood and beginnings of a great athlete [4:15]; Lance’s realization that he had a knack for racing after his first pro race at age 15 [13:00]; The move to cycling full time and a desire to compete in the Olympics [16:30]; Metrics tracked early in Lance’s career and his time with Motorola team [20:00]; The grueling nature of the Tour de France and the beginnings of serious drug usage in cycling [27:00]; The impact of EPO on cycling performance [35:15]; Testicular cancer diagnosis—denial, torturous symptoms, and treatment [38:15] Livestrong is born [50:45]; Return to cycling post-cancer and a crossroad in Lance’s career [53:45] Lance’s rise to prominence in the late 90s and the growing use of EPO in the sport [1:00:00]; Racing in the early 2000’s, blood transfusions, and rivalry with Jan Ulrich [1:12:00]; Retirement in 2005 and a comeback in 2009 [1:22:45]; Lance’s decision to come clean and tell the truth [1:27:30]; Growth through downfall: learning from his mistakes and helping others after their own fall from grace [1:33:00]; Moving forward: Living his life, reflecting on his legacy, the state of Livestrong [1:42:30]; Turning back the clock: Advice Lance would give to his 15 year-old self [1:46:45]; Keeping fit at age 50 [1:51:00]; More. Learn more: https://peterattiamd.com/ Show notes page for this episode: https://peterattiamd.com/LanceArmstrong  Subscribe to receive exclusive subscriber-only content: https://peterattiamd.com/subscribe/ Sign up to receive Peter's email newsletter: https://peterattiamd.com/newsletter/ Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.  

Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter, I'll focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content and 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 peteratia MD dot com forward slash subscribe.

Now without further delay, here's today's episode. My guess this week is Lance Armstrong. This episode we cover Lance's story from his humble beginnings in 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 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 of 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. I think cyclists see more stuff than most people. 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 hearing these offers in the real estate market is 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, so... 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 can't be super record? Yes. Is the greatest innovation in time-trialing the aerodynamic water bottle?

No. Is Edgar Allen 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 Alp Dues in under 45 minutes? Probably not. Is the 1985 Oakley Pilot Big Sass sunglasses the greatest shades of all time?

No, but just yes or no. No. Is Pinarello the best bike on the market? No Is George Hinkapy 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, North East Suburba 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, lead the house and be out in the fields and I would head up into Allen and go around Lake Levant 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 Pro was nuts to build the EDS headquarters there.

And now it's, you know, mom's still there. So I 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 duly elementary where I went to middle school. And I'll go to, I'm sorry, elementary school and middle school was arm-shung. I'll just go by these places and just, and look at them through a 50-year-old's eyes. Is it bitter, sweet, but because 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, no. I mean, I think most people have a, 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? He left you guys when you were two. Did you ever see him again after that? Never saw him again. Did you ever want to? Well, he's now passed away. 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 are just totally inappropriate. 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 he was a, was a road scholar. How old were you when she met Endor married Terry Armstrong? So I would have been three or four. Okay. Yeah. Right. And so that's where the name comes from, right? That wasn't born Lance Armstrong. Funny thing is my initials would have been leg if I would have stayed Lance Edward Gunderson. But yes, she became obviously blend 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, you know, playing every Texas sport, every

kid does. You didn't shine in any of those things and your 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, directed

somewhere, it was going to go somewhere toxic. And so she was right about that. But and I sucked that sort of mainstream sports. I've had an issue with balls my whole life as well. You didn't have an issue with your phone. So I can go that phone came falling out and that was one of the most impressive one-handed catches in the 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 there's different categories, so to speak, right? The most serious is age group swimming. That's where Michael Phelps 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 of the apps and you have some

meets and all the parents are there. I mean, 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 didn't know any strokes. You know, I showed up and man, the coach, they'd watch you for a while and 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, my buddies are over at the other end of the pool doing 3100s 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 eight-year-olds. And then a month later, I was 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 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 and 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, it doesn't matter. Our age group team was cops, City of Plano Swimmers, which at the time, one of the best age group teams in the country.

And that was because McCurdy. And I started traveling to trathlons 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'm an admin endurance guy, other than catching that phone. I don't have great fast switch muscle.

My 100 free, the mile's 16 and a half of those. What was your best mile? Uh, I'd have to go back and look. State championships, when you're out of third, is 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 swimming college presumably? I would have swimming college.

And if you asked McCurdy, he'd think I could have gone far, but I just, there was the prize money, there was travel. I was like, this is way cooler. When did you realize you also had an act 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 a city champ and wouldn't have been the mile. I was young enough that we ran the 1200 city champ and that

Back then the timing was primitive again. Yeah, these timers per athlete, you know top watches and you come across the lines if I 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 arm 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 that was 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 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 and I would train a little with the cross-country team that had structure We had another great coach and track and cross-country named James Mays So James Mays was a world-class 800 meter runner We had another great coach in track and cross country named James Maze.

