Cycling: Armstrong fights 'conspiracies' and rivals to stay ahead

Given the seige mentality enveloping the cycling world, it feels entirely appropriate that Lance Armstrong should agree to be interviewed inside a castle.

True, we are talking about a rather elegant 19th century château in south-west France, where – by chance – the triple Tour de France winner's US Postal team are staying during a recent Midi Libre stage race, so the interview is held against background noise of hushed French conversation from a chandelier-lit bar rather than anything belligerent.

But the latest stories of the sport's never-ending war against doping reach even here. On the battlefield, the Giro d'Italia, the news is not good: two of the three top contenders have returned positive dope tests, stories circulate of Mafia involvement in drugs rings, and there have been two police raids, and counting.

Like his sport, Armstrong sometimes also gives the impression of being a man under siege: he is convinced, for example, that there is a conspiracy among certain reporters determined to besmirch his name.

"Are there journalists out to get me?" he tells me with an ironic grin. "Oh absolutely. One hundred per cent. I've been told of their statements. But..." and he pauses for effect, "Good luck guys. You won't get me, – 'cos there's nothing to get, man, and they're running out of time.

"One of the biggest misconceptions is that I fight with the media. I can walk into that press room at the Tour and 90 per cent of those people are my buddies. I've been around for a long time and I've been open and honest.

"You know, I like to break it down by country, just to myself. The Dutch, the Belgians, the Spanish, the Germans – there's a lot of allies there." He seems oblivious to the fact that he has an English journalist sitting in front of him.

But maybe Armstrong is right to have a world vision that sounds disturbingly similar, if in another context, to that of his good friend, George W Bush. After all, as a rider who fought so hard and so successfully to return to cycling after his life-threatening cancer, it must hurt that the insinuations and suspicion continue. It must be tempting to divide the media into "allies" and "enemies", especially when he has never returned a positive in a dope test in a 10-year career.

The one chink in his seemingly invulnerable armour is perhaps his work with the Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, known to collaborate on Armstrong's strength tests, but who is also currently charged with supplying illegal drugs to athletes.

When Ferrari explained to the Danish newspaper Extra Bladet that Armstrong had contacted him during a Tour stage – via his team director Johan Bruyneel – to discuss an attack by his former rival Marco Pantani, it seemed that the dottore's influence on Armstrong was more important than previously thought.

However, up to now nobody has directly asked Armstrong whether this extended collaboration reported by the Danes (probably not among his "allies") was true.

"The answer to that is yes," he confirms. "We asked his opinion, based on what he could see on television, how fast he thought Pantani was climbing, how long he could keep that up. An expert analysis.

"We're in contact. But why is that a story?" he concludes. The jury are out on that one – in Ferrari's case, quite literally.

However, it is hard to see who Armstrong will need to be talking to Ferrari about when it comes to rivals for his fourth Tour win. This July, because of a serious knee injury there will be no Jan Ullrich, for example, the only rider whom Armstrong has publicly admitted worries him. The leading French mountain stage specialist, Richard Virenque, has even complained that Armstrong will have won the race after barely a week.

Speaking with all the silky self-confidence of the overwhelming favourite, Armstrong has his answer pat. "Somebody would probably look at Sestrieres, the Hautacam and the Alpe d'Huez [the three mountain stages where Armstrong effectively finished off any opposition in his run of Tour wins] and make that statement. But it's not always going to be like that. It just seemed right to open up the race at those points.

"Having said that, it's the Tour de France: you get the chance to take a minute, two minutes, you have to take it. Every time. Because it's long. You get a puncture on the last day on the Champs-Elysées, and lose a minute there's nobody's says, 'OK, you've got this far.' There's no bonuses, no favours."

Would he agree that cycling is a cruel sport? "It's an old sport," he replies. "It doesn't bend easy."

However, Armstrong does believe the sport is taking a hammering thanks to events in Italy. "It is not good for cycling, not good for fans, not good for everybody. It's a sad story all the way round," he said.

The Texan is convinced, though, that neither the case of 2001 Giro winner Gilberto Simoni, who recently failed a dope test for cocaine, nor that of the 2000 winner Stefano Garzelli, who was found positive for probenecid, have anything to do with what has gone on in the last four or five years.

"With Garzelli, it's just mind-boggling," he admits. "Probenecid is such an obscure, old drug. I can't believe that a rider like Gilberto Simoni would be doing cocaine three weeks before the Tour of Italy."

Garzelli's team strongly suspects a conspiracy, which ties in with Armstrong's concerns that cycling is not secure enough.

"Cycling is wide open," he agrees, also admitting the events of 11 September have made him more wary of attacks. "It's not like tennis or Formula One. I'm not saying fence off Mont Ventoux, not at all, but start lines, finish lines, hotels... they should be more secure. The event's big, it has global attention, maybe a bad person's attention. Why shouldn't it take itself more seriously?"

This may sound a little paranoid, but there is no arguing that when Armstrong ventures forth from his team bus or castle into the racing arena, he nearly always succeeds. In fact, soon after we talked, he went on to win the Midi Libre after a month without racing.

The only problem is that right now much of cycling's reputation and public image is in danger of collapsing. So when Armstrong does brave the public, the critics and the rivals and probably wins the Tour again, how much respect will what he conquers still command? Not even he can control that.

Alasdair Fotheringham writes for Cycling Weekly