NEWS
THE BATTALION
On one day, Armstrong
r leaders were temporal-
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Sports
The Battalion US
Page 3 • Monday, July 28, 2003
Litke: Every year gets harder for Armstrong
By Jim Litke
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
I f only for a day, Lance Armstrong
rode his bike like someone who
really was on a tour of France.
Pedaling smoothly on the run-in to
Paris, the hard work behind him,
Armstrong grabbed a flute of cham
pagne offered from his team car, took a
sip and then toasted himself by clink
ing the glass against the lens of a TV
camera that had pulled up alongside.
Moments later, he took his right
hand off the handlebars and extended
all five fingers toward the camera, a
gesture that needed no explanation at
the end of the world’s greatest bicycle
race. After three weeks, two mountain
ranges and 2,100 miles, his life on the
run was about to slow to a leisurely
victory lap.
As he rode, the only visible mark
on Armstrong after two crashes, bouts
with stomach flu and dehydration, a
handful of mishaps and a crisis of
self-confidence, was a scab just
below the left elbow. Soon after, with
his fifth consecutive Tour de France
title a fact, he slipped into the
leader’s yellow jersey and answered
the only important question that
remained.
Would he be back?
“Of course,” Armstrong answered
in French, “1 love cycling, I love my
job and 1 will be back for a sixth.”
But hours earlier, on the morning
train from Nantes to Ville d’Avray,
the western Paris suburb where the
20th stage began, the Texan hadn’t
sounded quite so confident.
He was about to join Spanish leg
end Miguel Indurain as the only
champion to string all five of his wins
together. But getting back on his bike
right after the Tour and resuming the
maniacal work schedule that left
rivals always riding in his slipstream
was anything but a given.
“This Tour took a lot out of me,”
Armstrong said. “1 need to step back
from cycling and from the races and
relax a little bit and focus on 2004 in
due time.”
By then he will be racing against
history, and you can be sure it won’t
cut him much slack. For all his seem
ing dominance, the real edge between
the Tour champion and the pack is as
narrow as the tires they ride on at
speeds up to 65 mph down the side of
a mountain.
“When you think you’re unbeat
able,” Greg LeMond, a three-time
Tour winner and the first American to
capture the race, wrote recently, “the
first defeat is just devastating. You
think you can come back. You tell
yourself as much. But you’re just
buying time. That first defeat changes
you forever.”
It did with LeMond and Indurain
and Eddy Merckx, the Belgian and
five-time winner who devoured the
competition with such fierceness he
was nicknamed “The Cannibal.” Each
was finally humbled in the mountains
the year after their final win, none so
memorably as Merckx, who ran out
of gas and was passed by eventual
winner Bernard Thevenet on the final
climb up the Alps to Pra-Loup in
1975.
“I tried everything and it didn’t
work,” Merckx said that day.
“Miracles don’t exist in sports. It’s
always the strongest who wins.”
For now, that is Armstrong.
Like Indurain and Frenchman
Bernard Hinault, he is that rare cham
pion who can chew up the field in flat
races or up and down mountains. And
while he claimed only one stage win
this time and the margin of victory
was his narrowest ever— 61 seconds
over five-time runner-up Jan Ullrich
— Armstrong still bettered his own
record for average speed by a half-
second, to 25.383 mph.
“Of course it’s possible,” Indurain
said about another Armstrong win.
“But every year it gets more difficult.”
Armstrong will be 32 in
September, and though racers have
won the Tour at that age and beyond.
US Postal Services team member Lance Armstrong celebrates after winning his fifth Tour de France Sunday in Paris. Armstrong
beat rival Jan Ulrich by more than a minute. He will look for a record-breaking sixth straight Tour de France title in 2004.
all the five-time winners logged their
final victory before that telling birth
day. To remain the strongest, he will
have to remain the hungriest.
So far, motivation has been
Armstrong’s strongest suit. When he
won the first time in 1999, he was
still recovering from a deadly form of
testicular cancer. Ringing in his ears
was the verdict of doctors who doubt
ed he’d ever compete at anything
more strenuous than poker. In succes
sive years, he rode to crush rumors of
doping and to claim a place among
those cyclists whose accomplish
ments merit comparison with the
greatest athletes of all time — in any
sport.
Armstrong’s training regimen has
always been something only a sadist
could love. He would go for months
in the winter in Europe with just two
days off, testing himself in the cold
and wet of the mountains, then shift
to the Texas heat and ring up heart
and aerobic conditioning rates that
flirted with the limits of human
performance.
In the midst of the drug controver
sy that swirled around him,
Armstrong’s main sponsor, Nike,
played off those numbers with an ad
that showed him pedaling furiously
down the road.
