Evidence suggests Nike may have had hand in what U.S. Anti-Doping Agency calls Lance Armstrong’s sophisticated doping program.
Nike raised eyebrows from the French Alps to Oregon's Cascade Range last week when it announced that it was standing by Lance Armstrong, despite the avalanche of evidence presented in the United States Anti-Doping Agency report that details why the cyclist was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
The giant sports apparel company has a history of publicly supporting embattled athletes – it issued statements backing Kobe Bryant after the Lakers guard was charged with sexual assault in 2003 and Tiger Woods after his extramarital sexploits became public in 2009. But Nike's support of Armstrong may be different: There is evidence that suggests Nike is not simply a sponsor that chose to remain visibly loyal to a scandal-stained athlete, but an active participant in what the USADA report described as the most sophisticated doping program in sports history.
USADA's explosive "reasoned decision" has focused new attention on people who have claimed for years that the cyclist's success was fueled by performance-enhancing drugs – critics who found themselves threatened by Armstrong and his lawyers and marginalized in the media. One of those critics is Kathy LeMond, the wife of American cyclist Greg LeMond, who testified under oath during a 2006 deposition that Nike paid former UCI president Hein Verbruggen $500,000 to cover up a positive drug test.
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"Lance didn't do it alone," said longtime Armstrong critic Betsy Andreu, the wife of the Texan's former friend and teammate, Frankie Andreu. She has also found herself a target of Armstrong's attacks and charges, along with her husband, following their testimony in a lawsuit Armstrong filed in 2004 against SCA Promotions in which they described hearing Armstrong tell doctors treating him for cancer that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs. "How else could he pull off the biggest fraud in the history of sport? He had big corporations backing him, the cycling governing body, UCI, defending him, and the media ignoring the evidence. No wonder fans thought that he was clean."
"Nike vehemently denies that it paid former UCI president Hein Verbruggen $500,000 to cover up a positive drug test," the company said in a statement. "Nike does not condone the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs."
A former Armstrong teammate, meanwhile, said he would lead a demonstration outside Nike's Oregon headquarters on Tuesday to protest the company's continued support of the cyclist.
"Nike should not condone the behavior that Lance Armstrong has demonstrated for so long," former professional rider Paul Willerton said. "To see Nike take this stance now is disgusting. Nike's materials have stood for some of the greatest thing you can stand for as a company. A clean sport should be another one of those things."
Willerton said he was on a fishing trip with Greg LeMond when Armstrong called the three-time Tour de France winner and threatened him.
"Lance basically told Greg he better shut his mouth about the dope, or he was going to find 10 people to say Greg took those drugs," Willerton told Oregon's KPTV-TV. "That rattled Greg, who was adamant to Lance that he won those races clean."
Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, the firm that managed his cycling team, filed the lawsuit against SCA, a Dallas company that indemnifies sponsors who offer prizes based on athletic achievements, in a Texas court. The suit was filed after SCA refused to pay Armstrong a $5 million bonus Tailwind had promised the cyclist for winning the 2004 Tour de France because of allegations of doping reported in "LA Confidential – the Secrets of Lance Armstrong," the explosive book by journalists David Walsh and Pierre Ballester.
During a 2006 deposition related to the suit, Kathy LeMond testified that Julian Devries, a mechanic for Armstrong's team who was once close to her husband, had told her and others that Nike and Thom Weisel, a Bay Area banker who sponsored Armstrong's team, had wired $500,000 to a Swiss bank account that belonged to Verbruggen.
In an interview with the Daily News on Monday, Kathy LeMond said she stood by her testimony. "I'm sure Julian was telling the truth," she said. Greg LeMond also testified in the suit.
The money, Kathy Lemond said Devries told her and several others, was sent to cover up a 1999 positive drug test for corticosteroids, which Armstrong had used to treat saddle sores. Devries, Kathy Lemond said during the deposition, had been disgusted by the way performance-enhancing drugs had polluted cycling.
But Devries ultimately "went to the other side" and even began transporting drugs for cyclists in the hollowed-out heels of his clogs, both Kathy and Greg LeMond testified.
Emma O'Reilly, Armstrong's massage therapist, told Kathy LeMond that Devries has been "bought off," according to the deposition.
"We have absolutely no idea what Mrs. LeMond, a long-time Lance-hater, was talking about when she gave her deposition," said Mark Fabiani, one of Armstrong's attorneys, "and to this day we have no idea what she was talking about."
Weisel did not return calls for comment. Devries has long denied the allegations, saying in an affidavit submitted to the court during the SCA case that the LeMond allegations were "100% made up."
In 2006, SCA agreed to pay Armstrong his $5 million bonus, as well as $2.5 million for interest and legal costs. The company said last week that it may try to recoup the money in the wake of the USADA report.
O'Reilly, meanwhile, provided an affidavit to USADA that backs up allegations that Armstrong – who has virulently claimed that he never tested positive for drugs – had flunked the 1999 test for corticosteroids.
She said she heard Armstrong and other Postal Service team members talking about how they would get Luis Garcia del Moral, the team physician, to write a backdated prescription for the steroid cream.
"Lance acknowledged that I had been present for a significant moment in his cycling career when he told me: ‘Now Emma, you know enough to bring me down,'" her affidavit says. "A few days later Lance won his first Tour de France."
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