So James Maze 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 drove a Porsche and we're like, holy shit, our teacher. It was his 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 president's in 86, which was out at Lake Lebon.

It was a longer format or longer distance. And then they moved it over to Las Calinas, where the O'Counboy's facility was in 87 and they made it an Olympic distance. I was trained 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 out and I was a great swimmer. So I came out a new I was going to 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. And then you hop on the bike. Up on the bike. You going under an hour. You're

going what? 50. Yep. Well, this is pre-Aro bars. Although actually that might have been the year. Andromick Norton flew away on the bike. He had the bars, the original Scott Aro bars. And then I rode to the Allen the whole time on the bike. And I'm sure he was, you know, those of they all race each other every weekend. They know what 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? Gallagmarg Alling get off and run 32. And you would run what? 36 after that. No, probably more, right? 38 or 39? I think I ended up, 5 or 6, and that's 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. You know, 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 5.30 a.m. 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 summer's a crazy. Well, the funny thing is, most people don't appreciate that the swim to run ratios about four to one. 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 for you say, you have a previous interview that trathons 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 tries. I did them also in 89 and 90 went to the junior world championships in Moscow in 1989. In my mind, I've 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 the late 80s early 90s. Right, it wouldn't be till 2000, right? 2000 in Sydney was the first time nobody knew that, but yes, so I switched over basically full time in 1991, 1990 or 91. Just kind of amazing to now fast forward to 93. What expectations that 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 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. I don't 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 US?

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 Julek, you? Yeah, and then, you know, the international guy, the Italians were amazing. Kester Telly, we lost 95. He won. He won the Olympic Games. Stabby D. Rebelline was on the Italian team, but you know, a lot of Eric Decker was on the Dutch team, Zabel 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, 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. Right, nice to our young,

Galle Giorgio started, he was racing in Central Park against adult men when he was 12 years old. Could you draft at the time in 90, 90, 90, 90, one? Right, so you go from a sport where bike can ever be able to draft in a triathlon. This pisses off all the, yeah, all the purists. We know all the sort of ITU guys, the Olympic guys. You know, I got a bunch of grief once because I called the part of triathlon a shampoo, a blow dry and a 10k. And I mean, was. It was people. 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, not any of those other things. No, the handling I had down, I wrote 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've 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. I mean, they were massive. These things, they look like bricks. Pugetimately component of rape.

Yeah, and that was it. I mean, that was sort of the first, no power meters, no testing. I mean, we just, yeah, he 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. Of course, I was living in Plano, so I 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 temp. 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 down? No, no, but the guy was like, okay, this kid's special. And then they said, we 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 gonna shove something up my ass, and I am terrified. I'm like, uh, I never went back. So to this day, we have no idea which your core temperature response would have been under that aerobic load.

Well, you wanna 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 and actually at 92. I was the only amateur on the team. Steve Bauer was on that team.

Bauer was there, Phil Anderson, Andy Hampstin. 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 is something that's like awesome And then of course Lamand was I mean forget about it like the most exciting thing in all of sports 1989 was the 89 come back to unbelievable.

Some would argue the greatest ending to a tour. You could argue maybe second greatest after what happened last year. Let the scholars debate that. But I want to talk about the 93 season because you've got a guy named Miguel Inderen who's come along and to throne Greg, right? And at this point, Inderen is 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. What's your thought going into that race? The way the season was structured then, and I actually much prefer to, the world 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 to San Sebastian, we went Zurich, we went leads in England. It was like boom, boom, boom, boom. I loved the rhythm of that calendar. After the tour of 9-3, which you won a stage. I won a stage in To Verdon 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 Cup semi was right there, all the preparations. I knew I was going to be in the front group. And I was, shit, I didn't, I mean, I look around in that group. I mean, you had Olaf Ludwig, you had Indira and you had Kiepucci, you had Schmiel, you had Miseu, you had Reese. I mean, I was looking around going, yeah.

Of course I'm here. And of course it was absolutely. The pissiest day of every year. Even 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, I mean.

It looked cold. 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 you're. 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 of rainbows on the sleeves, the collar. It's a cool end to when. Thinking back to that year in the tour, we're going to 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 great as it is to treat certain disorders or issues, it could also be hugely beneficial for endurance support. 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, Lamond and Indaran, 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 Indiraean because clearly by the time Reese came along in 96, I mean, that might have been the most

overuse. People most that really have a deep understanding, I'll tell you that 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 Mans was out, which was 87?