“What am I on?” Armstrong said
in the voice over. “I’m on my bike.”
He’d better be again, and soon.
Because holding up six fingers on
his way to the victory stand on the
Champs-Elysee next year will be
tougher than just pulling both hands
off the handlebars.
Baylor looks into possible
NCAA violations by coach
By Bobby Ross Jr.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WACO — At first blush, the world’s largest
Baptist university would seem an unlikely arena
for a sordid saga involving allegations of gun-
toting basketball players, improper payments by
coaches and doctored drug tests.
A Big 12 Conference school,
Baylor University isn’t known
as an athletic powerhouse, but it
touts its Christian heritage.
Yet the accusations made in
the wake of 6-foot-10, 230-
pound center Patrick Dennehy’s
disappearance have reopened
wounds for a basketball pro
gram twice placed on NCAA bliss
probation since the mid-1980s.
Prompted by claims made by friends and rel
atives of Dennehy, Baylor opened a new inquiry
last week into possible NCAA violations.
Coach Dave Bliss and his staff have declined
to comment but deny wrongdoing.
“This whole thing just breaks my heart,” said
Pat Nunley, the team’s longtime radio analyst.
It’s not the first time Baylor’s program has
come under scrutiny.
The program was put on five-year proba
tion in 1994 after an investigation found that
coaches were illegally doing correspondence
work for players. An FBI inquiry resulted in
mail and wire fraud convictions against three
assistant coaches. Former head coach Darrel
Johnson was fired.
In 1986, the Baylor basketball team was
slapped with a two-year probation after the
NCAA said it provided cash, transportation and
other illegal benefits to players. A player secret
ly recorded a conversation in which fonner head
coach Jim Haller agreed to give him $172 for a
car payment.
“One would hope that a university with a
religious heritage would not have these ethical
problems,” said Chuck Weaver, president of
Baylor’s Faculty Senate. “That’s not always
the case. Coaches at Baylor face the same
kinds of pressures to win as coaches at any
other university.”
Weaver added: “In general. Bliss has been
one of the most respected basketball coaches
Baylor has ever had. His hiring was considered
to be a response to previous difficulties.”
Baylor finished last season 14-14 but won
only five of 16 conference games. But the disap
pointment on the court was nothing compared to
the sorrow that has engulfed the campus since
mid-June.
Dennehy’s family reported him missing June
19, a week after he was last seen in Waco, about
100 miles south of Fort Worth. His Chevy
Tahoe, stripped of its license plates, was found
June 25 in a Virginia parking lot.
Authorities found a badly decomposed
body Friday night about five miles southeast
of Waco, but officials said it may take days to
identify the remains.
Carlton Dotson, a former teammate who
lived with Dennehy, was charged with
Dennehy’s murder last week and, remains jailed
without bond. Waco police said Dotson told FBI
agents in his home state of Maryland that he shot
Dennehy after the player tried to shoot him. But
he said he “didn’t confess to anything.”
Three Baylor Law School professors will
investigate allegations that a coach told Dennehy
his education and living expenses would be paid
if he gave up his scholarship for a year. The
committee also will examine whether Dennehy
received $1,200 to $1,800 from an assistant
coach toward a car loan for his sport-utility vehi
cle, and if players passed urine tests despite
smoking marijuana.
“We’re going to be looking into every allega
tion that has been reported ... and other issues
that we may encounter on our own,” committee
member Bill Underwood said.
Adriana Gallegos, a fonner girlfriend of
Dennehy’s, told The Associated Press that
Dennehy was excited when he returned to New
Mexico last spring from a recruiting trip to
Baylor.
“He was just like, ‘They’re going to hook me
up and they’re probably going to get me a nice
SUV,”’ said Gallegos, 22, who now lives in
Midland.
“I didn’t really think much of it because I’ve
heard so many stories of really good athletes
getting so many benefits from their coaches.... I
thought they were just bribing him to come out
to Baylor.”
Gallegos said Dennehy occasionally smoked
marijuana, but “it wasn’t an everyday thing.”
Dotson’s estranged wife, Melissa Kethley,
said Dotson and Dennehy were among three
players she drove to get tested at a Waco clinic
after a team-ordered urine test came back posi
tive for illicit drug use. Kethley told The Dallas
Morning News that Dotson passed a test at a
time she knew he and five or six teammates were
smoking marijuana.
“Half of them used to go to practice high,”
she said.
Jerrel Bolton, a Chevrolet dealer in West,
north of Waco, said Bliss called him last fall and
told him Dennehy was looking for an SUV.
