Why We’re Not Covering the Lance Armstrong-Frankie Andreu Feud
He may be the most reviled man in bike racing, but any time Lance Armstrong speaks, people still pause to listen. When he speaks, particularly under oath, it can be wise to pay attention. It’s just not necessarily important to pay attention to everything.
Witness the kerfuffle that erupted recently around reports that Armstrong had accused former teammate Frankie Andreu of doping for far more of his career than he had previously admitted. The allegations came in a deposition in the ongoing federal lawsuit over whether Armstrong’s doping defrauded the government via its US Postal Service team sponsorship. Andreu and his wife, Betsy, an early and outspoken critic of Armstrong, dismissed the allegations as completely false.
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For 15 years, I reported on Armstrong: His Tour de France wins; his ill-fated comeback; and above all the long history of allegations that ultimately culminated in the US Anti-Doping Agency investigation that brought about his downfall and its aftermath.
And after a decade and a half of that, and literally tens of thousands of words on the subject, I briefly scanned the Andreu news and…simply shrugged. No part of my journalist side twitched with the impulse to report the contretemps as news. There are elements of Armstrong’s current case that do produce that impulse, to be sure.
For example, Caley Fretz’s story this week in VeloNews says that, in the same deposition, Armstrong placed former team manager Jim Ochowicz at the center of the long-rumored scheme in 1993 to buy off rivals and ensure that Armstrong would win the so-called Triple Crown of American races and make off with the $1 million purse for doing so.
Ochowicz denied any knowledge of a deal, but it’s both interesting and relevant because it’s a direct and firsthand accusation, made under oath, of cheating by a longtime American fixture of the sport who is currently the General Manager for one of the largest and best teams in the sport, BMC Racing.
But the Armstrong-Andreu feud is mostly just that: a feud, between people who have long been seriously, even irreparably, at odds. Betsy and Frankie were some of the first people to testify, under oath, that Armstrong had admitted to doping, a fact that emerged in 2005. And Frankie was the first of Armstrong’s US Postal teammates to openly admit doping, an admission made nine years ago, all of which subjected them to the full force of Armstrong’s fury.
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So Armstrong’s allegations are about degree, not kind. Put in context of the larger picture and purpose—what pro cycling does to progress on its cleanup—what does matter whether Andreu, who last managed a team in 2013, took EPO once, or in one season, or in multiple seasons? The Ochowicz allegations are far more relevant to cycling today, and yet: Which story did USA Today cover?
In the past few years, cycling has made some promising steps toward clean racing. But I still believe that one of the foundational errors of UCI president Brian Cookson’s early days was not to pursue a full reconciliation commission-style investigation of cycling’s EPO era. Almost everyone involved in top-level pro cycling in the 1990s had direct knowledge of doping and participated to some degree. In the toothless and unfocused investigation that Cookson authorized, not even close to all of their stories got told, and so those who have not stepped forward live in continual fear of being outed, while those who were caught, like Armstrong and, before him, Floyd Landis, clearly see the hypocrisy and injustice of being made to pay for their sins while others continue on with no accountability.
Unfortunately, the moment for a true reconciliation seems to have passed, so pro cycling is condemned to dribs and drabs of accusation and manufactured scandal, a toxic environment of mutual recrimination and mistrust that may not fully end until everyone present at the crime scene, so to speak, is long-retired and forgotten. But that group is impossibly broad, and encompasses everyone from ex-racers who are out of the sport and forgotten to people like Ochowicz, who continue to be involved at its highest levels. It encompasses people like Frankie who have admitted their actions and tried diligently to reform themselves and the sport, and people who have evaded questions for years. We should be mindful of the difference, and perhaps create our own personal reconciliation: If it no longer matters to today’s sport, maybe we should just let it go.
If there’s something newsworthy in Armstrong’s testimony, it’s about people who are still in positions of great power who may never have been truly held accountable or answerable for their actions. That’s what matters to me. Unless it serves a more constructive purpose and deals with the sport today, I’m far past caring about who might have done exactly what drugs, and how much, 15 years ago. To paraphrase Bernie Sanders: “America is sick and tired of hearing your damn old doping tales!”
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