You know, way too much about the sport. You know a lot more than me. I pay get 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 air season races

and I mean, you could see it. You're like, is this guy been training or not? And Inderine was a machine. Inderine was a beast. I mean, this guy trained 365 days a year. So it's not clear what that transition was. Yeah. But Indiraan 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 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. Right or 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 their band or not band is really a semantic point. But in the earliest renditions of this race, riders were using alcohol to numb pain or traditional pain killers, 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 Cortezone or testosterone or other hormones? For example, in 93 when I won a stage in the store, I won the world's, I was tested. You were tested, okay. Now, you acknowledged that back then, you were using things like Cortezone, 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 their putic use exemption and a lot of these compounds come in different forms and different form factors

and different administrations. And so, you could say, well, got tenonitis 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 gonna work. I started doing the out of competition testing for, certainly for something like EPO, which has a five hour half-life, not gonna 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 festine, I mean, nobody tested positive in the festine affair. We have a dumbass one year across and a border gets pulled over, low 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 because that is when you basically got your ass kicked out of the gutter, but I want to know what you thought coming in. I mean, I thought I'd be competitive and 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 fighter. I was one day right. What did you weigh at that point? I probably weighed. I was big. My whole career was big just because as a swimmer, a swimmer never loses a swimmer's body.

The back that just 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. Yeah. When in the tours, I was, you know, between 161 65. Still big. Yeah, I mean, racing Pantani 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, and 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. And 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,

like those are individual competitions. And so there was a tectonic shift from 93 to 94. How long to 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. Yeah, it was all over the press. I mean, in 1994, you had in Fleshful Loan, you had three good-wiss riders go up the road and then the press went crazy after that because you're having an Italian team for Ari's, the trainer. The press also back then was more beat rider.

So they were friends with the riders, they were writers and they were friends with the riders, they were riteurs, and they were friends with the riders, 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 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 head smashed open on the side of the road?

Yeah. That was a helmet's were certainly not required in very few people wore them. I'm not sure what it helped Fabio. He hit really his face and basically died right there. But it just surreal to, you know, it was a tough mountain day and we were in the groupetto. 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 joke-sters. He was a joke-ster. He obviously had huge talent and potential when they only got 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 Kaster Telly.

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 Berniel 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 ourselves and I just took a huge flyer. I think it was 30, 40 K 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,

Hennie Kiper, who's a legendary Dutch cyclist, he kept coming up and giving me time splits. You were gaining on the gap? Yeah. Finally I said, Hennie, 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 at the, I've heard so many athletes talk about that when they're Damon Hill talking about racing after Sena died later in that season, feeling like he couldn't just make that cargo 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?

Was that effectively what was being done? They start doing this sort of morning hematocritus 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? Or 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? 50 was not. I know that there was no ceiling, right?

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 answers 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 front of the re-yeah, well, you need to do more. Did you feel a difference? Did you notice a difference from 94? Oh, yeah. I mean, let's not get 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 Perry Rubey,

just as much as it helps you on... Absolutely. Wants are lots. I mean you're getting 10% more hemoglobin or hematic red, 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. Yes, 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 Modone, which was your go-to test, right? Well, it wasn't the first to use it. Tony Romager used it. He had the fastest time and, you know, how many kilometers is Modone? What's about 30 minutes? 30 minutes and what's the grade?

It's about seven eight percent. So it's a straight in the saddle, pound away for 30 minutes. And what did you average for 30 minutes in 99? Five hundred watts. Are you freaking kidding me? Five hundred watts for 30 minutes. And at that point, you were 165 pounds.

Yep. Seven watts kilo. We got a few things to cover before we get the seven watts per kilo. 96, you should be in top form and your sick is 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 was shit weather that year and I wasn't riding that well and I was ready to go home. When did you notice a particular pain?

Certainly then, but I just, you know, soreness. That was the first symptom, right? Just enlarge testicle, sore on every level, sore to the touch, sore to sit on a seat, cross your legs in an upward way, it would hurt. And I just thought I had to do a 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 to 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 ignored after ignore. Even as the symptoms became more and more drastically significant, they're 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, it was here in Austin, actually, I was used to having a venue south of town. I forget, but I went to a Jimmy Buffett concert. I got a huge headache at the concert. Next day, woke up, blurry vision. You know, I'm pushing through them, like, okay, headache, because I was at a concert, I had maybe 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 doctor. 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, he was a neighbor,

he said, I don't know, we were 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 blood there was there. Did it scare you? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Obviously, it didn't do a good enough job telling him how much blood was in the sink. So he thought it was a sinus thing. You're a sinus, you try to crack your cough up a little. And you weren't putting two and two together, of course. This thing in my test, he's 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 just one other thing that's embarrassed, or I just, you know, I 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 Reaves'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.