NCAA spokeswoman Kay Hawes said she
couldn’t say whether such a call would be a
rules violation because “it would depend on too
many specific factors.”
See Dennehy on page 6
Widow of former Pro-Bowler
files lawsuit against NFL
By Joshua Freed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS — An attor
ney for Korey Stringer’s widow
said she will sue the NFL on
Monday, alleging that the
league’s policies led to
Stringer’s heat stroke death dur
ing the Minnesota Vikings’
training camp in 2001.
Stan Chesley said Kelci
Stringer’s suit would also name
football helmet maker Riddell
Sports Group Inc., and some
NFL medical advisers. He said
the federal lawsuit would
include a wrongful death claim
on behalf of Stringer’s widow
and son, and a class action claim
on behalf of all NFL players.
“What’s on trial here is the
rules and procedures and the
culture of the NFL,” Chesley
said Saturday. “Frankly, it’s no
coincidence that the average
football player in the NFL plays
for 4 1/2 years. They use them
up and spit them out.”
Chesley declined to say pub
licly where the lawsuit would be
filed. The planned suit was first
reported by The New York Times.
Stringer collapsed during
training camp on July 31, 2001,
in sweltering heat and humidity.
The 335-pound Pro Bowl line
man’s body temperature was
108.8 degrees when he arrived at
a hospital. He died 15 hours later.
Phone messages left by The
Associated Press with an NFL
spokesman and Riddell were not
immediately returned.
Kelci Stringer had already
filed a $100 million wrongful-
death lawsuit against the Vikings
and the team’s training camp
physician, David Knowles. In
April, a Hennepin County
District Court judge dismissed
Kelci Stringer’s claims against
the team. She later settled with
Knowles for an undisclosed sum.
Her attorneys said at the time
they planned to ask the state
appeals court to reinstate the
claims against the Vikings.
Chesley said the issues in the
new lawsuit are different. The
suit against the team stumbled
because the law limits how much
Stringer’s widow could get from
his employer, the Vikings.
Chesley said that while the
league does not employ the play
ers, it sets the procedures for the
mandatory training camps.
Chesley said the league want
ed a 335-pound player like
Stringer but then did little to
protect him in the heat that led to
his death. He said the lawsuit is
designed to change that.
The NFL has said it has
already made changes.
Before training camp opened
in 2002, the NFL consulted with
several experts and held a series
of discussions and seminars on
the subject. The league banned
the herbal stimulant ephedra and
began random testing for it last
summer after learning that
dietary supplements increased
the risk of heat-related illnesses.
A bottle of Ripped Fuel,
which contains ephedra, was
found in Stringer’s locker after
he died, though Stringer’s
remains weren’t tested for the
substance during investigations
of his death.
SPORTS IN BRIEF
Chicago takes two of three from
Houston, Astros still lead division
HOUSTON (AP) — When Sammy Sosa tied Ted
Williams and Willie McCovey for 12th place on the
career list, he let his bat speak for him.
Sosa hit his 521st career home run, his 12th in July,
as the Chicago Cubs beat the Houston Astros 5-3
Sunday.
Sosa, who had been O-for-7 in the series, homered
to left in the first inning, his 22nd of the season. He
trails Jimmie Foxx by 13 homers for 11 th place on the
career list.
Sosa, 1-for-ll in the series, declined to speak with
reporters. He was booed at every plate appearance in
the series.
Shawn Estes (7-8) got his first victory since June 10
as the Cubs took a 5-4 lead in the season series and
pulled within 4 1/2 games of the first-place Astros in
the NL Central.
"The pressure was to go out and have a good out
ing more than anything," Estes said. "It's a big game.
The Astros are the team to beat in our division right
now and we won two out of three here. This was a
big series for us."
Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek also had solo
homers, and Kenny Lofton went 3-for-5 with a single,
double and triple.
"You can't put your finger on any one thing," Lofton
said. "Against a guy who has a good record like that,
he's not unstoppable, you just have to battle and bat
tle, and that's what we did today."
Jeroime Robertson (10-4), who had been 9-0 in 15
starts since Montreal chased him after three innings
on April 25, lasted just 28 pitches and allowed three
runs and six hits in 1 2-3 innings. It was the shortest
outing of his major league career.
"I felt great," Robertson said. "My arm felt good. My
stuff was sharp coming out of the bullpen. Even
when they got some hits, I felt good."
Jeff Bagwell hit a two-run homer in the third, and
Richard Hidalgo homered in the sixth off Dave Veres
"Today just wasn't our day," Craig Biggio said. "But
we lose just one game in the loss column in this
series. Estes just changed speeds on us. He doesn't
give in. We never really got anybody on. You have to
tip your hat to him."