Free Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh

he’s an outstanding climber.’
    ‘David, if we are going to cast doubt on him, a lot of readers are going to be upset.’
    ‘I know that but I don’t believe we can applaud. There’s a young guy in the race, Bassons, and I would like to write a shorter piece about him. He’s talking about doping, saying it’s still a big problem. The other riders have turned against him.’
    ‘But back to Armstrong for a minute, David. Do you believe he’s doping?’
    ‘Yeah, I do. Of course I can’t prove it. I’m going to talk to people, see what others are saying.’
    ‘Well, make sure you give it to us in time for the lawyers to see.’
    This was the first time Alex said this to me. It wouldn’t be the last. In fairness he didn’t flinch.
    Covering the Tour de France means spending considerable time in the company of the journalists with whom you travel. Not quite Brian Keenan and John McCarthy chained together in Beirut, but close. With these guys you co-ordinate hotel accommodation, eat evening meals at the same table, breakfast the next morning and also drive to the start of the stage, before undertaking the five- or six-hour journey to the finish, day after day for twenty-three days.
    Rupert, our itinerant Aussie, shared the back seat with me, his ever-dazzling selection of shirts bringing a little piece of Caribbean sunshine with him every day. His dress code reflected an easy and sweet nature. He could cheer up mourners at a funeral just by appearing. In the driver’s seat Charles’ freshness was a joy, as he wanted to know again and again why I couldn’t warm to Armstrong, and why I was so unconvinced about the Tour of Renewal. John would keep his head down, writing down the name of every escapee in the breakaway even though we all knew they would be reeled in in no time.
    Day after day in the car, evening after evening over dinner, we spoke about the race and what we were seeing. Frequently we would discuss my refusal to accept it was possible without doping to make the leap Armstrong had made.
    ‘I don’t understand how a guy can ride the Tour de France four times and show nothing that indicates he will one day be a contender to suddenly riding like one of the great Tour riders.’
    ‘Was he that bad in those four Tours?’ Charles asked, lobbing the balls up for me to smash home.
    ‘Well, he was always capable of winning one of the flat stages but he didn’t even enter the race for the final yellow jersey. His usual was six minutes behind in the long trial, anything from seven to thirty in the mountains.’
    ‘David, he was only twenty-one when he first rode the Tour,’ Charles would say.
    ‘But Anquetil, Merckx and Hinault, who all won five Tours, won the first one they rode. LeMond was third in his first, second in his second when he should have won, and then he did win his third. Armstrong went into his third Tour in ninety-five on the back of good form and got his best ever placing, thirty-sixth. The bottom line was he couldn’t time trial well enough and couldn’t survive in the mountains.’
    Occasionally I would aim a question straight at John.
    ‘You were here last year, saw how much drugs the police found. And here we are a year later and the average speed is higher. Just doesn’t make sense?’
    And once, he engaged: ‘The speed of the race now has a lot to do with the improved road surfaces, the lighter-framed bikes, and this year the meteorological conditions have been favourable.’
    But mostly when I said something directly to John, he would turn his head a little to the side so the words could flow in one ear and out the other. Perhaps he was so focused on the race itself that he didn’t want to look underneath it all.
    So it was back to Charles.
    ‘This is mad. Clean guy goes faster than the EPO generation? So what do you think, Charles? Smoother road surfaces? Tail winds every day? Lighter bikes? Or these leaders are doping, as Bassons says?’ 10
    ‘I can’t argue with your