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, right? Well, it was 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. I said, what's that? 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 text. 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 and 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. But at this point, it's like, I don't know, six or seven pm. 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 seminomitous? 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 chest right was riddled. I mean, there was more white than it was gray. Pretty good indication. How long until you had the archiectomy? 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 seven a.m. tomorrow morning. And keep in mind, this is in 1996. The way people would process this news today, they would say, okay, I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna open my computer. I'm gonna Google everything I can about whatever my doctor just told me, and I'm gonna 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, I remember 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 seminomitist tumor, which is at that point really the only testicular cancer that's curable, right? You had a much more histologically advanced cancer that... Corio carcinoma. Which was wildly metastatic. What was your alpha-feta protein level? That was elevated. The one we monitored, the closest was BADHG. How high was that?

100,000. So you were pregnant? I know. Well, anything. You know, it was very pregnant. I mean, if you come in with 500, you got a problem. Anything about two, you was very pregnant. I mean, if you come in with 500, you got a problem. Anything about two, you have a problem. So you had the orchiac to me,

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 mats? 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 BP. So I did do one, we were talking about it. One with BLEO. Yeah, I did one cycle with BLEO. Coulda 1-8 if I didn't do that one cycle.

Yeah, so BLEO Mison 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. Yeah, like my local oncologist knew, I mean, I may be 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 and Indianapolis was the king when he came to test to go to cancer. In fact, a lot of his work really led to platinum-based therapies really being as effective as they are. So, and he was in Australia at the time. He was lecturing in Australia. And when I heard his name, I said, I got to find this guy. And then we tried to call him and he was off in Australia.

But the four cycles in total, the first cycle was done here in Austin. So I'd go one week on, two weeks off, one week on two weeks. 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 BLEO and standard. Well, they had a whole different approach. It was not traditional therapy, which is interesting. Much more chemotherapy, a lot more compounds did 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 meds as well. Is that another, what the hell is going on here? How much worse can this get moment?

I mean, yes, the answer's yes, but also a bit of a relief. You're like, okay, that's I'd explain. 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 gonna 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 on, like we were measuring the HG, it was coming down, they, what do you wanna see?

Like what's, this is the scoreboard, which, what's my metric? Yeah, what is my metric? It says, I'm ahead in this game and they set a log drop off every cycle. Man, we were hitting it, bam, bam. I 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. And 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, I'd fight, yeah, I'd mean, if I can live, yeah, they prefer to live. That would be cool. And they said, well, you can't keep doing BLEO. Yeah, it's so pulmonary toxic. It's so cardiotoxic. People ask, 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 been Christine and sis Platinum and blah blah blah. And so the downside to being treated with VIP is you have to stay as an inpatient. So, Brio, 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 don't, 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. Kima was bad for you. Kima was bad at the end. And I still talk to people about this, because they about to start Kima. They asked me and you know, cycle one.

I was like, you sure you did this right? I don't feel anything. Cycle two gets sick a few times. I was like, oh, okay. I think they got it right this time. Cycle 3, just sick of shit. Cycle 4, you just want to sleep. It just compounds and compounds.

It got much, much worse. What was the recovery like from the neurosurgery? That were big cuts. I mean, they were probably tennis ball size. It's the easiest way to describe it for people listening or have never been there. It's like doing the pumpkin for Halloween. Like you literally just cut the whole pull off the thing, dig out the seeds and put the

thing back on. But in number 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. Well, this was done after most of the chemo. No, there was done before halfway. The response was amazing.

But with the other soul, I don't know how, you know, the blood brain barrier, the spary 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 and 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 did a lot of hospitals or centers.

It's like a big room with lazy boys everywhere. And you sit beside them. I'm Lance with Testicular Cancer and you're Gina with breast cancer and Joe with cone. 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 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 started it before.

That should say we started it during. Was it entirely sure that there was gonna be a forward? But it's interesting. Obviously the foundation would grow to over a 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 and 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 with an apportfolio 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 call Cepret, the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas. It's a $3 billion bond initiative.

We at the time, Livestrong spent about $6003 billion bond initiative. We at the time, live strong, spend 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? 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 cofides prior to getting sick? Motorola had already folded. Motorola folded. You were already officially on cofides and then you come back and what

are they thinking? I mean before before the 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 the agent

and say, look, which probably just part ways. And your contract was a big contract, right? I mean, there's just 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.

Yes, 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 to 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's not. 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 Weisel, had been around.

I was on Weisel'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 Weisels 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.

