Lance Armstrong Investigation: What I Learned from 60 Minutes

I watched three 60 Minutes videos about the Lance Armstrong investigation, including a segment on 60 Minutes Overtime. In these videos, Tyler Hamilton states that the claims he made on 60 Minutes are what he told the Grand Jury that is investigating Lance Armstrong for his use of performance enhancing drugs while racing on the U.S. Postal Team. Here are a few claims made by Tyler and other takeaways from the videos:

• Tyler entered an agreement with the prosecutor, Jeffrey Novitzky, that will receive "limited immunity from prosecution" unless he is found lying in which case he "looses that immunity and becomes liable for prosecution."
• Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes said that it was like pulling teeth to get Hamilton to talk because it was obvious to him that Tyler did not want to talk bad about Lance. Whenever they talked about Armstrong doping, Tyler would say things like: "We all were doing it," as if to say that Lance wasn't the only one. 
• Tyler says that U.S. Postal team management encouraged the team to engage in doping and that several of the top racers on the team were involved, but not everyone.
• Doping was reserved for the top team members and when first approached to use doping products, he was given EPO in a white lunch bag. Tyler said he initially had to think about it but eventually considered it to be an honor because he was considered to be on the "A" team.
• A team doctor told Tyler he recommended that he take EPO for the team and for himself. At another time a team doctor told Tyler he needed to get his hematocrit up. Tyler called Lance and told him about this and a package of EPO came in the mail in "the next day or two."
• There were times in the Tour de France when the peloton would discuss amongst themselves how to avoid getting caught. 
• The team members involved in doping had secret code words and secret cell phones used for discussing doping products. The code word for EPO was "Poe" or "Edgar Allen Poe." The phones were not registered in their names in case authorities were listening.
• Hamilton claims that he and Lance engaged in blood doping in a manner similar to what Floyd Landis claimed. They first went to a hotel where a doctor took their blood. Months later when they were mid way through the Tour de France the team stopped at a hotel and the blood was transfused back into their bodies. He claimed he saw Lance have the transfusion; this is also what Floyd Landis claims he saw. 
• Another claim by Landis that Tyler provides a second witness to is Lance had a positive test in the Tour of Switzerland. He said that Lance told him about it but that he wasn't worried about his positive test for EPO because "people took care of it." He said that Lance told him that his "people and people from the other side, I believe people from the governing body of the sport (i.e. the UCI) figured out a way for it to go away."
• 60 Minutes received a letter from USADA showing that Lance's urine test was consistent with EPO use.
• 60 Minutes has been told that Lance and Johan Bruyneel met with the Swiss lab director that tested Lance's urine and the lab director hast told the FBI that the UCI wanted the suspicious test to go no further. 
• The head of WADA, David Howman, said that he believed Lance and Johan may have obtained information about testing which would help them avoid detection.
• Howman discussed Lance's "donations" of $125,000 to the UCI around the time that the Tour de Swiss test showed Lance was doping were highly unusual and he has never heard of anything like it. 
• Regarding Lance's ability to say he has never tested positive, David Howman pointed to Marion Jones who confessed to doping even though she had been tested more than 160 times and never tested positive. Howman used Jones as an example that never testing positive is meaningless.
• 60 Minutes claims that Italian authorities have evidence that Lance paid Dr. Michelle Ferrari thousands of dollars through 2010 even though Lance has claimed he ended professional relations with Ferrari in 2004 a few years after Ferrari was implicated in doping scandals in cycling.

Regarding Lance's side of the story, 60 Minutes stated that Lance would not talk to them so, instead, they showed Lance's denials over the years. They also discussed Tyler's dirt and his many denials and lies. 

The part I was most disappointed in was when Tyler made a statement that he did not dope "for the Olympics" but said it was "possible through residual effects from previous races that there was some performance enhancement." You have to ask: what exactly does that mean? He didn't dope on the day of his Olympic time trial? He was using EPO and blood doping all season long for years but that day he didn't use anything? Let's just be totally honest here...

In the end, I believe 60 Minutes uncovered quite a bit of evidence on Lance. The bullet points above, coupled with evidence that George Hincapie also testified against Lance, suggests the Novitzky's investigation is not going to be pretty for Lance, assuming the Grand Jury indicts him. We should know more by the end of summer...