Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong Page A

they could. Finally, I’d had it. I decided to leave, and I began to scout for a new home, in Spain .
    Life in France had in some ways been peaceful, with the Mediterranean pace and the metronomic routine of training, and I’d miss the baguettes, the flowers, the friends, and the view of the mountains against the sea. I’d miss sitting on our terrace and watching the sunsets over the city lights. But I wouldn’t miss the trash scavengers and the prosecutors.
    Meanwhile, the investigation threatened to seriously mess with my reputation. Bill Stapleton was finding it difficult to conduct business. Coca-Cola was running scared of me, and so were other sponsors.
    Bill finally said to them, “Look, he doesn’t take drugs, okay? I will stake my entire career on it.”
    We wrote in anti-drug out-clauses in our contracts: if I tested positive, I’d give the money back.
    Bill had also begun trying to negotiate a new four-year deal with the U.S. Postal Service, the contract that was my chief income. But now Postal was wary of re-signing the entire team, and even briefly considered not renewing its team sponsorship. All because of a French fishing expedition. It was hard not to take that personally.
    But another, far more personal blow came when Kevin Livingston, one of my closest friends, left the U.S. Postal squad. He wanted more money and independence, and decided he was tired of cycling on my behalf. So he defected. He accepted a larger contract offer, first from a team sponsored by the Linda McCartney food company. But that team proved short-lived and failed financially, so he accepted an offer from Deutsche Telekom, to work for my archrival, Jan Ullrich.
    I couldn’t believe it. Kevin and I had spent almost a decade cycling together. I’d ridden next to him, trained with him, climbed mountains with him. As a cyclist I felt I’d done a lot to help him, and as a friend I’d have killed for him, and I envisioned riding with him together to the ends of our careers. I felt totally betrayed: I was of the belief that when you had been friends for a decade, you didn’t do what he did. “Colin Powell might as well have signed on to help the Chinese,” I said.
    Kevin and I stopped speaking, and the silence lasted for a while. Finally, we began to chat a little bit on the bike or when we ran into each other. Finally, through mutual friends acting as intermediaries, we sat down together and talked, finally cleared the air over an out-of-season bender. A couple of beers greased the skids to get two friends back together. The problem, perhaps, was that my expectations for Kevin weren’t his own. It wasn’t my right to determine what was best for his career.
    But we have never cycled together again as teammates, and I still believe he never should have left. He ultimately fell out of love with the bike, and he quit the sport. (In fact, his retirement led to a kind of revenge on the drug testers. Early one morning in the fall of 2002, they showed up at his house, knocking on the door with their piece of paper. Kevin obliged them by peeing in a cup, and handed it over. “Here,” he said. “I really hope you find something in it. I’m retired.”)
    We still hadn’t hit the low point of the winter. That came when Kik and I failed in our attempt to have another child. In February, Kik underwent in-vitro fertilization, unsuccessfully.
    It’s hard to describe for the uninitiated how arduous the process was, the pills and self-administered shots and exams, with Kik cringing at the needles, only to hear that it hadn’t worked. We’d assumed it would be as easy as when we had Luke. Nothing happened.
    I took the call. Kik was looking right at me as I got the news, and she knew the answer was no. She could tell by my face and my tone. I said, as plainly as I could, “Okay, all right, thanks.”
    I hung up. “It’s not the answer that we wanted,” I said.
    Kik teared up. “It’s going to be okay,” I said. But we were both