Joke of itch is the number one player. Well, yeah, duh. Lewis Hamilton is the number one driver in F enough one because he has the most points and wins it. No shit. We had that and it's like, 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 Perry Nese, right? Then I quit, came home, said, fuck this, I'm outta here, I'm not cut out for this, I'm not. Yeah, I wanna 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 gonna 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, I was like a crosswind, back of the peloton, the peloton split, a day. Man, if I could cross when I'm back of the peloton, the peloton split, and I'm just like, I'm going home. Literally pulled over, got in the car, went to hotel, called Kristen and said, we're going home. What did she say? She was supportive. She necessarily agreed, 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, Pairnese is in March, April. That was probably six weeks around the April timeframe. It was almost like 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. And I said, okay, I'll do that. So I just started writing, no structure, just writing. I'd go out here in Austin, I just, and I rode a lot, four, five, six hours every day, just writing, no way. This is the season. So what are your teammates doing at this point? They're all racing.

They're all 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 to a Luxembourg. You win that, won that. Went to Germany to do another race and won that.

These are short-stage races. Short-stage races. You've reintroduced Epo at this point. Yep. I forgot to ask you this. Post-orcaic to me, 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 gonna cause further issues down the line. And the other thing I'm gonna 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 antibiotic agents, particularly, I mean, there's no way Epo would have, but what was your, or any of the other antibiotic agents, particularly, and there's no way Ipo would have, but what was your thought on some of the other drugs you'd used? Well, you certainly crossed your mind.

Predignosis, there was very little of that, anyways, only in 96, which was, of course, the year that I got sick, but... The fact that it seems to me the least performance enhancing drug for a cyclist. We never went back. I mean, Ferrari was like, don't need it. Never went back.

So really the main stay of drug when you came back was EPO. Yep, I think Cortezone. And yet it's amazing that Cortezone helped that much, huh? Yeah, you know what? 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 and everything. Fourths at the world, the fourth at the world's TT, fourth at the world's road race. I just was like, shit, I'm fourth and everything. But I got a thousand plus UCI points that Tom Wise will have 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 Bernille.

Okay. Who was the director of sports team? Johnny Welts was the director of sports team 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, he wouldn't pay this one years and

then we can't, that welta that I ended up getting fourth in or walked down one day, a breakfast table, and everybody's, no swan yours. I said, where's the fucking swan yours? 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, swan yours. Like, what the fuck is going on? They just walked out.

Cause they weren't, you know. Cause 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 Wusio, German guy, gave me his number. He wore the yellow jersey for a day back in the Navy. He was six friends. They went in the early stages, they get the jersey. I just called him, you know, 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. I just called him and I said, what are you gonna do now? No, 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, 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 wanna 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 incredible, he's smart. And like 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 only coach in 92. But once I started seeing Ferrari, Chris was just an advisor friend. We are talking about two very different skill sets here. And I'm not talking about doping. I mean, Mikaela Ferrari, you can say what you want. You and I calling him intelligent or bright or smart or even genius just drives people crazy. But I've heard him in interviews.

He's talked 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 first? Was that the first aha moment that says I could win this thing? Yep. And when Johann 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 and 99. I said, you are crazy. There's no way. You didn't think so with your confidence. Yeah. No. I mean, that's first of all, the welta is not the tour. I understand. But so getting forwards in the welta, 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, with their peak form.

I mean, I was just guessing. And I don't remember why were they not there in 99? Pantani had the thing at the jury got the himatic retest. I don't want to say, Jan, he also had, of course, you and I offline have talked a lot about Jan O'Rick, but I think he had another thing, maybe you 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 prolog that July day and Explain to people why the prologue matters like it's not a long stage We're just gonna eight and a half 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 the baddest thing in the world. Of course. It's the only way to start a tour.

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 and 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 Tweet of France

should always have. It should always have a prologue. It should always have a team time trial. It should always, I think really gone away from that for some reason, but thankfully not then. You win the prologue. Win the prologue. You're 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 micro-dose. You were just giving straight regular doses. This is before they had a test for EPO. Yep.

The only thing they had was a 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'd be too close. We had to stay around 46, 47. You know this, I mean, even 47, dehydrated, or you get sick, and they show up, like you're done. So something people don't realize is in 1996,

Reese won the tour. So finally, Unseeds, Indaran. His hematocrit was somewhere between 60 and 66 during that race. That's what they say. I mean, 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 Fistina and 98 that basically brought the hammer down and said, we're done with these guys walking around with hematocrit in the 60s?

Yeah. Is it that much of a difference if you're walking around with hematocrites in the 60s. Is it that much of a difference? If you're walking around hematocrit is 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 test came around, then, yeah, you just knew that you would drop the GC guys at least found ways around that. And that's where, you know, transfusions came in. And 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 co-mingling 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 a moto man was going around? Yeah, it was 99. It was 99. Yeah, although that was a great idea. You're 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. Yeah. Well, yeah, the prologue and the two log and then the two long time trials, then 60k Yeah, at least right right? 55. Yeah. And 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. Pantani wasn't here. Can I win this thing when they're both there? I'm 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, S-Carteen, Olano. I mean, yeah, 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... Cortisol. ...cortisol, 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've never really been on the hot seat, right?

