Among my emails Wednesday morning, out of the blue, was one from Lance Armstrong.
Riles, I’m sorry.
All I can say for now but also the most heartfelt thing too. Two very important words.
L
And my first thought was . . . “Two words? That’s it?”
Two words? For 14 years of defending a man? And in the end, being made to look like a chump?
Wrote it, said it, tweeted it: “He’s clean.” Put it in columns, said it on radio, said it on TV. Staked my reputation on it.
“Never failed a drug test,” I’d always point out. “Most tested athlete in the world. Tested maybe 500 times. Never flunked one.”
Why? Because Armstrong always told me he was clean.
On the record. Off the record. Every kind of record. In Colorado. In Texas. In France. On team buses. In cars. On cellphones.
I’d sit there with him, in some Tour de France hotel room while he was getting his daily postrace massage. And we’d talk through the hole in the table about how he stared down this guy or that guy, how he’d fooled Jan Ullrich on the torturous Alpe d’Huez into thinking he was gassed and then suddenly sprinted away to win. How he ordered chase packs from the centre of the peloton and reeled in all the pretenders.
And then I’d bring up whatever latest charge was levied against him. “There’s this former teammate who says he heard you tell doctors you doped. There’s this former assistant back in Austin who says you cheated. There’s this assistant they say they caught disposing of your drug paraphernalia.”
And every time – every single time – he’d push himself up on his elbows and his face would be red and he’d stare at me like I’d just shot his dog and give me some very well-delivered explanation involving a few dozen F words, a painting of the accuser as a wronged employee seeking revenge, and how lawsuits were forthcoming.
And when my own reporting would produce no proof, I’d be convinced. I’d go out there and continue polishing a legend that turned out to be plated in fool’s gold.
Even after he retired, the hits just kept coming. A London Times report. A Daniel Coyne book. A US federal investigation. All liars and thieves, he’d snarl.
I remember one time we talked on the phone for half an hour, all off the record, at his insistence, and I asked him three times, “Just tell me. Straight up. Did you do any of this stuff?”
“No! I didn’t do s—!”
Read the rest of Rick Reilly’s column on espn.com.
