Detroit Free Press Kristen Jordan Shamus column
By Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
She is the small David who took on the Lance Armstrong machine -- a formidable Goliath.
A decade before Armstrong, then cycling's most celebrated star, repented on "Oprah's
Armstrong's defenders -- a force of yellow-wristband wearing devotees loyal to the man who famously beat cancer and gave so many hope -- roared back, calling Andreu a jealous woman, bitter and vindictive.
It was an ugly battle of he said, she said, which played out in the news media.
Andreu's husband, former pro cyclist
Although for a time, he stumbled and succumbed to the pressure, in the end, Frankie chose Betsy; he chose love.
That, says
"One thing I love so much about Betsy and Frankie as a couple is that Betsy led the way. Frankie loved Betsy so much that when asked by a New York Times reporter (in 2006), 'Did you ever dope?' He said yes when no one else had admitted it, when he knew it would cost him his career because he knew he would have let Betsy down if he didn't tell the truth," says LeMond, who lives in
"He stood by her when she was so outspoken. He let her be her. To me, it's absolutely beautiful. I don't know many marriages where the husband is going to lose his job, but he values his wife's integrity so much that he wouldn't ask her to change."
Betsy has been an outspoken critic of Armstrong for more than a decade. She has been called names and accused of lying, and her motives have been questioned. Despite all that, Betsy says she did what she had to do to protect her husband, her children and her principles. For the first time, Betsy has spoken openly to the
How they met
Betsy, 47, talks with her hands, smiling broadly when she remembers how she met Frankie. She curses when she speaks about the depth of Armstrong's drug use and deception.
Growing up in
Then known as
"I had a teacher OD on Valium when I was in ninth grade" she says. "I was the one who didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I didn't do drugs."
The incident left its mark on her, and established a belief system that carried her through a tumultuous battle with the greatest legend in cycling.
After high school, Betsy went on to get a degree in theater from the
She remembers the date,
Frankie was there.
"I thought, 'Oh my gosh! He's cute,' " Betsy says, giggling a little at the admission. "With him, it was love at first sight."
But at that point, she wasn't looking for love.
"The day before, I'd gotten out of a relationship, and I'd said that morning, 'God, give me peace.' I said, '
As she tells the story, her hands go to a gold necklace, and she gently touches a
Frankie says there was something special about Betsy, too.
"I was very attracted to her," he says. "I had a girlfriend at the time and I immediately called her up and broke up with her, and then went and asked Betsy out like the next day."
Betsy recoils: "You never said she was your girlfriend. You said you'd dated her."
Frankie shrugs, and says: "Whatever. If you date somebody more than like three times regularly, doesn't she become your girlfriend? I don't know."
Betsy shakes her head: "20 years later, and I'm just finding out he had a girlfriend!"
So goes their banter, which she describes as being much like the dynamic between
"They both have really strong personalities, and they argued a lot," Hincapie says. "At the time, I was a young kid, I was single and not married, and I thought that was normal. But it was just because they were both really strong personalities."
Betsy swam and played tennis in high school, but says she knew little about cycling when she met Frankie, who grew up in
"Both of our fathers fled Communist governments," Betsy says, "so we had that in common.
"Frankie wanted me to see what a bike race was all about," she says. So she and some friends went with him to an event in
"My first impression was that Lance was typical
She says that when the American cyclists traveled, the wives and girlfriends got together often, hanging out and sharing meals to fight off the loneliness of living abroad. Because Frankie and Armstrong were such close friends, she got to know Armstrong pretty well, she says.
"Lance and the other cyclists ganged up on Frankie, who could be cynical. Lance coined the term cranky Frankie," she says, laughing.
"Lance was my partner in crime," Betsy recalls of their time in the mid- to late 1990s, in teasing and goofing around with Frankie, who she calls the Larry David of cycling.
On a trip to
"We sparred, but he liked to get a rise out of me," she says. "He just liked to get me going. ... He was pro-abortion on demand, and I'm pro-life. I'd say I'm not going to convince you; you're not going to convince me."
Armstrong doesn't recall his relationship with Betsy quite that way.
