Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Lance Armstrong's Coach on Cyclist's Incredible Achievement

Aired July 31, 2001 - 11:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, talking about time, 86 hours, 17 minutes and 28 seconds. That's how long it took Lance Armstrong to win his third consecutive Tour de France.

Joining us now to talk more about that achievement, Armstrong's coach, former Olympic cyclist and chairman of TrainRight.com, Chris Carmichael. Hi, Chris.

CHRIS CARMICHAEL, LANCE ARMSTRONG'S COACH: Hi. How you doing?

KELLEY: Real good. Hope you're the same. You know, you talk about 20 stages and three weeks of a race and some folks have said that he was just about as flawless, Lance Armstrong, just about as flawless as he could be and particularly strong in the mountains. What did you think?

CARMICHAEL: Well, this year's tour was definitely his best one yet. '99, when he first won the Tour de France, by the end of the tour he was really pretty much running on empty. 2000 he was stronger than in '99, but the same thing. He was counting down the days in the last bit of the Tour de France until it was over.

This year he was, he could have gone for another three weeks it looked like.

KELLEY: Jan Ullrich, who was one of his closest competitors, said it looked like he didn't make any mistakes. What did you think and what did Lance think?

CARMICHAEL: Well, at the end it looked great. I mean there's, there were some mistakes made out there. There was a break early on, a breakaway that got a significant amount of time and luckily there was five days of very difficult mountains that the race needed to go through and we had it calculated out that Lance would probably take about 10 minutes each day in the mountains from the race leader and would take over the lead the last two days of, in the mountains.

But that was dangerous. That was a break that could have basically ended Lance's Tour de France hopes for this year. So that was one major error. But he worked through it just by sheer, by sheer strength.

KELLEY: Tell us about you and your training with him. Are you pretty hard-nosed? CARMICHAEL: Before Lance had cancer, absolutely. I was cracking the whip on him all the time and I was twisting his arm to get him out there and ride there. Early in our career, working together, there probably wasn't a week that we didn't go through that he didn't hang up on me, especially --

KELLEY: Well, what do you do? What do you do for him for a routine? What's he supposed to eat? How long is he supposed to ride, all that jazz?

CARMICHAEL: Yes. We lay all that out. We have it laid out how many calories he needs to eat each day. We have it laid out on our Internet coaching tool exactly what the workout needs to be for that day right down to his individual heart rate for each workout, the pedal kinks he needs to ride out, how many hours he needs to be out there, how many intervals. Usually the distance is between two hours roughly, about 30 miles up to about eight and a half hours sometimes, sometimes putting in as much as 160 miles in one day's workout.

KELLEY: What if he comes to you and says you know what, I'm not doing it today, pal. I'm tired. I'm going to rest and I'm having chocolate cake.

CARMICHAEL: Actually, now it's quite the other way around. Usually it's me telling Lance to slow down, take it easy and not me trying to kick him in the butt and get him out there. He's usually really good at getting out there. And there's really a day he doesn't miss throughout the year in training.

KELLEY: All right, well, we're delighted for you and for him. Chris Carmichael, who is Lance Armstrong's coach, thanks so much.

CARMICHAEL: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com