In this episode, we'll learn about the dramatic rise and fall of Lance Armstrong, the cycling legend who won the Tour de France seven times before being exposed as a cheat.
From a heroic cancer survivor to the mastermind behind the biggest doping scandal in sports history, we'll hear about how it was all "one big lie".
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:07] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:16] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the last part of our three-part mini-series on controversial sportspeople.
[00:00:23] In case you missed them, in part one we talked about the phenomenally talented but self-destructive football player, George Best.
[00:00:31] In part two, we talked about the skating wars between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.
[00:00:38] And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about the seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong.
[00:00:45] For years, his story was a fairytale, an inspirational story of talent, endurance, and success against all the odds.
[00:00:55] But, then came the most spectacular fall from grace.
[00:01:01] So let’s not waste a minute, and talk about the controversial life and career of Lance Armstrong.
[00:01:09] In 1902, the biggest sporting newspaper in France was called Le Vélo, the bicycle.
[00:01:17] But there was an upstart newspaper, another sporting publication, called L’Auto, the car.
[00:01:25] As a trick to boost the circulation of the young newspaper, a journalist suggested creating and sponsoring a cycling race.
[00:01:35] But this would be a race unlike any other.
[00:01:40] Instead of a race around a track, or a long race from one town to another, the journalist suggested a race that would consist of multiple long races, spread over several days.
[00:01:54] The editors approved the idea, and in 1903, from July 1st to July 19th, the first-ever Tour de France was held.
[00:02:06] It started and finished in Paris, or to get technical just outside Paris, and went in a big circle through five of the largest cities in France: Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, before finishing back in Paris.
[00:02:24] It was long, at 2,428 km in total, and the winner finished in just under 100 hours.
[00:02:35] Fast forward to today, and the Tour de France is the most popular cycling race in the world, and one of the most watched sporting events globally.
[00:02:47] It has evolved significantly.
[00:02:50] The route changes every year, but is typically around 3,500 km, almost 50% longer than the original version.
[00:03:02] What’s more, if the distance wasn’t enough, the race now includes serious uphill climbs through both the Alps and the Pyrenees, the two main mountainous areas of France.
[00:03:15] Competitors now have to climb anywhere between 45,000 and 50,000 metres, which is like climbing Mount Everest more than five times.
[00:03:27] It takes place over 23 days and there are only two rest days.
[00:03:34] It is an insane race, and just managing to complete it requires extreme levels of fitness, endurance, and both physical and mental strength.
[00:03:47] You have to be at the absolute top of your game.
[00:03:51] And in 1999, it had a surprise winner.
[00:03:56] His name was Lance Armstrong, and he was the second American to win the Tour de France.
[00:04:04] He had grown up in Texas, and had first been a triathlete before switching to focus only on cycling.
[00:04:12] He had competed in the Tour de France before, in 1993 and 1995, but had only ever won two stages in total, and the highest position he managed was 36th.
[00:04:26] Of course, a remarkable achievement, but he was nowhere near the top.
[00:04:32] Not only this, but fewer than three years before he had been diagnosed with advanced cancer that had started in his testicles but had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs and brain.
[00:04:46] His body was riddled with cancer, and the doctors gave him a 50:50 chance of survival.
[00:04:54] This was a young man who had just been given the most horrendous of diagnoses, had been staring death in the face, but had beaten cancer and then decided to compete in the most physically demanding sporting competition in the world.
[00:05:10] And…he won.
[00:05:13] Not only that, but he went on to win it every single year until 2005, a total of 7 consecutive victories.
[00:05:24] It was the most incredible achievement; nobody has ever come close to doing what he did.
[00:05:31] To go from cancer patient to superstar professional endurance athlete was a fairytale story, a story that nothing was impossible, an inspiration to anyone that they too can achieve their dreams if they set their mind to it.
[00:05:48] He was a megastar, he launched a charitable foundation, he dated the singer Cheryl Crow, he seemingly could do no wrong.
[00:05:58] Journalists wrote gushing articles on this miracle comeback and this remarkable sportsman.
[00:06:05] Most, but not all journalists.
[00:06:08] There were some who weren’t buying it.
[00:06:11] Something wasn’t right about Lance Armstrong.
[00:06:14] He was too good, there was no way that a human being could push their body to its physical limit for as long as Lance Armstrong did without a little…help.
[00:06:26] And by help, of course, they meant performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:06:32] Now, we must go back briefly to talk about the Tour de France once more.
[00:06:37] You know it is an intense race, but let’s talk in some detail about what it does to the body.
[00:06:45] When you breathe in, you bring oxygen into your lungs.
[00:06:50] The oxygen then enters your blood, where red blood cells pick it up. These red blood cells carry the oxygen all around your body, delivering it to your muscles and other parts that need it to work properly.
[00:07:06] After dropping off the oxygen, the red blood cells pick up carbon dioxide, which is a waste product made by your muscles. The red blood cells take this carbon dioxide back to your lungs, where you breathe it out.
[00:07:23] Then, the whole process starts again.
[00:07:27] When you’re sitting or walking, like you might be doing now, your muscles don’t need much oxygen, so your body can easily keep up. It produces and moves enough red blood cells to meet your needs.
[00:07:42] But when you start running or doing exercise, your muscles need more oxygen. That’s why you breathe faster and your heart beats quicker—to move more oxygen-carrying red blood cells to your muscles.
[00:07:57] When your muscles begin to run low on oxygen, your body also makes some changes.
[00:08:04] One important change is that your kidneys produce more of a hormone called erythropoietin, which is a difficult word to say, which is why people use its acronym, EPO.
