Following Nike (NKE)‘s abrupt reversal on sticking by disgraced brand ambassador Lance Armstrong, as well as Armstrong’s own resignation today as chairman of the charity he founded, author Daniel Coyle took to Twitter to solicit suggestions for re-naming the Lance Armstrong Center at Nike headquarters. Some suggestions were a tad sharp—“The LieStrong Center,” “The Nike Correctional Facility,” “The Not Normal Pavillon—and others a bit unoriginal, “The Derek Zoolander center for kids who cant read good and want to do other stuff good too.” Finally, Coyle picked a decidedly in-joke winner: “The Paniagua Center for the Blind.”
Paniagua, a Spanish idiom for “bread and water, was cycling slang in the early aughts for racing without the benefit of performance enhancing drugs, as Coyle and former Lance teammate Tyler Hamilton reveal in the The Secret Race. A riveting tell-all published last month, The Secret Race spells out how Armstrong’s United States Postal Service teams used banned substances to reach the pinnacle of their sport from 1999 to 2005. Though the book is Hamilton’s first person account, Coyle did some additional investigative reporting to confirm Hamilton’s account, returning to a rolodex he built when he wrote the single best book on Armstrong at the height of his competitive success, Lance Armstrong’s War. As potential white elephants go, he says, the multi-million dollar Lance Center, which he last visited in 2011, is stunning. “It’s really a beautiful building. Part shrine, stuffed with his bikes and memorabilia, and part workout facility,” Coyle recalls. “It’s where the pool is.”
Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said the company will change the name of the center, just as the company removed Joe Paterno’s name from its child care center earlier this year. Nike would not elaborate on its sudden decision to fire Armstrong. But it’s worth noting that they are continuing their relationship with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. And while Armstrong has stepped down as chairman, he’ll remain on the non-profit’s board.
Aside from renaming any Modernist gymnasiums, is there more Nike will have to un-wind? Any next shoe to drop in this sordid, never-ending saga? In a statement today, Anheuser-Busch/InBev said it won’t renew its contract with Armstrong when it expires at the end of this year, and it’s likely that other sponsors will follow. There’s an outside chance that one or more of Armstrong’s sponsors will test the statute of limitations on breech of contract. Most sponsorship contracts in cycling following the 1998 Festina bust specified that athletes who tested positive for PEDs or banned from competition would have to return their sponsorship income. However unlikely, there remains the prospect of a full confession from Armstrong. One subplot to watch: Thom Weisel, the San Francisco-based financier who funded Armstrong’s victorious U.S.P.S. and Discovery Channel teams.
An alumni of Montgomery Securities and founder of Thomas Weisel Partners, an investment bank, Weisel took up cycling in the early 80s, and later established Tailwind Sports to compete in cycling as an team owner and sponsor. He initially lost Armstrong to another team, but later paid Armstrong his first million-dollar bonus, followed him in the pace car across the finish of Armstrong’s first Tour de France win (1999), and rode with him on his Champs d’Elysée victory laps the next several years, too. In his 2003 memoir, Capital Instincts: Life As an Entrepreneur, Financier, and Athlete, Weisel noted that Armstrong was his golden goose, and Weisel credits himself as the architect (and sugar daddy) for the unprecedented success of Armstrong’s racing teams.
Crucially, as detailed by investigative journalist Matt Smith in 2005 SfWeekly article, Weisel took over the regulatory arm of competitive cycling in the United States, and, according to reports at the time in Outside magazine, Milwaukee Business Journal, and others, installed a broker at Thomas Weisel Partners as its president. Smith shows that at the peak of Armstrong’s Tour run — the period during which he stands accused of doping — Weisel, the owner of Armstrong’s team, also controlled the top American cycling regulator.
Despite some juicy heresy, no one has proven if Weisel was aware of the doping program he effectively underwrote all those years. Therein lies what could be the saga’s next chapter.
