ITV's Ned Boulting has reported on nine Tours de France. In this extract from his new book "How I Won the Yellow Jumper", he recounts a fascinating encounter with Texan Lance Armstrong, the man who won the event an unprecedented seven times in a row between 1999-2005
"We leapt on a little scandal which played itself out over the closing days of the 2004 Tour. It was revealing, in that it threw Armstrong's true nature into sharp relief.
Filippo Simeoni was a rider with a problem. A tall, awkward, emotional man with a decent, albeit doping-tainted, career both behind and before him. He was riding out the end of an anonymous Tour in the garish colours of the completely underwhelming Domina Vacanze team. On Stage 18, he fancied a bit of the action.
Simeoni had previous form. After admitting to doping offences a couple of years prior to that, he had testified in an Italian court that Dr Michele Ferrari had, on a number of occasions, prescribed him EPO. Ferrari had worked closely with Lance Armstrong. This testimony naturally enough reflected badly on the Texan, who reportedly denounced Filippo as a liar. Simeoni promptly started proceedings against him for defamation. Brave, especially when you have to spend three weeks alongside the man, riding to the edge of collapse, up and down mountains in the searing summer sun. Armstrong counter-sued but in the end both men withdrew their cases.
That day six riders broke away, not one a threat to Armstrong's lead. Nor was Simeoni when he attacked and rode across to the break. But the yellow jersey was enraged. He tore off the front of the bunch, hammered across to the breakaway, and informed them that he would stay there for as long as Simeoni was part of their number. Behind them on the road, T-Mobile, the team of Jan Ullrich, had to react and, unsure of how this might play out, they hit the front and started to bring the race back together again.
The original six pleaded with Simeoni to relent. Eventually, wordlessly, the Italian sat up, and dropped away, Armstrong alongside him. T-Mobile called the chase off, and as the bunch swallowed up the two riders, Simeoni fell back through the peloton and, it is said, was spat at repeatedly.
Nothing and no one moved in those years without Armstrong's say-so.
Back in April of that year, it was rumoured, during the Tour of Georgia, Lance Armstrong's people had contacted Mario Cipollini, the pantomime-camp king, flamboyant sprinter and leader of the Domina Vacanze team, and asked him in no uncertain terms to make sure that Simeoni was not part of the Tour roster. This would have been a preposterous intervention. A grudge is one thing, but this would have taken it into very uncomfortable territory.
The reason that we, in the media, were drawn to this story was simple enough. There was in those years an unspoken sense that we were all subject to the Armstrong Orthodoxy. He was big news. And as a result of his endeavours year on year, the Tour grew bigger. The bigger the Tour, the better our job prospects, our security. Why rock the boat? …
He was at the centre of a small knot of cycling journalists. The guys from the press had trapped and encircled him with their Dictaphones. We joined the circle, our microphone suddenly swelling the numbers. I held back with the questions to gauge the tenor of the conversation.
Where was the question? Had I missed it? I could tell from the knitted brows of the writers that all the while they were holding their recorders close to Armstrong's lips, they weren't listening to a thing. They were formulating a plan of attack. They were scheming, manoeuvring the conversation to a point from which they could launch their attack and fire in the silver-bullet Simeoni question.
"What went on between you and Simeoni, today?" I could wait no longer. And in an instant, I knew for certain that no one had asked him that question yet. Their microphones all inched forward a notch.
He looked right at me. Very close. "I just follow on the wheels."
And with that, he broke into the broadest of smiles. He seemed pleased with the joke, and enjoyed a little ripple of sympathetic laughter from some of the onlookers. Then he turned half away from me, a dismissive gesture designed to close the chapter. His smile appealed to the other guys to chip in with a different line of enquiry. I knew he didn't want to hear my voice again, but that if I hesitated for a fraction, he would take that as a sign of weakness and ride off.
"There is a rumour that you asked Mario Cipollini that he shouldn't be selected ..."
He'd turned back to me now, and he didn't wait for me to finish my question. "That's absolutely not true."
"Not true?"
Filming to my left, I found out when I reviewed the footage later, John had started a slow zoom, ever tightening into Armstrong's taut features. "One hundred per cent not true. Absolutely not true. How can I ask a team who to take? I can barely control that on my own team."
Our encounter was finished. For once, I felt, it had been a score draw. In his long and winning Tour career, Armstrong had enjoyed many great days. This wasn't one of them."
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