"My recollection isn't nearly as warm and fuzzy," Armstrong said in a January interview with the
Both Betsy and Frankie were featured prominently in a new
Her own big dream
While Armstrong's and Frankie's careers grew on the Motorola cycling team, Betsy chased a dream and opened a coffee shop, Caffe Panucci, on
In
Betsy and Frankie visited him in the hospital in late
"Two doctors walked into the room," Betsy says. "I say, 'I think we should leave to give you your privacy.' Lance said, 'No, you can stay.' The doctors ask a few minor questions and then one of them says, 'Have you ever used performance-enhancing drugs?' and Lance says, 'steroids, testosterone, human growth hormone, EPO (erythropoietin), cortisone.' You name it.
"We were shocked. Frankie didn't know he was taking all that stuff," Betsy says.
Betsy says she pulled Frankie aside afterward and delivered an ultimatum: "I said, 'Frankie, if you do that sh--, I'm not marrying you.' Frankie said 'Whoa, calm down. I'm not doing that stuff.' "
Though he told Betsy he wasn't doping, in a sworn affidavit for the
Betsy agonized over it, and for a short time considered calling off their wedding. She talked to her mother, to her friends, and prayed.
"Betsy said, 'Mom, you are never going to believe this,' and she told me what happened," Betsy's mother,
"And she said, 'Mom, I am never going to lie about this, no matter what happens.' I said Betsy, 'Never compromise your integrity; the truth is going to come out.' I said, 'You have to live with yourself. What have you always been taught? Tell the truth. You can't live a lie.' I get emotional when I think about what that family went through and how unsupportive people were.
"But I had faith and confidence and I trusted her. The same with Frankie; I trusted them."
Betsy and Frankie were wed on
"Lance was sick with cancer, so he didn't come" to the wedding, Betsy says. And though she knew an ugly secret about their friend, it also wasn't something she was eager to expose.
"Lance was recovering from cancer, am I going to go to SI (Sports Illustrated) and say 'Guess what I just heard?' No."
And yet, as the months passed, that secret would grow into something Betsy says she could no longer ignore.
Finding success
While Armstrong fought cancer, Frankie's career blossomed. And Betsy realized she had a big decision to make: be a business owner or move with her husband to
"I chose to make my marriage work," she says, and shuttered the coffee shop by the end of 1997.
Frankie rode on the
A year later, Betsy recalls, she and Frankie went house hunting with Armstrong and his then-wife,
"We were considering trying to find something close together, believe it or not," Betsy says. The Armstrongs ended up in a big house; the Andreus bought a modest flat downtown.
Soon after, Betsy was expecting her first child, and Frankie was prepping for the 1999 Tour de France with Armstrong on the
Betsy watched the telecast of the tour from their
"He had no business climbing," she says. "A red flag went up; something was wrong here."
After watching her husband perform in races for five years, and knowing his strengths and weaknesses on a bicycle, Betsy was sure that Frankie had broken his promise to her. He'd used performance-enhancing drugs.
"I knew it without having proof because he's not a climber," she says.
"I called him after that, and he was really tired and said he didn't want to talk," Betsy says. "I was really angry and I kept pressing. ... I waited till I got there, and we just got into a huge brawl. I mean, you know, a really, really big fight.
"He promised me he wouldn't use it anymore. But he was kind of like, 'Betsy, you do realize I'm going to be off the team.'
Armstrong, Frankie and the rest of the U.S. Postal team won the tour that year. While the world anointed a hero, a man who fought his way back from cancer to win the biggest race in the world's most punishing sporting competition, the victory was hollow for the Andreus.
It created an ever-widening rift between them and Armstrong as the couple said pressure mounted for Frankie to "get serious" about his career and start working with Dr.
Hincapie, his teammate, says at the time, pro cyclists didn't have much of a choice. It was do or die when it came to doping.
"You come in being one of the best amateurs and juniors in the world, and all of a sudden you can't hold on to the wheel anymore," he said of the competitive advantage drugs gave to the athletes who used them. "I could have walked away. Sure, I had a choice. But I couldn't have raced at that level without it."
Frankie rode with Armstrong for the U.S. Postal team again a year later, and for a second time, they won the tour. But Frankie says he rode clean in 2000. And Betsy says it showed; he struggled to keep up.
Despite the victory, Frankie and Betsy say he lost his position on U.S. Postal after the 2000 Tour because his pay was cut for refusing to work with Ferrari, for refusing to get on a doping program similar to Armstrong and other riders on the team.
Armstrong denies that Frankie left U.S. Postal for any reason other than a pay dispute.
The loss of Frankie's job put the young family in a financial tailspin.
