bottom posted, translated
"Richard Adams" <ackthpt@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:c2352af0.0406141443.5c31bfe4@posting.google.com...
> "B. Lafferty" <Magni@Italia.com> wrote in message
news:<Wjizc.26321$Yd3.2035@newsread3.news.atl.earthli-
nk.net>...
> >
http://www.lexpress.fr/info/sciences/dossier/dopage/dossier-
.asp?ida=428161
>
> [snip]
>
> In a nutshell. Lance tries to make a point with Lemonde,
> that he could find 10 people who would say Lemonde took
> EPO, none of which necessarily speaking the truth, but the
> threat of 10 people all parroting the same line would cast
> a large black cloud over Lemonde's '89 victory.
>
> In effect Lemonde's loose tongue did this sort of damage
> to Lance in the SI interview.
Code name "McIlvenny"
In May 1999, O' Reilly took part in the camp of drive [ US
Postal ] in the Pyrenees, and, later in the month, with that
in the Alps. "Ferrari arrived in the Alps on May 18,
declares it. It placed in its motor home, but, this night,
it came to dine with us. We all were sat at table in the
small restaurant of Sestrières, the Last Tango, where I had
reserved a table [... ] One could note on the spot that the
relations between Lance and Ferrari were good. They had sat
coast at coast with the dinner, very at ease one with the
other. For us, Ferrari was welcome since it accompanied
Lance. Shine [ del Moral, official doctor of the team ],
him, was upset a little. It wanted to be implied more with
Lance. It was the same thing for the majority of the members
of the team. If you were with Lance, you had an easier life
indeed. But Ferrari had arrived and it was clear that he was
the right man for the job. That that likes or not Luis, it
was the same thing."
[... ] O' Reilly intended to say that Ferrari had returned
visit to the team during the Turn of France 1999. It was not
the direct witness, but, since their meeting in the Alps, it
knew that the Italian doctor could be discrete. "It [
Ferrari ] was to like the motor bike, because the son of a
mechanic offered to him the jacket of one of the
motorcyclists of the Turn. This boy was delighted to have
obtained a jacket for McIlvenny. It is like that that him
and the others called Ferrari: "McIlvenny". This code name
enabled them to speak about Ferrari without one knowing who
it acted."
Embarrassing the connection
Before the Turn of France 2001, Michele Ferrari was known to
have declared at the following day of the famous triplet of
the Gewiss-Ballan team on the Walloon Arrow that the EPO was
not more dangerous than the orange juice. At the time, in
1994, young professional cyclists had died under mysterious
conditions related to an abuse EPO. This comparison with the
orange juice cost him its post of doctor within the Gewiss-
Ballan team [... ].
Little time before the Turn of France 2001, July 8, Sunday
Times of London published a long article which clarified the
relations of runner to doctor that Armstrong and Ferrari
maintained. Few people were informed of their collaboration
and, like the Italian had been the subject of an
investigation for three years, this discovery sowed doubts
about the integrity of the most famous cyclist in the world.
The lawsuit of Ferrari for doping was to begin in September,
two months after the end of the Turn of France 2001. [... ]
The runner refused to speak about it during the first two
weeks about the test [... ]. Then, the day of rest, at the
time of a full press conference to crack, it mentioned the
questions raised by its association with Michele Ferrari. In
its book, Each second account, Armstrong thus summarize the
way in which it defended its doctor-trainer this afternoon:
"I knew Michele Ferrari well; it was a friend and I was
going sometimes to see it so that it advises me on my drive.
It did not count among my principal advisers, but it was
somebody of very listened in the medium of cycling and it
was able to me to consult it. It had helped me to develop my
drive in altitude and advised for my diet [... ] I refused
to show Michele and to excuse me to know it, because, as
much as I know, it did not have no proof against him there.
All came from what it had had as a patient, several years
before, a runner of the name of Filippo Simeoni, which had
been convinced thereafter of doping. "It is innocent as long
as a court did not condemn it", I have says. A journalist
asked me how I could reconcile my standpoint antidopage and
the maintenance of this relation with Ferrari. "It is my
choice", I answered. "I regard it as an honest man, a man
right and innocent." "
Rolex for the doctor
[... ] The police investigations carried out in Italy
indicate that Armstrong went to see Ferrari during two days
in March 1999, three days in May 2000, two days in August
2000, two days in September 2000 and three days in April
2001. Without speaking about its visit in January 1997 [ a
few weeks only after its last meeting of chemotherapy ]. In
Ferrare, at the time of its visits, Armstrong placed either
with the Annunziata hotel, one four stars, or in Duchessa
Isabella, one five stars.