[00:08:17] EPO tells your body to make more red blood cells, which helps deliver more oxygen to your muscles.
[00:08:25] If you’re doing something really intense, like a stage in the Tour de France, your body needs to work extra hard. Your muscles might not get enough oxygen, so your body increases EPO to make more red blood cells and keep up the oxygen supply.
[00:08:44] However, there’s a limit. Your body can only make about 50% more red blood cells during really intense activity. It can’t go beyond that.
[00:08:57] And during the Tour de France, riders are constantly fighting this.
[00:09:02] Their bodies cannot produce enough red blood cells to replace the ones being used up, so because of this deficit their bodies get extremely tired, lactic acid builds up and they can feel like they hit a wall.
[00:09:20] But Lance Armstrong didn’t seem to be affected in the same way.
[00:09:25] He could push through, he seemed to have inexhaustible stamina.
[00:09:31] To these sceptical journalists, this comeback champion, this cancer survivor, must be taking something.
[00:09:40] A few journalists started to do some digging, and found some suspicious evidence.
[00:09:47] Lance Armstrong was found to have visited on multiple occasions a town in Italy where a notorious Italian doctor was based.
[00:09:57] The doctor’s name was Michele Ferrari, and he was strongly suspected of supplying cyclists with performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:10:07] In particular, injections of EPO, the hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells.
[00:10:16] In other words, this drug had the effect of allowing the body to produce more red blood cells than it would under normal circumstances, allowing people who took it to push their bodies to the limit for longer.
[00:10:31] Ferrari had famously said that EPO was as safe as drinking orange juice, and had no hesitation in prescribing it to his clients, despite it being a banned substance.
[00:10:44] When confronted about this, Armstrong admitted that he had been working with Ferrari, but said that on no occasion had he taken performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:10:56] The rumours continued to circulate, but the cyclist was particularly aggressive in shutting them down.
[00:11:04] He constantly denied taking drugs, he would remind journalists that he was the most tested athlete in history and that on no occasion had any test ever been positive.
[00:11:16] He was the golden boy, the protagonist of the most remarkable comeback story in sporting history.
[00:11:24] Not only was he a very highly paid cyclist, but he was flooded with endorsements, most famously from Nike, which paid him a reported $10 million a year.
[00:11:37] He was also incredibly litigious, meaning that whenever there was some story or article that even hinted at him taking performance-enhancing drugs, his lawyers would aggressively shut the story down, threatening to sue for millions of dollars.
[00:11:56] Even as the rumours began to grow, and people started to come forward with anecdotal evidence that he'd been taking drugs, there was this knowledge that any published article would result in the threat of serious and expensive litigation.
[00:12:13] Was it worth it? Many editors, understandably, didn’t want to take the risk.
[00:12:21] There was one book, L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong - The Secrets of Lance Armstrong, which was published in 2004, while Armstrong was at the peak of his career.
[00:12:34] It was a collaboration between a French and an Irish journalist and alleged that Armstrong had been taking performance-enhancing drugs since 1995.
[00:12:47] It was only published in French and in France because Armstrong’s lawyers had threatened serious litigation if it was published in English and sold in the UK or in America, so its global impact was limited.
[00:13:02] The Irish journalist, David Walsh, did publish parts of the book in the British newspaper The Sunday Times, but this resulted in the newspaper being sued by Armstrong, having to pay a million-pound settlement and print a retraction of its claims.
[00:13:20] The message was clear: do not mess with Lance Armstrong.
[00:13:25] In March of the following year, 2005, shortly before the Tour de France, he announced that he would retire from professional cycling.
[00:13:35] After all, he had won six Tour de France by that point, and would win his seventh and final one in the summer of 2005.
[00:13:45] He was 33 years old, he had recovered from cancer, and he had fought off all of the allegations of foul play.
[00:13:54] He would go out on a high, and he did.
[00:13:58] But a few years later he announced that he was coming back.
[00:14:03] He couldn’t resist. He would come back to race the biggest race in cycling, The Tour de France, and his sights were on first place.
[00:14:12] This time it would be for a different team, Astana. The team he had previously ridden for was called the U.S. Postal Service.
[00:14:22] And importantly he made a big thing of the fact that this new team was going to be completely transparent and squeaky clean; he would post his blood test results online, the team would only consist of spotless cyclists, there was absolutely no possibility for anyone on the team to be accused of doping or of foul play.
[00:14:45] Although it’s clear why he did this, because he wanted to quash these rumours once and for all, it would prove to be his downfall.
[00:14:55] His former U.S. Postal Service teammate, Floyd Landis, wanted a place on Armstrong’s new team, on Astana.
[00:15:04] The pair had ridden together from 2002 to 2005, and Landis had been instrumental in helping Armstrong secure first place.
[00:15:15] But Armstrong said no.
[00:15:18] Landis had been embroiled in a doping scandal, he had admitted taking drugs, and Armstrong needed his team to be 100% clean.
[00:15:28] After being rejected, Landis was not happy.
[00:15:32] He was brooding, contemplating his next move.
[00:15:37] It was later revealed that he had emailed a bunch of newspapers alleging that Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing drugs during the Tour de France. Not only this, but he said that Armstrong had not only encouraged him and others to take drugs but had taught them how to beat the system.
[00:15:57] This was the first time that someone so high profile had gone on record and testified.
[00:16:04] The walls were closing in.
[00:16:07] And Armstrong’s comeback had not gone as he had hoped.
[00:16:12] He finished in third place in the 2009 Tour de France and on his last tour, in 2010, he finished in 23rd place. He had announced his retirement shortly afterwards but was facing growing calls for full investigations.
