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PROFILES THE LONG RIDE How did Lance Armstrong manage the greatest comeback in sports history? BY MICHAEL SPECTER couple of weeks ago, on a swelter- times in a row. (In 1995, the Spanish “I bonked,” Armstrong said later, Aing Saturday afternoon, I found cyclist Miguel Indurain became the first using a cyclist’s term for running out of myself in the passenger seat of a small to win five consecutively—a record that fuel. A professional cyclist consumes so Volkswagen,careering so rapidly around is clearly on Armstrong’s mind.) much energy—up to ten thousand calo- the hairpin turns of the French Alps The cyclists had covered a hundred ries during a two-hundred-kilometre that I could smell the tires burning. and eight kilometres, much of it over mountain stage—that, unless some of Johan Bruyneel, the suave, unflappable mountain passes still capped with snow, it is replaced, his body will run through director of the United States Postal despite temperatures edging into the all the glycogen (the principal short- Service Pro Cycling Team, was behind nineties. Now the peloton—the term is term supply of carbohydrates the body the wheel. Driving at ninety kilometres French for “platoon,” and it describes uses for power) stored in his muscles. an hour occupied half his attention. the pack of riders who make up the Armstrong hadn’t eaten properly that The rest was devoted to fiddling with a main group in every race—was about to morning; then he found himself cut off small television mounted in the dash- start one of the most agonizing climbs from his domestiques—the teammates board, examining a set of complicated in Europe, the pass between Mont Blanc who, among other things, are responsi- topographical maps, and talking into and Lake Geneva, which is known as ble for bringing him supplies of food one of two radio transmitters in the car. the Col de Joux Plane. In cycling, climbs and water during the race. “That was The first connected Bruyneel to the are rated according to how long and the hardest day of my life on a bike,” team’s support vehicle, laden with extra steep they are: the easiest is category Armstrong said later. He was lucky to bicycles, water bottles, power bars, and four, the hardest category one. The finish the day’s stage, and even luckier other tools and equipment. The second seventeen-hundred-metre Joux Plane to hold on and win the race. fed into the earpieces of the eight U.S. has a special rating, known as hors cate- “This isn’t just a stage in a race for Postal Service cyclists who were racing gorie, or beyond category; for nearly Lance,” Bruyneel said now, as Arm- along the switchbacks ahead of us. The twelve kilometres, it rises so sharply strong approached the bottom of the entire team could hear every word that that it seems a man could get to the top slope. “He needs to defeat this moun- Bruyneel said, but most of the time he only by helicopter. tain to feel ready for the Tour.” This was talking to just one man: Lance “We start the Joux Plane with a lot time, Bruyneel made sure that the do- Armstrong. of respect for this mountain,” Bruyneel mestiques ferried water, carbohydrate We had been on the road for about said quietly into his radio. “It is long, it drinks, and extra power bars to Arm- three hours and Armstrong was a kilo- is hard. Take it easy. If people are break- strong throughout the day. They peri- metre in front of us, pedalling so fast ing away, let them go. Do you hear me, odically drifted back to our car and per- that it was hard to keep up. It was the Lance?” formed a kind of high-speed docking sixth day of the Dauphiné Libéré, a “Yes, Johan,” Armstrong replied maneuver so that Bruyneel could thrust weeklong race that is run in daily stages. flatly. “I remember the mountain.” water bottles, five or six at a time, into Armstrong doesn’t enter races like the With only a few days remaining in their outstretched arms. Dauphiné to win (though often enough the 2000 Tour de France, Armstrong Last year, Armstrong won the Tour, he does); he enters to test his legs in had what most observers agreed was an for the third time in a row, by covering preparation for a greater goal—the insurmountable lead when he headed 3,462 kilometres at an average speed of Tour de France. Since 1998, when he toward this pass. He was riding with his more than forty kilometres an hour— returned to cycling after almost losing two main rivals of that year: Marco the third-fastest time in the history of his life to testicular cancer, Armstrong