"At that point, (their son) Frankie was really little, and I was pregnant with Marta," Betsy says. In addition to their flat in
The couple sold their flat in
"Thank God Frankie is a saver. Thank God he was as cheap and frugal as he was because we were up sh--'s creek! You look at these guys and how they're living and it's clear that doping pays."
Betsy says Frankie lined up jobs with other cycling teams, but alleges Armstrong's manager warned them not to hire him; job offers were rescinded, she says.
"They said, 'We're sorry, but that position isn't available anymore,' " Betsy says.
For his part, Armstrong says he never attempted to sabotage Frankie's career: "I never lobbed a word with anybody to get
Just before Christmas in 2000, when Betsy was a month away from delivering baby Marta, Armstrong's manager offered Frankie a job as director of the U.S. cycling team; Frankie took it. But Betsy says in Frankie's accepting the job, Armstrong was still in control.
Frankie directed the U.S. team for a couple of years and also became a broadcast correspondent for the cable Outdoor Life Network and later Versus, covering the tour. But even that was short-lived.
"I was doing some commentating and announcing and different things, and a lot of times I was told I was too controversial," Frankie says. "I was like what the hell? ... It was because of LA. (Lance Armstrong). If they did something with me, then it showed they were taking my side and were going against L.A. And nobody wanted to go against L.A. because he had so much power. He ran the whole sport. With a couple phone calls, he could destroy anybody, really. He was that influential."
Frankie now manages an American 5-Hour Energy cycling team and covers the Tour de France for
Coming clean
Over the years, Betsy had befriended an American journalist living in
He told Betsy he'd give her name and number to a
Walsh didn't call Betsy for another three years. But when he did, Betsy told him everything. The allegations were printed in his book with
The Andreus were called for depositions in the lawsuit brought by the
Others began to speak up, too.
"It was like I had a full-time, unpaid job," Betsy says, of fielding calls from journalists and authors, along with investigators. She and Frankie have spent "tens of thousands of dollars" over the years in attorneys' fees related to these lawsuits, she says.
Frankie became among the first cyclists to go on the record and admit in the news media to doping on Armstrong's team in a
"One critic called me a two-bit whore," Betsy says, noting that she now jokingly refers to herself as "two-bit" whenever she speaks to a journalist who has become a confidant over the years.
Armstrong and other critics called her a bitch and Betsy says the representative for one of his sponsors left a threatening voice mail message at their home, saying she wanted someone to bash Betsy's head in with a baseball bat.
"It was stressful. It was very stressful. And the loss of income was even more stressful," she says. "Maybe it was my quest for the truth to get out because I was so smeared. I knew the financial impact, but I didn't care. The truth was too important."
"He's a very forceful personality, and she wasn't going to back down," Lindsey says, "which I found, in all the relationships surrounding Armstrong, was very unique. She was the person who was the least likely to be intimidated and cow into submission. ... She was going to be true to herself even when it wasn't the smartest thing to do from the standpoint of self-preservation or for Frankie's career."
Frankie says through it all, no matter how ugly it got, he never asked Betsy to shut up, though he did ask her to tone it down a bit.
"She was braver than I was in dealing with this," says Frankie.
"What she did was courageous and it's something I don't think a lot of other people could have done," Frankie says. "She got ripped apart and attacked tremendously by a lot of people. Instead of crumbling, I don't know how, it just made her stronger and she fought back harder and became an important part in the whole investigation, the process of bringing out the truth. She played a key role in that, more than a lot of people know."
Betsy says her faith and steadfast belief in right and wrong helped her in the most difficult times.
"I prayed a lot," she says. "I have a Padre Pio (statue) and a St. Therese (Lisieux) of the Little Flower card. And I prayed and I said, 'I'll keep doing this with your blessing.' ... When you're Catholic, sometimes you go to God, and sometimes, you go to the saints," asking them to intercede on your behalf and deliver prayers to God.
The unraveling
In
Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life from cycling and any other sporting event sanctioned by organizations that subscribe to the
Armstrong appeared on
In his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong addressed Betsy directly, saying: "I called you crazy. I called you a bitch. I called you all those things, but I never called you fat."
An awkward silence followed, as did outrage from the news media and spoofs and jokes from late-night talk show hosts and viewers about Armstrong's backward apology. But Betsy says she understood it; she was sure it was a nod to the days when they teased each other, and when she picked on him for only dating thin women.