[00:16:30] There was a federal investigation in 2010, but that came to nothing. The case was dropped, without explanation.
[00:16:40] And then in June of 2012 came the bombshell.
[00:16:46] The United States Anti-Doping Agency, the organisation in charge of stopping and catching athletes who take drugs, accused Armstrong not just of doping, but of being, and I’m quoting directly, the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".
[00:17:10] Now, this wasn’t the statement of a disgruntled competitor or a journalist with a grudge; they were the words of the official government agency in charge of stopping doping.
[00:17:23] Shortly after, he was stripped of all of his world titles after 1998, so if you look at the list of Tour de France winners from 1999 to 2005, you will see “no winner”.
[00:17:38] He had retired from professional cycling, but nevertheless, he received a lifetime ban.
[00:17:45] He kept quiet initially, not responding to the allegations.
[00:17:50] But in January of the following year, he went on the Oprah Winfrey show and admitted it all.
[00:17:57] He had taken drugs, he had faked drug tests, he had done everything he had been accused of.
[00:18:05] And having previously made millions from endorsements due to his heroic image as a record-shattering cancer survivor, he was almost immediately dropped by all of the brands that had paid him handsomely to be associated with him.
[00:18:21] According to one interview, he lost $75 million dollars worth of endorsements in a single day.
[00:18:30] But worth perhaps even more than this was the complete destruction, or at least the huge damage, done to his reputation and legacy.
[00:18:40] He had been an inspiration to people all over the world; not just to people battling cancer, not just to aspiring athletes, but to anyone with a dream. He was living proof that people could do unthinkable things, and that what might seem impossible can be achieved with the right mindset and effort.
[00:19:03] To the fans who had believed in him, and who had ridiculed his detractors for claiming that his records weren’t “real”, it was clearly a huge disappointment. Armstrong had repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs, he had accused and harassed anyone who had said that he was using drugs, accusing them of being jealous and not believing in him.
[00:19:26] But, he was lying all along.
[00:19:29] In his own words, it wasn’t a series of lies, it wasn’t hundreds or thousands or even millions of lies. It was one big lie. His entire career, his success, was based on cheating.
[00:19:44] This admission was over 10 years ago now, and now that the dust has settled, there are differing views on the legacy of Lance Armstrong.
[00:19:54] Clearly, he inspired millions of people. He did recover from cancer in record-breaking time, he was a phenomenal athlete and cyclist, and he raised not only awareness but hundreds of millions of dollars for his cancer charity, Livestrong.
[00:20:12] But he cheated. He lied.
[00:20:15] And he behaved terribly against people who suggested that he had been doping, people he knew were telling the truth, but who he sued and accused of lying in order to keep his secret under wraps.
[00:20:29] He was the most phenomenal liar, and it is perhaps just as much of an achievement that he managed to keep his secret for as long as he did.
[00:20:38] And, had he not come back from retirement, had he not annoyed Floyd Landis and pushed him into testifying against him, he most probably would have got away with it.
[00:20:50] His legacy would be intact, he would still be making tens of millions of dollars a year from endorsements and all of those journalists who accused him might have thought that, actually, it was they that were wrong.
[00:21:04] But, like so many other people who were at the top of their game and had the chance to end on a high, hubris got the better of him.
[00:21:13] And so he will always be remembered as the biggest cheat in cycling history.
[00:21:20] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Lance Armstrong, and with that comes the end of this three-part mini-series on controversial sportspeople.
[00:21:29] I hope it's been an interesting one, and even if you knew about Lance Armstrong’s story, and that of George Best and Tonya Harding for that matter, well I hope that you've learnt something new.
[00:21:40] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:21:43] Do you like these ones on sportspeople? If so, what other ones should we make?
[00:21:48] And for the cycling fans in the house, what are your thoughts and memories about Lance Armstrong? Misguided hero, villain, or somewhere in between?
[00:21:58] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:02] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:14] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:07] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:16] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the last part of our three-part mini-series on controversial sportspeople.
[00:00:23] In case you missed them, in part one we talked about the phenomenally talented but self-destructive football player, George Best.
[00:00:31] In part two, we talked about the skating wars between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.
[00:00:38] And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about the seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong.
[00:00:45] For years, his story was a fairytale, an inspirational story of talent, endurance, and success against all the odds.
[00:00:55] But, then came the most spectacular fall from grace.
[00:01:01] So let’s not waste a minute, and talk about the controversial life and career of Lance Armstrong.
[00:01:09] In 1902, the biggest sporting newspaper in France was called Le Vélo, the bicycle.
[00:01:17] But there was an upstart newspaper, another sporting publication, called L’Auto, the car.
[00:01:25] As a trick to boost the circulation of the young newspaper, a journalist suggested creating and sponsoring a cycling race.
[00:01:35] But this would be a race unlike any other.
[00:01:40] Instead of a race around a track, or a long race from one town to another, the journalist suggested a race that would consist of multiple long races, spread over several days.
[00:01:54] The editors approved the idea, and in 1903, from July 1st to July 19th, the first-ever Tour de France was held.
[00:02:06] It started and finished in Paris, or to get technical just outside Paris, and went in a big circle through five of the largest cities in France: Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, before finishing back in Paris.
[00:02:24] It was long, at 2,428 km in total, and the winner finished in just under 100 hours.
[00:02:35] Fast forward to today, and the Tour de France is the most popular cycling race in the world, and one of the most watched sporting events globally.
[00:02:47] It has evolved significantly.
[00:02:50] The route changes every year, but is typically around 3,500 km, almost 50% longer than the original version.
