Former teammate had his head in a bucket

Updated October 11, 2012 13:19:00

The former Australian cyclist, and Lance Armstrong's teammate, Phil Anderson, says he believed that Lance Armstrong wasn't a drug cheat. But he concedes now the evidence is overwhelming. He says the use of EPO was discussed at team meetings in 1994.

Source: The World Today | Duration: 4min 55sec

Topics: doping-in-sports, cycling, united-states


ASHLEY HALL: The former professional cyclist Phil Anderson was the first Australian to wear the Tour de France's famous yellow jersey. His success came in the early 1980s before the EPO (erythropoietin) era.

He was a team mate of Lance Armstrong's on the Motorola team for three years during the early 90s when EPO was beginning to creep into the sport.

David Mark asked him whether the USADA evidence is irrefutable proof that his former colleague was a cheat.

PHIL ANDERSON: It's weighing very heavily against Lance and I think it's been said that it's a million to one chance that he wasn't doping and that's in the period of his comeback so I think it's, yeah, it's looking pretty bad in the house of Armstrong at the moment.

DAVID MARK: You weren't riding in the EPO era but you say you began to see some of it creeping in or there was some evidence of it creeping in during your time, is that the case?

PHIL ANDERSON: Yeah like even in the late '80s there was, there were a number of deaths within the sport. Not so much at the professional level but in the lower amateur ranks there was some mysterious fatalities. Not through accident but riders falling, losing their life in the middle of the night, you know, dying through heart attacks at a young age. Some very odd things happening and you know, word came out that there was this new product, which was on the banned list, called EPO but there was no way of detecting it and there was obviously some riders taking great risks and this was at a time when very little was known about this product. It had been used in the medical industry but being used in professional sport was at that stage seemed to be very experimental and that was in the late '80s.

I don't think it really, you know, people began getting an understanding of it until sort of the mid '90s and it seems like that was certainly being used on a, I wouldn't say it was on a high level but, you know, many cyclists appeared to be using it right through and it wasn't able to be absolutely detected even though it was on the banned list, it wasn't able to be enforced really until towards 2000.

DAVID MARK: So were you ever offered the drug, did you ever consider taking it?

PHIL ANDERSON: Oh no. I didn't know anything about it really except for the rumours that were travelling around. There was, in the beginning of my last season, we at the Motorola team, which Lance was part of, it did come up in a team meeting in a conversation at a race in Italy that the pace of the actual racing was markedly higher than what had, we just noticed that the pace in the race was getting higher and higher each year and the conversation sort of went along the lines that we believed it was the result of usage amongst some of the riders of EPO and, you know, but we come to a collective decision that we weren't going to be tempted. We wanted to stay completely away from it and that was really the only time when it was publicly discussed within the team.

DAVID MARK: So how many years did you ride with Lance Armstrong?

PHIL ANDERSON: I rode three years with Lance. You know, in the years when he was with me he became world champion, he'd won a stage. He'd actually won a stage in the Tour de France and he won a number of very big races but he certainly wasn't, I wouldn't have coined him as a potential Tour de France winner.

DAVID MARK: He came back from cancer and he of course won that famous first race in '99 and went on to win another six Tour de France titles. Did you at the time believe that this was a change that came about through training or because his body had changed because of the cancer or did you suspect that maybe drugs might have played a part in it?

PHIL ANDERSON: Oh look I never suspected drugs. I mean, maybe I had my head down a hole but I didn't. You know, he came back a different rider. I figured it was just you know, he'd stared death in the eye and when he came back he had such determination.

DAVID MARK: Phil Anderson, you mention that there wasn't a test for EPO until 2000 but nevertheless Armstrong, Lance Armstrong went on and won another five Tour de Frances after the test came in. He always claimed he was innocent and he pointed to the fact that he'd never failed a test. How do you believe it was possible that this was missed, that it wasn't picked up during all that time?

PHIL ANDERSON: I'm not sure. You know, there were signs of some tests which he didn't pass but he managed to get out of them either with a doctors letter but yeah, how he got out of years of usage of other products such as EPO, you know, maybe that will come out.

ASHLEY HALL: The former professional cyclist and Lance Armstrong's former team-mate, Phil Anderson, speaking to David Mark.