Last anecdote: once the Turn of France 2000 finished on the
second victory of the champion texan, Armstrong, Livingston
and Hamilton was cotisèrent to offer Rolex to Ferrari. Just
a pledge of their recognition.
Launch LeMond threat
Interviewed by Sunday Times, Greg LeMond testified to its
little of regard for Michele Ferrari and it expects to
receive a telephone call of Armstrong. Lance [... ] A few
weeks after the publication of this article, [... ] Kathy,
his wife, comes to seek it with the airport of Paul Minneapolis-
Saint, in Minnesota, where the couple resides. Whereas it is
installed on the conducting seat of the Station Coach Audi
de Kathy, the portable telephone of Greg LeMond sounds. "It
is Lance", murmurs it with his wife by discovering the
identity of its interlocutor.
This telephone conversation took place on August 1, 2001.
Greg LeMond refuses to evoke the content of it. Under the
terms of an agreement concluded with Trek, one of the
principal sponsors of the US team Postal and one of the
distributors of the bicycles of the LeMond mark, it was
committed not speaking publicly about that which succeeded
to him the prize list of the Turn of France. Nothing
prevents on the other hand Kathy, his wife, to testify [...
] Voici, therefore, according to Kathy LeMond, the contents
of this conversation:
"Greg, it is Lance.
- Hello! Launches, what you make?
- I am in New York.
- Ah, OK.
- Greg, I thought that we were friendly.
- I thought it too.
- Why do you have says that?
- On Ferrari? Eh well, there is a trick which does not go
with Ferrari. I am disappointed that you ways somebody
like him. I have a problem with this type and the doctors
of his species. My career was shortened, I saw a fellow-
member dying, I saw clean runners being destroyed and
obliged to give up their career. I do not like what became
our sport.
- does Oh, that go, you perhaps will say to me that you
never took EPO?
- What makes you say that I did take EPO?
- Go, everyone takes EPO.
- Why do you think that I took some?
- You know, your come-back in 1989 [ the year when LeMond
gains its Tour second of France ] was spectacular. Mine
[ its first victory, in 1999 ] is a miracle, the tien is
another. You could not be so strong in 1989 without
using EPO.
- Listening, Lance, I gained the Turn of France before the
EPO appears in cycling [... ] It is not thanks to the EPO
that I gained the Turn, the more so as my rate of
hématocrite never exceeded 45, but because I have a VO2
max [ maximum respiratory capacity of a sportsman ] of 95,
whereas the tien is
82. Give me the name of only one person who says that
I took EPO.
- Everyone knows that.
- You me threats?
- If you want the war, you will have it!
- Thus you are threatening me? [... ]
- I will find at least ten people for saying that you took
EPO. Ten people who will testify.
- It is impossible. I know that I never took some. Nobody
can testify on top. If I had taken EPO, my rate of
hématocrite would have exceeded 45, which was never the
case. It is impossible and they is false. I could produce
all my blood parameters, which prove that my rate of
hématocrite was never higher than 45. And if I hear this
charge against me, I will know that that comes from you.
- You did not have to say what you said, it was not correct.
- I try to avoid speaking to the journalists. David Walsh
called me. He knew your relations with Ferrari. What was
I to say? No how? It is not my kind. Then a journalist of
Illustrated Sports also telephoned to me. I spoke in all
with two journalists, not bars. It would have been
perhaps better than I do not speak to them, but I said
only the truth.
- I thought that there was respect between us.
- I thought it too. Listen, Lance, I tried to inform you
about Ferrari. The lawsuit of this type will open in
September [ 2001 ]. What it did in the Nineties changed
the runners. You should take your distances with him."
* Italian doctor, implied in a business of doping judged in
spring 2004. The court will return its decision only to
the nearest autumn.
Postscript Rather discrete of temperament, Lance Armstrong
made its entry in the People heading since it publicly posts
with the arm of its news girlfriend, the American pop singer
Sheryl Crow, met last year at the time of an official
reception of charity.