[00:03:02] What’s more, if the distance wasn’t enough, the race now includes serious uphill climbs through both the Alps and the Pyrenees, the two main mountainous areas of France.
[00:03:15] Competitors now have to climb anywhere between 45,000 and 50,000 metres, which is like climbing Mount Everest more than five times.
[00:03:27] It takes place over 23 days and there are only two rest days.
[00:03:34] It is an insane race, and just managing to complete it requires extreme levels of fitness, endurance, and both physical and mental strength.
[00:03:47] You have to be at the absolute top of your game.
[00:03:51] And in 1999, it had a surprise winner.
[00:03:56] His name was Lance Armstrong, and he was the second American to win the Tour de France.
[00:04:04] He had grown up in Texas, and had first been a triathlete before switching to focus only on cycling.
[00:04:12] He had competed in the Tour de France before, in 1993 and 1995, but had only ever won two stages in total, and the highest position he managed was 36th.
[00:04:26] Of course, a remarkable achievement, but he was nowhere near the top.
[00:04:32] Not only this, but fewer than three years before he had been diagnosed with advanced cancer that had started in his testicles but had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs and brain.
[00:04:46] His body was riddled with cancer, and the doctors gave him a 50:50 chance of survival.
[00:04:54] This was a young man who had just been given the most horrendous of diagnoses, had been staring death in the face, but had beaten cancer and then decided to compete in the most physically demanding sporting competition in the world.
[00:05:10] And…he won.
[00:05:13] Not only that, but he went on to win it every single year until 2005, a total of 7 consecutive victories.
[00:05:24] It was the most incredible achievement; nobody has ever come close to doing what he did.
[00:05:31] To go from cancer patient to superstar professional endurance athlete was a fairytale story, a story that nothing was impossible, an inspiration to anyone that they too can achieve their dreams if they set their mind to it.
[00:05:48] He was a megastar, he launched a charitable foundation, he dated the singer Cheryl Crow, he seemingly could do no wrong.
[00:05:58] Journalists wrote gushing articles on this miracle comeback and this remarkable sportsman.
[00:06:05] Most, but not all journalists.
[00:06:08] There were some who weren’t buying it.
[00:06:11] Something wasn’t right about Lance Armstrong.
[00:06:14] He was too good, there was no way that a human being could push their body to its physical limit for as long as Lance Armstrong did without a little…help.
[00:06:26] And by help, of course, they meant performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:06:32] Now, we must go back briefly to talk about the Tour de France once more.
[00:06:37] You know it is an intense race, but let’s talk in some detail about what it does to the body.
[00:06:45] When you breathe in, you bring oxygen into your lungs.
[00:06:50] The oxygen then enters your blood, where red blood cells pick it up. These red blood cells carry the oxygen all around your body, delivering it to your muscles and other parts that need it to work properly.
[00:07:06] After dropping off the oxygen, the red blood cells pick up carbon dioxide, which is a waste product made by your muscles. The red blood cells take this carbon dioxide back to your lungs, where you breathe it out.
[00:07:23] Then, the whole process starts again.
[00:07:27] When you’re sitting or walking, like you might be doing now, your muscles don’t need much oxygen, so your body can easily keep up. It produces and moves enough red blood cells to meet your needs.
[00:07:42] But when you start running or doing exercise, your muscles need more oxygen. That’s why you breathe faster and your heart beats quicker—to move more oxygen-carrying red blood cells to your muscles.
[00:07:57] When your muscles begin to run low on oxygen, your body also makes some changes.
[00:08:04] One important change is that your kidneys produce more of a hormone called erythropoietin, which is a difficult word to say, which is why people use its acronym, EPO.
[00:08:17] EPO tells your body to make more red blood cells, which helps deliver more oxygen to your muscles.
[00:08:25] If you’re doing something really intense, like a stage in the Tour de France, your body needs to work extra hard. Your muscles might not get enough oxygen, so your body increases EPO to make more red blood cells and keep up the oxygen supply.
[00:08:44] However, there’s a limit. Your body can only make about 50% more red blood cells during really intense activity. It can’t go beyond that.
[00:08:57] And during the Tour de France, riders are constantly fighting this.
[00:09:02] Their bodies cannot produce enough red blood cells to replace the ones being used up, so because of this deficit their bodies get extremely tired, lactic acid builds up and they can feel like they hit a wall.
[00:09:20] But Lance Armstrong didn’t seem to be affected in the same way.
[00:09:25] He could push through, he seemed to have inexhaustible stamina.
[00:09:31] To these sceptical journalists, this comeback champion, this cancer survivor, must be taking something.
[00:09:40] A few journalists started to do some digging, and found some suspicious evidence.
[00:09:47] Lance Armstrong was found to have visited on multiple occasions a town in Italy where a notorious Italian doctor was based.
[00:09:57] The doctor’s name was Michele Ferrari, and he was strongly suspected of supplying cyclists with performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:10:07] In particular, injections of EPO, the hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells.
[00:10:16] In other words, this drug had the effect of allowing the body to produce more red blood cells than it would under normal circumstances, allowing people who took it to push their bodies to the limit for longer.
[00:10:31] Ferrari had famously said that EPO was as safe as drinking orange juice, and had no hesitation in prescribing it to his clients, despite it being a banned substance.
[00:10:44] When confronted about this, Armstrong admitted that he had been working with Ferrari, but said that on no occasion had he taken performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:10:56] The rumours continued to circulate, but the cyclist was particularly aggressive in shutting them down.
[00:11:04] He constantly denied taking drugs, he would remind journalists that he was the most tested athlete in history and that on no occasion had any test ever been positive.
