Andreu questions soigneur's volte-face over Armstrong

Betsy Andreu, wife of Frankie Andreu, a former friend and team-mate of Armstrong on US Postal Service, has not corresponded with former Armstrong soigneur Emma O’Reilly since December 2013, when in an email exchange Andreu shot down O’Reilly’s feelings that Andreu was not outwardly supportive of O’Reilly. Andreu told her the two would simply have to “agree to disagree”.

Since then, O’Reilly has released a new book entitled The Race to Truth, for which Andreu says it has become apparent that O’Reilly, who once claimed in a 2012 interview with the New York Times that Armstrong demonised her as a “prostitute with a drinking problem”, has made amends with the excommunicated cyclist. In fact, Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles (1998-2005) after leading what was labelled “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen” by the US Anti-Doping Agency, claims that he was “honoured” to write the book’s foreword for O’Reilly who he once publically labelled an “alcoholic whore”.

“Our last conversations over email were very civil,” Andreu told Eurosport from her US home in Michigan. “I told Emma that Lance was a pathological liar and that I felt that he was using her.

"I told her that we would have to agree to disagree. I followed up with ‘are we good?’ and she never replied.”

Andreu told Eurosport that while she has not read the book, a close friend has given her a synopsis of its content and stance.

“I have not read the book, but I had a close friend give me an overview, which paints me as nice but still 'bitter' and scathes David Walsh,” said Andreu. “I am not bitter at all, just stating the facts. But I do have a problem with her showing such disrespect to David Walsh, who has been a total professional showing the utmost journalistic integrity, and I know for a fact, that he did everything he could for all of us during the research and writing of his book.”

O’Reilly claims that Walsh “hung me out to dry” after an interview she gave him in 2003 for his and Pierre Ballester’s book LA Confidential, which helped mark the beginning of the end and ultimately Armstrong’s unveiling by the US Anti-Doping Agency.

On Wednesday of last week, O’Reilly told the Guardian that her relationship with Lance “was and still is a human one” and that they had created a “deep bond” over the years of spending up to 18 hours a day with each other during the professional racing season.

Andreu said she sees right through that.

“Lance Armstrong is like herpes,” Andreu said. “Every now and then it surfaces and when it does it is always ugly.

“I think he has gotten under Emma’s skin, and it’s sickening – the whole ordeal is sickening and never ending,” she continued.

"After all, Emma had no problem with David when they appeared together on Oprah or on The Late Late Show [in January of 2013]. In fact, she appeared on TV with him and everything was fine.

“David and I talked about this, that it's funny that after Lance comes back into her life David Walsh is now the evil one. It just doesn't make sense. How come she didn't bring up any concerns with David Walsh then?”

Andreu claims that O’Reilly was the only one that requested compensation of what O’Reilly termed her “trouble”.

"The point I really want to stress is that Emma is the only one that demanded money for her interview, so she got money,” said Andreu. “The Sunday Times was going to indemnify those of us that helped cooperate with David Walsh, so what more did she want? We were all under pressure. Greg LeMond was under immense pressure. Frankie and I were under immense pressure because we had all cooperated with David Walsh."

When asked about the emergence of evidence suggested by Walsh on the recent documentary Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story that sports brand Oakley was fully aware of Armstrong’s drug use, but continued to sponsor him anyway, Andreu told Eurosport that she was not surprised.

Andreu said that Oakley could not have been the only sponsor aware of Armstrong’s doping indiscretions, and brought up the 2012 incident where Nike was accused of paying former UCI president Hein Verbruggen $500,000 to cover up a positive drug test that Armstrong produced after testing positive for corticosteroids at the 1999 Tour – an accusation that Nike vehemently denied.

“The evidence suggesting that Oakley knew is no surprise to me as [Stephanie McIlvain] had told me,” said Andreu of McIlvain, a close friend of Armstrong's who was employed as the cyclist's representative by Oakley. “In my opinion, there is no way that any of Lance’s sponsors, including Nike, did not know.”