So you've 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's going to be? In retrospect, was there another way to deny without attacking? Because I've 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 it. 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 So excuse me. What the fuck are you talking about? I mean literally like that Like just let's go. What did your teammates say? Did anybody pull you aside and say, Lance, you got to back this down, man?

No, but they wouldn't have done that. There are others. Johan? Johan, nope. We are like brothers. He would do the same thing. It might have been better if somebody here locally where my whole operation was run out of to go, you know what?

It 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? No. Did she ever ask?

No. 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? If we're playing the long

game, I've never had this conversation with her, but 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 when 2000 you come back, I want to ask you about Vauntu. 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 going to give him the win, which is one of the biggest regrets in my career. Why? Not on the Vauntu. Merck's called me when I was on the car ride down. He said, you don't ever gift the Vauntu ever.

Why did you want to gift it to him? I was going to win the tour. I knew I was going to win the tour. I was actually trying to be gracious and be sort of the patron of the Peloton. I'm like, look, I don't need to win everything here. You go win the Vauntu. But in hindsight, God, and may he rest in peace.

I mean, I'm not talking about Puntani. I'm just talking about the Vaughan too. But in hindsight, God, and may he rest in peace. I mean, I'm not talking about Pontani. I'm just talking about the Vaughan too, right, which is just, you just don't give that one away. And Merck's called you on the car ride day. Yeah. So it's a huge mistake. You never gift the Vaughan too. Is Merck's the greatest cyclist of all time? Of course. Different sport. Different sport. Different sport. Different sport. But if Merck's 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's on my coffee table. I was psyched

and Gifts Ever, which is that book that's in my coffee table. I was psyched. I saw him. I was like, Oh, Peter has one of those two. 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 him in five juros, 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 below key? Was he, or was that Ulrich that year? No, in 2000, young, young get second, I believe.

Is that when you guys begin? You've said before that, of all the guys you've ever raised, you've never respected anyone more than young. Obviously, we're gonna talk about young a little later. Your respect and your love for young post-cycling is he's a brother to you. If all the guys you've ever raised, you've never respected anyone more than you on. Obviously, we're going to talk about you on 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. And I'm like, you know, 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 Jan or I think I'm not 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 you're upbringing. Yeah, yeah, it's had a complicated upbringing. What's your biggest memory from O1 and O2? Which was the year you began having suffered a broken collarbone? Didn't you fall in bragging off in a that was to O3? So going into O3. O one was probably physically my best tour. I mean, oh, one of those, everybody refers to it as the look. What was your time, or what was your wattage up my dome? All those jails were 500 watts.

500 watts for 30 minutes. Yeah. And loving it. What do you think your wattage would have been without EPO? Oh, it would have been 450. Tony, it is 10%. You think it's a full 10%. Yeah, 10%.

Seven Watts per kilo. 450's still pretty good, by the way. Yeah, I mean, look, Bradley Wiggins probably put out 450 to 450 during his one hour record, which was... That's more, 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 it, 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. I'm gonna need a teammate and Ch me out. So I'm going to need a teammate. And Chetu 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 going to 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 got to be a little worried going into that, right? Because you're pretty depleted on red blood cells, aren't you? That's when I had a pretty big crash in the Dolphine right before. Huge crash, actually. And that's when you couldn't just give yourself Epo Willi-Nelly.

I think by then we had an Epo test, right? Yeah. Out of competition, you could. Yes. What was your hematocrit at the beginning of 03? Didn't you come in at like a 42 or something? 38. 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 a 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 and one bag. One bag at what stage? Halfway through. So that first day at Houghtoncom were, 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. 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 pocket, but. Right. Yeah. We can go down all these rabbit holes, all the stuff, I'm sort of done with that part of my life life where I have to contest every, 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 up 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 chamois. I had this whole theory that the ass and the chamois and Like I would always like kind of adjust it, adjust my chamois, 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 a 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 O3, you and Jan were really close. Well, yeah, you were not that far ahead of them, 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.

Is there a really Capticu Verac? Right, so that's when you're a himatic, Ritz 38. Yeah, so you're going, well, you've got 45 second lead. He took two minutes out of you in the, I mean, everybody said it's over. He's gonna catch him. I mean, everybody said it's over. He's going to catch him. I remember that like it was yesterday. Raining day.

Poor and rainy, but six seconds on me in the first kilometer. How many K was the time, Tron? Long. 50. 50-ish. So what went through your mind at that point? Yohan didn't tell me that. He didn't tell you that how much.

Okay. Six seconds and one comment. I'm unbelievable. You fucking get off the bike. Yeah. Like I'm done. Did you feel you were redlined? Oh yeah, that 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

and the car as he's driving. And then I knew, and it was over.in' the race on TV and the car as he's driving. And then I knew. And it was over. The other thing about 03 was below key, 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, I remember that one time, I keep fucking road crossed that field.