[00:11:16] He was the golden boy, the protagonist of the most remarkable comeback story in sporting history.
[00:11:24] Not only was he a very highly paid cyclist, but he was flooded with endorsements, most famously from Nike, which paid him a reported $10 million a year.
[00:11:37] He was also incredibly litigious, meaning that whenever there was some story or article that even hinted at him taking performance-enhancing drugs, his lawyers would aggressively shut the story down, threatening to sue for millions of dollars.
[00:11:56] Even as the rumours began to grow, and people started to come forward with anecdotal evidence that he'd been taking drugs, there was this knowledge that any published article would result in the threat of serious and expensive litigation.
[00:12:13] Was it worth it? Many editors, understandably, didn’t want to take the risk.
[00:12:21] There was one book, L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong - The Secrets of Lance Armstrong, which was published in 2004, while Armstrong was at the peak of his career.
[00:12:34] It was a collaboration between a French and an Irish journalist and alleged that Armstrong had been taking performance-enhancing drugs since 1995.
[00:12:47] It was only published in French and in France because Armstrong’s lawyers had threatened serious litigation if it was published in English and sold in the UK or in America, so its global impact was limited.
[00:13:02] The Irish journalist, David Walsh, did publish parts of the book in the British newspaper The Sunday Times, but this resulted in the newspaper being sued by Armstrong, having to pay a million-pound settlement and print a retraction of its claims.
[00:13:20] The message was clear: do not mess with Lance Armstrong.
[00:13:25] In March of the following year, 2005, shortly before the Tour de France, he announced that he would retire from professional cycling.
[00:13:35] After all, he had won six Tour de France by that point, and would win his seventh and final one in the summer of 2005.
[00:13:45] He was 33 years old, he had recovered from cancer, and he had fought off all of the allegations of foul play.
[00:13:54] He would go out on a high, and he did.
[00:13:58] But a few years later he announced that he was coming back.
[00:14:03] He couldn’t resist. He would come back to race the biggest race in cycling, The Tour de France, and his sights were on first place.
[00:14:12] This time it would be for a different team, Astana. The team he had previously ridden for was called the U.S. Postal Service.
[00:14:22] And importantly he made a big thing of the fact that this new team was going to be completely transparent and squeaky clean; he would post his blood test results online, the team would only consist of spotless cyclists, there was absolutely no possibility for anyone on the team to be accused of doping or of foul play.
[00:14:45] Although it’s clear why he did this, because he wanted to quash these rumours once and for all, it would prove to be his downfall.
[00:14:55] His former U.S. Postal Service teammate, Floyd Landis, wanted a place on Armstrong’s new team, on Astana.
[00:15:04] The pair had ridden together from 2002 to 2005, and Landis had been instrumental in helping Armstrong secure first place.
[00:15:15] But Armstrong said no.
[00:15:18] Landis had been embroiled in a doping scandal, he had admitted taking drugs, and Armstrong needed his team to be 100% clean.
[00:15:28] After being rejected, Landis was not happy.
[00:15:32] He was brooding, contemplating his next move.
[00:15:37] It was later revealed that he had emailed a bunch of newspapers alleging that Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing drugs during the Tour de France. Not only this, but he said that Armstrong had not only encouraged him and others to take drugs but had taught them how to beat the system.
[00:15:57] This was the first time that someone so high profile had gone on record and testified.
[00:16:04] The walls were closing in.
[00:16:07] And Armstrong’s comeback had not gone as he had hoped.
[00:16:12] He finished in third place in the 2009 Tour de France and on his last tour, in 2010, he finished in 23rd place. He had announced his retirement shortly afterwards but was facing growing calls for full investigations.
[00:16:30] There was a federal investigation in 2010, but that came to nothing. The case was dropped, without explanation.
[00:16:40] And then in June of 2012 came the bombshell.
[00:16:46] The United States Anti-Doping Agency, the organisation in charge of stopping and catching athletes who take drugs, accused Armstrong not just of doping, but of being, and I’m quoting directly, the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".
[00:17:10] Now, this wasn’t the statement of a disgruntled competitor or a journalist with a grudge; they were the words of the official government agency in charge of stopping doping.
[00:17:23] Shortly after, he was stripped of all of his world titles after 1998, so if you look at the list of Tour de France winners from 1999 to 2005, you will see “no winner”.
[00:17:38] He had retired from professional cycling, but nevertheless, he received a lifetime ban.
[00:17:45] He kept quiet initially, not responding to the allegations.
[00:17:50] But in January of the following year, he went on the Oprah Winfrey show and admitted it all.
[00:17:57] He had taken drugs, he had faked drug tests, he had done everything he had been accused of.
[00:18:05] And having previously made millions from endorsements due to his heroic image as a record-shattering cancer survivor, he was almost immediately dropped by all of the brands that had paid him handsomely to be associated with him.
[00:18:21] According to one interview, he lost $75 million dollars worth of endorsements in a single day.
[00:18:30] But worth perhaps even more than this was the complete destruction, or at least the huge damage, done to his reputation and legacy.
[00:18:40] He had been an inspiration to people all over the world; not just to people battling cancer, not just to aspiring athletes, but to anyone with a dream. He was living proof that people could do unthinkable things, and that what might seem impossible can be achieved with the right mindset and effort.
[00:19:03] To the fans who had believed in him, and who had ridiculed his detractors for claiming that his records weren’t “real”, it was clearly a huge disappointment. Armstrong had repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs, he had accused and harassed anyone who had said that he was using drugs, accusing them of being jealous and not believing in him.