Betsy says she was prepared, then, to accept his apology, to forgive Armstrong if he'd meet with her, talk with her face-to-face and sincerely try to make amends. A meeting was arranged, and she says at the last minute, Armstrong canceled.
Armstrong says even though he and Betsy didn't get along, "it doesn't change the most important issue here, and that is my poor and inappropriate behavior. It was unacceptable. For that, I am deeply sorry and I mean it. I hope the Andreus can, at some point, accept my apology."
For her part, Betsy says, "I think I'm going to just have to move on. You don't want to dwell on it. It needs to be something you can learn from, and release yourself from all that yuckiness.
"A lot of people say, just let it go. But the guy is still fighting. ... I fought a bully in a decade-long battle. I'm resilient, and I don't give up a fight that easily."
A long fight
Legal fees continue to add up, and Betsy says it has been a costly fight, emotionally and financially. "That's money you just don't recoup."
But to her, it's been worth it, particularly when she looks at her children: Frankie, now 14; Marta, 13, and 11-year-old Stevie.
"It's been one interesting journey," she says. "And a real important lesson for my kids. Nobody stood up for me even though a lot of others knew Lance was doping.
"I've always said to my kids, 'if you don't stick up for the one who's being bullied, you're just as bad as the bully. If I ever hear that you stood by and did nothing, you're going to be grounded for a really long time.' "
Armstrong is vexed by the incongruity of Betsy's fury.
"Let's be honest about this," Armstrong says. "We all know Frankie doped, like all of us, and of course she would have known. ... This was even a topic of discussion amongst our wives," he says.
"I know two things: I did all of that for years, and I know what it is to procure, store, use, dispose and hide (drugs). And No. 2, I've lived with women during those years. Whether it's Kristin or it's Sheryl (Crow, a former fiancee). It is absolutely impossible to hide all that. And I'm not talking about hiding a few whatevers in your Dopp kit. ... This is not easy. It's impossible. That is a fact. If they lived together, she knew.
"He never once came to us and said, 'Golly gee, I don't want to do this.' "
But Betsy contends she didn't know until 1999 that Frankie was doping, and when she figured it out, she urged him to stop. And he did.
"He can say that I knew, but I didn't. ," Betsy says.
Frankie says he kept his wife in the dark about his early use because he knew how vehemently she opposed the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Betsy says: "Frankie told me, 'I kept it from you because I knew how you were."
She also insists that there is a difference between making a mistake, as Frankie did, and owning up to it, and the way she says Armstrong pushed doping on teammates, denied allegations and intimidated anyone who dared to speak the truth.
She says that though the truth is out now, she's still not going to stop talking about what happened and will look for ways to educate young people about the dangers of using performance-enhancing drugs.
"It's about the kids," she says. "If you don't have kids, you don't get it. I had a friend ... who, years ago, said, 'Why can't you just let it go, Betsy? Lance is too big, nobody is ever going to believe you. He is never going to fall. Guys are going to cheat all the time; you're just going to have to accept it.'
"I said, 'It does matter. When my kids get to that point, it's going to matter.' When his son turned 13, he called me up, and he said, 'I get it now.' When this stuff started coming out about
Betsy and Frankie knew that at some point, their own children were going to find out that their father had used EPO in the Tour de France. And they agreed that it would be best for their kids to tell them the truth.
"It was incredibly hard," Betsy says, to have to talk to them about it. They've discussed it with their two eldest children, but plan to wait a little longer before talking to their youngest, Stevie.
"You can't justify it," Frankie says. "And so for me, that was hard. What I did was wrong, but at the time, I didn't realize it was wrong. I was just doing it."
He says he used EPO at a time when that and other drugs were rampant in the sport. Even so, he says, "I'm just as guilty as some of the others. Even though I didn't do near as much as a lot of the other guys did, which is a crazy amount of PEDs."
He used this analogy to explain why the level of involvement really doesn't matter in the end.
"If you go in and rob a bank for a nickel or you go in and rob a bank for a million dollars with grenades and firearms and you kill people, you're still both bank robbers. It's just one person did it to the extreme. But you're both still considered bank robbers," Frankie says.
Betsy is now trying to get the word out about the
"My whole thing is, 'OK, let's not dwell on Lance anymore,' " she says. " 'Let's make lemonade out of lemons.' "
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