I was like, yeah, I do remember, but incredibly lucky, very unlucky for Jussava, but if you go back and rewatch, of course there's a hundred versions of it on YouTube, but if you go back and rewatch exactly what happened. So he's leading flying downhill, It's a hundred degree day. It's bad roads with patched the whatever with tar. The tar was literally boiling. Tire caught some hot tar and just hight sided 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 going to go left. Keep in mind, the story ends with me not just right in 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, I mean, what are the chances that that path is there? And I get in this field and it is just dry. I don't know, 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 better get off this thing. It's 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 O3? Yeah, 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 kids 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 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. I mean, he was a director, director general of the tour. And he'll go down as being viewed as one of the greatest directors ever. And a very, very

tough guy, he's his where the highway, and you just didn't cross summary. I retire, landess winds, landess test positive. So it was a festina-esque moment in time and cycling. And yet another shift to like guys looking around go and 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. Jummery's point was, look, you are a bridge to the past, right? So the 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 with two big political papers of Le Monde and Le Figaro.

I think it was in Le Figaro. And it was interesting because I was in West Texas with Anna on a Marfa one of my favorite places. Were you just went recently? Yep. And we had just gotten together. She wasn't with me when I raised before. And we were out there and we went to this

This is so crazy. We were in Fort Davis outside of Mariffin Which of this lunch spot and I said this is a mistake Coming back. Yeah, I said I shouldn't do this. By the way, did LeBonk 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. I felt a ton of responsibility to the foundation. Yeah, and 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 it anything. But it would have been easy to say, you know, we routine, and he chatted with some bullshit and just got out. And you would have been easy to say, you know, we routine, he chatted with 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 sports 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 fazed or Phase II, 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, Oh, nine is kind of close.

You're third, and then, No, but it wasn't close. It wasn't close at all. But third is the, 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 96 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. Old man, 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 training? Well, yeah, 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? They ended up having 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 going to win the tour, like, what the fuck are you doing? Like what are you doing? You're not going to win the tour. Like, what the fuck are you doing? And then as, of course, as it led down the investigation start, and then you're trying to do both. You're trying to defend your reputation, defend your livelihood, defend everything, and have it 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 interview George, George went to the grand jury. So fall of 12 basically. It might have been earlier. 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 Coil, 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, like, I believe it.

He had a different version and his deposition in the post-al case, but I don't know what his deposition said. When anybody's deposed and they've written a book, they're just gonna read you the book. Yeah. Did you say this and did this? Did you just read, they go page by page? Yeah, I'm sure.

If it was, in any way, sort of contradictory towards him or his somebody cared about, then he would blame Dan. I will never forget his like, oh, that's right, because you had to co-auth it. You said that's a danism. I was like, wait a minute. Anyways. Yeah, it's late 11 or whatever, and you're basically like, I got to come clean. Well, 11, 12.

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 also 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 Brokall, who was it? My other option? It wasn't gonna help. What was that period like when you went, do you think you went to Hawaii right after, right? We still traveled a lot, just to kinda 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 Trek 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, 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 going to ask questions like you're asking because you'd know the sports 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 as kids, it is, if you can imagine, that Brady Bunch set up, we are a very close family. So after the operative 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 they would see it. You know, it's the Andreus, LeMonde, 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? We went better than I thought it would go. I was sincere. I said, but 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 swan year, was my swan year, 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 forward 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 would 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 it's saying. 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.

All right. 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 rearview mirror. I never want to lose sight of my sins, because they kind of ground me, of course. You've had the 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. But if you have the tools in place to keep him in the corner, right? Are there moments that you look back at? Like do you look at that S.C.A. deposition in October of O5 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 as 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, I wouldn't change a thing. And all these things that I would say that would,

you 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 like 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? You 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. Of course. And this one guy writes something, I'm just gonna 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. It's 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, well pick your favorite German writer who's loved and Ulrich was rejected. Why voters is loved and Tyler gets rejected or whomever, right? So if we're ditched, take a glance out of it for a moment,

because you're radioactive. What explains that difference between those other guys? Yon wasn't beating anybody up. Pentani wasn't screaming at anybody. In Spain, with him and us, 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 press and the organizers and the politicians in the sport. How they will, and Jan O'Rick is not welcome

at the start of the tour. Meanwhile, Eric Zobbles up there shaking hands with the guy in the yellow shirt. You know, it's like, wait a minute, this is fucking stupid. I don't understand. You have any idea why that hypocrisy exists? The ones who rose the highest, I mean, I mean, Panthani was the biggest athlete

in Italy at the time, no soccer, whatever sport F1. Panthani 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,