[00:19:26] But, he was lying all along.
[00:19:29] In his own words, it wasn’t a series of lies, it wasn’t hundreds or thousands or even millions of lies. It was one big lie. His entire career, his success, was based on cheating.
[00:19:44] This admission was over 10 years ago now, and now that the dust has settled, there are differing views on the legacy of Lance Armstrong.
[00:19:54] Clearly, he inspired millions of people. He did recover from cancer in record-breaking time, he was a phenomenal athlete and cyclist, and he raised not only awareness but hundreds of millions of dollars for his cancer charity, Livestrong.
[00:20:12] But he cheated. He lied.
[00:20:15] And he behaved terribly against people who suggested that he had been doping, people he knew were telling the truth, but who he sued and accused of lying in order to keep his secret under wraps.
[00:20:29] He was the most phenomenal liar, and it is perhaps just as much of an achievement that he managed to keep his secret for as long as he did.
[00:20:38] And, had he not come back from retirement, had he not annoyed Floyd Landis and pushed him into testifying against him, he most probably would have got away with it.
[00:20:50] His legacy would be intact, he would still be making tens of millions of dollars a year from endorsements and all of those journalists who accused him might have thought that, actually, it was they that were wrong.
[00:21:04] But, like so many other people who were at the top of their game and had the chance to end on a high, hubris got the better of him.
[00:21:13] And so he will always be remembered as the biggest cheat in cycling history.
[00:21:20] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Lance Armstrong, and with that comes the end of this three-part mini-series on controversial sportspeople.
[00:21:29] I hope it's been an interesting one, and even if you knew about Lance Armstrong’s story, and that of George Best and Tonya Harding for that matter, well I hope that you've learnt something new.
[00:21:40] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:21:43] Do you like these ones on sportspeople? If so, what other ones should we make?
[00:21:48] And for the cycling fans in the house, what are your thoughts and memories about Lance Armstrong? Misguided hero, villain, or somewhere in between?
[00:21:58] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:02] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:14] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:07] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:16] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the last part of our three-part mini-series on controversial sportspeople.
[00:00:23] In case you missed them, in part one we talked about the phenomenally talented but self-destructive football player, George Best.
[00:00:31] In part two, we talked about the skating wars between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.
[00:00:38] And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about the seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong.
[00:00:45] For years, his story was a fairytale, an inspirational story of talent, endurance, and success against all the odds.
[00:00:55] But, then came the most spectacular fall from grace.
[00:01:01] So let’s not waste a minute, and talk about the controversial life and career of Lance Armstrong.
[00:01:09] In 1902, the biggest sporting newspaper in France was called Le Vélo, the bicycle.
[00:01:17] But there was an upstart newspaper, another sporting publication, called L’Auto, the car.
[00:01:25] As a trick to boost the circulation of the young newspaper, a journalist suggested creating and sponsoring a cycling race.
[00:01:35] But this would be a race unlike any other.
[00:01:40] Instead of a race around a track, or a long race from one town to another, the journalist suggested a race that would consist of multiple long races, spread over several days.
[00:01:54] The editors approved the idea, and in 1903, from July 1st to July 19th, the first-ever Tour de France was held.
[00:02:06] It started and finished in Paris, or to get technical just outside Paris, and went in a big circle through five of the largest cities in France: Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, before finishing back in Paris.
[00:02:24] It was long, at 2,428 km in total, and the winner finished in just under 100 hours.
[00:02:35] Fast forward to today, and the Tour de France is the most popular cycling race in the world, and one of the most watched sporting events globally.
[00:02:47] It has evolved significantly.
[00:02:50] The route changes every year, but is typically around 3,500 km, almost 50% longer than the original version.
[00:03:02] What’s more, if the distance wasn’t enough, the race now includes serious uphill climbs through both the Alps and the Pyrenees, the two main mountainous areas of France.
[00:03:15] Competitors now have to climb anywhere between 45,000 and 50,000 metres, which is like climbing Mount Everest more than five times.
[00:03:27] It takes place over 23 days and there are only two rest days.
[00:03:34] It is an insane race, and just managing to complete it requires extreme levels of fitness, endurance, and both physical and mental strength.
[00:03:47] You have to be at the absolute top of your game.
[00:03:51] And in 1999, it had a surprise winner.
[00:03:56] His name was Lance Armstrong, and he was the second American to win the Tour de France.
[00:04:04] He had grown up in Texas, and had first been a triathlete before switching to focus only on cycling.
[00:04:12] He had competed in the Tour de France before, in 1993 and 1995, but had only ever won two stages in total, and the highest position he managed was 36th.
[00:04:26] Of course, a remarkable achievement, but he was nowhere near the top.
[00:04:32] Not only this, but fewer than three years before he had been diagnosed with advanced cancer that had started in his testicles but had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs and brain.
[00:04:46] His body was riddled with cancer, and the doctors gave him a 50:50 chance of survival.
[00:04:54] This was a young man who had just been given the most horrendous of diagnoses, had been staring death in the face, but had beaten cancer and then decided to compete in the most physically demanding sporting competition in the world.
[00:05:10] And…he won.
[00:05:13] Not only that, but he went on to win it every single year until 2005, a total of 7 consecutive victories.
[00:05:24] It was the most incredible achievement; nobody has ever come close to doing what he did.
[00:05:31] To go from cancer patient to superstar professional endurance athlete was a fairytale story, a story that nothing was impossible, an inspiration to anyone that they too can achieve their dreams if they set their mind to it.
[00:05:48] He was a megastar, he launched a charitable foundation, he dated the singer Cheryl Crow, he seemingly could do no wrong.
