Jonathan Vaughters, Pat McQuaid and Lance Armstrong have set out how news was relayed between them on the eve of USADA’s first major strike against Armstrong, which culminated in his downfall and ban from all sports.
In the second installment of the ESPN two-part
documentary, ‘Lance’, Vaughters said he warned McQuaid what was about to happen
on the day before USADA released the first batch of documents on its
investigation into Armstrong.
McQuaid then called Armstrong and told him what Vaughters
had said the next day the first damning allegations and some details of
evidence were published by USADA.
Vaughters said McQuaid initially reacted with disbelief that a number of cyclists had given evidence implicating themselves and Armstrong in doping and that all of the detail was about to emerge.
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For his part, Armstrong tells the documentary maker Marina
Zenovich that when McQuaid called him it woke him up to the fact something big
was about to happen as he had not been “paying attention” to the investigation
into him at that point.
Having seen the federal case, which could have resulted
in criminal charges, being discontinued in February, 2012, Armstrong said he believed
that was the end of the serious inquiries into his doping.
And though USADA vowed to take up the case, Armstrong did
not believe that represented a credible threat to him.
However, in the summer of 2012 it would emerge that USADA
had not only been true to its word in pursuing its investigation, but it was
ready to go public with its allegations against Armstrong and also detail some
of the evidence it had gathered.
This included sworn affidavits from his former US Postal Service Pro Cycling team mates stating they had taken drugs and directly implicating Armstrong; even George Hincapie setting out his knowledge of Armstrong using drugs.
Armstrong said he was working up to doing his first full
Ironman when the then UCI president Pat McQuaid called him to relay news that
shocked them both on hearing it for the first time.
“I was in Hawaii doing a half Ironman,” Armstrong says on
the documentary of the triathlon he competed in and won in early June, 2012.
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“I did the race and fly to France, for Ironman France. It
was going to be my first Ironman. I’ll never forget this; I’m sitting in this
house that we are renting and Pat McQuaid calls me.
“He said ‘Jonathan Vaughters just came up to me and said,
Pat, a little surprise tomorrow’.”
The documentary then cuts to an interview segment with
McQuaid recorded for the programme.
“He had been talking to USADA,” McQuaid explains of his
2012 conversation with Vaughters.
“He didn’t give me much information. He just said ‘this
is going to be bad, USADA are on this case and they’re on it very strongly’ or
something like that, ‘and this is going to go down’.”
Vaughters is then interviewed and he says he was telling
McQuaid what was coming in order that he would have some advance notice so the
UCI could begin preparing its response.
“I said, ‘you have to think of how the UCI is going to
react to this’,” Vaughters explains of talking to McQuaid.
“And he just didn’t believe me,” Vaughters adds of
McQuaid’s shock at the nature of the investigative work USADA had done.
“I mean, his reaction was: ‘Wait, you’re saying that a
bunch of cyclists testified that not only did they know about doping, but they
themselves doped and that all this is coming out in a couple of months?’ He’s
like, ‘no way; no way that people have done that’.”
Armstrong then explains the day after McQuaid called him, USADA published its first documents which effectively set out its allegations, and some of its evidence, against Armstrong. Immediately, Ironman France told Armstrong he could not compete in their race.
A number of months later, in October 2012, USADA
published its reasoned decision on the Armstrong case, resulting in him losing
most of his cycling results and being banned for sport.
McQuaid also soon announced on behalf of the UCI that
Armstrong was banned from cycling for life, stripped of his seven Tour de
France wins and that he had “no place in cycling”.
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