Pantani, the best-known Italian cyclist, the event. In all, during those three has focussed exclusively on dominat- and Jan Ullrich, the twenty-eight-year- weeks in July, Armstrong spent eighty- ing the thirty-five-hundred-kilometre, old German who won the Tour in six hours, seventeen minutes, and twenty- nearly month-long Tour, which, in the 1997, and who in the world of cycling eight seconds on the bike. “Lance al- world of cycling, matters more than all plays the role of Joe Frazier to Arm- most killed himself training for the last other races combined. This week, he strong’s Ali. As they started to climb, Tour,” Bruyneel told me. “This year, he begins a quest to become the fourth Armstrong seemed invincible. Halfway is in even better shape. But the press person in the hundred-year-history of up, though, he slumped over his han- still wants to talk about drugs.” the Tour—the world’s most gruelling dlebars, looking as if he had suffered a It is, of course, hard to write about test of human endurance—to win four stroke, and Ullrich blew right by him. cycling and not discuss performance- CORBIS SABA 48 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 15, 2002 TNY—07/15/02—PAGE 48—133SC. Armstrong’s heart is almost a third larger than an average man’s; his body seems built for cycling. Photograph by Martin Schoeller. TNY—07/15/02—PAGE 49—LIVE ART R11197.CROP—133SC—CRITICAL CUT TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PRESS RUN enhancing drugs, because at times so “He is already winning, and is ex- tronauts. “He has always wanted to test many of the leading competitors seem tremely fit. Still, people always ask that the boundaries,” she said. Armstrong to have used them. Strict testing mea- one question: How can he do this with- admits that he was never an easy child. sures have been in force since 1998, out drugs? I understand why people In his autobiography, “It’s Not About when the Tour was nearly cancelled ask, because our sport has been tainted. the Bike,” which was written with the after an assistant for the Festina team But Lance has a different trick, and I journalist Sally Jenkins, he said, “When was caught with hundreds of vials of have watched him do it now for four I was a boy I invented a game called erythropoietin, or EPO, a hormone that years: he just works harder than anyone fireball, which entailed soaking a tennis can increase the oxygen supply to the else alive.” ball in kerosene, lighting it on fire, and blood. But the changes have brought playing catch with it.” only limited success: just this May, Ste- ance Armstrong’s heart is almost a Armstrong was an outstanding young fano Garzelli and Gilberto Simoni, two Lthird larger than that of an average swimmer, and as an adolescent he began of Europe’s leading cyclists, were forced man. During those rare moments when to enter triathlons. By 1987, when he to withdraw from the Giro d’Italia, he is at rest, it beats about thirty-two was sixteen, he was also winning bicycle Italy’s most important race. times a minute—slowly enough so that races. That year, he was invited to the Because Armstrong is the best cy- a doctor who knew nothing about him Cooper Institute, in Dallas, which was clist in the world, there is an assump- would call a hospital as soon as he heard one of the first centers to recognize the tion among some of those who follow it. (When Armstrong is exerting him- relationship between fitness and aerobic the sport that he, too, must use drugs. self, his heart rate can edge up above conditioning. Everyone uses oxygen to Armstrong has never failed a drug test, two hundred beats a minute.) Physi- break down food into the components however, and he may well be the most cally, he was a prodigy. Born in 1971, that provide energy; the more oxygen frequently examined athlete in the his- Armstrong was raised by his mother you are able to use, the more energy you tory of sports. Whenever he wins a in Plano, a drab suburb of Dallas that will produce, and the faster you can run, day’s stage, or finishes as one of the top he quickly came to despise. He never ride, or swim. Armstrong was given a cyclists in a longer race, he is required knew his father, and refers to him as test called the VO2 Max, which is com- to provide a urine sample. Like other “the DNA donor.” He has written that monly used to assess an athlete’s aero- professionals, Armstrong is also tested “the main thing you need to know about bic ability: it measures the maximum randomly throughout the year.

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