[00:05:58] Journalists wrote gushing articles on this miracle comeback and this remarkable sportsman.
[00:06:05] Most, but not all journalists.
[00:06:08] There were some who weren’t buying it.
[00:06:11] Something wasn’t right about Lance Armstrong.
[00:06:14] He was too good, there was no way that a human being could push their body to its physical limit for as long as Lance Armstrong did without a little…help.
[00:06:26] And by help, of course, they meant performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:06:32] Now, we must go back briefly to talk about the Tour de France once more.
[00:06:37] You know it is an intense race, but let’s talk in some detail about what it does to the body.
[00:06:45] When you breathe in, you bring oxygen into your lungs.
[00:06:50] The oxygen then enters your blood, where red blood cells pick it up. These red blood cells carry the oxygen all around your body, delivering it to your muscles and other parts that need it to work properly.
[00:07:06] After dropping off the oxygen, the red blood cells pick up carbon dioxide, which is a waste product made by your muscles. The red blood cells take this carbon dioxide back to your lungs, where you breathe it out.
[00:07:23] Then, the whole process starts again.
[00:07:27] When you’re sitting or walking, like you might be doing now, your muscles don’t need much oxygen, so your body can easily keep up. It produces and moves enough red blood cells to meet your needs.
[00:07:42] But when you start running or doing exercise, your muscles need more oxygen. That’s why you breathe faster and your heart beats quicker—to move more oxygen-carrying red blood cells to your muscles.
[00:07:57] When your muscles begin to run low on oxygen, your body also makes some changes.
[00:08:04] One important change is that your kidneys produce more of a hormone called erythropoietin, which is a difficult word to say, which is why people use its acronym, EPO.
[00:08:17] EPO tells your body to make more red blood cells, which helps deliver more oxygen to your muscles.
[00:08:25] If you’re doing something really intense, like a stage in the Tour de France, your body needs to work extra hard. Your muscles might not get enough oxygen, so your body increases EPO to make more red blood cells and keep up the oxygen supply.
[00:08:44] However, there’s a limit. Your body can only make about 50% more red blood cells during really intense activity. It can’t go beyond that.
[00:08:57] And during the Tour de France, riders are constantly fighting this.
[00:09:02] Their bodies cannot produce enough red blood cells to replace the ones being used up, so because of this deficit their bodies get extremely tired, lactic acid builds up and they can feel like they hit a wall.
[00:09:20] But Lance Armstrong didn’t seem to be affected in the same way.
[00:09:25] He could push through, he seemed to have inexhaustible stamina.
[00:09:31] To these sceptical journalists, this comeback champion, this cancer survivor, must be taking something.
[00:09:40] A few journalists started to do some digging, and found some suspicious evidence.
[00:09:47] Lance Armstrong was found to have visited on multiple occasions a town in Italy where a notorious Italian doctor was based.
[00:09:57] The doctor’s name was Michele Ferrari, and he was strongly suspected of supplying cyclists with performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:10:07] In particular, injections of EPO, the hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells.
[00:10:16] In other words, this drug had the effect of allowing the body to produce more red blood cells than it would under normal circumstances, allowing people who took it to push their bodies to the limit for longer.
[00:10:31] Ferrari had famously said that EPO was as safe as drinking orange juice, and had no hesitation in prescribing it to his clients, despite it being a banned substance.
[00:10:44] When confronted about this, Armstrong admitted that he had been working with Ferrari, but said that on no occasion had he taken performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:10:56] The rumours continued to circulate, but the cyclist was particularly aggressive in shutting them down.
[00:11:04] He constantly denied taking drugs, he would remind journalists that he was the most tested athlete in history and that on no occasion had any test ever been positive.
[00:11:16] He was the golden boy, the protagonist of the most remarkable comeback story in sporting history.
[00:11:24] Not only was he a very highly paid cyclist, but he was flooded with endorsements, most famously from Nike, which paid him a reported $10 million a year.
[00:11:37] He was also incredibly litigious, meaning that whenever there was some story or article that even hinted at him taking performance-enhancing drugs, his lawyers would aggressively shut the story down, threatening to sue for millions of dollars.
[00:11:56] Even as the rumours began to grow, and people started to come forward with anecdotal evidence that he'd been taking drugs, there was this knowledge that any published article would result in the threat of serious and expensive litigation.
[00:12:13] Was it worth it? Many editors, understandably, didn’t want to take the risk.
[00:12:21] There was one book, L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong - The Secrets of Lance Armstrong, which was published in 2004, while Armstrong was at the peak of his career.
[00:12:34] It was a collaboration between a French and an Irish journalist and alleged that Armstrong had been taking performance-enhancing drugs since 1995.
[00:12:47] It was only published in French and in France because Armstrong’s lawyers had threatened serious litigation if it was published in English and sold in the UK or in America, so its global impact was limited.
[00:13:02] The Irish journalist, David Walsh, did publish parts of the book in the British newspaper The Sunday Times, but this resulted in the newspaper being sued by Armstrong, having to pay a million-pound settlement and print a retraction of its claims.
[00:13:20] The message was clear: do not mess with Lance Armstrong.
[00:13:25] In March of the following year, 2005, shortly before the Tour de France, he announced that he would retire from professional cycling.
[00:13:35] After all, he had won six Tour de France by that point, and would win his seventh and final one in the summer of 2005.
[00:13:45] He was 33 years old, he had recovered from cancer, and he had fought off all of the allegations of foul play.
[00:13:54] He would go out on a high, and he did.
[00:13:58] But a few years later he announced that he was coming back.
