JEEPS AND SHOTGUNS

NOVEMBER 1996. THREE years on from the Leeds Hilton.

The taxi swept me away from the airport terminal, picked up speed and joined the freeway heading downtown.

Flatbeds, limousines and jeeps slid past, bumper to bumper, in the outside lane. Alongside the slab of elevated road, football stadiums towered over shopping malls and parking lots.

Through the cab’s windscreen I saw shotguns stacked against the rear windows of passing trucks, and read bumper stickers with the ominous warning: ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’.

This was Austin, Texas. Lance Armstrong’s home town.

I checked in to the motel, dropped my bags on the bed, downed a bottle of water, and thumbed through my contact book. Lance in Como, Lance in Santa Barbara, Lance in Nice, Lance in Austin, and finally, Lance at Bill’s – his agent Bill Stapleton’s office. I called the number and scribbled down the address they gave me. I would have to wait. Then I took a shower, switched on the TV, shut my eyes and slept.

Across town, off another exit from another freeway, somewhere on the edge of the Texas hill country, and very much on the right side of the tracks, Lance Armstrong, pale, bald and scarred, was moving slowly through his luxury home on a gated estate. He had been diagnosed with testicular cancer and had undergone surgery and chemotherapy. He’d agreed to be interviewed. At the time, he had seen only a few journalists, mostly American. French sports paper L’Equipe, later to become his nemesis, had already been and gone. I was the only other European presence.

The last time I had seen him had been that summer, first at the Tour de France and then, in August, at the start of the San Sebastian Classic in northern Spain. He’d quit the Tour with a shrug and a wry grin, as a dark thunderstorm swept over Aixles-Bains. The news broke over race radio as we arrived at the press room. I turned the car around and headed across country to his team’s hotel, anxious to find out what was wrong.

I parked up and waited until he arrived. Eventually a Motorola team car swept up to the front door and he hopped out. I walked with him to his room. After he had showered and changed out of his racing kit, we chatted.

‘So what happened?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said with a troubled frown. ‘I just feel … blocked.’

In Spain, a couple of weeks later, we had talked again. He seemed unsure of himself, and kept his eyes hidden behind his Oakley shades. Something was still wrong – that ‘blocked’ feeling – but he didn’t know what was causing it.

The phone rang, waking me from my jet lag.

Lance would see me at the house on Lake Austin the next morning, but they told me to go easy on him and make sure I didn’t wear him out. ‘If he looks tired, Jeremy, then you gotta stop the interview.’

Another grey and humid Texan morning. Another taxi, another freeway exit and then we were driving down suburban streets of clapboarded wraparounds with beaten-up trucks parked in scrappy front yards. Under the oppressive sky, dogs on chains sat morosely under porches.

Then, just as quickly, we were out of town, heading towards the shores of Lake Austin through rolling hills and scrubland.

We skirted a hillside overlooking the lake, and slowed at the entrance to a gated community of modernist houses backing onto the water’s edge. Sports cars and jeeps dotted the sweeping driveways. Jet skis growled across the lake in the distance.

I didn’t know what to expect. My memories of Lance Armstrong were of a powerhouse jock of an athlete, aggressive, raging, fuelled by intense competitive desire and a quick wit. I rang the bell and waited.

After an age, he came unsteadily to the door, shrunken, slow, washed out, a baseball cap hiding his hair loss.

He was twenty-five, but he moved like an old man. I was so stunned at his decline that I remember that, yes – I very nearly hugged him. I didn’t, which given everything that has happened since, may have been for the best. But an arm instinctively went around his shoulder. He registered the shock on my face, straightened himself and smiled.

He walked back into his kitchen and made coffee. Then, for the next hour or so, we sat in his airy lounge with its panoramic views across the lake and high white walls dotted with tasteful contemporary art, talking about cancer. As ever, he was a deceptive interviewee. He can appear relaxed and calm, receptive and open, but every now and then a gesture or a look betrays the tension simmering just below the surface.

He told me about his treatment, about his fear of death, about his hopes for recovery and, with luck, even for a successful comeback.

‘I ride for about an hour to an hour and a half as often as I can,’ he said. ‘But I have to sleep a lot each day. Life’s normal apart from sometimes feeling drowsy – and having no hair. But I can take it. As long as I’m alive, that’s what matters.’

Cancer, he said, had chosen him.

‘Was there anything in your background, your past, to make you susceptible to it?’ I asked.

He narrowed his eyes and gave me a stare that was later to become known as ‘The Look’.

‘A couple of other people have said that and it pisses me off,’ he growled. What did he mean? I was baffled.

‘Well, erm, I meant in your family history – your mother, your father – if there was any hereditary reason …’ His face relaxed. It was the only wrong note of the meeting.

Only later, when I read that connections had been made by some between testicular cancer and doping, did I understand his response. But I remained baffled – did he really think that I had flown halfway across the world to make a ham-fisted accusation of doping-induced cancer, even as he endured full-blown chemotherapy?

Kevin, the photographer, finished shooting, packed up his kit and left. Lance relaxed a little more. The physical impact of his illness had made him self-conscious in front of the camera. Relieved, he lifted off his cap and ran his hand over his bald head.

I saw the two angry crescent scars, like ring pulls on a beer can, on the top of his scalp. These were the remnants of surgery on the lesions to his brain. He yawned and rubbed his eyes wearily.

It was time to go.