LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 3

      John Thomas Neal was an independently wealthy real estate investor and massage therapist, a forty-eight-year-old husband and father, who worked as a soigneur in elite cycling. Soigneur is a French term meaning “one who cares for others.” In cycling, it is a person who gives the riders massages, prepares their lunches and water bottles, cleans uniforms and transports their baggage to and from hotels. A fixer, nurturer and wise counselor, Neal had worked with professional athletes on the beach volleyball tour and swimmers at the University of Texas. But his passion was cycling because he loved the sport and the travel.

      He had fled Montgomery, Alabama, after growing up amid the race riots of the ’60s. In Austin, his open mind and eclectic tastes matched the city’s liberal attitude. He once hosted a gay wedding at his home, originally a church on a hilltop overlooking the city’s skyline. Though he had a law degree, legal work didn’t satisfy him and he didn’t stick with it. Anyway, he could afford to quit because he married into money.

      Neal, who was maybe 5 foot 8 and had a very slight build, was a huge sports fan—University of Texas football, swimming and volleyball, professional tennis, cycling, you name it—and wanted to find a way he could work in the sports business. He couldn’t coach because he wasn’t the aggressive type, nor had he ever been an athlete. Massage therapy was the answer. The clinical aspects of it fascinated him. He also loved the idea of being trained to cure people’s ills.

      Neal was so serious about his new vocation that he traveled to China and spent several months learning Eastern healing techniques, including how to perform acupuncture on the inner ear.

      Back in Austin, he volunteered to work with the athletes at the University of Texas. In time, he had made enough connections and had cultivated a reputation in the Olympic sports world for being so good at his job that he was hired to work as a soigneur for the Subaru-Montgomery professional cycling team. Former United States Olympic cycling coach Eddie Borysewicz was in charge of it. Thomas Weisel, an investment banker who was a legend in financial circles, was the owner.

      When he first signed on, Neal worked races only in the United States and hadn’t heard much about doping in the sport, except that performance-enhancing drug use among cyclists was prevalent in Europe.

      He met Lance Armstrong in 1989 at a Texas triathlon after Borysewicz told him to look out for the budding cycling star. Armstrong’s all-out effort at the 1989 junior worlds in Moscow had caught Borysewicz’s eye. The coach convinced him to switch to cycling from triathlon because cycling was an Olympic sport, while triathlon wasn’t.

      Armstrong, arguably the hottest up-and-coming cyclist in the world, later landed a spot with the Subaru-Montgomery team. By then, Neal and Armstrong knew each other well.

      Nearly a dozen athletes in Austin—both men and women—still say they were closer to Neal than to their own fathers. He brought them into his family and gave them some stability. Lance Armstrong was just the latest athlete in need.

      Armstrong was relocating to hilly Austin from flat Plano because the area’s terrain was perfect for training. At a steeply discounted rate, Armstrong moved into an apartment complex owned by Neal. Near downtown—among tall trees, twenty paces from Neal’s office—it was a comfortable, safe place that Armstrong could call home. Later, Armstrong told the Dallas Morning News his apartment was “killer … s-o-o-o nice!” He and Neal met every day, sometimes several times a day, for massage treatments and meals. It gave Neal satisfaction to know that he could make a positive impact on the life of a teenager who needed some guidance.

      Neal’s first impression was that the kid’s ego exceeded his talent. Armstrong was brash and ill-mannered, in desperate need of refinement. But the more he learned of Lance’s home life, the sorrier Neal began to feel for him. He was a kid without a reliable father. Linda Armstrong was pleased that her son now had a responsible male role model in his life, and Neal lent a sympathetic ear to her as well while she dealt with the rocky transition between marriages.

      Neal soon recognized that Armstrong’s insecurities and anger were products of his broken family—he felt abandoned by his biological father and mistreated by his adoptive one. Armstrong didn’t like to be alone, so Neal often met him for breakfast at the Upper Crust Café, just down the street from Neal’s house, and for lunch at a sports bar called The Tavern. Armstrong ate dinner with the Neals three or four times a week. The Neals’ three children would be there, along with the occasional Armstrong friend or a student Neal was mentoring. It was nothing fancy—sometimes just slow-cooked beans eaten with plastic utensils out of mismatched mugs, as if they were on a camping trip. But they were a family.

      Frances, Neal’s wife, and Armstrong were the group’s jokers. They might chase each other around the dinner table. They might sing parts of the song “Ice Ice Baby,” by the Dallas rap star Vanilla Ice, a song that then sat atop the music charts. One would sing, “Ice ice baby!” and the other would reply, “Too cold, too cold!” On some days, they would bring their show to the Neals’ motorboat, where they would spend the day swimming or water-skiing.

      It was arguably the happiest, most uncomplicated time in Armstrong’s life. He no longer had to worry about Terry Armstrong, and his mother’s current marital woes were 215 miles north on Interstate 35, back in Plano. His world centered on Austin and Neal, who gladly opened up his home or apartments to national team cyclists—like future Postal Service teammates George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Chann McRae and Kevin Livingston—who wanted to train with Armstrong in the Texas Hill Country.

      The day after Armstrong moved into his new apartment, the Neals saw him ride in Lago Vista, thirty-five miles from Austin. Armstrong did poorly and admitted to Neal that he’d been up late the night before, drinking at an Austin strip club named the Yellow Rose. Neal passed it off as Lance’s being just another rambunctious teenager testing his newfound freedom.

      The call from Armstrong to J.T. Neal came before dawn on an August morning, 1991. Could Neal come to San Marcos and pick him up? Armstrong wasn’t stranded on the side of the road in the Texas outback. He had not blown out a tire on his bike in a marathon training ride. He was in jail.

      The night before, thirty miles from Austin, Armstrong had partied with some coeds from Southwest Texas State University. As they frolicked in an outdoor Jacuzzi at one coed’s apartment complex, they made so much noise that the police came to quiet them down. But that was only Armstrong’s first meeting with cops that night. The second was the big one. Pulled over for driving erratically, he thought he could talk his way out of trouble. So what if he had appeared drunk and refused to take a Breathalyzer test? He was sure the officer would be impressed when he told them who he was—the best young cyclist in the entire country.

      Had he been a quarterback, maybe the ploy would have worked. But a Texas police officer could not care less about a guy boasting about his prowess on a bike. No, it was off to the county lockup.

      Neal, always concerned about Armstrong’s drinking and driving, came and got him from the San Marcos jail the next day. Months later, upon receiving a notice informing him that his driver’s license could be suspended, Armstrong forwarded the letter to Neal. On the envelope, he wrote, “J.T.—This came today?? Have a great Xmas! Lance.” Now acting as his lawyer as well as his friend, Neal helped Armstrong beat the charges and keep his license.

      In turn, Neal received from Armstrong something rare and precious: Armstrong’s trust. Armstrong sent him postcards from training trips and races—such as a note dated August 16, 1991, from Wein-und Ferienort Bischoffingen, Germany:

      J.T.—Hows it going? Well, Germany is very nice. As you probably know the worlds are a little

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