him and his dead, Vandenberg dead, Belger, Gommont dead in France. I mean, all guys over 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, they'll get Vanderbrook. I mean, Frank Vanderbrook was arguably one of the most talented of all time. He was the next Merck, he was the next, and the press just let it go and just hammered this guy. And he died in a hotel room in Senegal. Pantani 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's always liked to have fun. Yeah, but this didn't look like heaven. No, no, no. The other interesting thing is when a Jan's closest lieutenants,

when we were competing head to head, was Andreas Klooden, who ended up being on a stanna with us and Radio Shack and so I ended up getting to know Kloodin and really, really getting the love him. So I had heard that a lot of these guys, so Kloodin, Sobbing, Denil Hondo, they had tried to reach out to him, and I think 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 sold everybody else to just leave him alone. And then he's turned on. And he 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 Germany, a place that was, it was a mess. Yeah, what was that like to see him like that?

Unrecognizable. It was like an alien. I'd entered his body. I've seen some crazy shit. I have never seen anything like that. Unrecognizable. It's 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.

He'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 forget that now. I get very frustrated and straight up mad when I see the differences between Ulrich and Zabel and Pintani and Baso and on and on and on and on. And guys that were just not equipped to handle that downfall. I was the one, the 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 16, 17?

How'd the co-hack on look? It's been, like there was a period of time when you were really off the radar. Yeah, I mean, had no choice. Radar didn't pick you up either. I mean, there was no 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 and bars

ones. But what was the normal reaction like perfectly fine indifference? Yeah. That's why I don't read comments because I walked in my day, you know, I see guys on the golf course, I see people on bike rides, I see people on restaurants. I go to meeting. 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. Right.

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 to foundation tell you unofficially? Not the board, but the people who worked 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. 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. But and I just knew it was the wrong thing. I knew that timeout, yes, space, but some agreement here that we will both re-emerge.

That was the right thing to do. I mean, and I don't need somebody to say here and say, well, you're right. But if I look at where live strong is 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 ones back, so to speak, what interaction do you have these days with a 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 going to 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 got to 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 quit. Well, just do this whole thing that I was able to. Which time? Because you had a number of times to quit. Well, just do this whole thing

that I was able to keep it together without really any support and thank God we live in 2021, 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. But 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. You 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 podcasts.

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 on beholden to them. And that's all I care about. I don't need to be on the cover 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, cut. 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. Buck everybody else, we're gonna get these people. Like he's gone, weird 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, you know, but I mean, 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. I think there's a lot to unpack there. Never meeting your father and having this way 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 at once a month. I would have said, you know, why don't you go fuck yourself and 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 them 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, 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 step dad, 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 at 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 everything was like slow down kid like it was just everything was fight not even a competition it was 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 it, Lance, 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, but you could be, well, but they analyzed 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 thought out. The mountain bike trails are open. What's your fastest time up mountain? I've only done mountain mountains once. I did it in 1990. That's a long 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. Alright, 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 stack 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 right 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 the mountain bike for road bike? Mostly mountain bike. Just because of the risk of cars. Cars I like to stand with. And it's been 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 run. I think I'm too old to run. If I did yoga three days a week or was serious about stretching and probability 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 10-100s on? What would be your touch-and-go interval for 10-100s? It was sea level. Like if I went right now. Yeah, would you'd swim 10-100's on? What would be your touch and go interval for 10-100's? It would 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 a minute 110. No problem, yeah. So you're still a fit guy. I'm fitter than most 50 girls.

What's the biggest liability to your fitness? What's your biggest vice? Food, alcohol. What gets in the way of... Because what are you way right now? 180. Okay, so you're 15 pounds 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...

Yeah, yeah, just need it for your mental health. It is 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 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 for you. Oh, God. You got to tell that story right quick You can't tease them out with that This is I'll tell the story all the story So there's an effort 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 677 once ago and I walk in I'm like That sounds like salmon. I'm like, hey, what's for dinner? Peter is like, oh, I got some grill in this amazing salmon. I was like, oh, I was on the trigger. My special marinade. I was like, oh, okay.

And then I was like, what do we have in with it? And you're like, oh, I got some fresh okra. And I was like, this is not, this isn't happening? This is a fucking joke. Like, I'm getting pumped. It's like, Anna called me to tell me this before. And I was like, sitting there just like, getting to the meal. And we had a wonderful time and then I don't know why I was, but when I was stepping out, 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.

Sam and Anokra. But you had a brave face, man. I 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. Man, the Japanese whiskey too. That definitely lubricated it.

All right, my friend. Oh, man. You ready to go get your butt kicked? In the sem? Yeah. Well, you don't know that I'm gonna 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. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper into any topics we discuss, we've created a membership program that allows us to bring you more in-depth, exclusive content without relying on paid

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