[00:14:03] He couldn’t resist. He would come back to race the biggest race in cycling, The Tour de France, and his sights were on first place.
[00:14:12] This time it would be for a different team, Astana. The team he had previously ridden for was called the U.S. Postal Service.
[00:14:22] And importantly he made a big thing of the fact that this new team was going to be completely transparent and squeaky clean; he would post his blood test results online, the team would only consist of spotless cyclists, there was absolutely no possibility for anyone on the team to be accused of doping or of foul play.
[00:14:45] Although it’s clear why he did this, because he wanted to quash these rumours once and for all, it would prove to be his downfall.
[00:14:55] His former U.S. Postal Service teammate, Floyd Landis, wanted a place on Armstrong’s new team, on Astana.
[00:15:04] The pair had ridden together from 2002 to 2005, and Landis had been instrumental in helping Armstrong secure first place.
[00:15:15] But Armstrong said no.
[00:15:18] Landis had been embroiled in a doping scandal, he had admitted taking drugs, and Armstrong needed his team to be 100% clean.
[00:15:28] After being rejected, Landis was not happy.
[00:15:32] He was brooding, contemplating his next move.
[00:15:37] It was later revealed that he had emailed a bunch of newspapers alleging that Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing drugs during the Tour de France. Not only this, but he said that Armstrong had not only encouraged him and others to take drugs but had taught them how to beat the system.
[00:15:57] This was the first time that someone so high profile had gone on record and testified.
[00:16:04] The walls were closing in.
[00:16:07] And Armstrong’s comeback had not gone as he had hoped.
[00:16:12] He finished in third place in the 2009 Tour de France and on his last tour, in 2010, he finished in 23rd place. He had announced his retirement shortly afterwards but was facing growing calls for full investigations.
[00:16:30] There was a federal investigation in 2010, but that came to nothing. The case was dropped, without explanation.
[00:16:40] And then in June of 2012 came the bombshell.
[00:16:46] The United States Anti-Doping Agency, the organisation in charge of stopping and catching athletes who take drugs, accused Armstrong not just of doping, but of being, and I’m quoting directly, the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".
[00:17:10] Now, this wasn’t the statement of a disgruntled competitor or a journalist with a grudge; they were the words of the official government agency in charge of stopping doping.
[00:17:23] Shortly after, he was stripped of all of his world titles after 1998, so if you look at the list of Tour de France winners from 1999 to 2005, you will see “no winner”.
[00:17:38] He had retired from professional cycling, but nevertheless, he received a lifetime ban.
[00:17:45] He kept quiet initially, not responding to the allegations.
[00:17:50] But in January of the following year, he went on the Oprah Winfrey show and admitted it all.
[00:17:57] He had taken drugs, he had faked drug tests, he had done everything he had been accused of.
[00:18:05] And having previously made millions from endorsements due to his heroic image as a record-shattering cancer survivor, he was almost immediately dropped by all of the brands that had paid him handsomely to be associated with him.
[00:18:21] According to one interview, he lost $75 million dollars worth of endorsements in a single day.
[00:18:30] But worth perhaps even more than this was the complete destruction, or at least the huge damage, done to his reputation and legacy.
[00:18:40] He had been an inspiration to people all over the world; not just to people battling cancer, not just to aspiring athletes, but to anyone with a dream. He was living proof that people could do unthinkable things, and that what might seem impossible can be achieved with the right mindset and effort.
[00:19:03] To the fans who had believed in him, and who had ridiculed his detractors for claiming that his records weren’t “real”, it was clearly a huge disappointment. Armstrong had repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs, he had accused and harassed anyone who had said that he was using drugs, accusing them of being jealous and not believing in him.
[00:19:26] But, he was lying all along.
[00:19:29] In his own words, it wasn’t a series of lies, it wasn’t hundreds or thousands or even millions of lies. It was one big lie. His entire career, his success, was based on cheating.
[00:19:44] This admission was over 10 years ago now, and now that the dust has settled, there are differing views on the legacy of Lance Armstrong.
[00:19:54] Clearly, he inspired millions of people. He did recover from cancer in record-breaking time, he was a phenomenal athlete and cyclist, and he raised not only awareness but hundreds of millions of dollars for his cancer charity, Livestrong.
[00:20:12] But he cheated. He lied.
[00:20:15] And he behaved terribly against people who suggested that he had been doping, people he knew were telling the truth, but who he sued and accused of lying in order to keep his secret under wraps.
[00:20:29] He was the most phenomenal liar, and it is perhaps just as much of an achievement that he managed to keep his secret for as long as he did.
[00:20:38] And, had he not come back from retirement, had he not annoyed Floyd Landis and pushed him into testifying against him, he most probably would have got away with it.
[00:20:50] His legacy would be intact, he would still be making tens of millions of dollars a year from endorsements and all of those journalists who accused him might have thought that, actually, it was they that were wrong.
[00:21:04] But, like so many other people who were at the top of their game and had the chance to end on a high, hubris got the better of him.
[00:21:13] And so he will always be remembered as the biggest cheat in cycling history.
[00:21:20] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Lance Armstrong, and with that comes the end of this three-part mini-series on controversial sportspeople.
[00:21:29] I hope it's been an interesting one, and even if you knew about Lance Armstrong’s story, and that of George Best and Tonya Harding for that matter, well I hope that you've learnt something new.
[00:21:40] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:21:43] Do you like these ones on sportspeople? If so, what other ones should we make?
[00:21:48] And for the cycling fans in the house, what are your thoughts and memories about Lance Armstrong? Misguided hero, villain, or somewhere in between?
[00:21:58] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:02] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:14] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
